Scholar and columnist Thomas Sowell writes:
Britain's Channel 4 has produced a devastating documentary titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It has apparently not been broadcast by any of the networks in the United States. But, fortunately, it is available on the Internet.We expect the U.N. to mislead us. But the National Academy of Sciences? How did that happen?
Distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global warming hysteria is.
These include scientists from MIT and top-tier universities in a number of countries. Some of these are scientists whose names were paraded on some of the global warming publications that are being promoted in the media -- but who state plainly that they neither wrote those publications nor approved them.
One scientist threatened to sue unless his name was removed.
While the public has been led to believe that "all" the leading scientists buy the global warming hysteria and the political agenda that goes with it, in fact the official reports from the United Nations or the National Academy of Sciences are written by bureaucrats -- and then garnished with the names of leading scientists who were "consulted," but whose contrary conclusions have been ignored.
I plan to write Sowell and ask him to devote a column to explaining what many people, including scientists, are saying about the NAM: It’s been politized just like that ABA.
Sowell continues:
There is no question that the globe is warming but it has warmed and cooled before, and is not as warm today as it was some centuries ago, before there were any automobiles and before there was as much burning of fossil fuels as today.I hope you read all of Sowell’s column which ends:
None of the dire things predicted today happened then.
The British documentary goes into some of the many factors that have caused the earth to warm and cool for centuries, including changes in activities on the sun, 93 million miles away and wholly beyond the jurisdiction of the Kyoto treaty.
According to these climate scientists, human activities have very little effect on the climate, compared to many other factors, from volcanoes to clouds.
These climate scientists likewise debunk the mathematical models that have been used to hype global warming hysteria, even though hard evidence stretching back over centuries contradicts these models.
What is even scarier than seeing how easily the public, the media, and the politicians have been manipulated and stampeded, is discovering how much effort has been put into silencing scientists who dare to say that the emperor has no clothes.
Academics who jump on the global warming bandwagon are far more likely to get big research grants than those who express doubts -- and research is the lifeblood of an academic career at leading universities […].
No one denies that temperatures are about a degree warmer than they were a century ago.Question: If it comes to the point where people can’t “mindlessly extrapolate” about global warming, what will Al Gore do?
What the climate scientists in the British documentary deny is that you can mindlessly extrapolate that, or that we are headed for a climate catastrophe if we don't take drastic steps that could cause an economic catastrophe.
"Global warming" is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.
13 comments:
So does that spontaneously make it okay to keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?
The two main sinks for CO2 are green plants of all sizes and complexities and, uh, the ocean, by basic principles of diffusion where it dissolves as carbonic acid.
So: algal blooms and acid oceans. Neither of which are exactly Mr. Fun.
Hitching reduced CO2 to "stop global warming" doesn't spontaneously make it a bad idea. I mean, that "global cooling" thing we had with particulates and sulfides may not have been sound either, but that doesn't mean that less smog and less acid rain aren't good consequences.
--GF
John, u thank they be global warmin in Precious panties?
God bleess you, John
Pete Best
Seriously? Have you been to China and seen the kind of pollution they are pumping into the atmosphere? For that matter, have you been to the Ohio River Valley?
I have no doubt that some of the warming has to do with natural cycles, but I also have no doubt that humans are exacerbating the problem. To GF's point, why would we not want to take care of our only home, protect our disappearing species, preserve our melting ice caps and prevent disasterous changes that would occur as a result of global warming?
Remember, too, that a century is barely a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. So the fact that the entire earth's temperature has risen by an entire degree in that short of time is alarming.
When will us humans - and especially Americans, for that matter - step up to the plate to not only take responsbility for our actions, but also to work together with the rest of the world to come to a solution?
John, great work on your blog, and a nice topic change of pace. (But, while I'm at it - Go Duke Lacrosse!)
It is important to be deeply sceptical of claims that man is the cause of global warming, and as such is able to control global warming.
Global warming proponents are hugely motivated by money and power. They hope we will cave to pressure, give them grants, donations and increase taxes. They want us to concede further control over our lives and the economy.
My view, shared by many and receiving increased notice, is that warming of the planet is cyclical and primarily driven by the sun's cycles. Anything we might do, positive or negative, is trivial by comparison.
As just one data point demonstrates, carbon dioxide is an almost infinitessimally small part of our atmosphere: "The principal constituents of the atmosphere of Earth are nitrogen (78 percent) and oxygen (21 percent). The atmospheric gases in the remaining 1 percent are argon (0.9 percent), carbon dioxide (0.03 percent), varying amounts of water vapor, and trace amounts of hydrogen, ozone, methane, carbon monoxide, helium, neon, krypton, and xenon." (from Encarta)
0.03 percent can also be expressed as 0.0003 - how much effort (regulations, controls and costs) should go into reducing that tiny amount?
We might have better success attempting to deploy a solar umbrella into orbit.
I read recently that Mars is experiencing a cycle of warm weather just as we are, and it's caused by the sun's increased output of solar energy. I suppose al Gore suspects NASA planted a bunch of earthlings up there just to screw up their planet. Sure, we're getting warmer--the earth has been heating up and cooling down for millions of years. I also recall about thirty years ago, Time, Newsweek and the other rags were trumpeting the impending "new Ice Age."
So does that spontaneously make it okay to keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?
If it doens't cause the problem that it is claimed to cause? Absolutely.
p.s. atmospheric CO2 doesn't cause algae blooms nor does it alter the pH of the ocean. Since these are your claims please cite a source that says so. Otherwise, having been proved wrong, your remarks are just a transparent fallback position.
Furthermore:
Remember the CFCs that were supposed to be causing the hole in the ozone layer. They were banned 20 years ago. Oops! It's bigger than ever.
NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists report this year's ozone hole in the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere has broken records for area and depth.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/ozone_record.html
Despite the optimistic headline read on down in this one
Earth's Ozone Layer Appears To Be On The Road To Recovery
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060527093645.htm
It admits that the scientists don't know what is going on with such a short-term and easily measured phenomena.
So anyone who tells me they've got a model that predicts global temperatures into the next century is just kidding themselves.
Anne Coulter wrote"Its cold in Malibu,ice on the streets of Dallas. If Global Warming is true, why are we freezing our b^^^^ off?"
Churchill - Fox - 10PM Sunday PDS
Below is an excerpted rely I made to another hysterical proponent of "man caused global warming" will kill us all.
***********************************
straightarrow Says:
Link to this comment
A. if air pollution is having a measurable effect on the climate, that effect would be to cool the earth, not warm it. Look at the three year climatological cycles following every significant volcanic eruption. The pollution in the air reflected much sunlight back into space and filtered some from particle to particle preventing that heat energy from reaching earth. This has happened without fail. Every time. So if global warming is so dangerous, we all owe a debt of gratitude to anyone polluting the atmosphere and slowing down the heating of earth, if you believe the warming to be harmful.
B. Consensus is not a scientific term. It is a management tool that means we are all too chickenshit to claim a position so we will fart around till we see what everyone else will agree to and we will too. As such, it isn’t even a good management tool.
C. Consensus does not exist in the scientific community as to the cause of global warming. The science does show that we are warmer than we were in recent history,but not as warm as we were in the 13th century. That is provable. Yet there is not consensus either in whether this will be a bad thing. Remember, Greenland used to actually be green and was settled by Danish agriculturists. (farmers for you spittle flecked liberals)
D. Another provable fact is that the Atlantic Ocean at one time was frozen almost completely over as far south as Spain. This was so long ago that scientific discovery established this fact because there is no historical record. Most likely meaning before man was even on earth. Yet the entire globe warmed up without us.
E. No climatological model yet devised has ever been able to verify the past that we know has happened, and that we have recorded, with the exception of one. If with all their consensus these so-called researchers can’t determine what we know happened, how the Hell do we trust them to predict the future? Predicting the past is much easier and they can’t do that. The exception is when the known temperatures of the earth over a period of time are graphed alongside the known strength of the output of our sun. Every drop rise and fall and levelling is mirrored from one graph to the other. Fact, with some variations for catastrophic events such as large volcanic eruptions. Which is also measurable as to its blocking effect of the sun’s rays.
F. These consenters (consensus signatories) are the same people in some cases, and the same institutes, research facilities, etc., in the other cases, that were warning us from 40 to 30 years ago that life as we knew it on earth was going to be irrevocably changed if not eradicated due to the coming ICE AGE. Yeah, when that didn’t happen, they needed another ride or the grant money was going to dry up.
Until A through F can be refuted in their entireties no “man causes global warming hysterical screecher” should be given an audience anywhere. If they are too lazy or too intellectually limited to do the work, don’t try to get me on board with the “everybody does it” crap. That is kindergarten stuff. I’m too old and too intelligent for it. Try it out on the very young or the very limited or the very insecure that need to “belong”.
***********************************
Not included in the above but stated by me elsewhere is this. Since when did consensus quit meaning all agreed? When did it come to mean only those that agree with us is a consensus and everybody else doesn't count, therefore their opposing opinion doesn't negate consensus?
Hell, if I decide everybody who doesn't agree with me doesn't count and only those who do agree with me count, I have suddenly by consensus become the most handsome and sexiest man in the universe. BY CONSENSUS. Got that? BY CONSENUS!!!!
Of course it is only a consensus of one, but we already determined that we only had to count whom we wished to bolster our opinion.
Eat your damn heart out Brad Pitt.
Loco:
p.s. atmospheric CO2 doesn't cause algae blooms nor does it alter the pH of the ocean. Since these are your claims please cite a source that says so. Otherwise, having been proved wrong, your remarks are just a transparent fallback position.
Sure thing!
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/284/5411/118
Refereed article from 1998 with a load of citations since then.
Of course, you're welcome to cite something more recent.
--GF
And for counterpunch #2: of course these people want money! All scientists want to pick industry's pockets and not give a single thing back! Why, look at those catalytic converters - each one makes a car cost $10,000 more to produce than it should!
(Or at least this is testimony to Congress from when that law was going into production. Surprisingly, when people actually had to put them in, improvements in manufacturing efficiency quickly arose and the cost of a modern converter is under $100. Figures are adjusted for inflation.)
Folks,
IMHO this is a thoughtful and pretty civil thread.
On that, hat's off to you all.
Caution: Cite articles or post a key graf or two but don't lay in the whole or most of the article.
In a day or so I'm going to post again on "global warming."
In that post I'll say a few things in response to some comments that have been made here.
I hope you come visit the new post.
I'll put "global warming" in the title.
Again, thank you all for your comments.
John
Ever since 'Scientific American' magazine was hijacked by some seriously bigoted lefties, the citing of 'scientists' is no longer a good reference to unbiased authority. Their fawning reference to Pyongyang a couple of decades ago as a shining example of urban planning was a shocking tipoff, and their nasty treatment of Bjorn Lomborg on publication of his 'Skeptical Environmentalist' (they refused him space to fully respond to his critics) was anti-intellectual to say the least.
Worse, the Royal Society of Britain has moved politically to prevent funding to any research that counters the herd mentality that 'global warming is beyond any rational doubt anthropogenic'. The Royal Society used to be a skeptical body of scientific inquiry and discovery - now it's a religion persecuting heretics that don't run with the herd.
The Gramsciian march through the institutions metastastized long ago, and there's no organization nearly powerful enough currently to even slow it down. Witness Duke's 'angry studies' departments as a small example.
'The Great Global Warming Swindle' does clearly show that CO2 lags global temperature by about 800 years - it's a symptom, not a cause. So there's damn little reason to deliberately choke the US economy in a desperate attempt to reduce .03 percent of the atmosphere's greenhouse gases.
This is a political offensive, not a scientific one. Were it scientific, it would be aimed at China and India as well. China, next year, is expected to match US output of CO2, and its trend of emissions is steeply upward. But those countries aren't governed by white male democracies, so omitting attacks on their economies is perfectly fine.
Post a citation to an article that's available without me having to register.
By the middle of the next century, an increased concentration of carbon dioxide will decrease the aragonite saturation state in the tropics by 30 percent and biogenic aragonite precipitation by 14 to 30 percent.
Again, someone claiming to predict the global (or in this case, apparently, local) environment 100 years in the future is deluded when those who were worried about the ozone layer admit the models they used are faulty and cannot be fit to the last 20 years of recordings.
Furthermore, my original point stands. Having once asserted that CO2 is causing global warming, and having that cast into serious doubt, you do not get a second bite of the apple.
Post a Comment