Recently there was a letter to the editor published in one of the local newspapers in which the writer took exception to an article published in that newspaper that didn't pay proper homage to the pop-culture acceptance of AlGore's theories on man-made global warming. In his letter he insulted anyone who insisted on applying actual scientific principles to the discussion (especially those of us who live in Utah) as moon-landing deniers. Anyway, I just loved the response he got from the international scientific community. Since I know that this newspaper's circulation is very limited, I've reprinted both letters below for your enjoyment and edification:
Original letter (see: http://universe.byu.edu/node/1042)
Global warming is one-sided
Mon, 07/20/2009 - 20:56
On the front page of The Daily Universe's July 20 issue was an article titled "Farmers reject global warming." I looked with futility for the article's counterpart, "Climatologists virtually unanimous in acceptance of global warming."
I have no problem with journalists informing the public that farmers (or anyone else for that matter) don't believe in global warming. What is frustrating is the article's implication that farmers' opinions somehow carry the same weight as the many scientific studies that have proven the planet is heating up. The denial of global warming seems to be epidemic in Utah. Even among students at BYU, the reality of global warming has been treated with skepticism and even animosity. I can't help but to ask, "Why?" I can only guess the consumers of the aforementioned article fall into the same category of those who maintain the lunar landing was a hoax.
Unfortunately, the issue of global warming has become a war on expertise in which the media still feels the need to tell both sides of the story - the facts according to experts and the facts according to everyone else.
Jeremy Kuhre
Southlake, Texas
And here's the solid gold response from the scientific community:
Jeremy Kuhre recently suggested that BYU students are unreasonably skeptical about global warming, in the face of "virtually unanimous" acceptance among climatologists of the belief that our planet is "heating up." He equates the students with people who maintain the lunar landing was a hoax.
We the undersigned have studied weather, climate and climate change for years -- and we can state with certainty that there is no "unanimous" view among scientists on the matter of manmade catastrophic global warming. By the way, one of the signers of this letter, Dr. Harrison Schmitt, actually stood on the moon, drilled holes, collected moon rocks and has since returned to Earth. He knows the landing was real.
Probably all climate and other scientists do agree that our Earth warmed slowly between 1850 and 1998 and has cooled slightly since. But that is not the issue. The question is whether humans' use of oil, coal, and natural gas can cause a future global warming disaster -- and on that there is tremendous disagreement, just as there is about the forces that are responsible for recent, current and past climate changes. This is the reason why over 31,000 scientists have signed the Global Warming Petition at http://www.petitionproject.org/.
The opposition to the hypothesis of catastrophic climate change from rising atmospheric CO2 is legitimate, and it is the right and duty of all citizens, including American farmers, to ask questions and demand evidence and answers. The news media have contributed to the incorrect and biased view that recent warming was caused by human CO2 emissions, and that future warming will be disastrous for humans, wildlife and our planet. The media and political activists have also promoted policies that attack American liberties and that harm and kill people, by diverting money, attention and energy resources from far more urgent and worthy purposes, like reducing poverty, malaria and malnutrition and raising global as well as American living standards.
The issue of global warming is not a war of "expertise." It is, or should be, an objective study of scientific measurements and data -- which can now confirm that atmospheric CO2 plays at most a minor role in causing weather and climate change.
BYU is an institution of higher learning that should promote the seeking of truth. Similarly, science is an objective assessment of hypotheses, by testing concepts against actual data and observations; it is not a matter of votes, popularity or "virtual unanimity."
We are all harmed, if we allow our universities or our science to be politicized.
Signed
Harrison Schmitt, PhD, Geologist and Astronaut
Craig Idso, PhD, Geographer
David R. Legates, PhD, Climatologist
Art Robinson, PhD, Chemist
Noah Robinson, PhD, Chemist
Willie Soon, PhD, Astrophysicist
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
21st Century Snake Oil
A friend of mine asked me the following question. My response follows the question:
BTW what is all this stuff on TV about no such thing as "clean coal"???
Of course there is such a thing as clean coal; my power company happens to be 1/6th owner of the cleanest coal fired plant in the country. Clean coal happens when you filter the noxious gases, like SOx and NOx, which cause bad things like acid rain, out of the emissions.
The only people who argue that there's no such thing as clean coal are those who claim that CO2 is also a pollutant. But the only people who claim that CO2 is anything other than a harmless trace gas are those who are either too lazy to read any of the many scientific studies or they are deliberately trying to scam people out of their hard-earned money. "CO2 pollution" is the snake oil of the 21st Century and we'll all be laughing at those who were gullible enough to buy in to it before very many more years pass.
By the way, it's the fact that all of the scientific information is coming out about how CO2 is NOT causing "Global Warming" and that Al Gore is a great big scam artist that is causing a major panic among the Global Warming alarmists; they're in a huge rush to push through major funding for their projects, while suppressing scientific studies, before they get laughed out of Washington DC.
Sorry to run on so long on this subject, but as a professional power engineer I'm offended to see people have to pay more for their power bill than necessary, and these scam artists (including Obama's new Secretary of Energy) want to double or even quintuple your power bills.
BTW what is all this stuff on TV about no such thing as "clean coal"???
Of course there is such a thing as clean coal; my power company happens to be 1/6th owner of the cleanest coal fired plant in the country. Clean coal happens when you filter the noxious gases, like SOx and NOx, which cause bad things like acid rain, out of the emissions.
The only people who argue that there's no such thing as clean coal are those who claim that CO2 is also a pollutant. But the only people who claim that CO2 is anything other than a harmless trace gas are those who are either too lazy to read any of the many scientific studies or they are deliberately trying to scam people out of their hard-earned money. "CO2 pollution" is the snake oil of the 21st Century and we'll all be laughing at those who were gullible enough to buy in to it before very many more years pass.
By the way, it's the fact that all of the scientific information is coming out about how CO2 is NOT causing "Global Warming" and that Al Gore is a great big scam artist that is causing a major panic among the Global Warming alarmists; they're in a huge rush to push through major funding for their projects, while suppressing scientific studies, before they get laughed out of Washington DC.
Sorry to run on so long on this subject, but as a professional power engineer I'm offended to see people have to pay more for their power bill than necessary, and these scam artists (including Obama's new Secretary of Energy) want to double or even quintuple your power bills.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Gore's Scientist Calls Warming Fears ‘Mistaken’
Scientist Fired by Gore Calls Warming Fears ‘Mistaken’
Princeton University physicist Dr. Will Happer, who says he was fired by Vice President Al Gore for failing to adhere to Gore’s views on global warming, has now declared that man-made warming fears are “mistaken.”
Happer, who served as the director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from 1990 to 1993, said, “I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism. I did not need the job that badly.”
He said in 1993, “I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy."
Now Happer has asked to join the more than 650 international scientists who have spoken out against man-made global warming fears and are cited in the 2008 U.S. Senate Minority Report from Environmental and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe, R-Okla.
“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken,” Happer told the committee on Dec. 22.
President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as his top science adviser, Harvard University professor John Holdren, is a staunch believer in the dangers of man-made global warming and advised Gore on his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Dr. Happer has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.
Sen. Inhofe said that the statements of prominent scientists like Happer who are willing to publicly dissent from climate fears strike a blow to the United Nations, Gore, and the media’s claims about global warming.
“The endless claims of a 'consensus' about man-made global warming grow less and less credible every day," Inhofe said.
Happer declared, “I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect — for example, absorption and emission of visible and infrared radiation, and fluid flow. Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science. The earth's climate is changing now, as it always has. There is no evidence that the changes differ in any qualitative way from those of the past . . .
“Computer models used to generate frightening scenarios from increasing levels of carbon dioxide have scant credibility.”
Princeton University physicist Dr. Will Happer, who says he was fired by Vice President Al Gore for failing to adhere to Gore’s views on global warming, has now declared that man-made warming fears are “mistaken.”
Happer, who served as the director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from 1990 to 1993, said, “I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism. I did not need the job that badly.”
He said in 1993, “I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy."
Now Happer has asked to join the more than 650 international scientists who have spoken out against man-made global warming fears and are cited in the 2008 U.S. Senate Minority Report from Environmental and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe, R-Okla.
“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken,” Happer told the committee on Dec. 22.
President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as his top science adviser, Harvard University professor John Holdren, is a staunch believer in the dangers of man-made global warming and advised Gore on his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Dr. Happer has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.
Sen. Inhofe said that the statements of prominent scientists like Happer who are willing to publicly dissent from climate fears strike a blow to the United Nations, Gore, and the media’s claims about global warming.
“The endless claims of a 'consensus' about man-made global warming grow less and less credible every day," Inhofe said.
Happer declared, “I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect — for example, absorption and emission of visible and infrared radiation, and fluid flow. Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science. The earth's climate is changing now, as it always has. There is no evidence that the changes differ in any qualitative way from those of the past . . .
“Computer models used to generate frightening scenarios from increasing levels of carbon dioxide have scant credibility.”
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Manmade Global Warming Theory 'Arrogant'
CNN Meteorologist: Manmade Global Warming Theory 'Arrogant'
Network's second meteorologist to challenge notion man can alter climate.
By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute12/18/2008 11:02:44 PM http://businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081218205953.aspx
Unprecedented snow in Las Vegas has some scratching their heads – how can there be global warming with this unusual cold and snowy weather?
CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.
“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”
Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span.
“But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.”
“We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued.
Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13th Century.
“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”
Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man.
“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”
Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10.
Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies.
“There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.”
Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.”
His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”
Network's second meteorologist to challenge notion man can alter climate.
By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute12/18/2008 11:02:44 PM http://businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081218205953.aspx
Unprecedented snow in Las Vegas has some scratching their heads – how can there be global warming with this unusual cold and snowy weather?
CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.
“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”
Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span.
“But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.”
“We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued.
Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13th Century.
“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”
Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man.
“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”
Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10.
Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies.
“There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.”
Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.”
His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Obama continues anti-American activities
In typical "newspeak" (ala 1984) the Global Warming alarmists claim that President Bush has suppressed science, when in fact they are the ones who totally ignore the science that contradicts their faith-based belief system.
Obama Announces Energy, Environmental Team.
The New York Times (12/16, A24, Broder, Revkin) reports, "The team President-elect Barack Obama introduced on Monday to carry out his energy and environmental policies faces a host of political, economic, diplomatic and scientific challenges that could impede his plans to address global warming and America's growing dependence on dirty and uncertain sources of energy." Obama "vowed to press ahead despite the faltering economy and suggested that he would invest his political capital in trying to break logjams."
The AP (12/16) adds, "Obama selected Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and Carol Browner, a confidante of former Vice President Al Gore, to lead a White House council on energy and climate. Browner headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration." Obama also "announced his choice of Lisa Jackson, former head of New Jersey's environmental agency, as EPA administrator and Nancy Sutley, a deputy Los Angeles mayor, as chair of the White House Council on Environment Quality."
The Los Angeles Times (12/16, Tankersley, Hamburger) notes, "With this team, some environmentalists and former federal research scientists expect Obama's White House to break from what they view as the Bush administration's record of overlooking science in favor of politics. ... Critics -- including...former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman -- have complained about the influence of industry lobbyists and ideologues on Bush administration decision-making." Rep. Henry A. Waxman (CA) "is among the Democrats who repeatedly have accused top Bush officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and political advisor Karl Rove, with pressing federal agencies to take positions that put them at odds with their own scientists on energy, global warming and stem cell research." The Politico (12/16, Lee, Lovley), the Wall Street Journal (12/16, A5, Power), USA Today (12/16, Watson), The Hill (12/16, Youngman) and AFP (12/16), among other news outlets, also report on Obama's announcement.
Obama Announces Energy, Environmental Team.
The New York Times (12/16, A24, Broder, Revkin) reports, "The team President-elect Barack Obama introduced on Monday to carry out his energy and environmental policies faces a host of political, economic, diplomatic and scientific challenges that could impede his plans to address global warming and America's growing dependence on dirty and uncertain sources of energy." Obama "vowed to press ahead despite the faltering economy and suggested that he would invest his political capital in trying to break logjams."
The AP (12/16) adds, "Obama selected Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and Carol Browner, a confidante of former Vice President Al Gore, to lead a White House council on energy and climate. Browner headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration." Obama also "announced his choice of Lisa Jackson, former head of New Jersey's environmental agency, as EPA administrator and Nancy Sutley, a deputy Los Angeles mayor, as chair of the White House Council on Environment Quality."
The Los Angeles Times (12/16, Tankersley, Hamburger) notes, "With this team, some environmentalists and former federal research scientists expect Obama's White House to break from what they view as the Bush administration's record of overlooking science in favor of politics. ... Critics -- including...former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman -- have complained about the influence of industry lobbyists and ideologues on Bush administration decision-making." Rep. Henry A. Waxman (CA) "is among the Democrats who repeatedly have accused top Bush officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and political advisor Karl Rove, with pressing federal agencies to take positions that put them at odds with their own scientists on energy, global warming and stem cell research." The Politico (12/16, Lee, Lovley), the Wall Street Journal (12/16, A5, Power), USA Today (12/16, Watson), The Hill (12/16, Youngman) and AFP (12/16), among other news outlets, also report on Obama's announcement.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Obama declares war on energy
Just to prove that he hates America, Obama has appointed an academic who knows nothing about real energy to be the next Secretary of Energy:
Obama Expected To Tap Nobel Prize Winner To Head Energy Department.
Fox News' Special Report (12/10, Hume) reported, "Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu will be nominated Energy Secretary. Chu is a proponent of using alternative energy sources to replace fossil fuels." CNN's The Situation Room (12/10, Yellin) said Chu is "very well known in energy circles. He runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. He won the Nobel Prize in 1997 in physics. But the big question is going to be: If in fact this goes forward, will he have the political clout? He doesn't have a lot of political experience. Will he have the clout to pass a massive energy reform bill?"
In a front-page story, the Washington Post (12/11, A1, Mufson, Rucker) notes that "Chu, the son of Chinese immigrants, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997 for his work in the 'development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.' But, in an interview last year with The Washington Post, Chu said he began to turn his attention to energy and climate change several years ago." Said Chu, "I was following it just as a citizen and getting increasingly alarmed. ... Many of our best basic scientists [now] realize that this is getting down to a crisis situation." USA Today (12/11, Hall, Schouten), the AP (12/11, Sidoti, Cappiello), Los Angeles Times (12/11, Tankersley) and Financial Times (12/11, Luce), among other media outlets, run similar stories this morning.
In the Wall Street Journal (12/11) Environmental Capital blog, Keith Johnson examined Chu's "ideas about finding new supplies of energy." Johnson noted that "Chu's marquee work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is the Helios Project," which is "an effort to tackle what Dr. Chu sees as the biggest energy challenge facing the U.S.: transportation. That's because it's a huge drain on US coffers and an environmental albatross, Dr. Chu says." The project "has focused largely on biofuels," particularly research into second-generation biofuels. However, "Big Coal won't be very happy if Dr. Chu gets confirmed as head of the DOE," as Chu has called coal his "worst nightmare," particularly ""given the sheer scope of the challenge of economically storing billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions underground." Johnson also examined Chu's stance on nuclear power, and the implementation of renewable energy.
Obama Expected To Tap Nobel Prize Winner To Head Energy Department.
Fox News' Special Report (12/10, Hume) reported, "Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu will be nominated Energy Secretary. Chu is a proponent of using alternative energy sources to replace fossil fuels." CNN's The Situation Room (12/10, Yellin) said Chu is "very well known in energy circles. He runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. He won the Nobel Prize in 1997 in physics. But the big question is going to be: If in fact this goes forward, will he have the political clout? He doesn't have a lot of political experience. Will he have the clout to pass a massive energy reform bill?"
In a front-page story, the Washington Post (12/11, A1, Mufson, Rucker) notes that "Chu, the son of Chinese immigrants, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997 for his work in the 'development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.' But, in an interview last year with The Washington Post, Chu said he began to turn his attention to energy and climate change several years ago." Said Chu, "I was following it just as a citizen and getting increasingly alarmed. ... Many of our best basic scientists [now] realize that this is getting down to a crisis situation." USA Today (12/11, Hall, Schouten), the AP (12/11, Sidoti, Cappiello), Los Angeles Times (12/11, Tankersley) and Financial Times (12/11, Luce), among other media outlets, run similar stories this morning.
In the Wall Street Journal (12/11) Environmental Capital blog, Keith Johnson examined Chu's "ideas about finding new supplies of energy." Johnson noted that "Chu's marquee work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is the Helios Project," which is "an effort to tackle what Dr. Chu sees as the biggest energy challenge facing the U.S.: transportation. That's because it's a huge drain on US coffers and an environmental albatross, Dr. Chu says." The project "has focused largely on biofuels," particularly research into second-generation biofuels. However, "Big Coal won't be very happy if Dr. Chu gets confirmed as head of the DOE," as Chu has called coal his "worst nightmare," particularly ""given the sheer scope of the challenge of economically storing billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions underground." Johnson also examined Chu's stance on nuclear power, and the implementation of renewable energy.
The Washington Post (12/12, A9, Mufson) reports on "the next secretary of energy, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu," who argues that "the United States and other countries" need to address the issue of climate change. "He said governments need to 'act quickly' to implement fiscal and regulatory policies to stimulate the deployment of technologies that boost energy efficiency and 'minimize' carbon emissions." According to the Post, "Chu's views on climate change would be among the most forceful ever held by a cabinet member." In the past, Chu has called "the cost of electricity...'anomalously low' in the United States," and said "that a cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gases 'is an absolutely non-partisan issue,' and that scientists had come to 'realize that the climate is much more sensitive than we thought.'" Chu has also "said that he had confidence in mankind's ability to solve its energy problems," arguing that "the challenge...was to create things from nature that nature cannot make on its own."
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
ScareWatch: "Wilder and wetter everywhere"
ScareWatch: "Wilder and wetter everywhere"
by Christopher Monckton, December 10, 2008
The scare: The Guardian, one of the two UK newspapers most prone to write unverified and scientifically-inaccurate stories about the consequences of “global warming”, published an article on 10 December 2008, intended to influence delegates at the UN’s Poznan conference on the climate. The article listed a series of alleged climate catastrophes all round the world, saying that “millions … are feeling the force of a changing climate. … Evidence is emerging of weather patterns in turmoil and the poorest nations disproportionately bearing the brunt of warming”: more and longer droughts, more floods, more heat waves, more rainfall, more frequent and intense cyclones leading to food and water shortages, more illnesses and water-borne diseases, more malnutrition, soil erosion, disruption to water supplies.
In North-Eastern Brazil, temperatures are said to have risen by 1 degree C in 30 years. In “low-lying” Bangladesh, The Guardian says there has been a 10% increase in the intensity and frequency of major cyclones (the period over which this increase is supposed to have occurred is not stated), with too much rain in the rainy season and too little in the dry season. The “balmy” Caribbean is “also being churned up with increasing frequency and ferocity”, with eight hurricanes in 2008, five of which were major, and the hurricane season lasted “a record five months”, leading to “coral bleaching and flooding”.
In Mozambique, there is “a clear increase in temperature”, with more frequent extreme weather events, such as tropical cyclones, and late rains. In Nepal, floods that once happened once a decade “seem to be annual and getting more serious”. Forest pigs farrow earlier; rice and cucumber “will no longer grow where they used to”; days are hotter, trees flower twice a year, and “raindrops are getting bigger”.
Lakes in Nepal and Bhutan fed by “glacial meltwater” are “growing so rapidly that they could burst their banks”. In Tadjikistan, “thousands of small glaciers will have disappeared completely by 2050, causing more water to flow and hence a “disastrous decline in river flow”. The area of Peru’s glaciers fallen by “22% … in the last 35 years”.
The truth: The first of two central falsehoods implicit in The Guardian’s wearisomely characteristic catalogue of real or imagined climate disasters is the attribution of every local change in the weather to manmade “global warming”.
We begin, as we have had to begin so often in the past when examining such articles as this, by reminding readers that there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” for 13 full years since 1995, and that there has been a significant global cooling over seven full years since late 2001 – a cooling that The Guardian has chosen not to highlight to its readers. It is at once apparent, therefore, that every single one of the imagined recent catastrophes described by The Guardian’s breathless reporters cannot possibly have been caused by any kind of warming, whether manmade or natural, for the good and sufficient reason that there has not been any warming.
The second central falsehood lies in the fact, repeatedly stated even by the generally-excitable United Nations climate panel, that individual extreme-weather events, particularly on a local scale, cannot – repeat, cannot – be attributed to “global warming”. Why? Because, as the UN’s 2001 climate assessment puts it, the climate of the Earth is “a complex, non-linear, chaotic object” whose long-run evolution, in the words of Lorenz’s famous paper Deterministic Non- Periodic Flow (1963), “cannot be predicted by any method”. It follows that, if even a global phase-transition (a sudden change to what had previously seemed to be a regular pattern) cannot be attributed to a particular cause, then a fortiori a local phase-transition cannot be attributed to that cause.
Given the universal application of these two falsehoods to The Guardian’s alleged catastrophes, it is not strictly necessary to examine each of The Guardian’s specific allegations about the supposed impact of manmade “global warming” on individual regions. The entire article is founded upon sand. However, The Guardian’s latest list of disasters is more than customarily baseless, and betokens some desperation at the failure of “global warming” to do the damage that the newspaper has so often said it would do. We shall look briefly at a few of the supposed climate cataclysms.
“Drought” in north-eastern Brazil: The history of South America, going back to the time of the Inca and Mayan civilizations, has been one of alternate drought and flood. Set in this historical context, which The Guardian is very careful not to mention, a few years of drought in a single Brazilian region are unremarkable. Most of the southern hemisphere has been cooling even more rapidly than the northern hemisphere in recent years.
More and worse “tropical cyclones” in “low-lying” Bangladesh: There is no credible scientific evidence that “global warming”, even if it were occurring (which it is not), would cause any increase in either the frequency or the intensity of tropical cyclones. Dr. Kerry Emanuel, the lead author of a much-cited paper in 2005 suggesting a causative link, has since substantially retracted his finding. The Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index, a running two-year sum of the estimated intensity of all recorded tropical cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons worldwide, was first compiled 30 years ago: in October 2008, its lowest-ever value was recorded, demonstrating conclusively that, in fact rather than in theory, the combined frequency and incidence – in short, the impact – of tropical cyclones worldwide is at an alltime low. This result confirms other findings: for instance, the absence of any trend in the number of landfalling Atlantic cyclones for a century; the 30-year decline in the frequency of intense tropical cyclones; the similar decline in the frequency of intense typhoons; and the population-weighted decline in the incidence of death and in the cost of insured damage arising from tropical cyclones. Outside the tropics, it is settled science that a warmer world would lead to a reduction in both the frequency and the intensity of storms. And “low-lying Bangladesh”, despite repeated warnings from The Guardian and other newspapers about rising sea levels, has seen a growth of some 70,000 square kilometers in its total land area, caused by various factors that have nothing to do with “global warming”.
“Increasing frequency and ferocity” of hurricanes in the Caribbean: As paper after paper has demonstrated, and as Robinson, Robinson & Soon (2007) have confirmed, there has been no trend whatsoever in the number of hurricanes making landfall in the West Atlantic for a century. The Guardian’s statement is simply false. The hurricane season, said by The Guardian to be “a record five months”, is by no means of unprecedented length. It is true that flooding occurs during any sufficiently intense tropical cyclone, including major hurricanes: but, compared with the great Galveston flood of 1900, and with many other flood disasters in the first 60 years of the 20th century, recent flooding arising from hurricanes has been much reduced and far less harmful either to life or to property. Lloyds of London have been making record profits in the past couple of years.
“Coral bleaching” last occurred on a significant scale ten years ago, in 1998, as a result of the exceptional (but not unprecedented) natural alteration in global ocean currents known as the El Nino Southern Oscillation. There had been two previous such strong El Nino events, each lasting only a few months, over the past 300 years. As a result of both these events, bleaching of corals occurred: however, we know that corals evolved at least 175 million years ago, in the Triassic era (though The Guardian is very careful to avoid giving its readers this perspective), and, therefore, they have survived the major global-extinction events of the Triassic and Cretaceous periods, as well as having survived both global temperatures up to 7 degrees C (12.5 F) higher than the present, and atmospheric and oceanic carbon dioxide concentrations up to 10 times today’s. Bleaching does not in fact harm corals: they continue to grow quite successfully after bleaching events.
“Increased extreme-weather events” in Mozambique: The weather records in most African countries – and particularly in those, such as Mozambique, which were wracked by civil wars for decades – are simply not complete enough to allow any such conclusion to be drawn. Even if there had been more frequent and more intense extreme weather in Mozambique, it would not be proper to assume, as The Guardian strongly implies, that the problem is Africa-wide. In central Africa, for instance, in the region around Mount Kilimanjaro, there has been pronounced cooling for 30 years. It is this cooling, and the consequent atmospheric dessication, that has led to the ablation of most of the summit glacier. The glacier is not melting, because in 30 years the summit temperature has never risen above –1.6 degrees C, and its average temperature has been – 7 °C. It is inappropriate to select only those regions of a generally-cooling planet that (if the local records are reliable enough) have shown some recent warming, and to argue from these particular instances to an implicit general conclusion that “global warming” is occurring, or is causing damage.
“Disappearing glaciers” in Nepal: It is in the nature of glaciers that sometimes they advance and sometimes they recede. Professor M.I. Bhat, of the Indian Geological Survey, says that the 200 years of records concerning the 9575 glaciers that debouch from the Himalayas into India, initially maintained by the surveyors of the British Raj, disclose no recent pattern that is cause for concern. Although The Guardian’s article seems to assume that it is glacial meltwater that provides the nations of the region with their water supply, it is in fact Northern-Hemisphere snowmelt that provides almost all of the water supply. There has been no trend in northern-hemisphere snow-cover extent in the 30 years of continuous satellite monitoring. New records for northern-hemisphere snow-cover extent were set in 2001/2 and in 2007/8, and the latter record may well be surpassed in 2008/9.
The purpose of The Guardian in inventing this galloping concatenation of ingenious but baseless fictions was to induce nations such as the United States to part with large sums of taxpayers’ money to subsidize the imagined consequences of their past over-use of wicked fossil fuels for the poorer countries of the world. Whatever may be the intrinsic merits of aid to the Third World, the recent evolution of the climate, which is well within the parameters of normal variability, provides no basis for any additional funding. End of scare.
by Christopher Monckton, December 10, 2008
The scare: The Guardian, one of the two UK newspapers most prone to write unverified and scientifically-inaccurate stories about the consequences of “global warming”, published an article on 10 December 2008, intended to influence delegates at the UN’s Poznan conference on the climate. The article listed a series of alleged climate catastrophes all round the world, saying that “millions … are feeling the force of a changing climate. … Evidence is emerging of weather patterns in turmoil and the poorest nations disproportionately bearing the brunt of warming”: more and longer droughts, more floods, more heat waves, more rainfall, more frequent and intense cyclones leading to food and water shortages, more illnesses and water-borne diseases, more malnutrition, soil erosion, disruption to water supplies.
In North-Eastern Brazil, temperatures are said to have risen by 1 degree C in 30 years. In “low-lying” Bangladesh, The Guardian says there has been a 10% increase in the intensity and frequency of major cyclones (the period over which this increase is supposed to have occurred is not stated), with too much rain in the rainy season and too little in the dry season. The “balmy” Caribbean is “also being churned up with increasing frequency and ferocity”, with eight hurricanes in 2008, five of which were major, and the hurricane season lasted “a record five months”, leading to “coral bleaching and flooding”.
In Mozambique, there is “a clear increase in temperature”, with more frequent extreme weather events, such as tropical cyclones, and late rains. In Nepal, floods that once happened once a decade “seem to be annual and getting more serious”. Forest pigs farrow earlier; rice and cucumber “will no longer grow where they used to”; days are hotter, trees flower twice a year, and “raindrops are getting bigger”.
Lakes in Nepal and Bhutan fed by “glacial meltwater” are “growing so rapidly that they could burst their banks”. In Tadjikistan, “thousands of small glaciers will have disappeared completely by 2050, causing more water to flow and hence a “disastrous decline in river flow”. The area of Peru’s glaciers fallen by “22% … in the last 35 years”.
The truth: The first of two central falsehoods implicit in The Guardian’s wearisomely characteristic catalogue of real or imagined climate disasters is the attribution of every local change in the weather to manmade “global warming”.
We begin, as we have had to begin so often in the past when examining such articles as this, by reminding readers that there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” for 13 full years since 1995, and that there has been a significant global cooling over seven full years since late 2001 – a cooling that The Guardian has chosen not to highlight to its readers. It is at once apparent, therefore, that every single one of the imagined recent catastrophes described by The Guardian’s breathless reporters cannot possibly have been caused by any kind of warming, whether manmade or natural, for the good and sufficient reason that there has not been any warming.
The second central falsehood lies in the fact, repeatedly stated even by the generally-excitable United Nations climate panel, that individual extreme-weather events, particularly on a local scale, cannot – repeat, cannot – be attributed to “global warming”. Why? Because, as the UN’s 2001 climate assessment puts it, the climate of the Earth is “a complex, non-linear, chaotic object” whose long-run evolution, in the words of Lorenz’s famous paper Deterministic Non- Periodic Flow (1963), “cannot be predicted by any method”. It follows that, if even a global phase-transition (a sudden change to what had previously seemed to be a regular pattern) cannot be attributed to a particular cause, then a fortiori a local phase-transition cannot be attributed to that cause.
Given the universal application of these two falsehoods to The Guardian’s alleged catastrophes, it is not strictly necessary to examine each of The Guardian’s specific allegations about the supposed impact of manmade “global warming” on individual regions. The entire article is founded upon sand. However, The Guardian’s latest list of disasters is more than customarily baseless, and betokens some desperation at the failure of “global warming” to do the damage that the newspaper has so often said it would do. We shall look briefly at a few of the supposed climate cataclysms.
“Drought” in north-eastern Brazil: The history of South America, going back to the time of the Inca and Mayan civilizations, has been one of alternate drought and flood. Set in this historical context, which The Guardian is very careful not to mention, a few years of drought in a single Brazilian region are unremarkable. Most of the southern hemisphere has been cooling even more rapidly than the northern hemisphere in recent years.
More and worse “tropical cyclones” in “low-lying” Bangladesh: There is no credible scientific evidence that “global warming”, even if it were occurring (which it is not), would cause any increase in either the frequency or the intensity of tropical cyclones. Dr. Kerry Emanuel, the lead author of a much-cited paper in 2005 suggesting a causative link, has since substantially retracted his finding. The Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index, a running two-year sum of the estimated intensity of all recorded tropical cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons worldwide, was first compiled 30 years ago: in October 2008, its lowest-ever value was recorded, demonstrating conclusively that, in fact rather than in theory, the combined frequency and incidence – in short, the impact – of tropical cyclones worldwide is at an alltime low. This result confirms other findings: for instance, the absence of any trend in the number of landfalling Atlantic cyclones for a century; the 30-year decline in the frequency of intense tropical cyclones; the similar decline in the frequency of intense typhoons; and the population-weighted decline in the incidence of death and in the cost of insured damage arising from tropical cyclones. Outside the tropics, it is settled science that a warmer world would lead to a reduction in both the frequency and the intensity of storms. And “low-lying Bangladesh”, despite repeated warnings from The Guardian and other newspapers about rising sea levels, has seen a growth of some 70,000 square kilometers in its total land area, caused by various factors that have nothing to do with “global warming”.
“Increasing frequency and ferocity” of hurricanes in the Caribbean: As paper after paper has demonstrated, and as Robinson, Robinson & Soon (2007) have confirmed, there has been no trend whatsoever in the number of hurricanes making landfall in the West Atlantic for a century. The Guardian’s statement is simply false. The hurricane season, said by The Guardian to be “a record five months”, is by no means of unprecedented length. It is true that flooding occurs during any sufficiently intense tropical cyclone, including major hurricanes: but, compared with the great Galveston flood of 1900, and with many other flood disasters in the first 60 years of the 20th century, recent flooding arising from hurricanes has been much reduced and far less harmful either to life or to property. Lloyds of London have been making record profits in the past couple of years.
“Coral bleaching” last occurred on a significant scale ten years ago, in 1998, as a result of the exceptional (but not unprecedented) natural alteration in global ocean currents known as the El Nino Southern Oscillation. There had been two previous such strong El Nino events, each lasting only a few months, over the past 300 years. As a result of both these events, bleaching of corals occurred: however, we know that corals evolved at least 175 million years ago, in the Triassic era (though The Guardian is very careful to avoid giving its readers this perspective), and, therefore, they have survived the major global-extinction events of the Triassic and Cretaceous periods, as well as having survived both global temperatures up to 7 degrees C (12.5 F) higher than the present, and atmospheric and oceanic carbon dioxide concentrations up to 10 times today’s. Bleaching does not in fact harm corals: they continue to grow quite successfully after bleaching events.
“Increased extreme-weather events” in Mozambique: The weather records in most African countries – and particularly in those, such as Mozambique, which were wracked by civil wars for decades – are simply not complete enough to allow any such conclusion to be drawn. Even if there had been more frequent and more intense extreme weather in Mozambique, it would not be proper to assume, as The Guardian strongly implies, that the problem is Africa-wide. In central Africa, for instance, in the region around Mount Kilimanjaro, there has been pronounced cooling for 30 years. It is this cooling, and the consequent atmospheric dessication, that has led to the ablation of most of the summit glacier. The glacier is not melting, because in 30 years the summit temperature has never risen above –1.6 degrees C, and its average temperature has been – 7 °C. It is inappropriate to select only those regions of a generally-cooling planet that (if the local records are reliable enough) have shown some recent warming, and to argue from these particular instances to an implicit general conclusion that “global warming” is occurring, or is causing damage.
“Disappearing glaciers” in Nepal: It is in the nature of glaciers that sometimes they advance and sometimes they recede. Professor M.I. Bhat, of the Indian Geological Survey, says that the 200 years of records concerning the 9575 glaciers that debouch from the Himalayas into India, initially maintained by the surveyors of the British Raj, disclose no recent pattern that is cause for concern. Although The Guardian’s article seems to assume that it is glacial meltwater that provides the nations of the region with their water supply, it is in fact Northern-Hemisphere snowmelt that provides almost all of the water supply. There has been no trend in northern-hemisphere snow-cover extent in the 30 years of continuous satellite monitoring. New records for northern-hemisphere snow-cover extent were set in 2001/2 and in 2007/8, and the latter record may well be surpassed in 2008/9.
The purpose of The Guardian in inventing this galloping concatenation of ingenious but baseless fictions was to induce nations such as the United States to part with large sums of taxpayers’ money to subsidize the imagined consequences of their past over-use of wicked fossil fuels for the poorer countries of the world. Whatever may be the intrinsic merits of aid to the Third World, the recent evolution of the climate, which is well within the parameters of normal variability, provides no basis for any additional funding. End of scare.
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