Whatever happens, it’s all ‘climate change’

FROM-Kansas City Star

BY E. THOMAS MCCLANAHAN

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says last year was the hottest on record in the contiguous United States. As The New York Times put it in a recent headline, it was “not even close.”

A couple of days later, The Times published a roundup of global weather gone wild, reinforcing the shift that took place some time back, in which “global warming” became the more vague and menacing “climate change” — a semantic adjustment that neatly accounted for the annoying lack of statistically significant global warming in recent years.

Along with heat in the United States, The Times story described snow in Jerusalem, endless rain in Britain, heat waves in Brazil and Australia and an arctic air mass settling in from Central Europe to South Asia — a cold wave severe enough to cause several hundred deaths. In Siberia, it was so frigid that natural gas liquefied in its pipes.

Omar Baddour of the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva told The Times that these events were a sign that, as the paper put it, “climate change is not just about rising temperatures but also about intense, unpleasant, anomalous weather of all kinds.”

In other words, if the temperature isn’t rising globally then “climate change” is pretty much anything bad that happens. I wish I could remember the blogger who crystallized the fallacy at work here, but he nailed it perfectly: If everything that happens becomes evidence for what you want to believe, how can you call it “science”?

The Earth may well start warming again and human activity may be the cause, but there are signs that many people have lost patience with the greens’ insistent predictions of doom.

At the “Watts Up With That” blog, meteorologist Anthony Watts found that search trends on Google for “global warming” and “climate change” have radically dropped off in recent years, while searches for “extreme weather” barely registered.

One reason may be that many people picked up on the dodginess of the shift from “global warming” to “climate change.” The Climategate scandal of 2009 — in which scientists wrote back and forth on how to thwart freedom-of-information filings or manipulate data — was a major blow to the theory’s credibility.

Then there’s the lack of significant warming since 1998, still the hottest year on record globally. What’s more, that trend will continue if you believe scientists at the British Met Office, an agency sometimes described as Britain’s NOAA.

The Met created a minor flap recently when, over the Christmas holiday, it posted a new set of predictions coughed up by its computer models. Unlike the previous year’s forecasts, these saw no significant warming for the next five years.

Moreover, the greens have failed to propose any workable policy levers for dealing with “climate change.”

The Kyoto process was stillborn given the refusal of big developing countries like China and India to participate. And the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade bill rightly died in the Senate. Politicians, especially in a chronically weak economy, aren’t likely to approve measures that could reduce growth and jobs even more, especially given the failure of climatologists to explain why global warming seems to have ceased.

The greens’ biggest problem is their tendency to package proposed remedies with a big dose of redemptive castor oil. We must do penance for our sins of waste, we’re told. But if they’d drop the moral exhibitionism, constructive options might appear.

You want a carbon tax? Fine. Make it revenue neutral and use the proceeds to lower the payroll tax — a direct levy on job creation — and cut taxes on saving and capital formation. That could well change the nation’s energy-use patterns, but I suspect many greens would see a downside: It might also accelerate growth and jobs.

Global warming takes a vacation

FROM-Washington Times EDITORIAL:

Promoters of climate hysteria admit planetary temperatures are stable

Those who dare assert the Earth’s temperature isn’t on a perilous rise are derided as “deniers.” For liberals, the climate debate has ended, and it is an unquestionable article of faith that mankind’s carbon-dioxide emanations have set the stage for rising oceans, devastating hurricanes and disasters on a scale never before seen. To say otherwise is unthinkable, and that has created a dilemma. It’s not actually getting warmer.

In a paper published Tuesday, no less an authority than NASA scientist James E. Hansen wrote, “The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing.” Mr. Hansen is the intellectual godfather of the global-warming movement who advised Al Gore on his Oscar-winning climate-scare flick, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Mr. Hansen has just acknowledged more than the lack of warming. His words confirm nature, not mankind, played the decisive role in directing global temperatures over the past 10 years.

The anecdotal evidence has certainly not been friendly to climate hysteria. Southern England is covered in snow. Los Angeles has been shivering under what is — for Angelenos — a cold snap. The National Weather Service even issued a snow warning for the Washington area on Thursday. Frigid temperatures in January aren’t unusual, but the global-warming fanatics have been trying to pass off today’s climate as worse than the droughts and heat waves seen in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s when carbon-dioxide emissions were far lower.

There has been no appreciable warming since 1998, as can be seen in the official forecast from the Met Office, the United Kingdom’s national weather service, which the agency released on Christmas Eve. Presumably, the British government’s climate scientists didn’t want anyone to notice they had lowered their forecast from previous years, with temperatures in 2020 predicted to be no warmer than they were in the late 1990s. Websites such as Climate Depot and Watts Up With That had long ago reported the same phenomenon, only to be ridiculed by the climate-change establishment. It turns out these climate realists were right all along.

To be sure, the left isn’t about to give up on global warming. Politicians need the scare to have leverage to raise taxes through “cap and trade” schemes and to regulate what types of light bulbs the public will be allowed to buy. It would be economic suicide for climate soothsayers to entirely drop their frightening prognostications because that is their source for billions of dollars in taxpayer funding. That’s why Mr. Hansen’s paper insists the “stand-still of global temperatures” is a short-term phenomenon within a long-term warming trend. The carbon-dioxide molecules that are the byproduct of economic progress are still setting the stage for the end of days. The apocalypse is just on holiday for a decade or two.

The Washington Times

Global Warming Update

FROM-A MINORITY VIEW

BY WALTER WILLIAMS


John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, in an hour-long television documentary titled "Global Warming: The Other Side," presents evidence that our National Climatic Data Center has been manipulating weather data just as the now disgraced and under investigation British University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. The NCDC is a division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Its manipulated climate data is used by the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, which is a division of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration. John Coleman's blockbuster five-part series can be seen at www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/81583352.html.

The Coleman documentary presents research by computer expert E. Michael Smith and Certified Consulting Meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo. During the 1960s and into the 1980s, the number of stations used for calculating global surface temperatures was about 6,000. By 1990, the number of stations dropped rapidly to about 1,500. Most of the stations lost were in the colder regions of the Earth. Not adjusting for their lost made temperatures appear to be higher than was in fact the case. According to Science & Environmental Policy Project, Russia reported that CRU was ignoring data from colder regions of Russia, even though these stations were still reporting data. That means data loss was not simply the result of station closings but deliberate decisions by CRU to ignore them in order to hype their global warming claims. D'Aleo and Smith report that our NCDC engaged in similar deceptive activity where they have dropped stations, particularly in colder climates, higher elevations or closer to the polar regions. Temperatures are now simply projected for these colder stations from other stations, usually in warmer climates.

Mounting evidence of scientific fraud might make little difference in terms of the response to manmade global warming hysteria. Why? Vested economic and political interests have emerged where trillions of dollars and social control are at stake. Therefore, many people who recognize the scientific fraud underlying global warming claims are likely to defend it anyway. Automobile companies have invested billions in research and investment in producing "green cars." General Electric and Phillips have spent millions lobbying Congress to outlaw incandescent bulbs so that they can force us to buy costly compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL). Farmers and ethanol manufacturers have gotten Congress to enact laws mandating greater use of their product, not to mention massive subsidies. Thousands of major corporations around the world have taken steps to reduce carbon emissions including giants like IBM, Nike, Coca-Cola and BP, the oil giant. Companies like Google, Yahoo and Dell have vowed to become "carbon neutral."

Then there's Chicago Climate Futures Exchange that plans to trade in billions of dollars of greenhouse gas emission allowances. Corporate America and labor unions, as well as their international counterparts have a huge multi-trillion dollar financial stake in the perpetuation of the global warming fraud. Federal, state and local agencies have spent billions of dollars and created millions of jobs to deal with one aspect or another of global warming.

It's deeper than just money. Schoolteachers have created polar-bear-dying lectures to frighten and indoctrinate our children when in fact there are more polar bears now than in 1950. They've taught children about melting glaciers. Just recently, the International Panel on Climate Change was forced to admit that their Himalayan glacier-melting fraud was done to "impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action."

What would all the beneficiaries of the global warming hype do if it becomes widely known and accepted that mankind's activities have very little to do with the Earth's temperature? I don't know but a lot of people would feel and look like idiots. But I bet that even if the permafrost returned as far south as New Jersey, as it once did, the warmers and their congressional stooges would still call for measures to fight global warming.

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The ‘snow job’ we know as global warming

FROM- The Times Herald

By DEROY MURDOCK

Some 49 of these 50 United States simultaneously laughed at so-called “global warming.” Every state but Hawaii had measurable snow on Feb. 13. An average eight inches covered 68.1 percent of the continental U.S., well above January’s more typical 51.2 percent.

Warmists correctly retort that a cold snap is no pattern. Instead, listen to East Anglia University climatologist Dr. Phil Jones. This world-famous advocate of so-called “global warming” conceded to the BBC that Earth’s positive temperature trend between 1995 and 2009 is “not significant.”

Jones, the chief figure in the “Climategate” e-mails scandal, rejected the oft-stated claim that “warming”-related science is settled. “This is not my view,” Jones said. “There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties...”

Thus, it has become nearly impossible to hear about “global warming” without giggling. The so-called “global warming” that Albert Gore promised has yielded to global cooling. Meanwhile, Gore’s vaunted scientific “consensus” has collapsed, like a roof buckled beneath too much snow:

• NASA is fending off charges that it “dramatically trimmed the number and cherry-picked the locations of weather observation stations they use to produce the data set on which temperature record reports are based,” according to Weather Channel founder John Coleman. Average global temperatures are calculated based on observations from some 1,500 weather stations today, versus about 6,000 in the 1970s. Canadian stations have fallen to 35 from 600.

Icecap.us meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo, another Weather Channel veteran, says NASA has removed “higher-latitude, high-altitude” locations from its sample. Andean weather gauges, for instance, are overlooked, while regional temperatures now are based on readings “on the coast or in the Amazon,” D’Aleo says. He compares this to calculating Minneapolis’ average temperature by checking thermometers in St. Louis and Kansas City.

•The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) purports to be for “warming” science what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is to U.S. fiscal policy. If CBO were caught with a broken abacus making multiple errors, however, some politically motivated, it might face IPCC’s current level of embarrassment.

•In its Nobel Prize-winning 2007 report, IPCC’s Dr. Murari Lal asserts that so-called “global warming” would melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035, first drowning Asians in flash floods, and then dehydrating them beside desiccated rivers. Dr. Lal’s source for this apocalyptic vision was a non-scientific, 2005 World Wildlife Fund report, one of 16 non-peer-reviewed WWF papers that IPCC considered “evidence.” WWF, in turn, recycled two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain. WWF’s study also featured a massive mathematical mistake. It stated that a glacier receded at 134 meters (439 feet) annually. The correct distance was 23 meters (75 feet). WWF calculated annual shrinkage by dividing 121 years of glacier loss by 21, not 121. Oops!

•IPCC claimed that African, Alpine, and Andean mountain tops had lost ice between 1900 and 2000 “due to changes in the cryosphere produced by warming.” One source for this conclusion was an unpublished master’s-degree geography thesis that quoted observations from Swiss mountain guides. IPCC also cited a 2002 “Climbing” magazine article that quoted mountaineers who had scaled glaciers since the 1970s.

“There is no way current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense,” Professor Richard Tol of Dublin’s Economic and Social Research Institute, said in January 30’s London Daily Telegraph.

Such monkeyshines have dominated this issue for four decades. As IPCC author Stephen Schneider told Discover magazine in 1989: “To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest.”

These revelations of slipshod and sinister “global-warming science” have crippled cap-and-trade energy taxes, job-killing international “climate change” treaties, and other self-destructive policies.

The fact that America is buried in snow is the icing on the cake.


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Global warming advocates ignore the boulders

FROM- WAPO

By George F. Will

Science, many scientists say, has been restored to her rightful throne because progressives have regained power. Progressives, say progressives, emulate the cool detachment of scientific discourse. So hear the calm, collected voice of a scientist lavishly honored by progressives, Rajendra Pachauri.

He is chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 version of the increasingly weird Nobel Peace Prize. Denouncing persons skeptical about the shrill certitudes of those who say global warming poses an imminent threat to the planet, he says:

"They are the same people who deny the link between smoking and cancer. They are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder -- and I hope they put it on their faces every day."

Do not judge him as harshly as he speaks of others. Nothing prepared him for the unnerving horror of encountering disagreement. Global warming alarmists, long cosseted by echoing media, manifest an interesting incongruity -- hysteria and name-calling accompanying serene assertions about the "settled science" of climate change. Were it settled, we would be spared the hyperbole that amounts to Ring Lardner's "Shut up, he explained."

The global warming industry, like Alexander in the famous children's story, is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Actually, a bad three months, which began Nov. 19 with the publication of e-mails indicating attempts by scientists to massage data and suppress dissent in order to strengthen "evidence" of global warming.

But there already supposedly was a broad, deep and unassailable consensus. Strange.

Next came the failure of The World's Last -- We Really, Really Mean It -- Chance, a.k.a. the Copenhagen climate change summit. It was a nullity, and since then things have been getting worse for those trying to stampede the world into a spasm of prophylactic statism.

In 2007, before the economic downturn began enforcing seriousness and discouraging grandstanding, seven western U.S. states (and four Canadian provinces) decided to fix the planet on their own. California's Arnold Schwarzenegger intoned, "We cannot wait for the United States government to get its act together on the environment." The 11 jurisdictions formed what is now called the Western Climate Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2012.

Or not. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer recently suspended her state's participation in what has not yet begun, and some Utah legislators are reportedly considering a similar action. Brewer worries, sensibly, that it would impose costs on businesses and consumers. She also ordered reconsideration of Arizona's strict vehicle emission rules, modeled on incorrigible California's, lest they raise the cost of new cars.

Last week, BP America, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar, three early members of the 31-member U.S. Climate Action Partnership, said: Oh, never mind. They withdrew from USCAP. It is a coalition of corporations and global warming alarm groups that was formed in 2007 when carbon rationing legislation seemed inevitable and collaboration with the rationers seemed prudent. A spokesman for Conoco said: "We need to spend time addressing the issues that impact our shareholders and consumers." What a concept.

Global warming skeptics, too, have erred. They have said there has been no statistically significant warming for 10 years. Phil Jones, former director of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, source of the leaked documents, admits it has been 15 years. Small wonder that support for radical remedial action, sacrificing wealth and freedom to combat warming, is melting faster than the Himalayan glaciers that an IPCC report asserted, without serious scientific support, could disappear by 2035.

Jones also says that if during what is called the Medieval Warm Period (circa 800-1300) global temperatures may have been warmer than today's, that would change the debate. Indeed it would. It would complicate the task of indicting contemporary civilization for today's supposedly unprecedented temperatures.

Last week, Todd Stern, America's special envoy for climate change -- yes, there is one; and people wonder where to begin cutting government -- warned that those interested in "undermining action on climate change" will seize on "whatever tidbit they can find." Tidbits like specious science, and the absence of warming?

It is tempting to say, only half in jest, that Stern's portfolio violates the First Amendment, which forbids government from undertaking the establishment of religion. A religion is what the faith in catastrophic man-made global warming has become. It is now a tissue of assertions impervious to evidence, assertions that everything, including a historic blizzard, supposedly confirms and nothing, not even the absence of warming, can falsify.
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The great global warming collapse

FROM-The Globe and Mail

Margaret Wente

As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.....
Read entire article here



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"Except none of his predictions came true"

FROM- Baraboo News Republic
Ellen Bueno: Global warming latest hot button


While trying to make up my mind about this controversial "cap-and-trade" bill currently under inspection in the Senate, I realized I needed to understand global warming better. So I got out the aspirin, lined up a row of espressos every day for a week and went hunting for global warming truth.

I learned three things: Most scientists agree that the global average temperature has increased by about 1 degree over the past century. Most also agree that carbon dioxide emissions have increased notably during the Industrial Age. Most disagree on nearly everything else.

Do you want to know what the main cause of global warming is, or how bad it will get, or what we should do about it? Sorry. Those answers are numerous and contradictory, even coming from the scientific community. There is a majority opinion, however, presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This prestigious group of scientists presented its "Summary for Policymakers" in 2007, which politicians regard as climate change canon.

So all you have to do is find that and start reading, right? (Don’t try this without caffeine.)

Eh … you’ll have to decide if you’re going to ignore the Summary’s growing number of detractors. I’d ignore them if they weren’t scientists, but they are – real ones with PhDs and research grants and papers published in peer-reviewed journals. A recent U.S. Senate Minority Report lists more than 700 prominent international scientists, including many current and former IPCC scientists, who now disagree with the organization.

This isn’t surprising. Scientists rarely achieve consensus on complex subjects, and ideally they should be curious, not angry about challenges to their work. Peer review roots out error and bias.

Unfortunately, the scientific debate can’t be heard over the screeching of partisan politics. The Al Gore-ites who want the debate to be over are trying to dismiss skeptical scientists as a bunch of quack, global warming deniers, whom they equate with Holocaust deniers. This stifling of debate isn’t good for us.

Let’s give the scientific community more time to hash things out before we legislate expensive climate change policies. This rush to get cap-and-trade passed gives me a bad feeling of déjà vu …

In 1968 the Sierra Club published The Population Bomb, a book written by Stanford biology professor, Paul R. Ehrlich. He famously announced, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich also said poor people living in nations that didn’t control population growth should be allowed to starve.

The book is a study in bad math, alarmism and misanthropy, and yet people bought 1 million copies in less than two years, and quoted it all day.

Ehrlich wanted to "place the population issue at the center of environmental policy." So did liberal philanthropic groups like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. They donated millions of dollars toward population control programs and strongly influenced White House policies. On cue, President Nixon announced in 1969 that there was an "urgent need to address world population growth rates [and] their adverse impact on economic growth …"

When the United Nations and World Bank jumped aboard the population control freight train, it barreled down on poor women everywhere. Economic aid to poor nations was tied to population reduction programs, and overzealous governments in India, Bangladesh and other countries proceeded to sterilize millions of citizens against their will (killing thousands in the process) or use women as unknowing guinea pigs in the testing of new contraceptives, or only gave food subsidies to women who got sterilized. Ehrlich must have jumped for joy.

Except none of his predictions came true. The Green Revolution boosted food production in the 1960s. Population growth slowed in developed nations to the point where 20 countries now have negative or zero growth. 25 million people, sadly, have died of AIDS. We now know that children aren’t the enemy. Poverty is the enemy. And poverty in developing nations is caused mainly by corrupt governments, civil wars and lack of health care.

Everyone believed the world’s biggest problem was families with more than 2 children. And everyone was wrong.

Let’s learn from history instead of repeating it. A big chorus of impressive people is predicting catastrophe if governments don’t get a climate change freight train rolling. Are they right?


Ellen Bueno has lived in Baraboo for 21 years and is the reader member of the News Republic’s editorial board
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"We've got a Winner"

Well stated and I would add that many proponents treat it not as a theory but a scientific law, like gravity. The fact that they do this in light of the failure of the theory to live up to its own projections and are constantly changing the criteria by which to judge their theory shows how far from science it truly is.

FROM-C-3

As New Data Continues To Contradict, Is GW Theory Now Global Warming 'Speculation' At Best

Although the global warming theory has been the favorite adopted theory of the political class, grant-seeking scientists and guilt ridden celebrities/journalists, it has not returned all the love bestowed on it by the reverent. Other than the period between the mid-70's and late 90's, the hypothetical human CO2 causation of global warming has meager observation evidence to support it. That being the case, the term "Global Warming Theory" has become an incorrect scientific description, no longer deserving the respect of 'theory' status.

Instead, based on the following widely accepted definitions, a simple review reveals it has become, at best, Global Warming Speculation, unsubstantiated by any real world data or proof. Unfortunately for the devoted, global warming can't even sustain a position of being a convincing hypothesis.
A speculation is a conjecture expressing a belief about something; the expression of a belief that is held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof.

A hypothesis is a proposition that attempts to explain a set of facts in a unified way. It generally forms the basis of experiments designed to establish its plausibility. Simplicity, elegance, and consistency with previously established hypotheses or laws are also major factors in determining the acceptance of a hypothesis.

A scientific law is a hypothesis that is assumed to be universally true. A law has good predictive power, allowing a scientist (or engineer) to model a physical system and predict what will happen under various conditions.

A theory is a set of statements, including laws and hypotheses, that explains a group of observations or phenomena in terms of those laws and hypotheses. A theory thus accounts for a wider variety of events than a law does. Broad acceptance of a theory comes when it has been tested repeatedly on new data and been used to make accurate predictions.


Global warming is not a theory; not a scientific law; and, no longer a hypothesis. Its relevance in the rational, scientific realm is tenuous, and as a UK judge recently ruled, global warming belief is actually a religion. In addition, as the believers of global warming not only embrace, but proclaim profusely, at every opportunity, the belief of catastrophic, doomsday results caused by the hand of global warming, the terms religious beliefs or speculations have become that much more appropriate.
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Ignoranace is bliss

from Planet Gore

Earth Day, 2009: The More You Know, the Less You Care

What on Earth is going on in Washington? The public believes less and less that human beings are responsible for global warming, surface temperature shows no net change in over a decade, and there’s still a bill about to be debated in the House that will require the average American in 2050 to have a “carbon footprint” no larger than it was for the average American in 1867.

The politics of global warming are becoming increasingly disconnected from the public. Day after day, hour after hour, telescreens shout, “Go Green! Go Green!” Fewer and fewer people care.

On April 19, Rasmussen Reports released a new global warming poll: 48 percent of respondents believe that observed climate changes are being “caused by planetary trends,” while 34 percent believe they are a result of human influence on the atmosphere. When Obama was sworn in, the relative numbers were 44 percent and 41 percent. Just three months ago, opinion was pretty much evenly split, and now there’s a whopping 14 percent plurality in favor of “natural causes.”

This is a change from bad to worse in the eyes of environmentalists. In January, Gallup found that, out of 20 prominent issues, Americans ranked global warming dead last in terms of importance. If the newer Rasmussen results are any guide, support has waned even further since then.

If the political class had done its homework, it would have seen this coming. The incessant hype has generated a massive political backlash. It was first documented over a year ago in the refereed journal Risk Analysis, by Paul Kellstedt and two colleagues, political scientists at Texas A&M University.

The standard thinking is called the “knowledge deficit” model. That’s academese for the notion that the poor blokes aren’t concerned about global warming because they’re just stupid and haven’t heard enough about it. Obviously no one watches television any more (CNBC’s peacock is green this week), walks outside in major urban downtowns (plastered with billboards and posters — from energy companies — urging their customers to use less of their products), or goes to the movies (The Day After Tomorrow, An Inconvenient Truth, Ice Age: The Meltdown, etc).

Actually, people still do go to the movies, and watch TV, and are assaulted every urban minute with global-warming propaganda. And, according to Kellstedt, the more people know about global warming, the less they care:

Contrary to the assumptions underlying the knowledge-deficit model, as well as the marketing of movies like Ice Age or An Inconvenient Truth, the effects of information on both concern for global warming and responsibility for it are exactly the opposite of what were expected.

Jon Gertner touched on this in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. He noted that debate as to why climate change isn’t higher up on the priority totem-pole usually is blamed on “the doubt-sowing remarks of climate-change skeptics,” or “the poor communication skills of good scientists.”

This prism has bent the light on global warming exactly wrong. In fact, it is the communication skills of scientists that are responsible for people’s opinions. Kellstedt found that people “with high confidence in scientists . . . show less concern for global warming,” as did the “more informed respondents.” Americans’ lack of alarm has less to do with “skeptics” than it does with people’s perception of mainstream science.

Interestingly, this is parallel to other issues at the science-political nexus. Despite years of campaigning against genetically modified (GM) food on the part of many environmentalists, the more people learn, the less concerned they are about that, too.

Maybe this has to do with the fact that Americans have been consuming, in one form or another, GM food for decades, and we obviously aren’t dead yet. Sober scientists note that GM foods are nutritionally indistinguishable from their progenitors — so when someone else loudly and angrily foretells disaster upon disaster that will befall us from the use of GM products, people say “so what?” And when they see some movie about the horrors of global warming — if they know that scientists observe that the planet’s surface has been warming episodically and modestly for a century — they likewise say, “So what? It’s a movie.”

Washington would be well-advised to pay attention to what folks are telling pollsters out beyond the Beltway.

But it’s Earth Day, so I expect the response of the political class here will likewise be, “So what?”



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My Earth Day Post

I did not have time to write a new Earth Day Post, so I just grabbed this from something I had written earlier, but seems appropriate. The most important thing about Earth Day anyway is that I love our world and all its creatures and living things, even humans.

Natural Selection
I believe in God. I am not alone. In fact by any account a vast majority of mankind does.  Don't worry this is not about God that is not what this is about. Of that vast majority of mankind that believes in God the largest portion of them despite numerous other differences, agree upon one significant issue, they believe God is the creator. Don't worry this is not about Creationism that is not what this is about.

In fact this is about something believed, by those who believe in God as the Creator and those who believe in some other form of Universal formation. Virtually all of mankind believes that there is a creation. I mean we all agree we are here, right?  See how easy it is to get along?

So starting from this universally accepted truth that, we are here, let's look at something near and dear to my heart, the planet Earth. I love our planet, I spend a great deal of time exploring it, taking pictures of it and in general enjoying it and appreciating it. I, like most people, feel a certain responsibility to take care of it.

Here is an interesting thought to ponder, do other creatures in creation care about their planet? Does the sparrow worry if his sewage pollutes the habitat of the squirrel? I do not know if an environmental impact study has been done on the issue but based on personal observation I would say the sparrow does not give a wit about the squirrel. But I care about both.

Of course it could be argued that since the sparrows sewage is natural, it is not an environmental hazard, perhaps based upon this logic we should outlaw toilets and everyone can go back to nature. By the way ultimately what is not natural? Isn't even man made stuff ultimately natural stuff? I mean even the stuff we create, is all created from that which was already here and will return ultimately to its original form, right?

One of the great arguments against creationism, no this is not about that, is the theory of evolution. I personally do not think of it as a theory, but as a fact, to me creationism and evolution fit together perfectly, that is just me though. One of the original foundations of this theory is the process of natural selection. In fact our friends over in all knowing Wiki World conclude their definition of natural selection with the following sentence.

Natural selection is one of the cornerstones of modern biology... natural selection remains the single primary explanation for adaptive evolution.

Now continuing in Wiki Wold for a bit and punching up adaptive evolution on my man made computer keyboard, zinging through man made cyber space I find this:

"Any change in the structure or functioning of an organism that makes it better suited to its environment".

So by dissecting the theory of evolution (a bit) we learn through a process of natural selection organisms will adapt to make themselves better suited to their environment. Pretty straight forward really, I have always thought of this as "survival of the fittest", but a quick trip to Wiki World informs me that biologist do not use this term, they prefer natural selection, though it really does mean the same thing, so I'll stick with the scientists' sensibilities on this one.

So where are we going here? Well it is simple really, whether you believe in God or not it is undeniable that for good or bad, depending on your outlook, man(kind) is the dominant species on the planet. Most believers in God would say this is by God's will and intentions, and based on the theory of evolution which people who do not believe in God love to use to pound believers over the head, we are here as a result of evolution, or naturally. We are also at the top of the evolutionary chain, naturally.

So if you believe in God, you can assume the wonderful picture I posted with this article is the world in His hands, if you don't, then it can represent the world in our hands. Or you can go way out there and imagine it is both. we are in God's hands and we are in His.

I don't hunt. I have not fired a gun more than six times in my entire life and certainly at nothing living. I have nothing against hunting done responsibly. My son loves to hunt, he has hunted his entire life. He loves to hunt whether he actually shoots anything at all, he loves nature. This year he has killed his limit on deer and the meat now fills his box freezer providing food for him, his wife and my two grandchildren, saving their young family a great deal of money. This makes me happy, that my son loves nature, that my grandchildren are well fed and that he is able to do so while being thrifty and frugal. This is also a product of natural selection.

My son shooting a deer is no more unnatural than if that deer was killed by a mountain lion; "Any change in the structure or functioning of an organism that makes it better suited to its environment". The very gun that my son uses is man-made and is a bi product of natural selection. Don't worry this is not about hunting, that is not what this is about.

Remember the sparrow and the squirrel? Let's take another example from the animal kingdom which man(kind) is at the top of, through natural selection. Does a beaver inquire of a trout the impact of his dam upon the trout's environment prior to construction? We think not and until we learn that beavers have a back channel communications network with trout we will assume the beaver like the sparrow has not a bit of concern for their fellow creatures. But we humans do, why? Natural selection-evolution, plain and simple.

Man(kind) has evolved over the centuries to realize that our world and it's creatures are important to us not because we are bad, but because we are good. Through the process of adaptation whether you call it natural or God inspired, man cares more about the world around him than any of the other species that inhabit the planet with us. Through the process of natural selection, we are the species that has evolved to the top and thank God for it, can you imagine the Grizzly in charge?

Oh this post was brought to you via my man made computer, via the Internet to your eyes by the Grace of God and natural selection

God Bless and Happy Earth Day



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MELTDOWN

from Washington Times

COMMENTARY: Global-warming politics

Pure science victim of an empirical meltdown

By Anthony J. Sadar and Susan T. Cammarata

The professional practice of pure science, like most other honorable life pursuits, has its opinion leaders, its majority opinion and its minority opinion. However, the mix of pure science with politics, which is necessary from a practical standpoint, has obvious pitfalls.

To some large or small degree, highly opinionated and domineering personalities, stilted viewpoints and sometimes malevolent politics must enter into the recipe. The opinions and domineering seem to flow more freely around the time of the year we call Earth Day (for those who aren't hip, that would be April 22 every year). When politicking dominates the perspective of pure science on any day of the year, we all lose.

In our combined 50 years of professional atmospheric and environmental science experience in government, academia, activism and consulting, we have observed a dichotomy between the real and the academic-bureaucratic worlds of environmental science.

Scientists and engineers who work hands-on in the trenches with real-world environmental-science challenges on a daily basis are skeptical of claims of a substantial influence on global climate from human activity.

Academicians who view the world from their computer screens, theories, limited field investigations and well-read published reports are not only true believers but avid promoters of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

The academics, whose student and public admiration and financial well-being depend on an urgent topic, have a powerful incentive to focus on a simple human-produced cause and therefore a human-correcting solution to the incredibly complex challenge of global climate warming. This narrow focus limits the creativity so necessary to scientific discovery that truly resolves issues and serves society efficiently

Furthermore, because many students in general education are exposed only to superficial knowledge in science throughout their primary, secondary and college careers, such students as working, voting adults are relegated simply to trusting the consensus of experts on any even modestly complex science matter. For example, when the "lies, damn lies" and AGW statistics are proffered as proof that the Earth is warming because of the excesses of human comfort and that it will continue to do so if humans don't immediately get less comfortable, the insufficiently educated or uninitiated must simply comply. Let us offer an alternative.

We encourage everyone to begin to educate himself on this important topic by taking a look at the latest global temperature trend data through 2008. A good day to start your personal education might be Earth Day, and a good place to find the data of personal enlightenment is at the Web site of the National Climatic Data Center (www.ncdc.noaa.gov).

Trend data will show you a continued drop in the average level for the world's thermometers since 2005. Be assured that the AGW enthusiasts will still obsess that 2008 was one of the highest years on record. However, suppose you were to look at the data trend as if you were riding an amusement park's roller coaster. Your perspective would be quite different depending on which side of the big hill you were on.

What about bureaucrats? Government agencies with their technical and nontechnical personnel have an enormous responsibility. Such agencies must generate, carry out and oversee ostensibly the best available science to correct real environmental problems.

By and large, government environmental agencies have performed a yeoman's effort considering the monumental task. For instance, government pollution-control agents, interfacing with the general public and industries in their jurisdiction, live with the degree of reasonableness of government laws and regulations and perform admirably.

But, here again, agencies and individual agents can become politicized. If so, the real will and benefit of the people may be usurped by a political program, pet project or personal infatuation masquerading as, say, a climate sickness with its attendant scientific solution - although the solution eventually is exposed as a very expensive cure for an illness that never existed.

We have had a long history of earnest interest in the environment. On the first Earth Day in 1970, one of us biked to school with a sign proclaiming the day and later frequented outdoor environmental forums at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. We have actively participated in paid and volunteer environmental projects throughout our careers.

Our serious interest in the environment, however, is not unreasonable concern. Much personal, professional and academic experience tells us there's much more to be learned about the hugely complex climate system. And simple, politically motivated declarations of supposed climate facts and proposed solutions to dubious anthropogenic contributions to global warming will only abridge a full understanding of the biosphere and humans' limited interference with its natural operation.

A return to pure science and its very cautious association with politics, improved science education, and diligent generation and implementation of environmental regulations will make us all winners this Earth Day and beyond.

Anthony J. Sadar is a certified consulting meteorologist and co-author of "Environmental Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry" (CRC Press/Lewis Publishers 2000). Susan T. Cammarata is an independent environmental lawyer in Pittsburgh.
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Historical Perspective

As I have journeyed from belief to agnostic to skeptic, to full blown denier of the alarmist view of Man Made Global Warming, I have always held onto one certain fact, eventually the truth will win out.

After all we are dealing with science here right? Awhile back I made the observation that a few years of declining global temperatures or even stagnant temperatures would do in the whole Global Warming hysteria, today I am not so sure.

Although I still believe the truth will ultimately win out, I am skeptical that this truth will happen any time soon, indeed the Global Warming/Climate Change agenda will probably outlive me and could infect the world for a generation or more.

I actually expect that the general public will grow more skeptical as time goes on, but that does not necessarily translate into policy changes or the slowing of the momentum of such a massive agenda and entrenched interest. I'll try to explain using one of my life long passions the study of history especially American history which I will use as an analogy here.


A Historical Perspective

Our Founding Fathers during the forming of our country were faced with many challenges but perhaps there was no more difficult dilemma than the question of slavery. They knew that slavery was not only contrary to, but hypocritical to the very principles they espoused and the form of government they were establishing.

Thomas Jefferson knew that when he penned the words " We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.." that they flew in the face of the reality of slavery.

Of course many of the representatives wanted to outlaw slavery, but the majority realized regardless of their personal views on the subject, to attempt to do so would doom any attempt to "create a more perfect Union".

The reason of course was that slavery had become essential to the maintaining of an economic, societal , political and cultural way of life. A way of life that had no connection with the vast majority of the inhabitants of the states where slavery was primarily in practice. Very few, indeed a very small percentage, of people in these states either had slaves or had any desire to maintain slavery whatsoever. But slavery was so entrenched in the society of a very powerful and influential segment with a vested interest which controlled the political and economic processes, that slavery was preserved. This despite its obvious poisonous affect on the system our founders were trying to create.

Their only hope was that they would devise a system of government that would ultimately solve the issue through compromise. As we all know compromise was attempted many times but ultimately only the terrible blood bath of our Civil War wiped out the scourge of slavery.

Historically speaking then, this being just one example, often times the obvious bad apple is left to rot in order not to upset the applecart so to speak. But we all know what happens when a bad apple is not removed from the cart, now don't we? Eventually it must be purged for the longer it remains the worse the damage it does.

Look at the example I gave above, the rotten apple at the founding of our Republic led to unimaginable pain not only for countless slaves but a future generation of Americans who were left with the task of removing it. Actually it even went long beyond that, but you get the point.

Today the global warming agenda has so affixed itself to the societal, political and economic infrastructure of the world, that the pain of removal has now reached critical mass. I sincerely believe that many people in all segments of society, business, politics and even science have severe reservations about the theory, yet for personal, professional or political gain are unwilling to or intimidated from expressing their doubts less alone openly opposing it. When an ideal reaches this level of control upon the psychology of a society it will not be easily uprooted or overthrown.

Using my previous analogy of slavery, not only was slavery not endorsed by or an important part of most southerners life, most northerners despite their disdain for the institution were more than willing to live with it rather than create a conflict in order to root it out. Most people will simply ignore even the most distasteful of situations and attempt to live their life in peace avoiding confrontation. Only as it begins to directly affect their personal or family's well being will they become actively engaged.

Despite the fact that the Global Warming scare has been around for some time, it has basically been viewed as a hypothetical threat and thus not really all that important to the general public and every day life. Now that policies (here in America) are seriously being discussed and enacted to deal with this once hypothetical threat that will actually affect the public, are Americans beginning to take serious notice.

Unfortunately I fear that global warming, like slavery is too well entrenched, especially with powerful people with vested interest, for it simply to be disproved and go away. Make no mistake the agenda of global warming is a poison too, which will sap not only economic growth but impinge on human freedom and advancement in ways that are just coming into focus for the general public.

Garth Paltridge described the infestation perfectly in the scientific community:

"Basically, the problem is that the research community has gone so far along the path of frightening the life out of the man in the street that to recant publicly even part of the story would massively damage the reputation and political clout of science in general. And so, like corpuscles in the blood, researchers all over the world now rush in overwhelming numbers to repel infection by any idea that threatens the carefully cultivated belief in climatic disaster. "

This same analogy is just as applicable to a large segment of the political and media establishment. The global warming agenda is not science, it is an economic, political, societal and yes even a cultural way of life which will be defended in ways which go far beyond simple science.

By the time the general public becomes engaged enough to truly determine the threat, and it is a threat, far too many policies and far to much power will have been vested for it simply go away based on science. If that were the case the last few years would have begun a deceleration of political imputus rather than the acceleration of it. We can say that this is no more than an act of desperation, but once enacted it all becomes very difficult to dismantle.

It is easy for us in the skeptical camp to see the obvious failures of the theory but we like they live in an echo chamber of our own prejudices, the real world still hears only both sides chattering.

Jer

Walking Tall

One of the misconceptions deliberately fostered by the alarmist community is that people especially scientist who disagree with the so called consensus are mostly partisan hacks or pawns of the fossil fuel industry. They also try to make it seem that most of the skepticism is a result of ALGORE and his sci-fi flic, by scientist that either do not know what they are talking about or for some other reason not credible or uniformed.

In this too they employ very unscientific circular reasoning, if you disagree with the AGW orthodoxy you are not a credible scientist so anything you say or do is unscientific. The science of AGW has become a closed circle and unless you get on the merry go round, you can't play with the other kids-you are shut out. This in itself violates every tenant of good scientific practice which should welcome healthy scepticism in order to validate research and findings.

It is obvious that an attempt to discredit dissenters and lock them out of the climate science discussion is a political ploy designed to protect an agenda rather than to foster scientific debate in order to ascertain the truth.

Below is an editorial from some scientist who have been attempting to publicize an alternative view for many years, they are not alone. There are countless scientist and the numbers are growing, that have been fighting this for a very long time, they deserve our respect and support and those that would so casually trash them deserve nothing more than to be ignored.

Jer



from CO2 Science

The CO2-Climate Controversy

In an editorial in the 13 March 2009 issue of Science, Christopher Reddy (Director of the Coastal Ocean Institute of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) writes that "one often-overlooked responsibility of scientists is explaining their work to people," in order that they might contribute to "sound policymaking." Now more than ever, he notes that "issues such as climate change ... are migrating from scientific journals to the non-science community," and he says "it's critical that scientists venture beyond their laboratories to put these issues into the correct contexts and help the public understand what is known, unknown, and under debate [our italics]," which is precisely what we try to do -- and have been doing for well over a decade now -- in each weekly issue of our CO2 Science website.
Most recently, in this regard, we have also affixed our names to a declaration sponsored by the Cato Institute that was widely published in a number of major U.S. newspapers. It began with the following statement that was made by President-Elect Barack Obama on 19 November 2008: Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.

The signatories to this declaration all agreed, as we next said, that "with all due respect Mr. President, that is not true," and we went on to state that "the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated," that "surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest," and that "there has been no net global warming for over a decade now."

We also told the president that "after controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather-related events," that "computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior," and that his "characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect."

Why did we do this? We did it because we believe it is our sacred duty -- as "scientist citizens" -- to help President Obama (and other elected officials) better understand "what is known, unknown, and under debate" regarding CO2 and climate change. By virtue of joining with many of our fellow scientists in disputing the so-called scientific consensus on this issue, we demonstrated -- by that very act -- that the science is not beyond dispute, and that there is not a consensus, much less a scientific consensus, regarding the subject.

Proof of this contention is evident on nearly every page of our website, where we have archived all of the contents of each of the weekly issues we have produced over the past eleven-plus years, and where we have also filed these materials under various subject headings, producing succinct summaries of many of them. We urge all who seek to become better informed on the many aspects of the CO2-climate debate to read what we have culled from the scientific literature that stands in stark contrast to what is claimed by the climate-alarmist community, and to afterward judge for themselves what they think is most nearly correct with regard to this most vital topic, upon which legislative action at the highest level of government within the United States is imminent.

Sherwood and Craig Idso