“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.
I also have a new category thanks to this article.
“…I have read that Nazi Germany had more PhDs per capita than any other country. I’m not against education, but it seems like some of the stupidest people are also the most educated.”
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.
While many Americans were tuned into news coverage of the massive damage from tornadoes ravaging the state of Oklahoma, Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor to rail against his Republican colleagues for denying the theory of anthropogenic global warming.
Whitehouse spent 15 minutes chastising GOP senators and justified his remarks by alluding to states that seek federal assistance in the wake of natural disasters.
