“Every time I let the government make a choice for me, I give up a little more of my freedom. I become more dependent and reliant on government to manage my life. I am right where the Socialists want me to be – perpetually dependent on them.” -J.D. Pendry
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Reasonable people can disagree about the nature and extent of climate change. But no one should sally forth into this hostile territory without reason and reflection.
“Some scientists make ‘period, end of story’ claims,” writes biologist and naturalist Daniel Botkin in the Wall Street Journal, “that human-induced global warming definitely, absolutely either is or isn’t happening.”
These scientists, as well as the network of activists and cronies their science supports, I will refer to as the Climate Orthodoxy. These are the folks who urge, generally, that (a) global warming is occurring, (b) it is almost entirely man-made, and (c) it is occurring at a rate and severity that makes it an impending planetary emergency requiring political action. A Climate Agnostic questions at least one of those premises.
Trying to point out the problems of the Climate Orthodoxy to its adherents is like trying to talk the Archbishop of Canterbury into questioning the existence of God. In that green temple, many climatologists and climate activists have become one in the same: fueled both by government grants and zealous fervor
A new study out of Germany casts further doubt on the so-called global warming “consensus” by suggesting the atmosphere may be less sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide emissions than most scientists think.
A study by scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology found that man-made aerosols had a much smaller cooling effect on the atmosphere during the 20th Century than was previously thought. Why is this big news? It means increases in carbon dioxide emissions likely cause less warming than most climate models suggest.
In case you missed it, I thought y0u should catch up on the global warming scam. Happy reading…
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Assertions and Creditable Evidence: This week, the movie, Merchants of Doubt, was released, which claims that certain scientists were in the pay of tobacco companies, etc. without advancing credible evidence. These scientists had the audacity of challenging that human emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, are causing unprecedented and dangerous global warming. Of course, warming has stopped even though emissions continue to increase and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) continues to increase.
The movie is based on a book of the same name by Oreskes and Conway, which offers no credible evidence showing that the four scientists, including SEPP Chairman, Fred Singer, were paid by tobacco companies.
Without a causal mechanism, establishing that inhaling hot cigarette smoke was the primary cause of lung cancer was a difficult, statistically debatable process. Initially, many possible causes were considered, including replacing dirt roads with asphalted roads. The work by Sir Bradford Hill, and others, is laudatory.
There is no question that tobacco companies used unscrupulous means to attack the credibility of the researchers. This is well documented. Today’s issue centers on claims that anyone who questions the rigor of the statistical work supporting a politically popular cause must be using similar methods as the tobacco companies did – guilt by association. Fred Singer, who does not smoke, had the audacity of questioning the claim that second-hand smoke causes cancer. The claim is extremely weak, and far below any standard statistical threshold. For this, he was attacked in both the movie and the book as receiving money from tobacco companies, without any credible evidence supporting the claim.
These efforts illustrate how politically motivated persons will label those, who criticize the lack of rigorous science supporting a politically popular cause, as anti-science, or as paid by third parties. That scientists, and once highly-regarded scientific institutions, join this effort demonstrates the general lowering of standards of acceptable scientific rigor.
Fred Singer has challenged the producer of the movie for evidence. Ken Haapala is asking those who give it positive reviews to please provide credible evidence supporting claims that Singer were financially supported by tobacco companies. Of course, there is none. In fact, during his 25-year service as president of SEPP he received no salary or fee income whatsoever. Further, SEPP does not solicit support from corporations or government.
There may be a silver lining in the release of the movie. It comes at a time of increasing popularity of courtroom drama and crime shows. These are educating the viewing public that hearsay and rumor are not credible evidence. Some members of the public may begin to question the claims in the book and the movie that fail to produce credible evidence as hearsay and rumor. Who knows, they may begin to ask the same question about claims that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous global warming? See links under Communicating Better to the Public – Dream Evidence Up.
Global warming fraud. That’s what it is. It’s gone beyond scam. It’s charlatan.
Piss off ecotards.
Here’s the money quote (emphasis mine):
This comes from Melanie Fitzpatrick, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists
The climate models, Fitzpatrick said, will likely be correct over long periods of time. But there are too many variations in climate to expect models to be accurate over two decades.
Can you rely on the weather forecast? Maybe not, at least when it comes to global warming predictions over short time periods.
That’s the upshot of a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change that compared 117 climate predictions made in the 1990’s to the actual amount of warming. Out of 117 predictions, the study’s author told FoxNews.com, three were roughly accurate and 114 overestimated the amount of warming. On average, the predictions forecasted two times more global warming than actually occurred.
Some scientists say the study shows that climate modelers need to go back to the drawing board.”It’s a real problem … it shows that there really is something that needs to be fixed in the climate models,” climate scientist John Christy, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told FoxNews.com.
The typical hysteria and predictions of enviromMENTALists continues to get traction despite the fact that not one of their doomsday predictions has come to fruition.
You would think the nursery rhyme Chicken Little would have sunk in by now.
Dr. Henry Miller, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in a Forbes article “Rachel Carson’s Deadly Fantasies” (9/5/2012), wrote that her 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” led to a world ban on DDT use.
The DDT ban was responsible for the loss of “tens of millions of human lives — mostly children in poor, tropical countries — have been traded for the possibility of slightly improved fertility in raptors (birds). This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century.”
DDT presents no harm to humans and, when used properly, poses no environmental threat.
In 1970, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences wrote: “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. . .. In a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.”
Prior to the DDT ban, malaria was on the verge of extinction in some countries.
The demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature. By HARRISON H. SCHMITT AND WILLIAM HAPPER
Of all of the world’s chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That’s simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.
The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.
The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a “pollutant” in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to improve the growth and quality of their plants.
The press release below is from Wiley, where they worry that the polar bear can’t find enough sea ice. Meanwhile, billboards proclaim the uptick in polar bear numbers thanks to conservation efforts and other factors. See below for 10 reasons to consider why we shouldn’t worry. – Anthony
For polar bears, it’s survival of the fattest
One of the most southerly populations of polar bears in the world – and the best studied – is struggling to cope with climate-induced changes to sea ice, new research reveals. Based on over 10 years’ data the study, published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology, sheds new light on how sea ice conditions drive polar bears’ annual migration on and off the ice.
