The Fellowship Of Scientific Truth

Environmental Falsehoods Are Costly And Common

2010-01-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

The ClimateGate leaking of Emails and computer climate programs revealing the corruption, deceit and lies by "climate scientists"promoting the myth of man-caused global warming is just the tip of the iceberg where the "environmental movement" is concerned. This disease costs everyone dearly and will take a long, long time to cure. Maybe ClimateGate will be a beginning of much needed change into how science is conducted and viewed by the public. Thank goodness for the internet!
Peter

Four Decades of Deceit

Written by David Nace

Monday, 11 January 2010 16:23 SOURCE

The publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring launched the modern environmental movement. However, it also marked the beginning of a movement that not just tolerated, but encouraged scientists to misrepresent the facts if it helped to create media attention to promote its agenda.

Rachel Carson was very selective in the facts included in Silent Spring, only those supporting her premise that pesticides were harmful were included. Even her references were tainted, many were not scientific publications at all and many of her scientific references did not actually support her statements. Despite widespread criticism of Silent Spring from true scientists, in 1972 the EPA began hearings to ban the use of DDT based upon her fraudulent science.

One of the misrepresentations that Silent Spring helped to create is that DDT caused the thinning of bird eggs, threatening the entire bird population with extinction. Rachel Carson used an obscure study by Dr. James Dewitt of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to shown that DDT was reducing the number of bird eggs that were hatching. However the actual study showed that despite feeding quail 3000 times the daily human intake of DDT, their eggs did not hatch significantly less than the control group. The same study done with pheasants showed that the survival rate of hatchlings of DDT feed pheasants actually increased. This is exactly the opposite of what Rachel Carson wrote.

Researchers that produced thin shelled quail eggs did so by reducing the calcium intake of the birds. After the study was published in Science magazine, it was exposed as a fraud. The study was then conducted with normal calcium intake. The quail fed DDT treated food did not produce thin shells. However, Science magazine refused to print that study. Its editor later related that they would never print an article supporting the use of DDT.

In the 1972 DDT Hearings, the EPA appointed Edward Sweeney as the Hearing Examiner. After seven months and 9000 pages of testimony, Sweeney concluded that DDT should not be banned. He concluded it did not have a harmful effect on birds, fish, wildlife or man. Several months later the EPA administrator, William Ruckelshaus, overruled Sweeney’s decision by his own admission, for political reasons. When his decision was appealed, Ruckelshaus appointed himself as the appeals judge.

The result of banning DDT was an immediate increase in the number of cases of malaria worldwide. Without DDT spraying, more than 300 million cases of malaria are reported annually worldwide and approximately 2 million children die each year from the deadly disease. Since the 1972 banning of DDT, 60 million people have died needlessly from malaria and other insect borne diseases. This is more than Stalin or Hitler exterminated in their reigns of terror. Even more incredulous is the fact that these people died as the result of decisions made by environmentalists.

The attitude toward scientific fact reporting by environmental scientists may be best summarized by Stanford biology professor, Stephen Schneider’s statement, “We need to get loads of media coverage, so we have to offer up scary scenarios and make dramatic statements. Each of us has to decide on the right balance between effectiveness and honesty”.

In the 45 years since the publication of Silent Spring, it is very obvious that many environmental scientists choose effectiveness in generating media attention over honesty. Today the ability to obtain government funding for environmental studies clouds their judgment even more.

Given the fraudulent origins of the environmental movement is it surprising that climatologists would omit or modify data to support their alarmist views of global warming? Is it surprising that they would conspire to suppress the publication of studies that did not support their assumptions? Is it surprising the Obama science czar, John Holdren would send them emails relating his own attempts to discredit and damage the careers of those that did not support global warming theories while he was at Harvard? When there is vast wealth at stake in determining who gets carbon credits and government subsides, is it surprising that Al Gore can declare that the science is settled, when really only the fraud has not yet been exposed.

The combination of scientists that value media exposure over scientific fact and the opportunity to profit from that exposure is a dangerous combination not only to Americans but to citizens of every country. When administrations become enamored with the fraudulent theories that environmental scientists propose, the results are even more damaging. While Cap and Trade may not kill millions of people the way that the DDT fraud has, the global warming hoax will kill the American industrial economy and thousands of jobs along with it.

David Nace is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer and a featured NetRight Nation contributor.

We Must Stop Madness Of The Idea Of Man-Caused Global Warming

2009-08-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

Stop The Madness About Man-Caused Global Warming

How can the EPA, the Obama Administration, the United Nations, now the Pentagon and a host of others, ignore this kind of dispute over the idea of man-caused global warming or climate change? It is insane to even consider spending billions or trillions of dollars trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. We should be screaming from the roof-tops, marching in the streets, and doing all we can to stop the global warming madness.
Peter

Skeptics From Around the Globe-APS Letter

An Open Letter to the Council of the American Physical Society

As physicists who are familiar with the science issues, and as current and past members of the American Physical Society, we the undersigned urge the Council to revise its current statement on climate change as follows, so as to more accurately represent the current state of the science:

Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th -21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.

Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.

The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human -- on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause.

Louis J. Allamandola - Director, Astrochemistry Laboratory NASA Ames Research Center Fellow APS, AAAS Member ACS, American Astronomical Society, International Astronomical Union
More...

The Truth About Energy

2009-05-01T01:14:00.000-07:00

The following is from someone who knows as much as anyone about the energy we use and depend on. This should be read and understood by everyone.
Peter

Energy Myths and Realities

Keith O. Rattie
Chairman, President and CEO
Questar Corporation

Utah Valley University
April 2, 2009

Thank you for that introduction. Good morning, everyone. I’m honored to join you today.
I see a lot of faculty in the audience, but I’m going to address my remarks today primarily to you students of this fine school. Thirty-three years ago I was sitting where you are today, trying to decide what to do with my career after graduating with my degree in Electrical Engineering. I made a decision to go to work for an oil company – Chevron - on what turns out to have been a false premise: I was convinced that by the time I reached the age I am today that America and the world would no longer be running on fossil fuels. Chevron was pouring lots of money into alternatives – and they had lots of money and the incentive to find alternatives - and I wanted to be part of the transition.

Fast forward 33 years. Today, you students are being told that by the time you’re my age the world will no longer be running on fossil fuels.
I’m going to try to do something that seems impossible these days – and that’s have an honest conversation about energy policy, global warming and what it means for America’s energy future – and for you, the generation that will have to live with the consequences of the policy choices we make. My goal is to inform you with easily verifiable facts – not hyperbole and propaganda – and to appeal to your common sense. But first a few words about Questar.

Questar Corporation is the largest public shareholder-owned company headquartered in Utah, based on stock-market value, NYSE ticker STR. We’re one of two Utah-based companies in the S&P 500. Most of you know us as the parent company of Questar Gas, the utility that sends you your natural gas bill every month. But outside of Utah and to investors we’re known as one of America’s fastest-growing natural gas producers. We also own a pipeline company. I’m also proud to say that we’re the only Utah-based company ever to make the Business Week magazine annual ranking of the 50 top-performing companies in the S&P 500 – we were #5 in both 2007 and 2008, and we’re #18 in the top 50 in Business Week’s 2009 ranking, just out this week.

At Questar our mission is simple: we find, produce and deliver clean energy that makes modern life possible. We focus on natural gas, and that puts us in the “sweet spot” of America’s energy future and the global warming debate. Natural gas currently provides about one-fourth of America’s energy needs. When you do the math, the inescapable conclusion is that greater use of natural gas will be a consequence of any policy aimed at lowering America’s carbon footprint. You cut carbon dioxide emissions by up to 50% when you use natural gas instead of coal to generate electricity. You cut carbon emissions by at least 30% and NOx emissions by 90% when you use natural gas instead of gasoline in your car or truck - and here in Utah you save a lot of money - you can fill up your natural gas car at a cost of about 80 cents per gallon equivalent. You also cut carbon emissions by 30-50% when you use natural gas instead of fuel oil or electricity to heat your home.

But you didn’t come here for a commercial about Questar and I didn’t come here to give you one. Let’s talk about energy.
There may be no greater challenge facing mankind today – and your generation in particular - than figuring out how we’re going to meet the energy needs of a planet that may have 10 billion people living on it by the middle of this century. The magnitude of that challenge becomes even more daunting when you consider that of the 6.2 billion people on the planet today, nearly two billion people don’t even have electricity -- never flipped a light switch.

Now, when I started my career with Chevron in the mid-1970s the “consensus” at the time was that America and the world were running out of oil. Ironically, the media back then was also declaring a scientific consensus that the planet was cooling, fossil fuels were to blame, and we were all going to freeze to death unless we kicked our fossil fuel habit. We were told we needed to find alternatives to oil – fast. That task, we were told, was too important to leave to markets, so government needed to intervene with massive taxpayer subsidies for otherwise uneconomic forms of energy. That thinking led to the now infamous 1977 National Energy Plan, an experiment with central planning that failed miserably. Fast-forward to today, and: déjà vu. This time the fear is not so much that we’re running out of oil, but that we’re running out of time – the earth is getting hotter, humans are to blame, and we’re all doomed unless we find alternatives to oil, gas and coal -- fast. Once again we’re being told that the job is too important to be left to markets.

Well, the doomsters of the 1970s turned out to be remarkably wrong. My bet is that today’s doomsters will be proven wrong. Over the past 33 years mankind has consumed more than three times the world’s known oil reserves in 1976 – and today proven oil reserves are nearly double what they were before we started. The story with natural gas is even better – here and around the world enormous amounts of natural gas have been found. More will be found. And of course, the 30-year cooling trend that prompted the global cooling scare in the mid-70s abruptly ended in the late 70s, replaced by with a 20-year warming trend that peaked in 1998.
The lesson that we should’ve learned from the 1970s is that when it comes to deciding how much energy gets used, what types of energy get used, and where, how and by whom energy gets used -- that job is too important not to be left to markets.

Now, I’d love to stand up here and debate the science of global warming. The mainstream media, of course long ago declared that debate over -- global warming is a planetary emergency, we’ve got to change the way we live now. I’ve followed this debate closely for over 15 years. I read everything I can get my hands on. I’m an engineer, so I try to bypass the media’s penchant for alarmism – “World coming to an end – details at 11” - and go straight to the actual science. My research convinces me that claims of a scientific consensus mislead the public and policy makers - and often reflect another agenda.

Yes, planet earth does appear to be warming – but by a not so unusual and not so alarming one degree over the past 100 years. Indeed, global average temperatures have increased by about one degree per century since the end of the so-called Little Ice Age 250 years ago. And, yes carbon dioxide concentration in the upper atmosphere has increased over the past 250 years from about 280 parts per million in 1750 to about 380 parts per million today – that’s .00038. What that number tells you is that carbon dioxide – the gas that everyone in this room exhales every three seconds or so, the gas that plants need to grow - is a trace gas, comprising just four out of every 10,000 molecules in the atmosphere. But it’s a very important trace gas – without CO2 in the atmosphere, the earth would be a lifeless ball covered with ice. And yes, most scientists believe that humans are responsible for much of that increase.

But that’s where the alleged consensus ends. Contrary to the righteous certitude we get from some, no one knows how much warming will occur in the future, nor how much of any warming that does occur will be due to man, and how much to nature. No one knows what the impact of warming will be, nor how easily people, plants and species will adapt to warming. When you hear someone claim they know, I suggest Mark Twain’s advice: respect those who seek the truth, be wary of those who claim to have found it.

My views on this issue changed dramatically about a decade ago when I looked at the inputs to one of the global circulation models (GCM) that had been built to predict warming over the next century. If the only input were carbon dioxide, the output would be simple – doubling of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would result in only about a 1 degree increase in global average temperatures over the next 100 years. But the earth’s climate is what geek engineers refer to as a “non-linear, dynamic system”. There are dozens of inputs, and as I studied the model further I concluded that many of the inputs into these models are little more than the opinion of the scientist – in some cases, just a guess. For example, water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas – far more potent than CO2. [As an aside, if CO2 is a “pollutant” as some assert, then water vapor is also a “pollutant” – an absurd conclusion. But I digress]. I discovered that scientists do not agree on how to model water vapor, clouds, precipitation and evaporation. Some argue that clouds amplify CO2 forcing, others believe precipitation acts as the earth’s thermostat. The point is there’s no consensus this fundamental issue.

But the reality for American consumers is that whether you agree that the science is settled or not, the political science is settled. The new Congress has promised to “do something”. Carbon dioxide regulation is coming. Indeed, President Obama’s hope of shrinking the massive federal budget deficit depends on vast new carbon revenues from a tax on carbon energy – so called “cap and trade”. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised a bill by May.

Under cap-and-trade, the government would try to create a market for carbon dioxide by selling credits to companies that emit carbon dioxide. They would set a cap for the maximum amount of CO2 emissions. Over time, the cap would be lowered. In theory, this will induce companies to invest in lower-carbon technologies, thus reducing emissions to avoid the cost of buying credits from other companies that have already met their emissions goals. The costs of the credits would be passed on to consumers. Because virtually everything we do and consume in modern life has a carbon footprint, the cost of just about everything will go up.

Q: when was America’s carbon footprint as low as 2 tons per person per year?
A: not since the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
In short, ‘80 by 50’ means that by the time you folks are my age, you won’t be allowed to use anything made with - or made possible by - fossil fuels.

So I want to focus you young people today on this critical question: “How on God’s green earth – pun intended - are you going to do what my generation said we would do but didn’t – and that’s wean yourselves from fossil fuels in just four decades?” That’s a conversation that each of you, and indeed, all Americans need to engage in now -- because when it comes to “how” there clearly is no consensus. Simply put, with today’s energy technologies, we can’t get there from here.
The hallmark of this dilemma is our inability to reconcile our prosperity and our way of life with our environmental ideals. We Americans love our cars. We like the freedom to “move about the country” – to drive to work, fly to conferences, visit distant friends and family. We aspire to own the biggest house we can afford. We like to keep our homes and offices warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We like devices that use electricity – computers, flat screen TVs, cell phones, the Internet, and many other conveniences of modern life that come with a power cord. We want food that’s low cost, high quality, and free of bugs – which means farmers must use fertilizers and pesticides made from fossil fuels. We like things made of plastic and clothes made with synthetic fibers – and all of these things depend on abundant, affordable, growing supplies of energy.

And guess what? We share this planet with 5.9 billion other people who all want the same damn things.
America’s energy use has been growing at about 1.5 % per year, driven by population growth and prosperity. But while our way of life depends on ever-increasing amounts of energy, we’re downright schizophrenic when it comes to the things that energy companies must do to deliver the energy that makes modern life possible.

We want energy security – we don’t like being dependent on foreign oil. But we also don’t like drilling in the U.S. Millions of acres of prospective onshore public lands here in the Rockies plus the entire east and west coast of the U.S. are off-limits to drilling for a variety of reasons, some legitimate, some not. We hate paying $2 per gallon for gasoline -- but not as much as we hate the refineries that turn unusable crude oil into gasoline. We haven’t allowed anyone to build a new refinery in the U.S. in over 30 years. We expect the lights to come on when we flip the switch, but we don’t like coal, the source of 40% of our electricity – it’s dirty and mining scars the earth. We also don’t like nuclear power, the source of nearly 20% of our electricity -- it’s clean, but we’re afraid of it. Hydropower, the source of about 6% of our electricity is clean and renewable. But it has also been blacklisted – dams hurt fish.

We don’t want pollution of any kind, in any amount, but we also don’t want to be asked: “how much are we willing to pay for environmental perfection?” When it comes to global warming, Time magazine tells us to “be worried, be very worried” – and we say we are -- but we don’t act that way.

Let me suggest that our conversation about how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions must begin with a few “inconvenient” realities.

Reality 1: America’s and the world’s demand for energy will grow by 30-50% over the next two decades – in fact it will more than double and could triple by the time you’re my age. Simply put, America and the rest of the world will need all the energy that markets can deliver. We’re going to need it all – oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels.

Reality 2: There are no near-term alternatives to oil, natural gas, and coal. Like it or not, the world runs on fossil fuels, and it will for decades to come. The U.S. government’s own forecast shows that fossil fuels will supply about 85% of total world energy demand in 2030 – roughly the same as today. Yes, someday we’ll find alternatives. But that day is still a long way off. It’s not about will. It’s not about who’s in the White House. It’s about thermodynamics and economics.
Now, I was told back in the 1970s the same that you’re being told today: that wind and solar power are ‘alternatives’ to fossil fuels. A more honest description would be ‘supplements’. Taken together, wind and solar power today account for just one-sixth of 1% of America’s annual energy consumption today. Let me repeat that statistic – one-sixth of one percent -- .0016.
I’m holding a pie chart showing total U.S. primary energy demand today. PowerPoint won’t even create a thin slice for wind and solar – it’s just a line.

Back when I was starting my career Jimmy Carter declared that America would be out of oil and gas by 1990, and declared alternative energy the “moral equivalent of war.” Thirty years and $30 billion in government subsidies and all we get for all the wind farms and all the solar electricity plants in operation in this country today is a thin line on a pie chart.

Undaunted by all of this, President Obama has proposed to double wind and solar power generation in this country by the end of his first term. I would first point out that the line on this pie chart will become a slightly thicker line by the end of his first term. I would also point out that wind and solar power doubled in just the last three years of the George W. Bush administration. I’ll grant you that W. started from a smaller baseline, so doubling again over the next four years will be a taller order. But if President Obama’s goal is achieved, wind and solar together will grow from one-sixth of one percent to a combined one-third of one percent of total primary energy use – and that assumes energy consumption remains stagnant, which of course it will not.

The problems with wind and solar power become apparent when you look at their footprint. To generate electricity comparable to a 1,000 MW gas-fired power plant you’d have to build a wind farm with at least 500 very tall windmills occupying 40,000 acres of land. What about solar power? Well, here’s a photo of “America’s most productive utility-scale solar electricity plant”. It has a capacity 8.2 MW, and it’s located on 82 acres of land in southwest Colorado. When you take into account the fact that the sun doesn’t always shine, you would need roughly 250 of these plants, occupying roughly 20,000 acres to replace a single 1,000 MW gas-fired power plant.
By comparison, a 1,000 MW gas-fired power plant can be built on about 10 -15 acres. [Another example, you’ll find a photo of Sempra energy’s El Dorado Solar near Las Vegas on their website. 10 MW – largest of its kind in North America – built next to a 500 MW gas-fired power plant. They plan to run the gas plant and “supplement” gas-power with solar when its available. This is the current state of the art].

The Salt Lake Tribune recently celebrated the planned startup of a 14 MW geothermal plant near Beaver, Utah. That’s wonderful! But the Tribune failed to put 14 MW into perspective. Utah has over 7,000 MW of installed generating capacity, primarily coal. America has one million MW of installed capacity. Because U.S. demand for electricity has been growing at about 2% per year – we need to build 10-20,000 MW of new capacity every year to keep pace with growth. There’s a worldwide building boom in new coal-fired power plants – over 200,000 MW under construction, over 30,000 MW in China. In fact, there are 30 coal plants under construction in the U.S. today that when complete will burn about 70 million tons of coal per year.

Why did my generation fail to develop wind and solar? Because our energy choices are ruthlessly ruled, not by political judgments, but by the immutable laws of thermodynamics. In engineer-speak, turning diffused sources of energy such as photons in sunlight or the kinetic energy in wind requires massive investment to concentrate that energy into a form that’s usable on any meaningful scale.

What’s more, the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Unless or until there’s significant breakthrough in high-density electricity storage – a problem that has confounded scientists for more than a century – wind and solar can never be relied upon to provide base load power.

But it’s not just thermodynamics. It’s economics. Over the past 150 years America has invested trillions of dollars in our existing energy systems – offshore platforms, power plants, the grid, steam and gas turbines, railroads, pipelines, distribution infrastructure, refineries, service stations, boilers, airplanes, cars, trucks, appliances, etc. Changing that infrastructure to a system based on renewable energy will take decades and massive new investment.

To be clear, we need all the wind and solar power the markets can deliver at prices we can afford. But please, let’s get real -- wind and solar are not “alternatives” to fossil fuels. [If time, explain why Bush’s hydrogen vision has gone nowhere].

Reality 3: Carbon cap and trade regulation will drive the cost of energy painfully higher. Obama’s budget puts the cost at $650 MM over the next decade. Some believe that this estimate could be off by a factor of three – suggesting the true cost will approach $2 trillion over the next decade. As I mentioned, the businesses that are forced to buy credits will pass this cost on in the price of their goods – we’ll all pay for it.

Aside from the enormous cost, I hope you would ask: will cap and trade work? In my opinion the answer is no. It won’t work until we have viable alternatives to fossil fuels that can be delivered to markets at scale and at a cost that is politically and economically acceptable.
The European Union implemented a cap and trade scheme in an effort to meet their Kyoto commitments to reduce carbon emissions to below 1990 levels by 2012. [Explain Kyoto if time]. There’s a reason why they’re failing: no country is willing to sacrifice their economy and their standard of living to do so. Europe’s cap and trade scheme was designed to fail – and it’s working as designed.

Let me do the math to explain why Kyoto would have failed in the U.S. and why I think Obama’s cap and trade scheme will also fail.
Americans were responsible for about 5 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions in 1990. By 2005 that amount had risen to about 5.8 billion tons. Let’s suppose that the U.S. had signed the Kyoto treaty back in 1997 – incidentally, Bill Clinton was President and Al Gore was Vice President when the Senate voted 95-0 to reject Kyoto - the U.S. would’ve committed to cut manmade CO2 emissions to 7% below that 1990 level – to about 4.6 billion tons, a 1.2 billion ton per year cut.
Q: what would it take to cut CO2 emissions by 1.2 billion tons per year by 2012?
A: a lot more sacrifice than just riding your Schwinn to work or school, and changing light bulbs.
We could’ve outlawed gasoline. In 2005 gasoline use in America generated about 1.1 B tons of CO2. That would almost get us there. Or, we could shut down over half of the coal-fired power plants in this country – coal plants generated about 2 B tons of CO2 in 2005. Of course, before we did that we’d have to get about 60 MM Americans and a significant number of American businesses to volunteer to go without electricity.

This simple math is not friendly to those who demand that government to mandate sharp cuts in manmade carbon dioxide emissions -- now.

Reality 4: Even if America does cut CO2 emissions, the same computer models that predict manmade warming over the next century also predict that Kyoto-type CO2 cuts will have no discernible effect on global average temperatures for decades, if at all. The models show that Kyoto reductions would prevent only a small fraction of one degree of warming over the next 50 years. When was the last time you read that in the paper? We’ve been told that Kyoto was “just a first step.” Your generation may want to ask: “what’s the second step?”

That begs another question: “how much are Americans willing to pay for ‘a first step’ that has no discernible effect on global climate?”

The answer here in Utah is: not much, according to a public opinion poll conducted by Dan Jones and Associates published in the Deseret News. 63% of those surveyed said they’re worried about global warming. But when asked how much they’d be willing to see their electricity bills go up to help cut carbon dioxide emissions, only half were willing to pay more for electricity. Only 18% were willing to see their power bill go up by 10% or more. Only three percent were willing to see their power bill go up by 20%.

Here’s the rub: many Europeans today pay at least 20% more for electricity as a consequence of their (failed) efforts to severe the link between modern life and CO2 emissions.
If Americans aren’t willing to pay a lot more for their energy, how do we reduce CO2 emissions? Well, here are four things we can all agree on.

First, we need to improve energy efficiency.
Second, we need to stop wasting energy.
Third, we need to conserve energy.
Fourth, we need to rethink our irrational fear of nuclear power. I see Steve Creamer, the Chairman and CEO of Energy Solutions is here today. I’ll let Steve make the case for nuclear power.
Fifth, we need to embrace one of the key recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - substitute low-carbon natural gas for higher-carbon coal and oil. The good news: we can now do so without driving the price of natural gas to unacceptable high levels.

Indeed, 2008 will be remembered in the energy industry as the year U.S. natural gas producers changed the game for U.S. energy policy. Smart people in my industry have ‘cracked the code’ – we’ve figured out how to produce stunning amounts of natural gas from shale formations right here in the U.S. [Explain difference between shale gas and shale oil].

As a result, we can now say with confidence that America and the world are “swimming” in natural gas. U.S. onshore natural gas production has grown more than 20% over the past three years, a feat that most energy experts thought impossible a few years ago. America’s known natural gas resource base now exceeds 100 years of supply at current U.S. consumption – and that number is sure to get bigger. Abundant supplies mean that natural gas prices over the next decade and beyond will likely be much lower than over the past five years. While prices may spike from time to time in response to sudden, unexpected changes in supply or demand – for example, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico or extreme cold or hot weather – these spikes will be temporary.

Greater use of natural gas produced in America - by American companies who pay American taxes - will help reduce oil imports. Unlike oil, 98% of America’s natural gas supply comes from North America.

What’s more, we don’t need massive new investment in gas-fired power plants to substitute gas for coal. I mentioned earlier that America has about one million MW of installed electric generation capacity. Forty percent of that capacity is built to run on natural gas – about 400,000 MW. That compares to just 312,000 MW of coal capacity. But unlike those coal plants, which run at an average load factor of about 75%, America’s existing, installed natural gas-fired power plants operate with an average load factor of less than 25%. Turns out that we’ve got a quick and easy way to cut carbon emissions without driving the price of electricity through the roof – use clean burning, low-carbon, American-made natural gas in our existing, underutilized gas-fired power plants.

Sixth, your generation needs to focus on new technology and not just assume it, as many in my generation did back in the 70s – and as many in Congress continue to do today. Just one example: there’s no such thing as “clean” coal. But given America and the world’s dependence on coal for electric generation, we need to fund R&D aimed at capturing and storing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel plants. [Mention USTAR funding].

To be sure, carbon capture and sequestration will be hugely expensive and it’ll take decades to implement on any meaningful scale. The high costs will be passed through in electricity rates to consumers. It’s not just the capture part - we’ll have to construct a massive pipeline grid comparable to our existing natural gas pipeline grid, and drill thousands of wells to transport and pump massive amounts of CO2 into the ground. The facilities required to do this will use huge amounts of energy – which most likely will come from fossil fuels, negating some of the carbon reduction benefits. We’re not sure where we’re going to put all this CO2.

Questar is one of the largest owner-operators of underground natural gas storage. Gas storage is in high demand - we’re always looking for places to build cost-effective storage. But I can tell you that there aren’t many places left that are economic to develop. That will be the case with CO2 sequestration as well.

But the point is, R&D aimed at allowing us to continue to use fossil fuels while waiting for breakthroughs in other technologies seems a rational thing to do.

Seventh, it’s time to have an honest discussion about alternative responses to global warming than what will likely be a futile attempt to eliminate CO2 emissions related to fossil fuel use. In truth, while many scientists believe man’s use of fossil fuels is at least partly responsible for global warming, many also believe the amount of warming will be modest and the planet will easily adapt. Just about everyone agrees that a modest amount of warming won’t harm the planet. In fact, highly-respected scientists such as Harvard astrophysicist Willie Soon believe that added CO2 in the atmosphere may actually benefit mankind because more CO2 helps plants grow and increases biodiversity. When was the last time you read that in the paper?
You’ve no doubt heard the argument that even if global warming turns out not to be as bad as some are saying, we should still cut carbon emissions – as an insurance policy – the so-called precautionary principle. While appealing in its simplicity, there are three major problems with the precautionary principle.

First, none of us live our lives according to the precautionary principle. Let me give you just one example. Around the world about 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents – about 3,200 deaths a day. At that pace, 120 million people will die this century in a car wreck somewhere in the world. We could save the lives of 120 million people by banning cars and trucks, or by imposing a 5 mile per hour speed limit worldwide. How many of you can live with a 5 MPH speed limit to save 120 million lives? Of course we don’t – we accept trade-offs. We implicitly do a cost-benefit analysis and conclude that we’re not going to do without our cars, even if doing so would save 120 million lives. Don’t you think we should insist on an honest cost-benefit analysis for cap and trade regulation?

Second, the media dwells on the potential harm from global warming, but ignores the fact that the costs borne to address it will also harm us. We have a finite amount of wealth in the world. We have a long list of problems – hunger, poverty, malaria, nuclear proliferation just to name a few. Your generation should ask: how can we do the most good with our limited resources? The opportunity cost of diverting a large part of current wealth to solve a potential problem 50-100 years from now means we do “less good” dealing with these other problems.

Third, economists will tell you that the consequence of what is in effect a huge tax on the way we live our lives will be slower economic growth. Slower economic growth, compounded over several decades, means that we leave future generations with less wealth to deal with the consequences of global warming, whatever they may be. [Compare U.S. wealth in 1900 vs. today].
In truth, mankind has proven to be remarkably adaptive. Humans live north of the Arctic Circle where temperatures are below zero most of the year. Roughly one-third of mankind today lives in tropical climates where temperatures often exceed 100 degrees. In fact, you can take every one of the potential problems caused by global warming and identify lower-cost ways to deal with that problem than rationing energy use. For example, if in fact melting arctic ice causes the sea level to rise, a wealthier world will adapt over time by moving away from the beach or building retaining walls to protect beachfront property. What about the polar bear? Polar bears have survived sometimes dramatic climate changes over thousands of years, most recently the so called “medieval warm period” of 1000-1300 A.D. in which large parts of the arctic glaciers disappeared and Greenland was truly “green”. It’s an established fact that more polar bears die each year from gunshot wounds than from drowning. The first thing we need to do to protect polar bears is to stop shooting them.

Let me close by returning to the lessons my generation learned from the 1970s energy crisis. We learned that energy choices favored by politicians but not confirmed by markets are destined to fail. If history has taught us anything it’s that we should let markets determine how much energy gets used, what types of energy get used, and where, how and by whom energy gets used. What’s more, no form of energy is perfect, thus only markets can weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different energy forms. Instead, government’s role is to set reasonable standards for environmental performance, and make sure markets work.

I’ve tried to cover a lot of ground this afternoon. I hope my comments provoke at least some of you to become engaged in the discussion about America’s energy future. Most of all I wish you freedom, prosperity – and abundant supplies of energy at prices you can afford. Thank you for your attention, and now I’ll be glad to take rebuttal!

Mark Twain And Truth

2009-05-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

I suggest Mark Twain’s advice:

"Respect those who seek the truth, be wary of those who claim to have found it. "

A Sincere Expression Of Truth About Global Warming

2009-04-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

Well written and well said. Take it for what it is, I think a profound expression of truth.
Peter

Testimony of John Coleman
before the
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands
of the
Committee on Natural Resources
of the United States Congress

April 7, 2009
Thank you to the Committee for the invitation to appear here today. And to any who listen to my remarks or read them later, thank you for your consideration of my testimony.
I come before this Subcommittee with no allusions or expectations. I am aware that for the majority of the Committee and most involved government officials my conclusions will run counter to your interests and agenda and will be ignored. None-the-less, I have made the effort to be here today because I feel what I have to contribute should at least be in the record.
Here is what I know as scientific fact: There is no significant man-made global warming or climate change at this time, there has not been any in the past and there is little reason to fear any in the future.

I did not say that the activities of man do not alter the weather and climate, because it is clear they do. What I said there is no significant man-made climate change and none should be reasonably expected to occur in the future.

I have visited most of the National Parks in the United States and love them. I have enormous appreciation for the efforts to protect our environment and provide places and ways for the citizens to enjoy the amazing beauty and powerful natural forces at work around us and interact with the thousands of species that live in those parks and related natural areas. Clearly, it is a huge task to balance between access and protection. I honor that.

But here is crux of what I can contribute to the issue before us. The science behind this current global warming, man-made climate change commotion, has failed to verify. The hypothesis that our carbon footprints produced by our use of fossil fuels is producing a significant greenhouse effect that will lead to climate calamity has failed to verify. So I repeat, there is no significant man-made global climate change.

I have studied the research papers of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and examined the science presented by Al Gore in his books, his movie and his power point. I have traced the history of the development of the concept of carbon dioxide in the exhaust from our cars, power plants and industrial plants entering the atmosphere and interacting with the primary greenhouse gas, water vapor, to magnify warming. It all collapses into a failed theory when examined with scientific care. I am not alone in reaching this conclusion. In the past year, 34 thousand scientists, 10 thousand with PhDs, have signed a statement debunking global warming.

There is solid scientific evidence that by burning fossil fuels our civilization increases the amount of carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere. However, even after 150 years of burning fossil fuels, CO2 remains a tiny trace gas. To be precise only 380 molecules out of every one million are CO2. Scientists with an anti-fossil fuel agenda developed a theory of radiative forcing to explain how this trace gas could create runaway greenhouse warming. They put that theory into general circulation computer models. Their models then projected a continuous rapid rise in global temperatures year after year. In the 1980s and 1990's the models seemed on track as temperatures climbed. But in 1998 the warming stopped. By 2002 a rapid cooling had begun. That cooling continues today. The computer proof has failed. It has become clear the warming in the 80s and 90s was at the peak of a solar cycle and now that the sun has gone very quiet, cooling has gripped the planet. Yet the models continue to predict warming that is not happening. There is no significant warming from CO2.

I am painfully aware that global warming has become a political issue. I deeply regret that. The latest Gallup Poll documents the wide divide on the issue: 66 percent of Republicans are of the opinion that the claims of global warming are exaggerated; only 22
percent of Democrats are of that position. I want to make very clear my conclusion is in no way politically based.

I was a science reporter for ABC News in the 1970's when there was a similar flurry of excitement about a coming Ice Age. Thankfully our government and political parties didn't get involved so when the science got things straightened out, the frenzy faded away. Unfortunately, this time people with the anti fossil fuel agenda had jumped on the global warming bandwagon and just won't let go. They have calmed the rhetoric to climate change, but they are still all wrapped up in cap and trade to tax our use of fossil fuels. This will do great harm to our economy but do nothing of consequence to protect the environment.

My advice to the National Park Service and the Subcommittee is: Do nothing to mitigate man-made global warming or climate change, because there is none. Reject the extremist agendas and concentrate on your wonderful work protecting our natural resources and making natural experiences available to us citizens of today and generations to follow.

To any who have an interest in pursuing the sources behind my scientific conclusions I provide a list of internet links with my written testimony.

Again, thank you for allowing me to present my testimony and place it into the record.

Two Palm Springs TV stations were there. Their coverage also accepted the dominate line of the day, but both did include me in their reports. LInks to their video are below:
KESQ CHANNEL 3:
http://www.kesq.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?ClipID1=3630037&h1=Delegation%20Questioning%20Wildlife%20Die-Off%20at%20Joshua%20Tree%20Nat%27l%20Park%20%284/7%29&vt1=v&at1=News&d1=128700&LaunchPageAdTag=News&activePane=info&rnd=54602381
KPSP CHANNEL 2
http://www.kpsplocal2.com/Global/story.asp?S=10147556
Links referenced in John Coleman’s remarks

http://icecap.us
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
http://www.ipcc.ch/
The Al Gore movie, "An Inconvenient Truth
http://www.climatecrisis.net/
An online article about the word "deniers" used to describe Global Warming skeptics
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1782/
United Nations IPCC Chapter 9, the key chapter on CO2 Forcing
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf
Natural Resources Defense Council Global Warming report
http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/fcons.asp
Michael Mann and the Hockey Stick Chart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Mann_(scientist)
Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick’s Paper refuting the Hockey Stick Chart
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.grl.2005.pdf
Stephen McIntyre’s website
http://www.climateaudit.org
Ross McKitrick’s website
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/ross.html
NASA web pages on average annual temperatures
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/earth_warm.html
Dr. Mayhay Khandekar and Joseph D’Aleo’s post on the problems with the NASA average temperature calculations
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/PITFALLS.pdf
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr;’s post on problems with calculation average global temperatures:
http://climatesci.org/2008/02/08/an-error-in-the-construction-of-a-single-global-average-surface-temperature/
Ross McKitrick and Pat Michaels paper detailing how observation points change over time influences global average temperatures
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/MM.JGRDec07.pdf

Anthony Watts discovers serious site problems with many official weather observation stations in the United States and conducts a national effort to survey every location
http://surfacestations.org/
Dr. Ben Herman investigates questionable exaggerations in maximum temperatures at locations where certain types of new temperature sensors have been installed.
http://climatesci.org/2008/01/21/guest-weblog-by-professor-ben-herman-of-the-university-of-arizona-maximum-temperature-trends/
The controversy about the influence of urban heat islands on global temperatures is covered in the Wikipedia article at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island
Long term climate changes on Earth, resulting from natural causes, primarily variations in the radiation received from the Sun are detailed by D. Bruce Merrifield
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/global_warming_and_solar_radia_1.html
I write about the solar influence on climate variations on Earth in my brief The Force behind Climate Change
http://images.bimedia.net/documents/Comments+on+Global+Warming.pdf
Roger Revelle, the Grandfather of Global Warming and the man who inspired Al Gore, cautioned against alarmism from the carbon dioxide build-up
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/40867912.html
Carbon Dioxide characterized as a pollutant, the force behind global warming
http://worldcoolers.org/co2map/
Typical newspaper article decrying carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003716817_carbon22.html
Union of Concerned Scientists page on carbon dioxide
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/vehicles_health/cars-and-trucks-and-global-warming.html
The key Paper by Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson and Willie Soon that explains that Carbon Dioxide Forcing is not valid
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/other/Robinson_Soon.pdf
Another excellent Paper by Allan M.R, MacRae showing that Carbon Dioxide is not the primary force in climate change
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
Dr. David Evans Paper showing that Carbon Dioxide does not cause Global Warming
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Evans-CO2DoesNotCauseGW.pdf

Alan Cheetham details the history of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_History.htm
Dr. John McLean details the lack of significant peer review of the IPCC documents
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/mclean/mclean_IPCC_review_final_9-5-07.pdf
Dr. Vincent Gray writes about his experience as a member of the IPCC
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=155&Itemid=1
The report on the over 700 scientists who have spoken out in opposition to global warming
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=10fe77b0-802a-23ad-4df1-fc38ed4f85e3
The website of the global warming debunkers petition with over 31 thousand signatures:
http://www.petitionproject.org/
My webpage which contains numerous other documents and links:
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner

Will Congress Listen To Science And Reason?

2009-02-26T11:47:00.000-08:00

Will Congress Listen To Science And Reason About Global Warming?
Will the American Congress listen to scientists about the issue of global warming being caused by carbon dioxide emissions? Or will they listen to political organizations like the United Nations (IPCC) and (failed) politicians pursuing a highly profitable personal agenda, like Al Gore?

President Obama wants to tax industries and activities that produce carbon dioxide, as does every internal combustion engine, and every animal that exhales. Obama is counting on his "carbon cap and trade" scheme to raise Billions of dollars in revenue for the Federal Government. This is nothing more than a thinly-disguised tax that will be passed on to the consumer, all based on the myth of man-caused global warming. It is truly economic and scientific insanity. Will Congress listen? This is a huge factor in the current worldwide economic crisis. Stay tuned.
Peter

Princeton Physicist Tells Congress Earth in 'CO2 Famine' -- Increase 'Will Be Good for Mankind' Dr. Will Happer, once fired by Al Gore, challenges former vice president's much-published claim that warming debate over.

By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute 2/25/2009 11:08:28 PM (source)

When former Vice President Al Gore said the science was settled on the issue of global warming before Congress in 2007, he might have meant it was settled as far as people that he would allow to work for him.

Dr. William Happer, currently a professor of Physics at Princeton University, was once fired by Gore at the Department of Energy in 1993 for disagreeing with the vice president on the effects of ozone to humans and plant life, also disagrees with Gore’s claim that manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) increases the temperature of the earth and is a threat to mankind.

Happer appeared before the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee on Feb. 25 and explained CO2 is in short-supply in relative terms of the history of the planet.“Many people don’t realize that over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene [geologic epoch] – 280 [parts per million (ppm)] – that’s unheard of,” Happer said. “Most of the time, it’s at least 1,000 [ppm] and it’s been quite higher than that.”Happer said that when CO2 levels were higher – much higher than they are now, the laws of nature still managed to function as we understand them today.

“The earth was just fine in those times,” Happer said. “You know, we evolved as a species in those times, when CO2 levels were three or four times what they are now. And, the oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it’s baffling to me that, you know, we’re so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started.”

That directly conflicts with the line Gore has been telling the media for years. In November 2007, Gore told NBC’s “Today” that there was “as strong a consensus as you'll ever see in science” that global warming was caused by mankind.

The chairwoman of the EPW committee, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has long supported Gore’s “global warming battle.” During Wednesday’s hearing, she was skeptical of Happer’s view, stating a lot had changed in the 80 million years. But Happer explained that the laws of science had not changed.“Well, I don’t think that the laws of nature, physics and chemistry have changed in 80 million year,” Happer said. “Eighty million years ago, the earth was a very prosperous place and there’s no reason to think it will suddenly become bad now.”

Happer claimed that in fact, an increase in CO2 levels wouldn’t be a bad thing at all, but a good thing for humanity.“Increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause some warming of the earth’s surface,” Happer said. “The key question is will the net effect of the warming and any other effects of CO2 be good or bad for humanity? I believe the increase of CO2 will be good.”

Happer explained to the committee that the global warming movement mirrors the temperance movement that led to Prohibition in the 1920s. He claimed the movement has enlisted various elements of society, including the media, to promote their cause. He noted his opinion that children are being misused to spread the “climate catastrophe” movement’s message.“

Like the Temperance Movement a hundred years ago, the climate catastrophe movement has enlisted the mass media, leadership of scientific societies, trustees of charitable foundations, many other influential people to their cause,” Happer said. “Even elementary school teachers and writers of children’s books terrify our children with the idea of impending climate doom. Children should not be force-fed propaganda masquerading as science.”

Also accompanying Happer on the Senate panel were Dr. R.K. Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Christopher Field director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Dr. Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health.

The Causes Of Global Warming: What Do We Really Know

2008-12-19T08:35:00.000-08:00

The following article expresses the opinion of two professional geologists on what are truly the causes of global warming. I think it represents the opinion of most geologists, (certainly everyone I know). The truth is being drowned out by the political and social motives of those people who are (sadly) gaining more power than ever. Read the article and let's hear what you think.
Peter

Causes of Global Warming, Are We Certain? (.pdf) November 28, 2007 The Professional Geologist
The November/December, 2007 issue of The Professional Geologist has contains an article titled “Causes of Global Warming, Are We Certain?” by Robert G. Corbett and Gary Dannemiller. Found on pages 12 through 15 it contains a contrarian perspective on the idea that burning fossil fuels makes significant contributions to global warming.

Information About Global Warming and Climate Change

2008-10-25T00:13:00.000-07:00

From: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/

Blogs I read
Andrew Bolt
Anthony Watts
Chthoniid
Graham Young
Joseph D’Aleo
Kerry Miller
Lubos Motl
Marc Morano
Matt Briggs
Neil Hewett
Paul Biggs
Tim Blair
Warwick Hughes

Carbon Dioxide, Ocean Acidification And Global Warming

2008-10-25T00:02:00.001-07:00

Here is another geological, or geochemical explanation of why slightly increasing levels of carbon dioxide are not going to destroy planet Earth. Are mankinds carbon dioxide emissions causing global warming and climate change? Impossible.
Peter

Not Enough CO2 in Fossil Fuels to Make Oceans Acidic: A Note from Professor Plimer
Posted by admin, October 24th, 2008 - under Opinion.Tags: Climate & Climate Change, Coral Reefs
In response to a question concerning the likelihood of our oceans becoming acidic from global warming Ian Plimer, University of Adelaide, has replied:

THE oceans have remained alkaline during the Phanerozoic (last 540 million years) except for a very brief and poorly understood time 55 million years ago.

Rainwater (pH 5.6) reacts with the most common minerals on Earth (feldspars) to produce clays, this is an acid consuming reaction, alkali and alkaline earths are leached into the oceans (which is why we have saline oceans), silica is redeposited as cements in sediments, the reaction consumes acid and is accelerated by temperature (see below).

In the oceans, there is a buffering reaction between the sea floor basalts and sea water (see below). Sea water has a local and regional variation in pH (pH 7.8 to 8.3). It should be noted that pH is a log scale and that if we are to create acid oceans, then there is not enough CO2 in fossil fuels to create oceanic acidity because most of the planet’s CO2 is locked up in rocks.
When we run out of rocks on Earth or plate tectonics ceases, then we will have acid oceans.
In the Precambrian, it is these reactions that rapidly responded to huge changes in climate (-40 deg C to +50 deg C), large sea level changes (+ 600m to -640m) and rapid climate shifts over a few thousand years from ’snowball’ or ’slushball’ Earth to very hot conditions (e.g. Neoproterozoic cap carbonates that formed in water at ~50 deg C lie directly on glacial rocks). During these times, there were rapid changes in oceanic pH and CO2 was removed from the oceans as carbonate. It is from this time onwards (750 Ma) that life started to extract huge amounts of CO2 from the oceans, life has expanded and diversified and this process continues (which is why we have low CO2 today.

The history of CO2 and temperature shows that there is no correlation.
Ask your local warmer:
1. Why was CO2 15 times higher than now in the Ordovician-Silurian glaciation?

2. Why were both methane and CO2 higher than now in the Permian glaciation?

3. Why was CO2 5 times higher than now in the Cretaceous-Jurassic glaciation?

The process of removing CO2 from the atmosphere via the oceans has led to carbonate deposition (i.e. CO2 sequestration).

The atmosphere once had at least 25 times the current CO2 content, we are living at a time when CO2 is the lowest it has been for billions of years, we continue to remove CO2 via carbonate sedimentation from the oceans and the oceans continue to be buffered by water-rock reactions (as shown by Walker et al. 1981).

The literature on this subject is large yet the warmers chose to ignore this literature.
These feldspar and silicate buffering reactions are well understood, there is a huge amount of thermodynamic data on these reactions and they just happened to be omitted from argument by the warmers.

When ocean pH changes, the carbon species responds and in more acid oceans CO2 as a dissolved gas becomes more abundant.

Royer, D. L., Berner, R. A. and Park, J. 2007: Climate sensitivity constrained by CO2 concentrations over the past 420 million years. Nature 446: 530-532.
Bice, K. L., Huber, B. T. and Norris, R. D. 2003: Extreme polar warmth during the Cretaceous greenhouse? Paradox of Turonian ∂18O record at Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 511. Palaeoceanography 18:1-11.
Veizer, J., Godderis, Y. and Francois, L. M. 2000: Evidence for decoupling of atmospheric CO2 and global climate during the Phanerozoic eon. Nature 408: 698-701.
Donnadieu, Y., Pierehumbert, R., Jacob, R. and Fluteau, F. 2006: Cretaceous climate decoupled from CO2 evolution. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 248: 426-437.
Hay, W. W., Wold, C. N., Soeding, E. and Floegel, S. 2001: Evolution of sediment fluxes and ocean salinity. In: Geologic modeling and simulation: sedimentary systems (Eds Merriam, D. F. and Davis, J. C.),
Kluwer, 163-167.Knauth, L. P. 2005: Temperature and salinity history of the Precambrian ocean: implications for the course of microbial evolution. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 219: 53-69.
Rogers, J. J. W. 1996: A history of the continents in the past three billion years. Journal of Geology 104: 91-107.
Velbel, M. A. 1993: Temperature dependence of silicate weathering in nature: How strong a negative feedback on long-term accumulation of atmospheric CO2 and global greenhouse warming? Geology 21:1059-1061
Kump, L. R., Brantley, S. L. and Arthur, M. A. 2000: Chemical weathering, atmospheric CO2 and climate. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 28: 611-667.
Gaillardet, J., Dupré, B., Louvat, P. and Allègre, C. J. 1999: Global silicate weathering and CO2 consumption rates deduced from the chemistry of large rivers. Chemical Geology 159: 3-30.
Berner, R. A., Lasagna, A. C. and Garrels, R. M. 1983: The carbonate-silicate geochemical cycle and its effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 100 million years. American Journal of Science 283: 641-683.
Raymo, M. E. and Ruddiman, W. F. 1992: Tectonic forcing of late Cenozoic climate. Nature 359: 117-122.Walker, J. C. B., Hays, P. B. and Kasting, J. F. 1981: A negative feedback mechanism for the long term stabilization of the Earth’s surface temperature. Journal of Geophysical Research 86: 9776-9782.
Berner, R. A. 1980: Global CO2 degassing and the carbon cycle: comment on ‘Cretaceous ocean crust at DSDP sites 417 and 418: carbon uptake from weathering vs loss by magmatic activity.” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 54: 2889.
Schwartzman, D. W. and Volk, T. 1989: Biotic enhancement of weathering and the habitability of Earth. Nature 311: 45-47.
Berner, R. A. 1980: Global CO2 degassing and the carbon cycle: comment on ‘Cretaceous ocean crust at DSDP sites 417 and 418: carbon uptake from weathering vs loss by magmatic activity.” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 54: 2889. CO2 + H2O = H2CO3 H2CO3 = H+ + HCO3- 2Ca2+ + 2HCO3- + KAl2AlSi3O10(OH)2 + 4H2O = 3Al3+ + K+ + 6SiO2 + 12H2O 2KAlSi3O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + 2K+ + 4SiO2 2NaAlSi3O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + 2K+ + 4SiO2 CaAl2Si2O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + Ca2+ KAl2AlSi3O10(OH)2 + 3Si(OH)4 + 10H+ = 3Al3+ + K+ + 6SiO2 + 12H2O CO2 + CaSiO3 = CaCO3 + SiO2 CO2 + FeSiO3 = FeCO3 + SiO2 CO2 + MgSiO3 = MgCO3 + SiO2
In the oceans, CO2 exists as dissolved gas (1%), HCO3- (93%) and CO32- (8%)

Seeking the Truth About Global Warming and Climate Change

2008-10-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

This article comes from Britain. It is comforting to read how people from many different walks of life are speaking out against the myth of man-caused global warming. These are experienced and educated people. They are far from being radicals or extremists, and it is absurd for anyone to refer to them as deniers, equating that to those rare eccentrics who deny the holocaust. Read what these global warming skeptics have to say.
Peter

The climate change unbelievers
Global warming is happening and we're to blame, right? That's certainly the view of almost every expert in the field. But a die-hard band of naysayers continues to rail against the consensus. Are they completely mad? Judge for yourself...
By Tim Walker Sunday, 12 October 2008 (source)

The caption calls him the "high priest of deceit and global destruction". The picture has him belching fire like a dragon. And who is the subject of this highly personal attack? None other than Al Gore, who last year won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for their success in bringing the climate-change crisis to global public attention.

Not everybody likes Gore and his beliefs about the future of our planet – and especially not Hans Schreuder, the 62-year-old former chemist who runs the Gore-baiting website Ilovemycarbondioxide.com (see page 29). Schreuder is one of the climate-change sceptics who continue to make their case despite the mounting evidence of climate change that we, the public, are presented with every day; despite the unanimous endorsement of climate-change theory by every national academy of science in the industrialised world.

Even President Bush, who stalled developments for so long, has conceded that climate change is real, and caused by man-made carbon emissions. And even Bush has tried, however half-heartedly, to do something about it in the last days of his administration. (Though the big challenge remains to persuade the new major emitters – China and India – to sign any agreement on reductions.)

The sceptics declare that the central evidence for carbon-driven climate change in the reports of the IPCC are nonsense. Specifically, the "hockey stick" graph, which correlates the steep rise in world temperatures to the steep rise in carbon emissions, and which Gore demonstrates, with the help of a hydraulic crane, in his film An Inconvenient Truth. Gore's opponents say there's evidence that world temperatures have, in fact, begun to fall since 2000.

In 2005, the House of Lords Economics Committee voiced "concerns" about the objectivity of the IPCC, suggesting some of the agency's emissions projections were "influenced by political considerations". The committee's claims were subsequently rejected by the Government and the Stern Review on the economics of climate change, but the vested-interests argument unites sceptics, and mirrors the accusations often levelled at them in turn, that they are in the pockets of big oil, big gas, or the US Republican Party.

The sceptics come from the worlds of politics, economics, television and, crucially, science. David Bellamy (opposite), a professor of botany who was formerly the televisual face of eco-evangelism, has been compared with a Holocaust denier because he doesn't believe carbon emissions cause climate change. Climatologist Piers Corbyn (page 25) is convinced climate change is caused by solar activity, not CO2. Economist Ruth Lea (page 25) warns of the IPCC's political and business interests. Martin Durkin (page 28), maker of the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, says the green industry is in too deep to afford to acknowledge scientific law. And the former Chancellor, Nigel Lawson (page 27), maintains that though the science of climate change could be broadly correct, its consequences have been exaggerated.

Should we give their opinions the time of day? Whether you agree or not (and chances are you won't), the climate-change sceptics have no intention of shutting up.

The conservationist: David Bellamy
David Bellamy is an environmental campaigner and former television presenter. He was senior lecturer in Botany at Durham University until 1982, where he is now an honorary professor
"Global warming is the biggest scam since the church sold indulgences back in the Middle Ages. If our Government actually believes that all those people are going to die, why did it build Terminal Five?

"I've been doing research on the stability of ecosystems, which is all tied up with human activity, for 22 years. That's why I became a leading greenie in the early days. I have probably stood on more picket lines than anyone to stop forest-clearing, wind farms and the overfishing of the sea. But when the scientific arguments don't add up, one starts to question them: CO2 levels have risen in the atmosphere, but why don't all the other bits of science fall in around that?

"The speed of retreat of glaciers worldwide has not changed. The latest data shows that both the northern and southern ice caps are actually growing. The recent studies of the ice core show that rises in temperature are followed by a release of carbon dioxide, not the other way around. I'll be in New Zealand soon, and two of the major glaciers there are growing like the clappers. And from 1998 there has been no rise at all in the temperature of the earth. Indeed, all the sunspot data tells us we're headed for 15 very cold years.

"Many peer-reviewed papers show that as CO2 goes up, many plants and forests grow up to 40 per cent faster. The New Scientist has reported that 300,000 square kilometres of former desert are now covered with trees. Why don't we have all those good points publicised?
"Global temperature has risen at a natural rate that began 300 years ago. That slope of change has not changed since then, so how can we say that carbon is the driver? The sun has more correlations with temperature change than carbon.

"The whole world is hooked on a fear of carbon, and there really is nothing to fear.
"The scientific consensus is not strong, but every time I turn on the television or read a newspaper, I hear that it is. The BBC constantly tells us the lakes in Africa are drying up because of global warming. The lakes are drying up because of the dams around them, and the fact that we are using that local water to produce cut flowers for the European market. Why aren't we told these things?

"If you go through the peer-reviewed literature on our side of the argument, it's near-unanimous in not predicting climate catastrophe. But it has got to a state of McCarthyism within science. As a university don, I used to try to get every tenth paper of mine into [the weekly science journal] Nature. But Nature will not touch any papers which are anti the global-warming ethic. I have been called a Holocaust denier. If they weren't really frightened they were losing the argument, they wouldn't write those things."

The economist: Ruth Lea
Ruth Lea is economic adviser to the Arbuthnot Banking Group, and formerly held positions including director of the Centre for Policy Studies, head of the Policy Unit at the Institute of Directors, and economics editor of ITN

"The foundation of our climate-change policy is the projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We've signed up to the IPCC, as an agency of the UN, and it's portrayed as an impartial, independent scientific organisation. In fact, it's highly political, most of its members are governmental appointees, and it contains a strong element of evangelical environmentalism. But whatever you think about it politically, you have to look at its projections, as they are core to the whole debate.

"The IPCC makes assumptions on economic growth, assumptions on fuel prices and demographics, then it puts all these assumptions into a model, which produces a forecast for carbon-dioxide emissions. Then it puts those results into a climate model, which predicts temperature change for the next century.

"I wouldn't claim to be qualified to speak about the climate models, but as an economist and statistician, I look at its predictions for economic growth, fuel consumption, demographics and so on, and I ask myself how it can possibly know what these will be by the end of the century.
"I made some economic forecasts about six weeks ago, and then we were hit by a financial crisis, so who knows where fuel costs are going? Yet the IPCC says it knows what'll be happening in 100 years' time.

"Climate-change policy is predicated on the IPCC stuff being taken as gospel. When I started to study the economics, I was shocked. Like many people, I assumed the IPCC findings were rock- solid and unquestionable. But when I looked at how it made its projections, I was horrified. I don't think people realise the vast uncertainties. When you hear people saying the temperature is going to rise by four degrees this century, do you hear anyone explaining that there's only a 0.001 probability that will happen? No.

"I wrote a sceptical letter to the FT in 2006, and there was a very dismissive, patronising, curt response from the Royal Society as if to say, 'How dare you question any of this?' I was amazed at its tone. And the writer and environmentalist George Monbiot has accused me of being financed by the oil companies. If only!

"Anybody who disputes the IPCC's projections is branded a Holocaust denier. I find that offensive. If I had relatives who'd been murdered in the Holocaust, I'd be beside myself with anger.

"When I started to utter my views, I discovered there were quite a few vested interests in green industry, not least in carbon-trading. And boy, they didn't like it. Questioning this stuff rips away the foundations of their business.

"There are probably more economists in a position to speak freely than there are scientists – we can afford to. The problem for scientists is that they have to go along with government policy, which currently states that we're all going to be fried alive in the next 50 years."

The climatologist: Piers Corbyn
Piers Corbyn is the maverick weather forecaster and owner of Weather Action, which makes forecasts up to a year in advance based on Corbyn's theory of the 'Solar Weather Technique'
"There's no evidence that carbon dioxide drives world temperatures or climate change. The 'hockey stick' is fraud, Al Gore's film is fraud, and schemes to remove CO2 from the atmosphere by machines are a scam.

"Temperatures rose since about 1915, but if you look in more detail, estimates show that they've declined since 2002. As it grew, the global-warming empire set about trying to find data to prove its case, but the data it found actually disproves its case. That's why the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Project doesn't highlight the results that negate the theory.

"The idea that climate change causes extreme weather is preposterous. The average number of landfall storms per decade in the US was higher between 1900 and 1960 than in the past 30 or so years. I've met scientists who've said I'm probably right, but if you're in a university funded to research global warming, you're not going to speak up.

"People say that I oppose climate-change theory because I want my way of forecasting to be proved right. But the reason I think the CO2 theory is wrong is that the CO2 theory is wrong."

The politician: Nigel Lawson
Now Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer this year published 'An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming', in which he was critical of climate-change policy, including the Kyoto Protocol and the Stern Review

"There has been no global warming this century, and that is apparent from figures produced by the Hadley Centre, the branch of the UK Met Office that monitors world temperatures.
"There's also uncertainty over the impact of climate change, even if it does happen. If you take the trouble to read the IPCC reports, there's a mixed bag of potential consequences, some of them beneficial.

"After the hot summer of 2003, the Department of Health looked into what might happen in the UK if the temperature by 2050 matched predictions. It found there would be an increase in deaths from dehydration of 2,000 per year, but a reduction in deaths from hypothermia of 20,000 per year.

"We're told that there has to be a global agreement to deal with global warming, to cut back drastically on carbon-dioxide emissions, but it's simply not going to happen. The Chinese and Indians have made it clear that they're not going to cut back, and with good reason. Their number-one priority is to get their people out of poverty. That means the most rapid possible rate of growth, which means using the cheapest available form of energy, which, now and for the foreseeable future, is carbon-based energy.

"If warming occurs, we should adapt, as mankind has always done. People live in a whole range of climates already. Technology will develop in ways that we can't predict. We can help poor countries to adapt with aid programmes, which will be infinitely cheaper than wrecking our own economies.

"There is a great clash going on between the developing world and the developed world over this, which is politically dangerous. People as diverse as the EU industry commissioner, President Sarkozy of France, and the Democrats in the US Congress, are saying that if China and India won't cut back emissions, then we must impose tariffs on their goods. That kind of retreat into protectionism would be very damaging economically.

"Still, I think you'll find now that both major parties are giving this issue a lot less prominence than they were a year ago, and that is all to the good. The last thing we want is foolish and damaging commitments being made."'

The polemicist: Martin Durkin
Martin Durkin is the documentary-maker behind The Great Global Warming Swindle, which was shown on Channel 4 in 2007 and became the subject of an Ofcom enquiry. He was already known as the 'scourge of the greens' for some of his previous work, including the 1997 series Against Nature, which was critical of the environmental movement

"The premise of The Great Global Warming Swindle was that climate-change science doesn't stack up. We had to ask, if it's true that the science is weak, then why the scare? It had to be about the phenomenon of a scare as much as the science.

"Take BSE; we were told that half the population would die because we'd all eaten dodgy hamburgers. It was backed by the Government's chief scientist, yet it is now acknowledged as nonsense. Anyone with a long memory will remember the 'next ice age' scare in the early-1970s. There is a culture that produces scares.

"My first brush with the environmental movement came about 12 years ago, when Channel 4 asked me to make a series about it. There was a long line of environmental scares – about population, resource depletion, GM food – and I wanted to find out whether they were rational.
"I discovered quickly that a section of society – broadly speaking, the bureaucratic middle-classes – are instinctively anti-industry, anti-supermarkets, anti-cars. Scientists, teachers and university lecturers are part of this section. They fall into a tradition of romantic anti-capitalism, which finds modernity aesthetically distasteful. They used to have a disparate set of prejudices, but global warming linked them all up and gave them the uber-apocalypse they were after.

"If they cause a rumpus, then politicians will say, 'We're putting £20m into research' because they want to be seen to be doing something. Then anyone who's doing a PhD in stoats is advised by their supervisor to do it on stoats in relation to global warming, which releases those funds.
"Objectively, it is staggeringly obvious that climate-change science is complete twaddle. There is no correlation, on any meaningful timescale whatsoever, between CO2 and temperature. Take the politics and the grants out of it, and no one would take it seriously.

"Nearly all the letters we get are positive: if this was a working-class movement, or some rough types believed in it, then I might have been threatened. But they're just a bunch of quiche-eating hippies. What are they going to do – wave their panini at me?

"I think they're trying to inhibit progress, to stifle people's creativity and freedom, and hold back development, particularly in poor countries. It's like Laurens van der Post, the anthropologist who studied African tribes and jolly well didn't want them to change because their culture was so interesting. Well, Van der Post lived in a nice flat in Chelsea while the poor bastards out in Africa were eating mud. I'm in favour of us all leading better lives.

"How conscious were the Nazis of what they were doing? Look at DDT, the insecticide that the greens had banned internationally, thereby causing the deaths of about 50 million people [due to malaria]. We should be made conscious of the consequences of our actions."

The activist: Hans Schreuder
Hans Schreuder is a former analytical chemist from the Netherlands, now living in Suffolk. After retiring, he set up the website www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com to back his hypothesis that carbon dioxide bears no relation to global warming.
"I qualified as an analytical chemist in Holland in 1968 and spent about 15 years in analytical chemistry.

"I set up my site last year to prove that carbon dioxide is irrelevant to climate and climate change. I get about 5,000 or 6,000 hits every month. I wrote my final page in June, but I still publish papers by other people.

"What I want to get across is the fallacy that man can influence the climate by means of a fictitious greenhouse effect. It is just such a laughable idea, yet the western world has bought into it. The problem is, there's way too much money in it to dump it. But in the cold reality of Nature, there is no problem whatsoever with carbon dioxide.

"I'm off to Holland for a publicity stunt. I have a big 'I love my carbon dioxide' banner and a friend of mine wants to jump in the water around the parliament building in The Hague with it.
"I haven't been targeted by activists, which is a shame, as that would have created publicity. I called Al Gore a liar and lots of other things on the site, because I was hoping someone would sue me for defamation. But nobody has bothered."

Global Warming Alarmism A Threat To Freedom and Democracy

2008-10-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

To read more by Mr. Vaclav Klaus and to learn more about global warming, climate change, energy issues, and geology, visit my other blog site here: http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/
Peter

Global Warming Alarmism Must Be Challenged
The following article sums up why I and too few other scientists oppose the spread of the myth of man-caused global warming. We see the bigger picture, the cost to America's and the world's economies, the great harm this is doing and will do to people all over the world, AND as Mr. Vaclav Klaus says, it is a grave danger to our very freedom.
Peter

Vaclav Klaus is the current President of the Czech Republic. He gave this speech at the Hilton Hotel in Portland, Oregon on September 30, 2008

Global Warming Alarmism is Unacceptable and Should be Confronted

Written by Vaclav Klaus, Hawaii Reporter Wednesday, 01 October 2008

Many thanks for the invitation and for the opportunity to be here with all of you. I have visited the U.S. many times since the fall of communism in November 1989 when – after almost half a century – traveling to the free world became for people like me possible again, but I’ve never been to this beautiful city and to the state of Oregon before. Once again, thank you very much.I am expected to talk here about global warming today (even though I don’t really feel it, especially not in this room) and my address will be devoted mostly to this issue. As you may expect Oregon is – for me – in this respect connected with the well-known Oregon petition which warned and keeps warning against the irrationality and one-sidedness of the global warming campaign. Rational people know that the warming we experience is well within the range of what seems to have been a natural fluctuation over the last ten thousand years. We should keep saying this very loudly.

Before I start talking about this issue, I would like to put the topic of my today’s speech into the broader perspective. During my visits in the U.S. in the last 19 years, I made speeches on a wide range of topics. There has, however, always been a connection between them. They were all about freedom and about threats endangering it. My today’s speech will not be different. I will try to argue and to convince you that even the global warming issue is about freedom. It is not about temperature or CO2. It is, therefore, not necessary to discuss either climatology, or any other related natural science but the implications of the global warming panic upon us, upon our freedom, our prosperity, our institutions and our legislation. It is part of a bigger story.

At the time that followed immediately after the fall of communism, I spoke here about my (and our) experience with the dismantling of this tragic, irrational, repressive and inefficient system, about the experience with the rather complicated transition from one social system to a radically different one and with the intricacies of building a free society and market economy. We had learnt some useful lessons and they should not be forgotten. This is not an issue in my country anymore now, it is all over there, even though it continues to be relevant in other places of the world.

There are other phenomena that should be discussed and warned against now. I very carefully watch and study the situation on the European continent. Applauding the end of communism is not sufficient. I am more and more nervous about the developments that followed. I have always tried to explain to the Americans the meaning and substance of the European integration process and especially the undergoing shift from evolutionary and more or less natural (or genuine) integration, based on opening up, on liberalization, on elimination of various protectionist barriers, towards politically and bureaucratically organized unification. We are close to the formation of a supranational entity called the European Union, resulting in the weakening of democracy and free markets in Europe.

To be correctly understood, I am not against my country’s EU membership (by the way, it was me who handed in the formal application to enter the EU in 1996 when I was prime minister of the Czech Republic), because regretfully there is no other way to go in Europe these days. The recent developments in the EU are, however, very problematic: we see and feel less freedom, less democracy, less sovereignty, more of regulation, and more of extensive government intervention than we had expected when communism collapsed.

As if this wasn’t enough, in the recent years we came to witness yet another major attack on freedom and free markets, an attack based on environmentalism and – in particular – its global warming variant. The explicitly stated intentions of global warming activists are frightening. They want to change us, to change the whole mankind, to change human behavior, to change the structure and functioning of society, to change the whole system of values which has been gradually established during centuries. These intentions are dangerous and their consequences far-reaching. These people want to restrict our freedom. It is our duty to say NO.

As I said at the beginning, the current world-wide panic as regards dramatic, in the past allegedly unknown global climate changes and their supposedly catastrophic consequences for the future of human civilization must not remain without a resolute answer of the more or less silent majority of rationally thinking people.

After having studied this issue for a couple of years, I am convinced that this panic doesn’t have a solid ground and that it demonstrates an apparent disregard for the past experience of mankind. I know that its propagandists have been using all possible obstructions to avoid exposure to rational arguments and I know that the substance of their arguments is not science. It represents, on the contrary, an abuse of science by a non-liberal, extremely authoritarian, freedom and prosperity endangering ideology of environmentalism.

It is important to demonstrate that the global warming story is not an issue belonging to the field of natural sciences only or mostly, even though Al Gore and his fellow-travelers pretend it is the case. It is again, as always in the past, the old, for many of us well-known debate: freedom and free markets vs. dirigism, (Dirigisme (from the French) (in English also "dirigism" although per the OED both spellings are used) is an economic term designating an economy where the government exerts strong directive influence.)political control and expansive and unstoppable government regulation of human behavior. In the past, the market was undermined mostly by means of socialist arguments with slogans like: “stop the immiseration of the masses”.

Now, the attack is led under the slogan: stop the immiseration (or perhaps destruction) of the Planet.This shift seems to me dangerous. The new ambitions look more noble, more attractive and more appealing. They are also very shrewdly shifted towards the future and thus practically “immunized” from reality, from existing evidence, from available observations, and from standard testing of scientific hypotheses. That is the reason why they are loved by the politicians, the media and all their friends among public intellectuals. For the same reason I consider environmentalism to be the most effective and, therefore, the most dangerous vehicle for advocating large scale government intervention and unprecedented suppression of human freedom at this very moment.

Feeling very strongly about this danger and trying to oppose it was the main reason for my writing the book “Blue Planet in Green Shackles” (2) with its hopefully sufficiently understandable subtitle “What is endangered: Climate or Freedom?”. It has also been the driving force behind my active involvement in the current Climate Change Debate and behind my being the only head of state who openly and explicitly challenged the undergoing global warming hysteria at the UN Climate Change Conference in New York City in September 2007. (3)I am frustrated by the fact that many people, including some leading politicians, who privately express similar views, are more or less publicly silent. We keep hearing one-sided propaganda regarding the greenhouse hypothesis, but we are not introduced to serious counter-arguments, both inside climatology, and in the field of social sciences.

We, economists, owe the society a lot. We did not succeed in explaining the practical inexhaustibility of resources, including energy resources (on condition they are rationally used, which means with the help of undistorted prices and well-defined property rights). We did not come up with simple, well-argued and convincing studies about the costs and benefits of the currently proposed “green” measures and policies and about many other things.I feel very strongly about it. I used to live in a world where prices and property rights were made meaningless. It gave me the opportunity to see how irrationally the economy was organized and how damaged the environment was as a result. This experience tells me that we should not let anyone play the market again and dictate what to produce, how to produce it, what inputs to use, what technologies to implement. This would result in another disaster and in the true “immiseration of the masses”, especially in developing countries. We already see some evidence for this now.

We should also speak about the convincing human experience with technological progress and give reasons for our justified belief not only in its continuation but very probable acceleration in the future. It is rational to expect that technological changes will be more important than any potential climate changes. There is no need for technologic skepticism and no reason to expect that we will enter a stationary world – unless the environmentalists win the debate and stop human progress. (4)The economists should also discuss very relevant future shift in the structure of demand which will be based on the so called income or wealth effect. With higher income and wealth, people demand more of environmental protection which is a classic luxury good. It is, therefore, not necessary to radically decrease today’s consumption by coercion, because the much more affluent people in the future will have enough time to make rational consumption and investment decisions without our today’s “quasi-help”. Economic growth and the accumulation of wealth do not lead to deterioration of the environment. The empirical work in the field of the environmental Kuznets curves gives us reassuring arguments about it.

We should also explain to the non-experts the idea of discounting as the only rational basis for intergenerational comparisons, and for our today’s decisions about the future. Everyone who wants to protect future generations should express his or her presumptions about this intergenerational relationship and to clarify how he or she sees the future and what weight and importance he or she attaches to it. The environmentalists assume that no matter how distant the future is, it is of equal importance as the present, which is against human nature and experience. The objectively existing preference of rational human beings of the present over the future is traditionally discussed by means of the term discount rate. To defend this position is neither shortsightedness nor ignorance on our side. The models of the environmentalists produce strange results mainly because they consider the “social discount rate” to be zero or close to zero.Another issue is the rational or irrational risk aversion.

Every rational human being minimizes risks – but not at all costs. The precautionary principle, this dogma of environmentalists, leads to an unjustifiable maximization of risk aversion, which can in the end succeed in blocking and prohibiting almost everything. The environmentalists systematically overestimate the negative impacts of human activities and forget the positive ones. Such approach cannot bring good outcomes. We should offer standard cost-benefit analysis instead.Even more frustrating is the fact that the economists do not pay sufficient attention to the abuse of the words “market” and “price” by the global warming alarmists. They want nothing else than to tax us, but instead speak about market-friendly “emissions trading schemes”. We have to tell them that the emissions licenses are implicit taxes and that playing the market is impossible. The economists convincingly argue that tax changes have very large effects. Recent U.S. study (5) shows that “an exogenous tax increase of GDP lowers real GDP by roughly 2 to 3 per cent.” It works mostly through the strong response of investment to tax changes.

And the environmentalists keep advocating large tax increases under the disguise of the “price of carbon”.The global warming alarmists succeeded also in creating incentives which led to the rise of a very powerful rent-seeking group. These rent-seekers profit- from trading the licenses to emit carbon dioxide;- from constructing unproductive wind, sun and other equipments able to produce only highly subsidized electric energy;- from growing non-food crops which produce non-carbon fuels at the expense of producing food (with well-known side effects);- from doing research, writing and speaking about global warming.

These people represent a strong voice in the global warming debate. They are not interested in CO2, freedom or markets, they are interested in their businesses and their profits – “produced” with the help of politicians.With all my criticism, I hope it is evident that I am not speaking against paying due attention to the environment and to environmental protection, because that’s another story. I would also like to stress that I don’t oppose the claim that the climate-anthropogenic carbon dioxide nexus justifies watching and research, but I am convinced that the existing evidence does not justify the currently proposed expensive, economy and society disrupting and probably useless and ineffective measures.

As I said many times before: the current world-wide dispute is not about environment, it is about freedom. And I would add “about prosperity and living conditions of billions of people.” To avoid a disaster, “we should trust in the rationality of man and in the outcome of spontaneous evolution of human society, not in the virtues of political activism.”

Vaclav Klaus is the current President of the Czech Republic. He gave this speech at the Hilton Hotel in Portland, Oregon on September 20081 - Portland Speech, Cascade Policy Institute luncheon address, Hilton Hotel, September 30, 2008. 2 - Published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., May 2008 (originally in Czech language under the title Modrá, nikoli zelená planeta by Dokorán, s.r.o., Prague, Czech Republic, 2007). The German, Dutch, English, Russian and Spanish versions were published between December 2007 and July 2008. Polish and Bulgarian translations will be published in coming weeks and others are under preparation.3 - Speech at the Climate Change Conference, United Nations, New York, September 24th, 2007. See www.klaus.cz. 4 - Is Schumpeter’s Vision of the End of Capitalism Relevant?, Speech at the Competitive Enterprise Institute Annual Dinner, 28 May 2008, Washington D.C.; see http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=OfTuMDaIhOG8 or http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/90823_CEI-web.pdf5 - Christina Romer, David Romer, “The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks”, NBER Working Paper No 13264, Cambridge, MA, March 2007. Source

The Corruption Of Climate Science

2008-10-01T14:18:00.000-07:00

We have said this before, the science behind the concept of man-caused (anthropogenic) global warming has been corrupted. Here is a partial explanation of how this has happened.
Peter

September 24, 2008

Corrupted science revealed

Jerome J. Schmitt (source)
Outsiders familiar with the proper workings of science have long known that modern Climate Science is dysfunctional. Now a prominent insider, MIT Meteorology Professor Richard S. Lindzen, confirms how Al Gore and his minions used Stalinist tactics to subvert, suborn and corrupt a whole branch of science, citing chapter and verse in his report entitled "Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?" His answer: A resounding "NO!"
Detailing the corruption, he names a series of names. Until reading this I did not know that
"For example, the primary spokesman for the American Meteorological Society in Washington is Anthony Socci who is neither an elected official of the AMS nor a contributor to climate science. Rather, he is a former staffer for Al Gore." Page 5

Although a bit lengthy, this very important report is highly readable and revealing. While some of the paragraphs are a bit technical, I encourage AT readers to wade through them because their purpose is to provide specific examples of how a radical cabal is forcing scientists to ignore or amend measurements that undermine the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Scientists are literally forced to include sentences in their papers that indicate their support of AGW, even if these sentences are non-sequiturs, or even if they conflict with the overall thrust of the paper. In this way, Al Gore's uneducated political commissars are able to deliver the "consensus" he so craves.

How is this possible you might ask? Prof. Lindzen gives considerable background history.
However, having been an undergraduate and graduate student in the hard sciences, and later a research collaborator with dozens of industrial scientists and university professors, perhaps I can shed some further light. Today's scientists get to the top of their field by extreme dedication to their specialty involving inordinate focus and concentration that cannot tolerate distractions. The best scientists are constantly "at home" at their lab bench, with their instruments, analyzing data, teaching a few promising students and preparing publications. Most scientists interact intensively only with other specialists in allied fields ("geeks").

Many scientists are naturalized citizens from Asia and Eastern Europe, unfamiliar and intimidated by American politics and government, to which they are dependent upon for visas and grant support. Although all stereotypes are unfair to individuals, there is some truth to the one of the shy, retiring, absent-minded professor. His or her absent-mindedness is most likely due to intense cogitation on a difficult scientific problem. Their dealings with one another are only possible by maintaining extreme standards of honesty, integrity and open-mindedness to scholarly debate in search of the truth. The very qualities that make them good scientists and scholars thus leave them ill-equipped to deal with the raucous, underhanded, disrespectful, politically-motivated radicals unleashed upon them by Al Gore and his fifth column for a "hostile takeover" of their scientific institutions.

I naively thought that the National Academy of Sciences could impose some quality-control on an errant discipline. Prof. Lindzen notes that event this august body has been penetrated by eco-activists by exploiting loopholes in its nominating procedures.
Fortunately, in science "truth will out". The long term faith of the American public in science, a trust built up since WWI is at stake. Next it will be important to see whether a prominent scientific journal publishes this revelation.

As an aside, for those who have wondered how leftist cabals were able in the 60's and 70's to take over our universities' humanity departments, the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities, Prof Lindzen's report lays bare the template for radicalization.

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Bears Becoming Democrats

2008-09-24T22:47:00.000-07:00

from sevenheart.....

It's worse than you thought:

The photo below captures a disturbing trend that is beginning to affect wildlife in the US .

Animals that were formerly self-sufficient are now showing signs of belonging to the Democratic Party... as they have apparently learned to simply sit and wait for the government to provide for their care and sustenance.

Facing The Facts, The Truth Be Told, Michael Crichton

2008-08-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

The following speech is worthy of reprinting and saving. It takes great courage for a person in the public spotlight to tell the truth, just the pure simple, obvious truth, with no concern or need for personal profit. For this, Michael Crichton deserves our support and praise. Consider the following:
Peter

Pulled From The Vault: The Case for Skepticism on Global Warming (source)

Written by Michael Crichton

Page 1 of 3
CCF note: Occasionally we like to highlight an item from our
vault that provides exceptional insight into a particular issue. In this
speech by Mr. Crichton, given on January 25, 2005, to the National Press Club,
he "criticizes global warming scenarios. Using published UN data, he
reviews why claims for catastrophic warming arouse doubt; why reducing CO2 is
vastly more difficult than we are being told; and why we are morally unjustified
to spend vast sums on this speculative issue when around the world people are
dying of starvation and disease."
* * * * *

To be in Washington tonight reminds me that the only person to ever offer me a job in Washington was Daniel Patrick Moynihan. That was thirty years ago, and he was working for Nixon at the time. Moynihan was a hero of mine, the exemplar of an intellectual engaged in public policy. What I admired was that he confronted every issue according to the data and not a belief system. Moynihan could work for both Democratic and Republican presidents. He took a lot of flack for his analyses but he was more often right than wrong.

Moynihan was a Democrat, and I’m a political agnostic. I was also raised in a scientific tradition that regarded politics as inferior: If you weren’t bright enough to do science, you could go into politics. I retain that prejudice today. I also come from an older and tougher tradition that regards science as the business of testing theories with measured data from the outside world. Untestable hypotheses are not science but rather something else.
We are going to talk about the environment, so I should tell you I am the child of a mother who 60 years ago insisted on organic food, recycling, and energy efficiency long before people had terms for those ideas. She drove refrigerator salesmen mad. And over the years, I have recycled my trash, installed solar panels and low flow appliances, driven diesel cars, and used cloth diapers on my child—all approved ideas at the time.

I still believe that environmental awareness is desperately important. The environment is our shared life support system, it is what we pass on to the next generation, and how we act today has consequences—potentially serious consequences—for future generations. But I have also come to believe that our conventional wisdom is wrongheaded, unscientific, badly out of date, and damaging to the environment. Yellowstone National Park has raw sewage seeping out of the ground. We must be doing something wrong.

In my view, our approach to global warming exemplifies everything that is wrong with our approach to the environment. We are basing our decisions on speculation, not evidence. Proponents are pressing their views with more PR than scientific data. Indeed, we have allowed the whole issue to be politicized—red vs blue, Republican vs Democrat. This is in my view absurd. Data aren’t political. Data are data. Politics leads you in the direction of a belief. Data, if you follow them, lead you to truth.

When I was a student in the 1950s, like many kids I noticed that Africa seemed to fit nicely into South America. Were they once connected? I asked my teacher, who said that that this apparent fit was just an accident, and the continents did not move. I had trouble with that, unaware that people had been having trouble with it ever since Francis Bacon noticed the same thing back in 1620. A German named Wegener had made a more modern case for it in 1912. But still, my teacher said no.

By the time I was in college ten years later, it was recognized that continents did indeed move, and had done so for most of Earth’s history. Continental drift and plate tectonics were born. The teacher was wrong.

Now, jump ahead to the 1970s. Gerald Ford is president, Saigon falls, Hoffa disappears, and in climate science, evidence points to catastrophic cooling and a new ice age.Such fears had been building for many years. In the first Earth Day in 1970, UC Davis’s Kenneth Watt said, “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.” International Wildlife warned “a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war” as a threat to mankind. Science Digest said “we must prepare for the next ice age.” The Christian Science Monitor noted that armadillos had moved out of Nebraska because it was too cold, glaciers had begun to advance, and growing seasons had shortened around the world. Newsweek reported “ominous signs” of a “fundamental change in the world’s weather.”

But in fact, every one of these statements was wrong. Fears of an ice age had vanished within five years, to be replaced by fears of global warming. These fears were heightened because population was exploding. By 1995, it was 5.7 billion, up 10% in the last five years.
Back in the 90s, if someone said to you, “This population explosion is overstated. In the next hundred years, population will actually decline.” That would contradict what all the environmental groups were saying, what the UN was saying. You would regard such a statement as outrageous.

More or less as you would regard a statement by someone in 2005 that global warming has been overstated.

But in fact, we now know that the hypothetical person in 1995 was right. And we know that there was strong evidence that this was the case going back for twenty years. We just weren’t told about that contradictory evidence, because the conventional wisdom, awesome in its power, kept it from us.(This is a graph from Wired magazine showing rate of fertility decline over the last 50 years.)

I mention these examples because in my experience, we all tend to put a lot of faith in science. We believe what we’re told. My father suffered a life filled with margarine, before he died of a heart attack anyway. Others of us have stuffed our colons with fiber to ward off cancer, only to learn later that it was all a waste of time, and fiber.

When I wrote Jurassic Park, I worried that people would reject the idea of creating a dinosaur as absurd. Nobody did, not even scientists. It was reported to me that a Harvard geneticist, one of the first to read the book, slammed it shut when he finished and announced, “It can be done!” Which was missing the point. Soon after, a Congressman announced he was introducing legislation to ban research leading to the creation of a dinosaur. I held my breath, but my hopes were dashed. Someone whispered in his ear that it couldn’t be done.

But even so, the belief lingers. Reporters would ask me, “When you were doing research on Jurassic Park, did you visit real biotech labs?” No, I said, why would I? They didn’t know how to make a dinosaur. And they don’t.

So we all tend to give science credence, even when it is not warranted. I will show you many examples of unwarranted credence tonight. But here’s an example to begin. This is the famous Drake equation from the 1960s to estimate the number of advanced civilizations in the galaxy.

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet’s life during which the communicating civilizations live.
The problem with this equation is that none of the terms can be known. As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from “billions and billions” to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. The mathematical appearance is deceptive. In scientific terms—by which I mean testable hypotheses—the Drake equation is really meaninglessness.

And here’s another example. Most people just read it and nod:“How Many Species Exist? The question takes on increasing significance as plants and animals vanish before scientists can even identify them.”

Now, wait a minute…How could you know something vanished before you identified it? If you didn’t know it existed, you wouldn’t have any way to know it was gone. Would you? In fact, the statement is nonsense. If you were never married you’d never know if your wife left you.
Okay. With this as a preparation, let’s turn to the evidence, both graphic and verbal, for global warming. As most of you have heard many times, the consensus of climate scientists believes in global warming. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

And furthermore, the consensus of scientists has frequently been wrong. As they were wrong when they believed, earlier in my lifetime, that the continents did not move. So we must remember the immortal words of Mark Twain, who said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

So let’s look at global warming. We start with the summary for policymakers, which is what everybody reads. We will go into more detail in a minute, but for now, we assume the summary has all the important stuff, and turning to page three we find what are arguably the two most important graphs in climate science in 2001.The top graph is taken from the Hadley Center in England, and shows global surface warming. The bottom graph is from an American research team headed by Mann and shows temperature for the last thousand years.
Of these two graphs, one is entirely discredited and the other is seriously disputed. Let’s begin with the top graph.

I have redrawn the graph in Excel, and it looks like this. Now the first thing to say is that there is some uncertainty about how much warming has really occurred. The IPCC says the 20th century temperatures increase is between .4 and .8 degrees. The Goddard Institute says it is between .5 and .75 degrees. That’s a fair degree of uncertainty about how much warming has already occurred.

But let’s take the graph as given. It shows a warming of .4 degrees until 1940, which precedes major industrialization and so may or may not be a largely natural process. Then from 1940 to 1970, temperatures fell. That was the reason for the global cooling scare, and the fears that it was never going to get warm again. Since then, temperatures have gone up, as you see here. They have risen in association with carbon dioxide levels. And the core of the claim of CO2 driven warming is based on this thirty-five year record.

But we must remember that this graph really shows annual variations in the average surface temperature of the earth over time. That total average temperature is ballpark sixteen degrees. So if we graph the entire average fluctuation, it looks like this:So all the interest is in this little fluttering on the surface. Let’s be clear that I am graphing the data in a way that minimizes it. But the earlier graph maximizes it. If you put a ball bearing under a microscope it will look like the surface of the moon. But it is smooth to the touch. Both things are true. Question is which is important.

Since I think the evidence is weak, I urge you to bear this second graph in mind.
Now the question is, is this twentieth-century temperature rise extraordinary? For that we must turn to the second graph by Michael Mann, which is known as the “hockey stick.”This graph shows the results of a study of 112 so-called proxy studies: tree rings, isotopes in ice, and other markers of relative temperature. Obviously there were no thermometers back in the year 1000, so proxies are needed to get some idea of past warmth. Mann’s findings were a centerpiece of the last UN study, and they were the basis for the claim that the twentieth century showed the steepest temperature rise of the last thousand years. That was said in 2001. No one would say it now. Mann’s work has come under attack from several laboratories around the world.

Two Canadian investigators, McKitrick and McIntyre, re-did the study using Mann’s data and methods, and found dozens of errors, including two data series with exactly the same data for a number of years. Not surprisingly, when they corrected all the errors, they came up with sharply differing results.But still this increase is steep and unusual, isn’t it? Well, no, because actually you can’t trust it. It turns out that Mann and his associates used a non-standard formula to analyze his data, and this particular formula will turn anything into a hockey stick---including trendless data generated by computer.Physicist Richard Muller called this result “a shocker…” and he is right. Hans von Storch calls Mann’s study “rubbish.” Both men are staunch advocates of global warming. But Mann’s mistakes are considerable. But he will get tenure soon anyway.

But the disrepute into which his study has fallen leaves us wondering just how much variation in climate is normal. Let’s look at a couple of stations.Here you see that the current temperature rise, while distinctive, is far from unique. Paris was hotter in the 1750s and 1830s than today.Similarly, if you look at Stuttgart from 1950 to present, it looks dramatic. If you look at the whole record, it is put into an entirely different perspective. And again, it was warmer in the 1800s than now.

Now, these are graphs taken from the GISS website at the time I did my research for the book. For those of you think the science is all aboveboard, you might contemplate this. The data have been changed.

I have no comment on why the Goddard Institute changed the data on their website. But it clearly makes the temperature record look more consistently upward-trending and more fearsome than it did a few months ago.
All right. With the second graph demolished, it is time to return to the first. Now we must ask, if surface temperatures have gone up in the twentieth century, what has caused the rise? Most people have been taught that the increase is caused by carbon dioxide, but that is by no means clear.

Page 2 of 3
Two factors that were previously not of concern have recently come to the renewed attention of scientists. The first is the sun. In the past it was imagined that the effect of the sun was fairly constant and therefore any rise in temperature must be caused by some other factor. But it is now clear from work of scientists at the Max Planck institute in Germany that the sun is not constant, and is right now at a 1,000 year maximum. The data comes from sunspots.

According to Solanki and his associates,This shows that solar radiation and surface temperature are correlated until recent times. Solanki says that the sun is insufficient to explain the current temperatures, and therefore another factor is also at work, presumably greenhouse gases. But the question is whether the sun accounts for a significant part of twentieth-century warming. Nobody is sure. But it is likely to be some amount greater than was previously thought.
Now we turn to cities:Another factor that could change the record is heat from cities. This is called the urban heat bias, and as with solar effects, scientists tended to think the effect, while real, was relatively minor. That is why the IPCC allowed only six hundredths of a degree for urban heating. But cities are hot: the correction is likely to be much greater. We now understand that many cities are 7 or 8 degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside. (A temperature chart from a car driving around Berlin. The difference between city and country is 7 degrees.)

Some studies have suggested that the proper adjustment to the record needs to be four or five times greater than the IPCC allowance.
Now what does this mean to our record? Well remember, the total warming in the 20th century is six tenths of a degree.If some of this is from land use and urban heating (and one studies suggests it is .35 C for the century), and some is solar heating (.25 C for century), then the amount attributable to carbon dioxide becomes less. And let me repeat: nobody knows how much is attributable to carbon dioxide right now.
But if carbon dioxide is not the major factor, it may not make a lot of sense to try and limit it. There are many reasons to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and I support such a reduction. But global warming may not be a good or a primary reason.
So this is very important stuff. The uncertainties are great.

And now, we turn to the most important issue. WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE?
To answer this, we must turn to the UN body known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC, the gold standard in climate science.
In the last ten years, the IPCC has published book after book. And I believe I may be the only person who has read them. I say that because if any journalist were to read these volumes with any care they would come away with the most extreme unease---and not in the way the texts intend.

The most recent volume is the Third Assessment Report, from 2001. It contains the most up-to-date views of scientists in the field. Let’s see what the text says. I will be reading aloud.
Sorry, but these books are written in academic-ese. They are hard to decipher, but we will do that.

Starting with the first section, The Climate System: An Overview, we turn to the first page of text, and on the third paragraph read:Climate variations and change, caused by external forcings, may be partly predictable, particularly on the larger, continental and global, spatial scales. Because human activities, such as the emission of greenhouse gases or land-use change, do result in external forcing, it is believed that the large-scale aspects of human-induced climate change are also partly predictable. However the ability to actually do so is limited because we cannot accurately predict population change, economic change, technological development, and other relevant characteristics of future human activity. In practice, therefore, one has to rely on carefully constructed scenarios of human behaviour and determine climate projections on the basis of such scenarios.

Take these sentence by sentence, and translate into plain English. Starting with the first sentence. It’s really just saying:
Climate may be partly predictable.
Second sentence means:
We believe human-induced climate change is predictable.
Third sentence means:
But we can’t predict human behavior.
Fourth sentence:
Therefore we rely on “scenarios.”

The logic here is difficult to follow. What does “may be partly predictable” mean? Is it like a little bit pregnant? We see in two sentences we go from may be predictable to is predictable. And then, if we can’t make accurate predictions about population and development and technology… how can you make a carefully-constructed scenario? What does “carefully-constructed” mean if you can’t make accurate predictions about population and economic and other factors that are essential to the scenario?

The flow of illogic is stunning. Am I are making too much of this? Let’s look at another quote:“The state of science at present is such that it is only possible to give illustrative examples of possible outcomes.”

Illustrative examples. The estimates for even partial US compliance with Kyoto---a reduction of 3% below 1990 levels, not the required 7%---has been predicted to cost almost 300 billion dollars a year. Year after year. We can afford it. But if we are going to spend trillions of dollars, I would like to base that decision on something more substantial than “illustrative examples.”
Let’s look at another quote.My concerns deepen when I read “Climate models now have some skill in simulating changes in climate since 1850…” SOME SKILL? This is not skill in predicting the future. This is skill in reproducing the past. It doesn’t sound like these models really perform very well. It would be natural to ask how they are tested.

NEXT QUOTE
While we do not consider that the complexity of a climate model makes it impossible to ever prove such a model “false” in any absolute sense, it does make the task of evaluation extremely difficult and leaves room for a subjective component in any assessment.
Now, the term “subjective” ought to set off alarm bells in every person here. Science, by definition, is not subjective. I will point out to you that this is precisely the kind of issue that has Americans furious about the EPA. We know you can’t let a drug company manufacture a drug and also test it---that’s unreliable, and everybody knows it. So why in this high stakes climate issue do we allow the same person who makes a climate model to test it?
The flaws in this process are well known. James Madison, our fourth President:
No man is allowed to be judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and not improbably, corrupt his integrity.
Madison is right.
Climate science needs some verification by outsiders.

NEXT QUOTE
Again, am I making too much of all this? It turns out I am not. Late in the text, we read:“The long term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Surely it should lead us to close the book at this point. If the system is non-linear and chaotic—and it is—then it can’t be predicted, and if it can’t be predicted, what are we doing here? Why are we worrying about the year 2100?

All right, you may be saying. Perhaps this is the state of climate science, as the IPCC itself tell us. Nevertheless we read every day about the dire consequences of global warming. What if I am wrong? What if a major temperature rise is really going to happen? Shouldn’t we act now and be safe? Don’t we have a responsibility to unborn generations to do so?

NEXT CHART – Act Now or Later?Here is again the IPCC chart of predictions for 2100. As you see, they range from a low of 1.5 degrees to a high of 6 degrees. That is a 400% variation. It’s fine in academic research. Now let’s transfer this to the real world.
In the real world, a 400% uncertainty is so great that nobody acts on it. Ever.If you planned to build a house and the builder said, it will cost somewhere between a million and a half and six million dollars, would you proceed? Of course not, you’d get a new builder. If you told your boss you were going on vacation and would be gone somewhere between 15 and 60 days, would he accept that? No, he’d say tell me exactly what day you will be back. Real world estimation has to be much, much better than 400%.

When all is said and done, Kyoto is a giant global construction project. In the real world nobody builds with that much uncertainty.
Next, we must face facts about the present. If warming is a problem, we have no good technological solutions at this point. Everybody talks wind farms, but people hate them. They’re ugly and noisy and change the weather and chop birds and bats to pieces, and they are fought everywhere they are proposed. Here is the wind farm at Cape Cod, which has aroused everyone who lives there, including lots of environmentalists who are embarrassed but still…they don’t want them. Who can blame them? A very large anti-wind faction has grown up in England, partly because the government are trying to put farms in the Lake District and other scenic areas.

But whether we like the technology or not, do we really have the capability to meet the Kyoto Protocols? Reporting in Science magazine, a blue-ribbon group of scientists concluded that we do not: So, if we don’t have good technology perhaps we should wait. And there are other reasons to wait. If in fact we are facing a really expensive construction job, we can afford it better later on. We will be richer. This is a 400 year trend.Finally, I think it is important to recognize that we can adapt to the temperature changes that are being discussed. We are told that catastrophe will befall if we increase global temperature 2 degrees. But that is the difference in average temperature between New York and Washington DC. I don’t think most New Yorkers think a move to Washington is balmy. Similarly, a move to San Diego is an increase of 9 degrees.

Of course this is not a fair comparison, because a local change is not the same as a global change. But it ought at least to alert you to the possibility that perhaps things are not as dire as we are being told. And were told thirty years ago, about the ice age.
Last, I want you to think about what it means to say that we are going to act now to address something 100 years from now. People say this with confidence; we hear that the people of the future will condemn us if we don’t act. But is that true?

Page 3 of 3
We’re at the start of the 21st century, looking ahead. We’re just like someone in 1900, thinking about the year 2000. Could someone in 1900 have helped us?
Here is Teddy Roosevelt, a major environmental figure from 1900. These are some of the words that he does not know the meaning of:
airport
antibiotic
antibody
antenna
computer
continental drift
tectonic plates
zipper
nylon
radio
television
robot
video
virus
gene
proton
neutron
atomic structure
quark
atomic bomb
nuclear energy
ecosystem
jumpsuits
fingerprints
step aerobics
12-step
jet stream
shell shock
shock wave
radio wave
microwave
tidal wave
tsunami
IUD
DVD
MP3
MRI
HIV
SUV
VHS
VAT
whiplash
wind tunnel
carpal tunnel
fiber optics
direct dialing
dish antennas
gorilla
corneal transplant
liver transplant
heart transplant
liposuction
transduction
maser
taser
laser
acrylic
penicillin
Internet
interferon
nylon
rayon
leisure suit
leotard
lap dancing
laparoscopy
arthroscopy
gene therapy
bipolar
moonwalk
spot welding
heat-seeking
Prozac
sunscreen
urban legends
rollover minutes

Given all those changes, is there anything Teddy could have done in 1900 to help us? And aren’t we in his position right now, with regard to 2100?

Think how incredibly the world has changed in 100 years. It will change vastly more in the next century. A hundred years ago there were no airplanes and almost no cars. Do you really believe that 100 years from now we will still be burning fossil fuels and driving around in cars and airplanes? The idea of spending trillions on the future is only sensible if you totally lack any historical sense, and any imagination about the future.
If we should not spend our money on Kyoto, what should we do instead? I will argue three points.

First, we need to establish 21st century policy mechanisms. I want to return to those pages from the IPCC. The fact is if we required the same standard of information from climate scientists that we do from drug companies, the whole debate on global warming would be long over. We wouldn’t be talking about it. We need mechanisms to insure a much, much higher standard of reliability in information in the future.

Second, we need to deal correctly with complexity of non-linear systems. The environment is a complex system, a term that has a specific meaning in science. Beyond being complicated, it means that interacting parts that modify each other have the capacity to change the output of the system in unexpected ways. This fact has several ramifications. The first is that the old notion of the balance of nature is thoroughly discredited. There is no balance of nature. To think so is to share an agreeable fantasy with the ancient Greeks. But it is also a shocking change for us, and we resist it. Some now talk of “balance in nature,” as a way to keep the old idea alive. Some claim there are multiple equilibrium states, but this is just a way of pretending that the balance can attained in different ways. It is a misstatement of the truth. The natural system of inherently chaotic, major disruption is the rule not the exception, and if we are to manage the system we are going to have to be actively involved.

This represents a revision of the role of mankind in nature, and a revision of the perception of nature as something untouched. We now know that nature has never been untouched. The first white visitors to the New World didn’t understand what they were looking at. In California, Indians burned old growth forest with such regularity that there is more old growth today than there was in 1850. Yellowstone was a beauty spot precisely because the Indians hunted the elk and moose to the edge of extinction. When they were prevented from hunting in their traditional grounds, Yellowstone began its complex decline.

We now have research to help us formulate strategies for management of complex systems. But I am not sure we have organizations capable of making these changes. I would also remind you that to properly manage what we call wilderness is going to be stupefyingly expensive. Good wilderness is expensive!

Finally, and most important—we can’t predict the future, but we can know the present. In the time we have been talking, 2,000 people have died in the third world. A child is orphaned by AIDS every 7 seconds. Fifty people die of waterborne disease every minute. This does not have to happen. We allow it.What is wrong with us that we ignore this human misery and focus on events a hundred years from now? What must we do to awaken this phenomenally rich, spoiled and self-centered society to the issues of the wider world? The global crisis is not 100 years from now—it is right now. We should be addressing it. But we are not. Instead, we cling to the reactionary and antihuman doctrines of outdated environmentalism and turn our backs to the cries of the dying and the starving and the diseased of our shared world.

And if we are going to remain too self-involved to care about the third world, can we at least care about our own? We live in a country where 40% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Where schoolchildren pass through metal detectors on the way to class. Where one child in four says they have seen a murdered person. Where millions of our fellow citizens have no health care, no decent education, no prospects for the future. If we really have trillions of dollars to spend, let us spend it on our fellow human beings. And let us spend it now. And not on our impossible fantasies of what may happen one hundred years from now.
Thank you very much.

Source About the author:
Michael Crichton is the best-selling author of State of Fear, which takes the reader from the glaciers of Iceland to the volcanoes of Antarctica, from the Arizona desert to the deadly jungles of the Solomon Islands, from the streets of Paris to the beaches of LosAngeles. The novel races forward on a roller-coaster thrill ride, all the while keeping the brain in high gear. Gripping and thought provoking, State of Fear is Michael Crichton at his very best.
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Book Review: "The Deniers"

2008-08-22T20:58:00.000-07:00

This book should open a few eyes about the MYTH of man-caused global warming. It should be very sobering, if not frightening for people to realize how badly the general public has been misled about the realities of global warming and climate change. This is serious; billions, if not trillions of dollars are at stake, as well as the health and well-being of everyone on Earth. For more information on global warming, climate change, and related issues, go here. Note that you can also do a search to quickly find what interests you.
Peter

BOOK REVIEW OF "The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud" By Lawrence Solomon
Review by Jay Lehr, Ph.D
Lawrence Solomon, a longtime environmental activist, began wondering a few years ago how it could be that some scientists were questioning the apparently solid consensus that humans are causing a global warming crisis. He began seeking them out, and interviewing them on the topic. Before long, Solomon came to realize a substantial number of the world's leading scientists are making a very strong case that humans are not causing any sort of global warming crisis.In 2006 he began publishing his interviews with these leading scientists in Canada's National Post newspaper.

In his outstanding new book, The Deniers, Solomon presents the best of these interviews, while sharing additional insights for which his newspaper columns did not have room. Solomon's book breaks new ground in the global warming discussion, presenting the most important scientific evidence in the words of the scientists themselves.The Deniers is not just a series of interviews and vignettes, however. Solomon carefully divides the information gleaned from his prestigious dissenters into chapters asking the very questions most of us have on our minds, and he allows the scientists' own words to answer the questions collectively.

All of the "dissenters" profiled in the book are recognized leaders in their fields, with many even active in the official body that oversees most of the world's climate change research, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Thus the book provides absorbing insight into both the scientific issues and the ferocious political and media battles being waged about global warming. Solomon shows how noble scientists have suffered for their integrity and how attack dogs have mounted an all-out campaign against these scientists, portraying them as hacks bought by profit-mad oil companies or as non-credentialed cranks and lunatics.

The book offers well-written brief biographies of each of their illustrious careers. Here is a sample of the dozens of scientists the author interviewed, with a very condensed indication of who they are and what they believe:

Claude Allegre, Ph.D.: A member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science, Allegre was among the first scientists to sound the alarm on potential dangers from global warming. His view now: "The cause of this climate change is unknown."

Richard Lindzen, Ph.D.: A professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Lindzen says global warming alarmists "are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right."

Habibullo Abdussamatov, Ph.D.: Head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science's Pulkova Observatory and head of the International Space Station's Astrometria Project, Abdussamatov reports, "the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

Richard Toi, Ph.D.: Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit and adjunct professor at the Carnegie Mellon University Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Toi calls the IPCC reports "preposterous ... alarmist and incompetent."

Sami Solanki, Ph.D.: Director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, Solanki argues changes in the sun's state, not human activity, may be the principal cause of global warming. Says Solanki, "The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures."

Freeman Dyson, Ph.D.: A professor at Princeton University and one of the most eminent physicists in the world, Dyson reports the models used to justify global warming are "full of fudge factors" and "do not begin to describe the real world."

Eigil Friis-Christensen, Ph.D.: Director of the Danish National Space Center and vice president of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, Friis-Christensen argues changes in the sun's behavior could very well account for most of the warming during the past century.

Necessary Second Opinion
Global warming has become a critical question for citizens who must decide whether the cures being bandied about are not in fact worse than the disease. In matters of health, most intelligent citizens seek a second opinion before undergoing a serious medical procedure, but in the case of global warming, a second opinion is exactly what global warming activists do not want you to seek, for fear it will reduce the effectiveness of their fear-mongering. Therefore, we are treated to a continuous drumbeat of the words, "the science is settled."All the scientists Solomon interviews in his book are prominent in climate science and are not just nitpicking over the interpretation of some small piece of data. Throughout the book Solomon artistically includes boxes of highlighted quotes from his subjects, taken from their own publications.

Here is one from Lindzen:
"How can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes? The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. "Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policymakers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes."

In his interview, Dyson points out from long experience that models packed with numerous "fudge factors" are worthless. As a mathematician and physicist, Dyson is known for the unification of three versions of quantum electrodynamics, as well as for contributions to space flight and the development of a safe nuclear reactor used today by hospitals and universities around the world. But today he is known more widely as a scientific heretic for disagreeing with claims of a central human role in global warming.

In his 2005 winter commencement address at the University of Michigan, Dyson said the mathematical computer models on which the alarmist claims are based "do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry, and the biology of fields, farms, and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in."

In Solomon's interview with Friis-Christensen, the scientist states he was originally optimistic about the work IPCC would do in studying the sun's influence on climate change. To his surprise, however, IPCC refused to consider the sun's effect on the Earth's climate as a topic worthy of investigation. IPCC conceived its task only as investigating potential human causes of climate change.That is a huge omission, Abdussamatov points out. He notes there has been global warming on other planets and moons in the solar system, and this demonstrates other forces may be at work regarding the Earth's moderate recent warming. "Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians," he observes.

Abdussamatov, at the pinnacle of Russia's scientific establishment, is one of the world's most eminent critics of the notion carbon dioxide is driving global warming. He argues these "parallel global-warmings observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth--can only be a straight line consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance."Abdussamatov believes the recent global warming will be short-lived and that we are actually on the brink of a global cooling, and likely a severe one. He argues Earth has hit its temperature ceiling, demonstrated by cooling currently occurring in the upper layers of the world's oceans. In addition, Abddussamatov notes, solar irradiance has begun to fall, likely ushering in a protracted cooling period beginning in 2012-2015.

The lowest depth of the solar irradiance reaching Earth will occur around 2041 (plus or minus 11 years), Abdussamatov estimates, and will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-60. The freeze will last into the twenty-second century before temperatures rise again. For now, he says, "we continue to bask in the remains of heat that the planet accumulated over the twentieth century."

This is an excellent book. It is written for non-scientists, and I guarantee you will understand every word. It will inspire you as you witness the courage of the deniers to take a stand and endure the wrath of global warming activists for having the audacity to report sound science.
Source

Kommando Kat Protecting Truth

2008-08-16T23:03:00.001-07:00

A series of amazing and apparently real photos of a rare white Bengal Tiger named "Odin". Who says cats dont like water?
Peter

Training the new Kommando Kat...

Swimming is part of his lesson.....

Underwater stealth.....

and aggression........

All Kommando Kats are trained to promote and defend the Fellowship Of Scientific Truth.

A series of incredible photographs of a swimming and diving white Bengal Tiger....named Odin.

The Greatest Hoax Of All Time: Man-Caused Global Warming

2008-08-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

The following article is long, but worth saving and re-publishing.

Peter

source

The Greatest Hoax ever Perpetrated
June 2008 Eric Creed

GOOGLE "RECORD HEAT" and you will get 3,180,000 hits. Google "record cold" and you will get 5,110,000. Yes, that’s right; and it’s just the tip of the proverbial (not melting) iceberg. You see, the convenient truth about the theory of global warming is that you can blame anything on it. Record snows and snow cover in North America, record cold in Asia, snow falling in Baghdad. That’s right. Snow in the desert. Clearly more signs of catastrophic global warming. Not so fast. Pull up a chair, put your feet up, expel some evil CO2, and let’s talk about how "settled" the issue of global warming really is.

Patron Saint Gore
I know full well that writing this piece will cause me to be labeled a "global warming denier" and be lumped in with those that Al Gore said in March are, along with Dick Cheney, "in such a tiny minority view now with their point of view, they’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat." Seriously?

I can’t question the people who are incapable of telling me what the weather is going to be for my tee-time this Saturday, but claim to know exactly how much warmer the entire globe will be, how much the sea will rise, how much the snow cover will recede, and how much the ice caps will melt in 100 years? You’re really going to implicitly equate me with a holocaust denier because I don’t believe that your faulty computer models (designed by James Hanson, et al., a liberal NASA scientist with an agenda) prove that the globe is warming, or if it is, that it’s our fault? You swear by the models, why don’t you swear by the corrections that NASA very quietly released last summer that show the warmest year on record was not 1998, but in fact is 1934, and that five of the top 10 hottest years on record were all before World War II?

The Pope once had a problem with a "denier." His name was Galileo, and he thought that the earth was round and that it was not the center of the universe; that it actually revolved around the sun, not the other way around. The Pope did the same thing that Al Gore is doing now. With faulty data and conjecture, the Pope declared that the debate was over and that anybody who disagreed would be burned at the stake. While we don’t burn people at the stake these days, Gore claims we will all die in a ball of fire if we don’t rally around this theory and devote all of our time, energy (both fossil and kinetic), and money to it.

OK, I am a skeptic. When every lunatic liberal leftist on the face of the planet says we need to close down the carbon emissions of industry (carbon caps) and spend trillions of dollars trying to fix something that (1.) we don’t know if we caused it (the factual evidence says we didn’t), and (2.) if we did cause global warming, is it really in our power to fix (reverse) it, red flags go up.

Many leading scientists firmly believe that more CO2 in the atmosphere is actually good for the planet. David Archibald, PhD, at the Biology Department of San Diego State University, is one of those leading scientists. In a lecture given at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, Dr. Archibald said that more CO2 in the atmosphere will give us a lusher environment and actually increase plant growth rates in addition to increasing the sustainability of crops in arid regions.

If you believe that liberal bastion of policy wonks and diplomats (and a couple of decent, and many not-so-decent, scientists), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we cannot reverse it. The IPCC closed its Fourth Assessment Report’s (AR4) Summary for Policymakers with this: "[B]oth past and future anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to global warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium, due to the time scales required for removal of this gas from the atmosphere."

For those of you who do not know, the IPCC is more than just Gore’s co-conspirator in the global warming fraud, they are co-recipients of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. And what does climate change have to do with peace anyway?

Back to our favorite global warming alarmist, Al Gore. He recently announced that his Alliance for Climate Protection will embark on a mission to better educate the public on the dangers of man-made global warming and the dire necessity to make drastic (and prohibitively costly) changes in order to stop it. Oh yeah, he’s spending $300 million to do it. Maybe Gore subscribes to Gallop. A recent Gallop poll revealed that about the same percentage of people believe in man-made global warming as did when they first took the poll in 1989.

Ironically, the propaganda machine that is Nobel Laureate Gore bans the media from his lectures. An odd contradiction for a man that wants the world to adopt his doomsday outlook and invest in his "green" funds. Gore’s lecture contract, handled by The Harry Walker Agency, Inc., in New York, in addition to requiring non-disclosure of the terms and conditions of the agreement, says in section 9(a) that "the press is not invited or permitted to cover the event unless express written permission is granted by the Harry Walker Agency, Inc." Section 9(c) reads, "Vice President Gore will accept no interview requests." Maybe if he allowed the press into his lectures, or gave an interview or two, he wouldn’t have to spend $300 million on public awareness.

In case you are wondering, yes, I have a copy. Are you at least a little bit curious why the free press is not allowed to attend his lectures? Read on, my friend.

GLOBAL WARMING HAS BECOME QUITE THE INDUSTRY. The U.S. alone spends over $4 billion per year on climate change research. That seems like a lot of money to spend on something that is so well settled and agreed upon by all but a few "flat-earthers."

Gore has started giving a disclaimer during his lectures. Gore, and Global Investment Management, LLP (GIM), the London-based private equity firm of which Gore is the founder and Chairman, stand to benefit in untold riches if we invest in the companies he recommends in his lectures. His disclaimers are no different than those of a stock broker or insurance agent. Gore is basically saying, yes, I own stock in these companies, but you should too if you want to save the planet from certain doom. Doom-and-gloom has served Gore well.

Like the other two shysters from his administration, he is reported to be worth north of $100 million. If you missed the media’s passing mention last month, Clinton finally released her income tax returns. Turns out she’s worth about $109 million. Civil servants, huh? Servants never had it so good. All the past presidents and vice presidents combined probably don’t have the wealth of the Gores and Clintons.

As a side note, Gore closed GIM’s second "green" fund, Climate Solutions Fund, in April at $683 million. The first fund, Global Equity Strategy Fund, has invested $2.2 billion in large companies judged to have, from an environmental, social and economic viewpoint, a "sustainable" business. I wonder, can any of the companies that Gore is investing billions in help him and his Nashville mansion use less than 10 times the amount of energy the average American household uses? But don’t worry, he’s using compact fluorescents in his house, so it’s ok to use 10 times as much energy as everyone else.

Speaking of Gore’s waste and gluttony, I wonder how ginormous his carbon footprint was while he was jetting around the world promoting his lie/movie and trying to convince everyone to invest in his companies.It was reported in April that An Inconvenient Truth used computer-generated footage from the movie The Day After Tomorrow to show a crumbling ice shelf. Those are the kinds of deceptions necessary when trying to convince the world of a lie. Just as Nazi Propaganda Chief Joseph Goebbels said, "[T]ell a lie enough and it becomes accepted as truth."

As well as that has worked for Gore, support for his "planet in peril" mantra is eroding faster than he claims the ice caps are. In 2007 a British court held that, in order for his lie/movie to be shown to school children, "eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of the [students]." Among those inaccuracies, the court ruled, was that rises in CO2 lagged behind temperature rises by 800-2,000 years; that despite the movie’s claim, it is a scientific impossibility for global warming to cause the Gulf Steam to stop flowing; and that, while the movie claims sea levels could rise 23 feet, the evidence showed sea levels are expected to rise 15 inches over the next 100 years.

If you believe Gore, we shouldn’t even bother buying green bananas, the end is so close at hand. Gore should have won his Oscar for the best mockumentary, not documentary, of 2007.The idea of exposing the lies behind global warming in courtrooms is catching on in the U.S. also. John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, published an article in ICECAP last year in which he called global warming the greatest scam in history. Coleman added, "[S]ome dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long-term scientific data to create in [sic] allusion of rapid global warming.

Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the ‘research’ to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus." Coleman didn’t stop there. On March 3, while attending the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York he said the following: "I have a feeling this is the opening. If the lawyers will take the case – sue the people who sell carbon credits, that includes Al Gore – that lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the witness stand and testified, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming." Well, it worked in Britain.

Another famous Albert (Einstein), this one with a background in math and science, however, once noted that the consensus of a 100 scientists is undone by one fact. Steve McIntyre and a team of volunteers noticed some inconsistencies and an unusual discontinuity in the US temperature data used for climate modeling. When they asked NASA’s Hanson for the algorithm, he refused. (All in the name of science and consensus, I’m sure.) McIntyre and his team reverse-engineered it. What they found was a jump in many locations, all occurring around January 2000. As previously noted, NASA has released corrected data. Hanson can’t even fix the Y2K glitch in his climate model, and we’re supposed to radically change global lifestyles and economics based on his numbers?

Joseph D’Alea, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chief of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecast, says that "carbon dioxide (CO2) is 0.000383 of our atmosphere by volume. . . Only 0.0275 of atmospheric CO2 is [man-made] in origin. . . We are responsible for 0.00001 of this atmosphere. If the atmosphere were a 100-story building, our [man-made] CO2 contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor." Do we really want to spend a trillion dollars on linoleum?

"We’ve been warming up about a degree per century since the Little Ice Age (LIA) in about 1600. We’ve been warming for 400 years, long before human-generated CO2 could have anything to do with the climate," says Dr. Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus Geology, Western Washington University. Dr. Easterbrook is not alone in his opinion.

Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, opines "[O]f course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the LIA, not because we are putting more carbon dioxide into the air."

On December 13, 2007, 100 scientists (often referred to as the Bali-100) wrote an open letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, His Excellency Ban Li-Moon, in New York, NY. Among other things, the letter made three significant declarations: 1. "[R]ecent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability. 2. The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century fall within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years. 3. Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today’s computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling."

The letter continued, "In stark contrast to the oft repeated assertion that the science of climate change is ‘settled,’ significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But, because these IPCC working groups were generally instructed to consider work published only through May 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated." In case you are wondering, these are not some lunatic-fringe, pseudo-scientists. Of the 100 signatories to that letter, 85 hold a PhD. They closed the letter by saying, "[A]ttemps to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems."

On March 4, at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, more than 500 scientists closed the conference with what is referred to as the Manhattan Declaration. In short, they declared that "global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life. . . There is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change. . . Now, therefore, we recommend that world leaders reject the view expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided, works such as An Inconvenient Truth." How many of you heard or read about these declarations in the mainstream media? Is this the consensus that Saint Gore and his co-conspirators in the media speak of?

On April 14, 2008, a group of scientists (Hans Schreuder, Piers Corbyn, Dr. Don Parkes, Svend Hendriksen*), including a former Nobel Peace Prize recipient*, sent a letter to the IPCC. The letter opens with "[W]e are writing to you and others associated with the IPCC position – that man’s CO2 is a driver of global warming and climate change – to ask that you now in view of the evidence retract support from the current IPCC position and admit that there is no observational evidence in measured data going back 22,000 years or even millions of years that CO2 levels (whether from man or nature) have driven or are driving world temperatures or climate change."

They close the letter by asking that the IPCC "and all those whose names are associated with the IPCC policy accept the scientific observations and renounce current IPCC policy."Do you still think there is consensus? Try this on: between 1999 and 2001 a petition (commonly referred to as the Oregon Project) was attached to a 12 page paper and circulated within the scientific community.

The petition reads, in its entirety: "We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing, or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth." This petition was signed by nearly 20,000 scientists. More than 7,000 are PhDs. Of the 263 signatories from Tennessee, more than 53% hold a PhD or MD.

While critics of the petition have pointed to fake signatures (e.g., Janet Jackson, Perry Mason, etc.), no doubt put there by those wanting to discredit it, none have attacked the science and evidence cited in the paper. The paper this petition was attached to was written by three scientists at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. They wrote that the "average temperature of the Earth has varied within a range of about 3 degrees C during the past 3,000 years. It is currently increasing as the Earth recovers from a period known as the Little Ice Age. . . Atmospheric temperature is regulated by the sun; by the greenhouse effect, largely caused by atmospheric water vapor (H2O); and by other phenomena that are more poorly understood." (Imagine a needle scratching across a record.)

Stop. Back up. The Earth’s temperature is regulated by the sun? Absolutely ground-breaking. What will they think of next? The paper’s summary continues, "While major greenhouse gas H2O substantially warms the Earth, minor greenhouse gases such as CO2 have little effect. The 6-fold increase in hydrocarbon use since 1940 has had no noticeable effect on atmospheric temperature or on the trend in glacier length.""Comprehensive surveys of published temperature records confirm the fact that the current Earth temperature is approximately 1 degrees C lower than that during the Medieval Climate Optimum 1,000 years ago. Surface temperatures in the United States during the past century reflect this warming trend and its correlation with solar activity. . .

Predictions of catastrophic global warming are based on computer modeling, a branch of science still in its infancy. The empirical evidence – actual measurements of Earth’s temperature and climate – shows no man-made warming trend. Indeed, during four of the seven decades since 1940 when average CO2 levels steadily increased, U.S. average temperatures were actually decreasing. . . The temperature of the Earth is continuing its process fluctuation in correlation with variations in natural phenomena.

Mankind, meanwhile, is moving some of the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result."Those that will attack me for my views and call me a "denier," or worse, a Republican, will also likely claim that the scientists I have cited are in the pocket of Big Oil.

Very few scientists have taken money from Big Oil, simply because they don’t give that much out. True, they have given $20 million to fund climate change research over the past two decades. However, over that same period of time proponents of the theory of global warming have received $50 billion in funding. For those of you not mathematically inclined, $20 million is 0.004 of $50 billion. Who’s in whose pocket?

So what have the doomsday predictions gotten us? An ethanol mandate. And we can, once again, thank Al Gore for that. As vice president, Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate in 1994 mandating the use of ethanol. Well, that’s good, right? It lessens our dependence on foreign oil, doesn’t it? Not so much. Until we get past the environmentalist whackos and actually tap our own vast oil reserves, we are stuck buying it on the world market. Recent studies have indicated that corn ethanol creates more greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline.

But, there is a larger concern regarding the use of ethanol. "It takes 400 pounds of corn to produce 25 gallons of ethanol," says Benjamin Senauer, Professor of Applied Economics and Co-director of the Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota. While that diet leaves a lot to be desired, it’s enough to feed an adult male for one year. An IPCC member and Nobel Peace Prize winner with Gore in 2007, Rajendra Pachauri, is also concerned. "We should be very, very careful about coming up with biofuel solutions that have major impact on production of food grains and may have an implication for overall food security, " says Pachauri.

That’s an understatement. Riots have broken out around the world as the effects of this mandate are being felt globally. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop is now being allocated for fuel, not food. The riots in Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan are someone else’s problem, right? Not necessarily. Sam’s Club and Costco have already started rationing rice. Vietnam and Cambodia have stopped exporting it all together. In 2008 alone the price of rice has increased 68%. Milk and bread prices are up 11 – 25%, and global food prices are up 83%. The International Food Policy Research Institute has released a study that indicates 25 – 33% of the rise in commodities are due to biofuels.

I wonder, how many of Gore’s companies are in the biofuel business? The UN high commission on refugees has said that the American and European mandates on biofuels are a crime against humanity. It pains me to say it, but I agree with the UN.

The world stopped warming in 1998. In fact, the cooling that has taken place since then has all but erased the small temperature increase of the 20th century. How is that possible, especially since each year China increases its output of CO2 equal to that of Germany? As previously noted (with shock and dismay), the sun sets the thermostat on Earth, not the evil, SUV-driving Republicans. And UN meteorologists have said that 2008 will be colder than last year.

The US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) recently reported that the average temperature of the global land surface in January 2008 was below the 20th century mean (-0.02 degrees F / -0.01 degrees C) for the first time since 1982. Based on data from the NCDC, the UK Telegraph reported in February that "[T]emperatures were also colder than average across large swathes of central Asia, the Middle East, the western US, western Alaska and southeastern China." "The peak U.S. temperature was 1934, at much the same time that Total Solar Irradiance peaked," says Dr. Archibald.

He continues, "[A]t its simplest, the relationship between the solar magnetic field strength and the Earth’s climate is this: lower magnetic field strength means few sunspots, fewer sunspots means less solar wind, less solar wind means more galactic cosmic rays, more galactic cosmic rays means more low level cloud formation, more low level clouds means more sunlight reflected back into space, which in turn means less heating of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere." Dr. Archibald is far from alone.

Dr. Tapping, solar researcher and project director for Canada’s National Research Council, says "[S]olar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quite. The last time this happened was about 400 years ago – and it signaled a solar event known as the ‘Maunder Minimum,’ along with the start of what we now call the ‘Little Ice Age.’"

Looking at real, quantifiable data, and not faulty computer modeling, retired engineer P eter Harris has reached similar conclusions. Harris says, "[T]here is abundant archeological evidence to show that global temperature is closely correlated with solar activity. . . The data is based on analysis of carbon 14, which varies in concentration according to the level of solar activity. Solar activity over the past 70 years has been greatest for 8,000 years, and is the most likely cause of the recent trend through 1998 that has wrongly been attributed to CO2 warming.

"Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming," explains Phil Chapman, a geophysicist, astronautical engineer and NASA astronaut, "the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or declined during the past decade, despite continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies tracking Earth’s temperature (the Hadley Climate Research unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy Group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems, Inc. in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7 degrees C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

"In the next decade or so the global warming fraud will be exposed for what it is, a massive power and money grab by those who seek to rule over us and redistribute wealth, all the while bringing us to socialism. That day will be a dark day indeed for all the alarmists. What will be said of the great crusader, Academy Award and Nobel Prize winner Albert Gore? If I were to write it, it would say: "Al Gore: the man who invented the Internet later conned the world out of billions of dollars."

For those of you not willing to swallow the methane-producing manure that is shoveled at you everyday by a liberal and biased media, and would like to educate yourself, there are a seemingly countless number of websites and papers to read on this subject. I recommend starting your education by going to www.climatedebatedaily.com and www.climatepolice.com. Another great resource for "exposing liberal media bias" is www.newsbusters.org. Look at the science, not the dogma. Trust in what they can prove, not what they predict.

Penn and Teller..Being Green?

2008-08-02T23:02:00.000-07:00

Brilliant, insightful and profane, but a "must watch".
Peter

Penn & Teller's Bullsh**!:"Being Green"

United Nations IPCC Uncertainties About Man-Caused Global Warming

2008-08-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

This information is buried in the back pages of the latest United Nations report on global warming and climate change. It is overlooked by most and ignored by the mainstream media. However, it is recorded by one of our ever-vigilant members of "The Fellowship Of Scientific Truth". The point is, is this the kind of scientific "consensus" that we should be spending BILLIONS of dollars on trying to control global warming and climate change, by the United Nations own admission?

Thanks to "Grillednutria" published here.
Peter

From Technical Papers, Chapter 8 IPCC report.

8.2.1 Understanding and projecting climate change
Major uncertainties in understanding and modelling changes in climate relating to the hydrological cycle include the following [SYR; WGI TS.6]:

• Changes in a number of radiative drivers of climate are not fully quantified and understood (e.g., aerosols and their effects on cloud properties, methane, ozone, stratospheric water vapour, land-use change, past solar variations).

• Confidence in attributing some observed climate change phenomena to anthropogenic or natural processes is limited by uncertainties in radiative forcing, as well as by uncertainty in processes and observations. Attribution becomes more difficult at smaller spatial and temporal scales, and there is less confidence in understanding precipitation changes than there is for temperature. There are very few attribution studies for changes in extreme events.

• Uncertainty in modelling some modes of climate variability, and of the distribution of precipitation between heavy and light events, remains large. In many regions, projections of changes in mean precipitation also vary widely between models, even in the sign of the change. It is necessary to improve understanding of the sources of uncertainty.

• In many regions where fine spatial scales in climate regenerated by topography, there is insufficient information on how climate change will be expressed at these scales.

• Climate models remain limited by the spatial resolution and ensemble size that can be achieved with present computer resources, by the need to include some additional processes, and by large uncertainties in the modelling of certain feedbacks (e.g., from clouds and the carbon cycle).

• Limited knowledge of ice sheet and ice shelf processes leads to unquantified uncertainties in projections of future ice sheet mass balance, leading in turn to uncertainty in sealevel rise projections.

An Addition To The Hall Of Shame

2008-08-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a founding member of "The Fellowship".......a brilliant illustration of how the true believers of man-caused global warming accept critical modern science.

Source

Grillednutria
Message #300908/02/08 10:04 PM

Here are the alarmists Sky, jon and HOOS...shame on them..

New Members Of The Fellowship Of Scientific Truth

2008-07-31T11:25:00.000-07:00

We have some new members in The Fellowship Of Scientific Truth. Here they are, from the MSNBC Discussion Board, "Environment". http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/board.aspx?BoardID=781

GCB Stokes
Message #4707/31/08 02:24 AM
SD-Bass, e-mail penpal, Steam Geek, LtDan and Heavy Metal Thunder, and Just_some_girl

Welcome to "The Fellowship Of Scientific Truth."

Congratulation to you all!!!!

Another View Of The World

2008-07-27T01:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5IIXeR5OUI&feature=related

and another....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtPF9M3nIHs&feature=related

this will bring a few tears.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1tl0RNuvQo

A Picture For All Time

2008-07-27T01:45:00.001-07:00

What a wonderful world......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc

2008-07-27T01:44:00.000-07:00

An Observation Worth Saving and Sharing.....

2008-07-27T00:32:00.000-07:00

I thought the following statement was very appropriate in light of today's challenges, and remarkably passionate and sincere. So I am saving it here for all to share. Thanks "Grillednutria". (This comes from an on-going discussion here: http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/thread.aspx?threadid=695008&boardsparam=Page%3d17
Peter

Grillednutria
Message #20307/26/08 09:03 PM
For as long as I have trolled this lonely internet outpost it has been my view that the premise of catastrophic climate change is a gimmick led by the few and followed by many, to foment a cultural change through a fear response. While I strongly advocate both conservation and protection of the environment, I am repulsed by those who attempt to elicit such change under false premises. Even if their cause is a just one of conservation and environmentalism they have tarnished it by assuming that our culture is unable or unwilling to respond to anything less than a percieved crisis. Al Gore has said that he believes this in almost so many words.

This is an insult to all of us and a free people will not stand for such condescention, particularly from a failed politician. The myth of Global Warming has distracted us for too long from some very serious problems based primarily in todays energy based economy.
Fear incites panic, and panic kills.

If this habit of creating crisis in order to motivate political action does not soon cease, we will likely drown due to a self fulfilling panic while less than an arms length from safety. The rest of the world could go down with us, so we all have a tremendous responsibility here.
Energy is todays gold economic standard. Interest rates are no longer a practical means of throttling the economy. Tweaking of interest rates has very little effect any more. It is time that we bring today's real economic driver under control by finding domestic energy and by conserving it. There is plenty of it here to support the current and projected human population for many generations to come if we use our technology wisely.

Calm, rational thought will result in the continued progress of our nation and our civilization toward more peaceful and enjoyable lives for us and for future generations.
We need to quit playing around and get back to work.

GCB Stokes Protecting Scientific Truth

2008-07-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

GCBStokes Protecting Scientific Truth......

Seeking Out Enemies Of Scientific Truth

2008-07-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

KommandoKat seeking Enemies Of Scientific Truth

A Case Study In How The Quest For Funding Tarnishes Science

2008-07-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

I must add this article now and preserve and share it. It has relevance to the on-going debate surrounding the myth of man-caused global warming, how it came to be, and why it persists. The fact that the scandal described in the following article originated at my alma mater is an aside. This issue affects all scientists and all of science. I welcome comments. (source)
Peter

Can of Worms

The UW’s worst scientific scandal in decades exposes the ways that external funding has increased the vulnerability of two of the university’s most valuable assets — its integrity and its graduate students.
By John Allen

On September 20, 2006, Irwin Goldman received an e-mail with good news — “exceptional news,” he wrote at the time — he’d never expected to hear, at least not from anyone at UW-Madison. Graduate student Amy Hubert PhDx’08 had made a breakthrough in her research, successfully identifying the piece of DNA in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans that corresponds with a gene called laf-1.Laf-1 is important in sex determination among nematodes, which are typically hermaphroditic. Those that have a single laf-1 gene mutation develop as females. Those that have two die — thus “laf,” which stands for “lethal and feminizing.”No one ever said a worm’s life is easy.But, then, neither is a graduate student’s, and Amy Hubert’s has been harder than most.

Seven months earlier, she was working and studying in the lab of Elizabeth Goodwin, then a leading researcher in C. elegans genetics, when Goodwin was accused of scientific misconduct — essentially of misrepresenting her work in an application for federal funding. It was one of the most serious scandals in UW science, and even today, those connected to it are reluctant to talk about it. The university launched an investigation, and Goodwin soon resigned. UW-Madison had to give up thousands of grant dollars and still faces the possibility of sanction by the federal government.

The chief evidence against Goodwin came from Hubert and her graduate student colleagues, and the aftermath of the scandal has taken nearly as heavy a toll on them as it did on Goodwin. Of the seven people working in her lab — six graduate students and one research specialist — five are no longer at UW-Madison. Hubert hopes to complete her doctorate soon, which would make her the first member of the lab to do so.Her success may illustrate her academic skill, but the fact that she’s the only one from that team nearing graduation to date shows something else: the vulnerable position in which graduate students find themselves in the modern scientific world of grant-based research. Wholly dependent upon their faculty mentors for educational, financial, and career support, grad students lead a perilous life. And the increasingly competitive struggle among professors to win research grants only makes that peril more acute.

Chasing Phantoms
C. elegans is a model organism, one of a handful of species that scientists study closely to learn about general biological principles. There are a few others: several bacteria and yeasts, Arabidopsis plants, fruit flies, zebra fish, rats, and mice. Nematodes are useful as a model organism because they’re among the simplest creatures to possess a nervous system, they can be frozen and thawed without damaging their viability, and they reproduce rapidly — even more quickly than fruit flies. Nobel Prize-winner Sydney Brenner pioneered studies of C. elegans in the 1970s, making it a relatively recent entry into the roster of model species. As a result, says CALS associate dean Irwin Goldman PhD’91, “the C. elegans community is still relatively small and tight-knit.”That closeness is highlighted at WormBase, an online database that keeps records of the researchers who are working on C. elegans, cross-referencing mentors to protégés. Sydney Brenner, for instance, is listed as WB (WormBase) Person77. He was the mentor for David Hirsh, WBPerson259, a professor at Columbia who mentored Judith Kimble, WBPerson320. A biochemistry professor at UW-Madison, Kimble supervised Elizabeth Goodwin, WBPerson213, when she was a postdoctoral fellow. And Goodwin was the mentor to WBPerson3474, Amy Hubert.Hubert came to UW-Madison in 2001 from the north-central Kansas town of Concordia. Like many graduate students, she’d earned her previous degree elsewhere — a bachelor’s at the University of Kansas. She’d been attracted to the UW by its reputation as a leader in genetics, but she didn’t join Goodwin’s lab until spring 2002.“I liked Betsy [Goodwin] as an adviser,” Hubert says. “She was very friendly, very hands-on, always checking in with us about how our work was going.”

Goodwin was then one of the rising stars of the UW’s genetics department. “She was an extremely good citizen,” says Phil Anderson, another C. elegans expert (WBPerson21) and a professor of genetics. “She did more than her fair share of committee work, and she was very involved socially. She entertained prospective graduate students and helped recruit new faculty. She brought a genuine sense of joy to working here.”Goodwin’s lab was then one of only two or three in the world that were doing such advanced research into sex determination among nematodes, aiming to shed light on the importance of sexual reproduction in evolution. She was developing a hypothesis that laf-1 affected sex determination in C. elegans because it encoded a strand of “small RNA” — ribonucleic acid — instead of a conventional protein, which most genes encode. Such a discovery would have been a major coup, had she been able to prove it.“Within the last five or ten years,” says Anderson, “small RNAs have become very fashionable in research. There’s been a lot of exciting progress around small RNAs, and there’s a lot of mystery there.”But Hubert quickly lost conviction that Goodwin’s small RNA hypothesis was the right track. “When I first joined the lab,” she says, “I was getting the same results that Betsy and the others were. But I began to see that the laf-1 mutants weren’t all matching the prediction. Some of the results were just — well, they weren’t all that strong.”

While Goodwin continued to pursue the small RNA hypothesis, Hubert turned to more traditional approaches. She decided to revisit the question of laf-1’s identity by continuing to map its location in the C. elegans genome. “And the more mapping I did, the more it showed me that laf-1 was in a different spot from where everyone else [in the lab] was looking.”“Amy’s a real geneticist, while the rest of us were molecular biologists,” says one of her former lab partners, Mary Allen MS’06. “She was willing to take a long time and go back through the laf-1 work from the beginning, redoing the experiments and looking for inconsistencies. She was willing to go through the tedious process of looking at each generation of worms to see the phenotypes. I can remember her spending up to twelve hours in the lab, even on Saturdays. It was a lot of hard work, and a lot of time, but it paid off for her.”It was this difference of opinion that ultimately saved Hubert’s career at the UW. When the Goodwin affair blew up at the beginning of 2006, Hubert’s colleagues, whose work had all been intertwined with Goodwin’s search for small RNA, saw their years of labor vanish.“The project that Betsy was so committed to turned out to be a phantom,” says Anderson. “Laf-1 does not encode small RNA. And because that was a phantom, it wasn’t producing results, and it never would. The students who were chasing this phantom, they weren’t making any progress. Amy had the foresight — almost from when she first joined the lab — she had the good sense to challenge Betsy on this. She went back to the tried-and-true methods of mapping the DNA. Because of that, she was able to survive Betsy’s departure. That’s why she was able to make her breakthrough.”

Trying to Do Good
The Goodwin affair became public on February 23, 2006, when Goodwin resigned from the UW, bringing to a close three months of tension and quiet recriminations that had infected the members of her lab. She slipped quietly out of town and hasn’t spoken publicly about the allegations since, leaving her lawyers to respond to the charges. But her departure didn’t bring the affair to a close. In many ways, the difficulties were just beginning.The misconduct allegations leveled against Goodwin were, according to Bill Mellon, associate dean of the graduate school and head of the UW’s research compliance, among the most serious he’s heard in his twenty-nine years at UW-Madison, and certainly the most serious involving a tenure-track faculty member. But the university couldn’t just drop the issue upon Goodwin’s departure.“We had an obligation to investigate the charges,” says Mellon. “There were at least two federal grant applications involved, a renewal and an application for new funding, and we have to show the government that we’re serious about our honesty and the honesty of our scientists. So we had to carry out a long and detailed process — and I must say, Professor Goodwin’s absence made the process all the more difficult.”

Without Goodwin to answer the charges or explain her actions, investigators have struggled to determine just how far the damage goes. Mellon is confident that Goodwin wasn’t guilty of fraud — “she used the federal money to run the experiments she said she was going to run,” he says — and so far, no one has challenged the validity of the articles Goodwin has published. But the university had to report its findings to the federal government, and it hasn’t yet heard what the government’s Office of Research Integrity has to say about the Goodwin case.Still, if the process has been difficult for the university, it’s been even harder on Goodwin’s former students.At the time of the allegations, Goodwin’s lab employed six graduate students — Hubert, Allen, Garett Padilla MS’06, Chantal Ly MS’06, Sarah La Martina ’00, MS’06, and Jacqueline Baca — and one research specialist, Maya Fuerstenau ’04. In November 2005, Padilla discovered a discrepancy in the data that Goodwin was reporting in her grant renewal application. The application made it appear that the lab was producing favorable results, when in fact the data were incomplete, inconclusive, or worse. He brought this to the attention of his colleagues and to Goodwin.“At first, all we saw was that the data were wrong in one figure on one of the grants,” says Hubert. “After Garett talked to Betsy about it, she told him it was just a mistake, that the data had been placeholders. But the more we looked, the more we saw that seemed wrong. She was saying some experiments had been done that hadn’t been, and the figures that were being used to illustrate her results weren’t the correct figures. The conclusions she gave, in some cases, weren’t correct. Things had been relabeled, and we concluded that it couldn’t have just been a mistake. It had to be deliberate.”

The graduate students then faced a difficult decision — whether to report Goodwin to the university, knowing that, if they were wrong, it would ruin their relationship with their mentor and boss, and if they were right, it would destroy the research they’d been conducting for years.“We had a lot of discussion about what to do,” says Allen. “A lot of discussion. We were grappling with a big decision, and some people were afraid that they’d have to start over.”Eventually, however, the students came to a unanimous decision. “When we looked at it, though, there wasn’t really a choice,” says Hubert. “We wanted to believe [Goodwin]. We felt she was trying to do good for the lab. But we had to report it.”In December, they informed Mike Culbertson, chair of the genetics department. He reported the allegations to Mellon, and Mellon asked Irwin Goldman from CALS and Paul DeLuca, an associate dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health, to begin an informal inquiry to determine if there was any merit to the students’ allegations.

“We met with the students and with the professor, and we looked at the grant proposal and the data provided by the students, and it seemed clear that there was some attempt at deception,” says Goldman. “Betsy was giving one set of numbers to NIH [National Institutes of Health] and another to the students. This was clearly not a frivolous accusation.”While Goldman and DeLuca were gathering information, the lab environment was deteriorating. “We didn’t really know what was going on,” says Hubert. “We had spoken with the investigators, but were asked not to speak about Betsy to anyone else. At the same time, she was free to defend herself, and we had the feeling that she was bad-mouthing us around the department, saying that we were making mountains out of molehills and that we were out to get her. For a while, we got the feeling that we were the ones who were in the wrong.”As the situation progressed, the students felt increasingly betrayed and isolated. “It’s like there were two Betsys,” says Hubert. “The one who was my friend and who was so helpful, and then the one who had done this thing on her application. I couldn’t believe they were the same person. I still can’t.”

Goldman and DeLuca issued their recommendation to Mellon, reporting their opinion that the students’ charges had merit. Mellon then referred the matter to a formal investigative committee. And just as they began their work, Goodwin resigned. The committee finished its work a month later, concluding in a report to the Office of the Chancellor that Goodwin was guilty of the charges the students had leveled. The UW submitted its report to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, and returned what remained of her grant money.Within a few weeks, news about the misconduct spread through both the local and the scientific community, as major stories appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal and in the journal Science.“Once the report was delivered, I think it was clear that we’d been in the right,” Hubert says.But if they were vindicated, they were hardly safe. In reporting their mentor’s misconduct, they’d endangered their own careers as well.

Heroes
For Irwin Goldman, the key to the Goodwin affair isn’t ultimately what happens to Goodwin, but rather what happens to her former students. Hubert and her colleagues, he says, “displayed professional heroism. They put their careers at great personal risk for the sake of scientific integrity. That’s exactly the kind of people we want to attract into the sciences. These students risked a lot for the truth. They didn’t deserve to suffer for the actions of their mentor.”And yet when the students decided to come forward, it seemed likely that they would be punished nearly as severely as Goodwin. When she resigned and the university forfeited her funding, her lab closed down. That meant the students were out of work — no salaries, no tuition reimbursement, and perhaps worst of all, no research. That would mean no progress on their degrees, and possibly starting over. That, Goldman feels, is a poor reward for honesty.Unlike undergrads, graduate students are often more like apprentice academics, breaking into careers in science and research. Many parts of the university, including the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, where Goldman works, are dependent upon them for carrying out research. Protecting these students from dishonest faculty isn’t just an issue of justice, he maintains; it’s a matter of the UW’s self-interest.“We have almost a thousand graduate students in this college alone,” he says. “We try to get the best students to want to spend five or more years here. And if we want to attract and keep them, we have to care about them and their vulnerability.”

So Goldman convinced his colleagues within CALS to guarantee that Goodwin’s students would receive funding for at least the remainder of the semester, and he began looking for avenues through which they could continue their studies. For Hubert, who was far advanced in her work, he found a home in the lab of Phil Anderson. Another student, Jacqueline Baca, who was nearer the beginning of her work, was also placed in a different lab. But the others, facing the realization that they would have to start over, left the UW. Allen left Madison to study worms under Tom Blumenthal at the University of Colorado-Boulder; Ly and La Martina found laboratory jobs in other states; and Padilla departed for law school.“We can’t give [students] back the time that they lose,” says Bill Mellon, “but we can try to protect them from financial disaster.”That’s what Goldman set out to do. After Goodwin resigned, he began work drafting a policy for CALS that would protect graduate students in the event of scientific misconduct by their mentors. It demands that the college “use its best effort to secure funding for CALS graduate students, including Research Assistants, Fellows, and Trainees, and research associates whose positions and funding may be jeopardized by his/her good faith disclosure of scientific misconduct.” Adopted last year, the policy “is the only one I know of in the country,” says Goldman, and it’s since become a model for a university-wide attempt to improve the grad-student safety net.

“If there’s a hero in all this, it’s Irwin,” says Anderson. “He not only did everything he could to do right by Betsy’s students, but he also pushed the rest of us to try to do right by them.”Still, there’s only so much that a college can do to protect its students from faculty upheaval. The policy only covers scientific misconduct, not any of the other ways that a professor might depart — death, for example, or by taking a position at another university or in government or industry. In those cases, the students are still left to scramble.“It’s depressing,” says Goldman, “and perhaps it’s a flaw in the university system that’s developed over the last hundred and fifty years. But we’re doing our best to protect these students, because they’re the future of science.”

Competition at the Mall
The root of all science may be, as that plaque outside Bascom Hall suggests, the spirit of untrammeled inquiry, but the fundamental basis of research in today’s world is money — in particular, grant money. This is what creates the temptation toward misconduct, and what makes protecting graduate students so difficult. Phil Anderson knows this well. In November 2007, he was going through the renewal application process for the one grant that keeps his lab running — a process that had consumed nearly all his time for more than two and a half months. The good news, he says, is that the application was finished; the bad news is that it was two weeks late, which, fortunately, the reviewers at the National Institutes of Health didn’t hold against him.A committee of perhaps thirty NIH scientists will judge that application, though it’s likely that only a couple will examine it closely. Though the committee members are competent researchers in their own right, the highly specialized nature of modern studies makes it unlikely that any of them will be as well versed in Anderson’s area of research as he is. That’s what creates the opportunity to falsify data on an application.“I’ve thought about Betsy a lot through this process,” he says. “What she did, I believe, happened because of the extreme pressure we’re all under to find funding.”

According to the National Science Foundation (NSF), UW-Madison is now the American university with the second-highest total of extramural research grant money — $905 million a year, when it’s all added up from every school, college, and department. That’s an average of $440,000 per faculty member, with some 90 percent of that money in the science and engineering fields. While that may seem like a lot of money, a great many things depend upon those grants, and the pressure to get them is severe. Take, for example, Anderson’s lab. The grant he’s applying for, an extension of the one that has funded his research for the last fourteen years, is worth $1.8 million during a four-year span. The university takes a share of this — some 48.5 percent — as overhead, what it calls facilities and administrative (F&A) costs. The rest, then, must pay for supplies: computers and microscopes and slides, not to mention C. elegans worms and the means to keep them alive and breeding. And it must pay for everyone who works in Anderson’s lab — his one assistant and three graduate students, covering their salaries and tuition reimbursements, and their own research, which will aid Anderson’s, but will also serve as the basis for the dissertations and other publications that will launch their academic careers.Should Anderson’s grant application fail, his salary will continue, but everything in the lab will shut down — the students and assistant will be laid off, the research halted, the worms discarded.“All of these things are paid for from outside sources,” he says. “In a way, the university is sort of like a big mall, and we’re all independent shops. We’ve got to come up with our own funding if we want to keep operating.”

But the competition is fierce and getting fiercer. There is a continual stream of new researchers — UW-Madison graduated 648 PhDs in 2005–06 alone — many of whom will seek funding for studies, and, as Anderson says, “you don’t get money for filling in the gaps; you have to be a pioneer” to be certain of winning a grant.In 2000, about one in every three applications for a grant from either NSF or NIH was successful. By 2007, that fraction had dropped to one in five. “For the most part, those are good scientists,” says Anderson. “They want to expand knowledge, and for most of them, there’s only one source of funding — the federal government. When they’re turned down, there’s no place else to go.”And that’s where the difficulty comes in for protecting graduate student whistle-blowers. It’s one thing for the university to guarantee that their funding won’t be eliminated should their professor be guilty of malpractice; it’s another to find the dollars to replace that funding once it’s lost. As he looks at pushing to make Irwin Goldman’s CALS plan a university-wide policy, Bill Mellon realizes that it will need more than morality. It will need money.“We’ll probably have to set up some sort of misconduct relief fund,” he says. “Fortunately, this sort of thing is very rare. But we’ll have to be prepared.”Such preparation is necessary, because the pressure to win extramural funding is so strong. Anderson believes that Goodwin is hardly the only scientist guilty of exaggerating to win a grant.“We’re all guilty of marketing ourselves, of casting our research in the light that makes it seem the most certain and revolutionary,” he says. “But the cardinal sin of science is misrepresenting one’s data. Openness, honesty, and fidelity to our data — those are what make science work.”

Forward
Two years after Elizabeth Goodwin’s resignation, her lab is still empty. It produces no income for the university, nor any research or educational benefits.Phil Anderson is still waiting to hear from the National Institutes of Health as to whether they’ll confirm his grant. His students’ futures — not to mention his own career advancement, and his research into nematode genetics — depend on the NIH’s answer. Irwin Goldman’s graduate student protection plan is likely to become university-wide policy this spring. “Morally, no one has any objections to it,” Bill Mellon says. “There may be a few tweaks here and there, but I expect it to pass this March.”At the same time, Mellon, who must shepherd the policy through approval by the faculty senate, has had his own grants to renew — his application for funding to study hormone action and vitamin D was due in February.And once Amy Hubert successfully defends her dissertation, she will walk across the stage and trade her nematodes for a sheepskin. According to Allen, Hubert is “a natural teacher,” and so she plans to take her career out of Madison and into someplace with less emphasis on lab results.“I’m hoping to get a position at a small college, where I can focus on teaching more than research,” Hubert says. “I’d still like to have my own lab, but I want to spend my time teaching and actually being in a lab, rather than holed up in an office writing grants. I don’t want that to be my whole job.”

John Allen is senior editor for On Wisconsin.

Truth may enter the world by many doors, but she is never escorted by force.

2008-06-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

A voice of reason....we need more of it. James Hansen is an enemy of science and a danger to all.
Peter

OPINION: SCIENCE BY INTIMIDATION
The Globe and Mail, 27 June 2008
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080627.corex28/BNStory/specialComment/home REX MURPHY
Truth may enter the world by many doors, but she is never escorted by force. I thought that was a lesson learned long ago, and learned by none more tellingly than scientists. Real scientists, actually, have learned it. A new amalgam has emerged however, the scientist-activist, and for that specimen it's a lesson passed by.In the dawn of the Enlightenment, it was scientists who were hauled before tribunals and inquisitions. Galileo is the arch example, the pioneer empiricist who rejected the ancient Earth-centric model of the (then known) universe, and for his pains earned the attention and wrath of the distinctly unscientific Inquisition.

I am drawn to these thoughts, and to the long-decayed example of the Inquisition, by a most curious outburst this week by James Hansen, the principal voice of NASA on the subject of global warming, a man who played - as it were - John the Baptist to Al Gore's messianic teachings on the subject. Dr. Hansen is largely credited with "sounding the alarm" on man-made global warming, and he has been a persistent, high-profile and very aggressive proponent of the cause for over two decades now. Dr. Hansen doesn't take kindly to those who dispute his apocalyptic scenarios. I choose the term, apocalyptic, deliberately.

According to Dr. Hansen, mankind may have reached the tipping point with global warming. Should that be the case, wide-scale calamity and catastrophe are inevitable. And should we not have reached the point of absolute crisis, should there be a minuscule interval for the human species to act and avert the very worst, according to Dr. Hansen, what yet remains to be faced is still horrible enough indeed.

Not all the world shares Dr. Hansen's vision of imminent ecological Armageddon. Serious minds, seriously disinterested in the subject, throw up caveats all the time. They question the models of climatological speculation; they question the peculiar mix of man-made and other likely sources of climate dynamics; they question some of the data gathering and some of its interpretation; and they question the very maturity of the highly complex, and experimentally deficient science of global warming itself.

They seriously question, too, the massive policy prescriptions that are being insisted upon as necessary in response to the scientific determinations of man-made global warming. There is lots of room for different, honest opinion on questions so large and complex, questions at the terribly complicated intersection of science, politics and economics. But, to Dr. Hansen's agitated mind, those who raise such questions, who inject skepticism into the global warming debate, are "deniers." The word here is becoming commonplace, but it remains a singular slur. A clutch of the global warming believers like to cast all who would argue with them into the polemical pit, the pit being that dissent from orthodox opinion on global warming as the equivalent of Holocaust denial. It is a shameless and vicious tactic, and hardly accords with the nobility that is suppose to drive the conscience of those out to save the planet.

Dr. Hansen is overfond of the specious and chilling analogy: He has written of the "crashing glaciers serv(ing) as a Krystal Nacht" and, although he later repented of the metaphor, compared coal trains to "death trains - no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species." This week, Dr. Hansen went a step even more noxiously forward. He called for a tribunal, or as I prefer to call it, an Inquisition, to put on trial for crimes against nature and humanity, the CEOs of the big oil companies who, according to Dr. Hansen's frantic view of things, feed the public "misinformation" about the climate crisis. Again the implicit model is to Nuremberg, as the man attempts to put concern for a future - let us call it a probability - on a moral and factual par with the unquestioned, historical, shattering enormity of the Nazi Holocaust.

Is this a scientist speaking? If so, it is more than curious that in the 21st century it is the scientist calling for the secular equivalent of an Inquisition. More to the point, are these the words of a man really certain of his truth, or one who - with the anxiety of the fanatic - is trying to shield it from all rigour of skepticism and inquiry? In either case, I do not question at all the assertion that it is the voice of a man who is neither a friend to reason or science. This is the voice of the scientist-activist consumed with his own virtue and fearful of all dispute. Science has no need of tribunals or trials, no need of Nuremberg justice, or analogies with the Holocaust. James Hansen's words this week were an offence, an offence against inquiry, against science, against moral seriousness. They were a piece of insolence against the idea of debate itself.

Copyright 2008, Globe and Mail

Global Warming Science Consensus? Not At All

2008-05-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

At some point it seems the only scientists who will remain believers in man-caused global warming will be those who make their living promoting the concept. What will it take for politicians salivating over the opportunity to raise tax revenue from "carbon emissions" to realize they are wrong? When will the public wake up to the hoax that is man-caused global warming, and let their political leaders know they are not buying into the scam? Let us hope it is soon, before even more harm is done.
Peter

AND FINALLY: HOW MANY SCIENTISTS DOES IT TAKE TO OVERTURN A SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS?
Financial Post, 17 May 2008
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/05/17/32-000-deniers.aspx
By Lawrence Solomon
Question: How many scientists does it take to establish that a consensus does not exist on global warming? The quest to establish that the science is not settled on climate change began before most people had even heard of global warming. The year was 1992 and the United Nations was about to hold its Earth Summit in Rio. It was billed as - and was - the greatest environmental and political assemblage in human history. Delegations came from 178 nations - virtually every nation in the world - including 118 heads of state or government and 7,000 diplomatic bureaucrats. The world's environmental groups came too - they sent some 30,000 representatives from every corner of the world to Rio. To report all this, 7,000 journalists converged on Rio to cover the event, and relay to the publics of the world that global warming and other environmental insults were threatening the planet with catastrophe.In February of that year, in an attempt to head off the whirlwind that the conference would unleash, 47 scientists signed a "Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming," decrying "the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action."

To a scientist in search of truth, 47 is an impressive number, especially if those 47 dissenters include many of the world's most eminent scientists. To the environmentalists, politicians, press at Rio, their own overwhelming numbers made the 47 seem irrelevant.Knowing this, a larger petition effort was undertaken, known as the Heidelberg Appeal, and released to the public at the Earth Summit. By the summit's end, 425 scientists and other intellectual leaders had signed the appeal. These scientists - mere hundreds - also mattered for nought in the face of the tens of thousands assembled at Rio. The Heidelberg Appeal was blown away and never obtained prominence, even though the organizers persisted over the years to ultimately obtain some 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners.

The earnest effort to demonstrate the absence of a consensus continued with the Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change - an attempt to counter the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. Its 150-odd signatories also counted for nought. As did the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship in 2000, signed by more than 1,500 clergy, theologians, religious leaders, scientists, academics and policy experts concerned about the harm that Kyoto could inflict on the world's poor.

Then came the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's Petition Project of 2001, which far surpassed all previous efforts and by all rights should have settled the issue of whether the science was settled on climate change. To establish that the effort was bona fide, and not spawned by kooks on the fringes of science, as global warming advocates often label the skeptics, the effort was spearheaded by Dr. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences and of Rockefeller University, and as reputable as they come.The Oregon petition garnered an astounding 17,800 signatures, a number all the more astounding because of the unequivocal stance that these scientists took: Not only did they dispute that there was convincing evidence of harm from carbon dioxide emissions, they asserted that Kyoto itself would harm the global environment because "increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

"The petition drew media attention, but little of it was for revealing to the world that an extraordinary number of scientists hold views on global warming diametrically opposite to those they are expected to hold. Instead, the press focussed on presumed flaws that critics found in the petition. Some claimed the petition was riddled with duplicate names. They were no duplicates, just different scientists with the same name. Some claimed the petition had phonies. There was only one phony: Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, planted by a Greenpeace organization to discredit the petition and soon removed. Other names that seemed to be phony - such as Michael Fox, the actor, and Perry Mason, the fictional lawyer in a TV series - were actually bona fide scientists, properly credentialled.

Like the Heidelberg Appeal, the Oregon petition was blown away. But now it is blowing back. Original signatories to the petition and others, outraged at Kyoto's corruption of science, wrote to the Oregon Institute and its director, Arthur Robinson, asking that the petition be brought back. "E-mails started coming in every day," he explained. "And they kept coming. " The writers were outraged at the way Al Gore and company were abusing the science to their own ends. "We decided to do the survey again."Using a subset of the mailing list of American Men and Women of Science, a who's who of Science, Robinson mailed out his solicitations through the postal service, requesting signed petitions of those who agreed that Kyoto was a danger to humanity.

The response rate was extraordinary, "much, much higher than anyone expected, much higher than you'd ordinarily expect," he explained. He's processed more than 31,000 at this point, more than 9,000 of them with PhDs, and has another 1,000 or so to go - most of them are already posted on a Web site at petitionproject.org. Why go to this immense effort all over again, when the press might well ignore the tens of thousands of scientists who are standing up against global warming alarmism? "I hope the general public will become aware that there is no consensus on global warming," he says, "and I hope that scientists who have been reluctant to speak up will now do so, knowing that they aren't alone."At one level, Robinson, a PhD scientist himself, recoils at his petition. Science shouldn't be done by poll, he explains. "The numbers shouldn't matter. But if they want warm bodies, we have them."

Some 32,000 scientists is more than the number of environmentalists that descended on Rio in 1992.Is this enough to establish that the science is not settled on global warming? The press conference releasing these names occurs on Monday at the National Press Club in Washington.

Copyright 2008, Financial Post

Bin Gore, and his "Green Taliban".........

2008-05-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

taking credit for a new phrase.....which may become famous.....and hereby crediting it to "Duckalou".....

Duckalou,
"Bin Gore, and his Green Taliban"
Oh man, I love it!!! Do you mind if the rest of "The Fellowship of Scientific Truth" uses your phrase?
"They should have thrown Bin Gore in jail for "Fraud" instead of giving this proven liar and hot C02 salesman the Noble Peace prize."
I just gotta love ya, what a wonderfully factual statement.

DEMOCRACY, GDP AND NATURAL DISASTERS

2008-05-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

This rather lengthy essay states what to me at least, is, or should be, obvious. That is wealthier, Democratic countries suffer fewer deaths, injuries, and illness from natural disasters than other countries. They may suffer more economic damage, but only because they have more to lose. The lesson is if we truly care for all people, and truly want to alleviate suffering, the answer lies in improving people's standard of living and promoting Democracy and freedom. Trying to prevent natural disasters, or trying to "stop global warming" or "climate change" is sinfully, and tragically misguided, as I think the following study aptly illustrates.
Peter

DEMOCRACY, GDP AND NATURAL DISASTERS
Geotimes, October 2007
http://www.geotimes.org/oct07/article.html?id=feature_democracy.html

Gregory E. van der Vink and co-authors Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1998 with the observation that there has never been a famine in a nation that has a democratic form of government and a free press. A similar relationship exists for natural disasters: Deaths associated with natural disasters are lower for nations with democratic forms of government and the associated higher national income, or Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

In general, the World Bank's Democracy Index, a measure of how strong a democracy is, and a nation's GDP are stronger predictors of a natural disaster's humanitarian impact (as measured by deaths) than either the size of the event or the population density in the area of the disaster.

Global increases in democracy and GDP may therefore partially explain the apparent paradox of the generally decreasing death toll associated with natural disasters despite the increased population density in high-risk areas. Natural Disasters Natural disasters result from encounters between natural events and human infrastructure and activity. It is logical, therefore, that the rapid global increase in human population should place more people in the path of natural events, raising both the number of natural disasters and their accompanying death tolls. In addition, climate change, sea-level rise and other environmental phenomena may be increasing both the severity and frequency of events such as floods, hurricanes and other extreme weather that can result in natural disasters.

A historical comparison of annual natural disaster occurrences and disaster-related deaths, however, is inconsistent with the assumed relationship. Despite the increase in natural disasters, reported deaths are actually decreasing - both as a percentage of global population and in total numbers. The average annual percentage of the global population killed by natural disasters decreased 10-fold from the period 1964 to 1968 compared with the period 2000 through 2004, from 0.01 percent (roughly one killed for every 10,000 people) to 0.001 percent (one in 100,000) respectively.

At the same time, the average annual number of recorded disasters increased five-fold between 1964 through 1968 (64 per year) and 2000 through 2004 (332 per year). The events that continue to result in the major number of fatalities are the relatively small percentage of events that occur with large recurrence intervals, such as massive floods, strong earthquakes and direct strikes from intense hurricanes, or events that are unusual in the area in which they occur.

Clearly, the impact of a natural disaster is not simply a function of the natural event itself, but is determined also by society's ability to respond to the disaster. Over the same time period that we observe a decreasing number of disaster deaths, two great global socioeconomic trends of the last half century have also occurred: democratization and economic development.

To evaluate the role that democracy and economic development play in reducing the humanitarian impact of natural disasters, we measured 133 countries' natural disaster death tolls against both their average democracy ranking and their average per capita GDP. We excluded only those nations with a population of fewer than 1 million people, or which have experienced five or fewer disasters between 1964 and 2004.

The Role of Democracy
More than 80 percent of the total global disaster deaths from 1964 to 2004 occurred in just 15 countries, including China, Ethiopia, Sudan, Indonesia and Bangladesh, among others. Of these fifteen nations, 73 percent are below the median global GDP and 87 percent are below the median democracy index. The democracy index is the average of the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicator values for voice and accountability, political stability, absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption.

The exceptions to the trend that high GDP correlates with a low death toll after a natural disaster are Iran and Venezuela, both oil-rich countries with significant wealth but low democracy indices. Because the two outliers have high GDP and relatively high death tolls, they suggest that democracy, rather than GDP, may play the more pivotal role in reducing deaths from natural disasters. The strong exponential correlation between democracy and GDP, however, makes it difficult to differentiate the two.

El Salvador also stands out as an outlier. Despite its democratic ranking, the impoverished nation experiences a large number of deaths in the aftermath of a natural disaster. El Salvador does not have a very high democracy rating (-0.1) in general compared to the global median (-0.3). (By contrast, the U.S. democracy index is 1.4, and Finland, which has the world's highest democracy index, is 2.47.) In fact, El Salvador's democracy ranking may be misleading in the context of this analysis. Its democratic constitution was drafted only in 1983, after a long period of political instability and civil war.

Two common characteristics are notable in the countries in which the deadliest disasters have occurred since 1964. First, they all were (and many still are) developing nations: All except one (Peru) had a per capita GDP of less than $1,000 (U.S.) at the time of the disaster. Second, they were (again, many still are) non-democratic states: All except one (India) had a non-representative government or was at war (1965) when the disaster occurred, and India was facing a virtual war against militant Islamists.

Notably, the type of disaster (including earthquakes, storms and floods, for example) varies among the top 10, again implying that the characteristics of the disaster itself count for much less than the characteristics of the nation. The two unifying traits of the nations with the deadliest disasters or, more exactly, the two qualities distinctly lacking in these nations, are democracy and development.

Flooding in Nepal from last summer's monsoons killed hundreds and left millions across Southeast Asia homeless. Regions such as Nepal's Bardiya District in the southwest were particularly hard hit. New research indicates that countries with lower per capita GDP and a lower democracy index are more likely to face a lot of deaths when a disaster strikes than richer countries with stronger democracies.

In contrast, the three costliest disasters occurred in countries that are highly developed and highly democratic - the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, 2005's Hurricane Katrina in the United States and an earthquake in southern Italy in 1980. However, the three costliest disasters resulted in a relatively miniscule number of deaths.

The dichotomy is striking: Natural disasters that occur in undeveloped, non-democratic nations result in a high humanitarian cost but a low economic cost, whereas natural disasters that occur in developed, democratic nations result in a low humanitarian cost but a high economic cost. There is clearly a link between democracy, development and the impact of natural disasters.

The strong exponential correlation between democracy and GDP makes it difficult to resolve the determining factor. In addition, the reason for the strong correlation between the World Bank's Democracy Index and per capita GDP is not fully known. Similarly, it is difficult to determine exactly which of the factors that go into the calculation of the World Bank's Democracy Index have the greatest influence in determining the relationship to the death toll. These considerations are beyond the resolution of our analysis.

What is clear, however, is that the death tolls associated with natural disasters are undeniably linked to level of democratic rule within the nation that the disaster occurs. The relationship between the humanitarian impact of a natural disaster and the democracy of the nation in which the disaster occurs is consistent with the relationship that Amartya Sen discovered between democracy and famine. Deaths from natural disasters are more likely to occur in nations with low levels of democratic rule.

Furthermore, we also calculated the pattern of humanitarian relief aid from both the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) - the U.S. Agency for International Development's disaster assistance department - and the U.N. World Food Programme: The analysis indicates that the populations of less democratic nations are more vulnerable to natural disasters. Of the 577 World Food Programme grants awarded between 1987 and 2004, 92.5 percent were given to nations with negative democracy values. Only 12 countries with positive democracy values received aid, and only one (Botswana) had a democracy value greater than 0.5. The majority of both World Food Programme and OFDA aid grants are received by nations with negative democracy scores.

Grant numbers are corrected for the number of countries that fall into each democracy category, so the observed decrease cannot simply be explained by the larger number of less democratic countries. Taken together, data from the OFDA and the World Food Programme further enforce the previous finding that nations with low-levels of democratic rule are more likely to suffer severe humanitarian consequences from natural disasters. The spread of democracy over the last several decades may therefore partially explain why the total number of deaths associated with natural disasters is decreasing despite the increase in the number of events.

Reducing Hazard Vulnerability
Amartya Sen discovered that famines are distinctly non-natural phenomena. Certain climatic conditions, such as droughts, make famines more likely, but they are not the inevitable consequence of environmental circumstances. States and their citizens have the power to prevent, or bring about, as it may be, a famine - and likely other disasters. If famines are almost entirely within the control of governments and citizens, how are we to understand what are collectively referred to as "natural disasters"?

Such events as earthquakes, windstorms (hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones and tornadoes), landslides, volcanic eruptions, floods and droughts are referred to as "natural," implying that they are beyond the sphere of human influence and agency. But are they really? No state or society can prevent the occurrence of an event such as a hurricane or an earthquake. That is beyond the range of human capability. But one can not argue that disasters are wholly independent of human action. After all, a disaster is only a disaster if it affects humans themselves. That is, any natural disaster is the intersection of a natural event and a human population. But if we cannot prevent the event itself, we can certainly influence - reduce or exacerbate, depending on the circumstances - the impact of the immutable event.

Asked in another way, do certain characteristics of any given society or state predispose it to a greater impact or enable it to reduce the impact from natural disasters than states lacking or possessing in smaller or larger amounts those characteristics? And how is one to quantify the impact of a disaster: Should it be measured in terms of lives lost (humanitarian) or money spent (economic) or some combination of the two? Are the incentives for a state to respond in a certain manner moral, societal or financial? If the impact of natural disasters in humanitarian and economic terms is not solely natural, then there exists a clear opportunity for societies and communities at all scales, from familial to global, to influence the impact.

We have to capitalize upon this remarkable opportunity to effect change, ensuring that the influence is a positive one and that more lives are saved and not lost. Vulnerability to natural hazards includes not only the risk of an event - the risk involves both the probability of occurrence and how much infrastructure, both societal and economic, is exposed - but also the resiliency of the infrastructure and the national capacity to respond. Governments with low levels of accountability to their citizens may feel less pressure to maintain a high-level capacity for response to the humanitarian impact of natural disasters. Even if a nation has a comparatively low level of accountability to its own citizens, it may still have a high level of accountability to the global community.

If individual nations become accountable for many of the deaths that occur within their borders in the aftermath of a disaster, a strong international incentive (pressure from the world community) may take the place of accountability through democratic rule. Advances in global communications and economic interdependency may now be making all governments accountable to global citizenry. Deaths from natural disasters can no longer be dismissed as random acts of nature. They are a direct and inevitable consequence of high-risk land use and the failures of governments to adapt or respond to such known risks. If so, then perhaps the most important and possibly least expensive methods for reducing the humanitarian impact of natural hazards is to increase the transparency of risk, improve global awareness of the consequences of high-risk land use and hold accountable governments that place their populace in harm's way without a capacity to respond.

Van der Vink teaches courses on environmental science and natural hazards in the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University in New Jersey. His co-authors are Peter DiFiore, Andy Brett, Edward Burgess, Jacalyn Sproat, Heather van der Hoop, Pamela Walsh, Ali Warren, Logan West, Daphne Tess Cecil-Cockwell, Alain Chicoine, Jevon Harding, Christian Millian, Elena Olivi, Sara Piaskowy and Grace Wright. The authors would like to acknowledge the World Bank and the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance for making their data available for this study. They further acknowledge the Department of Geosciences, Princeton University for their support of this project.
© 2007 American Geological Institute. All

The Chaiten Volcano, Chile---A Factor In Climate Change?

2008-05-06T10:50:00.001-07:00

If this recent volcanic eruption in Chile causes significant global cooling, we may want all the CO2 in the atmosphere (that allegedly causes warming) that we can get. The links in this article and the linked satellite photo are excellent.

Peter

May 06, 2008

The Chaiten Volcano - Could it Be a Factor?
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
The news is reporting a relatively large and long lasting volcanic eruption in Chile. According to the AP, the Chaiten volcano spewed lava and blasted ash more than 12 miles (60,000 feeet) into the sky on Tuesday, prompting a total evacuation of the provincial capital and other settlements. The volcano’s five-day eruption has sent a thick column of ash into the stratosphere, streaming across Patagonia to the Atlantic.

In earlier stories, we noted that there are usually 8 to 12 volcanic eruptions on-going at almost all times. Most are the small guys which emit just lava or if eruptive have their ash and gas clouds only reaching thousands to a few tens of thousands of feet in the air, remaining within the troposphere where the ash and gases quickly falls or gets rained out within a few days or weeks.
It is the bigger eruptions that reach above this tropospheric layer into the more stable stratosphere that can have long lasting (up to several years) and extent effects (global).

Pinatubo in 1991 reached over 110,000 feet and El Chichon 105,000 feet in 1982. Both Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and Cerro Hudson in 1991 reached around or just over 60,000 feet. Chaiten may fall into that category of a St Helens or Cerro Hudson and have some effect on the climate. the activity has not ceased and it is still possible a larger eruption will follow. The long lasting (5 days plus) nature of this eruption adds to the likelihood of an effect. It’s higher latitude means a a lower stratosphere and increases the chances of material being injected into that stable layer.

See larger image here

Note how much a major eruption can reduce incoming solar energy. This would add to the global cooling from the ocean flips and the a super long cycle 23 and possibly quiet solar cycle 24.
See larger graph here.

We have written on volcanic potenital effects here and here.

One other note, back over a decade ago, there was some speculation that volcanic activity led to El Nino development as the ash reduced the thermal and thus pressure gradients and through them the equatorial easterlies, reducing cold water upwelliing in the eastern Pacific and favoring the sloshing east of warm water from the western Pacific. Anecdotally the super El Nino of 1982/83 followed El Chichon and the El Ninos of 1991/92 and 1992/93 followed Pinatubo and Cerro Hudson. Stay tuned as better assessments are made of how much Chaiten may play a role on what’s ahead.

source
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Adding Carbon Dioxide To The Atmosphere May Be Beneficial, Says Roy Spencer

2008-05-03T23:20:00.000-07:00

Here is another article by Dr. Roy Spencer. He reiterates his doubt about the myth of man-caused global warming. In addition he speculates on the reason why man's addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere may really be beneficial, instead of harmful, as so many people mistakenly believe. If he is is correct, then all of our efforts to limit CO2 emissions are a terrible, tragic waste of effort and resources.

Of course Dr. Spencer is not the first person to come to this conclusion, but he is one of a growing number of scientists who have come to the same conclusion. Search the blog here for Roy Spencer and you will find much more of what he has to say on the weather, climate, and global warming. Also, please note he has a new book out titled "Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads To Bad Science, Pandering Politicians, And Misguided Policies That Hurt The Poor".
Peter

More Carbon Dioxide, Please: Raising a Scientific Question.
By Roy Spencer in National Review Online
There seems to be an unwritten assumption among environmentalists - and among the media - that any influence humans have on nature is, by definition, bad. I even see it in scientific papers written by climate researchers. For instance, if we can measure some minute amount of a trace gas in the atmosphere at the South Pole, well removed from its human source, we are astonished at the far-reaching effects of mankind’s “pollution.”

But if nature was left undisturbed, would it be any happier and more peaceful? Would the carnivores stop eating those poor, defenseless herbivores, as well as each other? Would fish and other kinds of sea life stop infringing on the rights of others by feasting on them? Would there be no more droughts, hurricanes, floods, heat waves, tornadoes, or glaciers flowing toward the sea?
In the case of global warming, the alleged culprit - carbon dioxide - just happens to be necessary for life on Earth. How can Al Gore say with a straight face that we are treating the atmosphere like an “open sewer” by dumping carbon dioxide into it? Would he say the same thing if we were dumping more oxygen into the atmosphere? Or more nitrogen?

As a climate researcher, I am increasingly convinced that most of our recent global warming has been natural, not manmade. If true, this would mean that global temperatures can be expected to peak in the coming years (if they haven�t already), and global cooling will eventually ensue. Just for the sake of argument, let us assume that manmade global warming really is a false alarm. In that case, we would still need to ask: What are the other negative effects of pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere? Read what they are and why they may not be problems
here.
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Why Scientists Are Skeptical

2008-04-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

He, who has learned to doubt and to ask questions where the
norms forbid it, can never stop the habit. As such, every creative
person is building bridges to those masses of people who are tied
up helplessly by the pressures of peers and society. His is a step
out and above the group. And however strong the creative person
is enchained by conventions, he has unshackled himself on his
way as a free and autonomous personality. As such, he may
have cleared a new path for his group, his society and
perhaps humankind in order to transform culture and
to create space for other free personalities who want to
set new goals.
--Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943)

Global Warming: A Technical Guide For The Layperson, By DocNavy

2008-04-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

Global Warming: A Technical Guide For The Layperson, by DocNavy
Here is Doc's compilation of articles and information sources about global warming and climate change. In summary form this provides an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about the subject. Thanks Doc. Also, for anyone caring to get in on the debate over the causes of global warming and climate change, see here and here.
Peter

DocNavyMessage #1 - 09/20/07 02:17 PMGreetings! Here for your perusal are a number of articles, and websites that explain Global Warming. As it is a complex subject that is EASILY spun in many directions, I have tried to pull together a few resources that help explain it in easy terms. All of these sites contain referenced material, if you wish to go more in depth.If anyone has more information that they'd like to include, please post it. Please make sure that your posts contain active links, and the material can be understood by anyone.
Doc

*Disclaimer* A number of sites I list could be classified as "Skeptic", but even those sites endeavor to show accurate scientific data. The terms "AGW" and "GW" Stand for "Anthropogenic Global Warming", and ""Global Warming" respectively.

*NEW!* What does John Coleman, FOUNDER of The Weather Channel, think of AGW? HERE (Thanks GeoPete)

*NEW!* An interview with REID BRYSON, one of modern climatology's founding scientists about what he thinks of AGW, HERE.

*NEW!* Senator Inhofe's paper (Including speeches) on Global Warming. Previously ONLY AVAILABLE to policymakers, and Media Heads, HERE.

*Revised* A decent referenced primer that covers most everything related to AGW, HERE.

An easily read investigative article on the foundations and history of AGW, HERE.

*NEW!* Are CO2 Levels HIGHER than they have ever been? Is the Earth moving into an

UNPRECEDENTED high in Global Temperature? Find out, HERE.

A somewhat brash, though still good article on what might be causing GW, HERE.

An engaging academic DEBATE between Pro-AGW authorities and "Skeptics".

*UPDATED* A transcript of "An Inconvenient Truth" and a LINK to the Video, accompanied by a LINK (Pt.1), LINK (Pt.2) to Pacific Research Institute's documentary about AIT's presentation of scientific "Facts".

*NEW!* Lord Monckton's paper outlining 35 "Inconsistencies" of AIT, HERE.

LINK to "The great Global Warming Swindle" Documentary that is a response to "An Inconvenient Truth."An interesting article on the historical Climate Change Crises claims,

HERE.An interactive explanation of what "The Greenhouse Effect" is, HERE.

An explanation of what "Carbon Sequestering" or a "Carbon Sink" is, HERE.

The "Hockey Stick", a peer reviewed paper on exactly what it is, HERE.

A peer reviewed paper on the science of Climate Change, HERE.

*Revised* A referenced article explaining some of the more esoteric and confusing mathematical expressions often cited in IPCC TAR Report used to express actual warming, HERE.

Transcript of the Testimony of Richard S. Lindzen before the Senate Commerce Committee on 1 May 2001 on Global Warming and The Kyoto Protocol.

A peer reviewed paper explaining Climate Change, The Kyoto Protocol, it's results and how it effects the World, HERE.

A peer reviewed paper discussing the effect of a warmer, CO2 enhanced World on Human Health, HERE.

--==One of my personal FAVORITE reads!!==--*NEW!* A companion paper to the one above, submitted in the Journal of American Physicians & Surgeons. Now you know what the Doctors know. HERE. Dated FALL 2007.

*NEW!* An outstanding and easily understood article on Water Vapor and it's relationship to the Greenhouse Effect, HERE. (Thanks DietDew)

An article from the WASHINGTON POST about the "Fuzzy Math" used by mainstream media about Climate Change, HERE.

An excellent site explaining what thermal inversions, and Photochemical Smog are, HERE. (Thanks LtDan)

A DEVASTATING documentary on the attitudes and motivations behind the modern

Eco/Enviro movement, and the disparity between what is seen in the media and what is done in real life, HERE.

*NEW!* The OFFICIAL report from the US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works about what is really happening to Alaskan Polar Bears, HERE.

*NEW!* IS THERE A SCIENTIFIC "CONSENSUS" on Global Warming?? The OFFICIAL report from the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works dated 20 DECEMBER 2007, HERE. (**Updated 22 FEB 08**)
**UPDATED!!** 07APR08

Climate Fearmongering And The Danger To Democracy

2008-04-09T12:23:00.000-07:00

This comment clearly explains why we must seek and demand that the truth about the causes of global warming and climate change be found and related to everyone who cares.
Peter

THE BBC, CLIMATE HYSTERIA AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY
An email from John A [johna.sci@googlemail.com] of Climate Audit
Can it be any more apparent that the BBC is actively engaged in laundering environmental reports especially on climate to satisfy a few extremists? That what we read about climate history changes faster and more efficiently than even Winston Smith could have managed with his Speakwrite?

Witness the constant changing of historical temperature data by James Hansen now being dissected on Climate Audit. This is not simply a scandal, it is a crisis reaching to the foundations of our democracy - that news and information be disseminated by a Free Press without fear or favour to the Powers that be, nor to extremists and radicals seeking the overthrow of democracy by stealth through a crisis which bears all the hallmarks of being manufactured?

Just imagine, for a moment, what a global emissions trading scheme would look like: no Western democracy would have any control over the price of energy even in its local markets, its entire economy being subject to minute bureaucratic control of everything from the gas heater in the house to energy required to produce steel. Without any control of the cost of energy, food prices would inevitably rise and a black market in basic foodstuffs would appear (this is what happened during the fall of the Soviet Union) including a resurgent Mafia-style criminal underclass.

What then, would be the point of voting for any party? Or of democracy itself? What state could withstand the inevitable social turmoil when basic foodstuffs become more expensive than the poor can afford because the market has been rigged?It is axiomatic that any State, no matter how brutal, must eventually fall when it has lost control of the price of food - witness Zimbabwe right now, or the fall of the Soviet Union, or the fall of Suharto in Indonesia, or the Weimar Republic in the early 1930s.Make no mistake, and speaking as a classical liberal, we are looking at the most serious attempt to collectivize the world economy since the fall of Communism in the 20th Century and to render democracy moot in the Western World and beyond.

Who speaks for the farmers of Kenya whose exports into the EU and beyond are the only thing between themselves and starvation and whose products are now being labelled with airmiles by Western environmental extremists?Did any of us vote for the imposition of world energy cartel? I can't remember such a proposition being on any manifesto. But that's what it is.All of this makes the betrayal of the BBC even to its own charter that much more dangerous to all of us who hold liberal democracy so dear.

In the "Green Room" we see academics and activists talk blandly about population control (really? how?), the marginalization of democracy through a consensus of self-appointed "experts" and the need to somehow control the absolutely uncontrollable (the Earth's climate) via trying to moderate a single variable, carbon dioxide concentration, whose ability to control climate in any meaningful way is entirely absent from any paleoclimatic proxy?Yet the opinions given by academics on subjects well away from their areas of specialization are published as if those opinions are unquestionable truths. Comments are censored prior to publication to prevent serious criticisms being made, and a false impression of support for the ludicrous and dangerous propositions is thereby created.No right of reply is ever allowed except by that favourite abuse of propagandists - the "skeptic sandwich". Note that twice now, the BBC has announced that the work of Svensmark has been debunked, and twice Svensmark has replied showing that the studies are flawed and the BBC has refused to publish those replies.

The Real Effects of Carbon Dioxide

2008-04-04T20:41:00.000-07:00

The following is an important article about the effects of carbon dioxide on life on planet Earth. Please read it and save it for future reference.
Peter

http://friendsofscience.org/assets/files/documents/robinson.pdf

New Book Explores The Truth Behind The Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming

2008-03-31T00:47:00.000-07:00

This is from a larger collection of articles, comments, and observations here... This sounds like a good book, and I'd like to hear more, read more.
Peter

A New Book On The Myth of Man-Caused Global Warming And How It Came To Be......
Here is an important new book, worth reading and incorporating into our growing body of knowledge about the myth of man-caused global warming and how it has come to be.Peter

Thursday, March 27, 2008
Must-Read Global-Warming Book [Sterling Burnett]
About a year ago, Canadian environmentalist and journalist Lawrence Solomon began a series of articles in the National Post examining the credentials of and arguments made by scientists and economists labeled “deniers” by various environmentalists, a number of mainstream environmental reporters, and some politicians. Solomon, true to the finest tenets of his profession, sought the truth concerning whether there was in fact a consensus on the headline-grabbing issue of global warming, or whether in fact any “real” scientists actually dissented from the Al Gore/UN line that global warming is happening, is largely caused by humans, and threatens all manner of catastrophies.

As many people — policy wonks and fellow travelers — on this blog are well aware, dissenting scientists are not in fact rare: There are serious scholars whose views should, but too often do not, inform the debate.Solomon’s columns were important because they brought this message to a wider audience. As Solomon’s knowledge grew, he found that the genre limits of newspaper writing precluded an adequately in-depth exploration of these skeptical scientists’ important observations. Accordingly, selecting some of the scientists discussed in his columns, Solomon has written a book: The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**and those who are too fearful to do so.

As a jacket blurb puts it, “What he found shocked him. Solomon discovered that on every “headline” global warming issue, not only were there serious scientists who dissented, consistently the dissenters were by far the more accomplished and eminent scientists.”

This book does not attempt to settle the science, or show that humans are or are not responsible for the present warming trend, or settle what we can expect the future harms/benefits of continued warming (or cooling) might be. Rather, the genius of the book is that it shows in a manner accessible to a lay audience that uncertainties concerning each important facet of the “consensus” view on warming abound, and that the dissenting views are at least as plausible (and often more compelling) than the IPCC/Gore camps.

The Deniers, examines what should be the active debates concerning the plausibility of the argument that human CO2 emissions (or CO2 per se) is a driver for climate change, what role the sun may play in warming, what role the present warming trend (and human activities) play in hurricane and tropical/parasitic disease patterns, and the reliability of the climate models, among other issues.

In addition, Solomon notes the harsh treatment that many scientists have endured simply because they followed the scientific method, the evidence from their research, and their own consciences, all of which led them to the conclusion that this or that facet of the global-warming consensus view was woefully incomplete or flat-out wrong.

This treatment has had the effect intended by global warming scaremongers — to shut down promising areas of research and to silence credible critics. As I put it in an earlier column: The term skeptic has historically been a badge of honor proudly worn by scientists as indicating their commitment to the idea that in the pursuit of truth, nothing is beyond question, every bit of knowledge is open to improvement and/or refutation as new evidence or better theories emerge.

However, in the topsy-turvy field of climate science, “skeptic” is a term of opprobrium and to be labeled a skeptic is to be dismissed as a hack. Being a skeptic concerning global warming today is akin to being a heretic in the Middle Ages — you may not be literally burned at the stake, but your reputation will be put to flames. In response, many scientists whose research calls into question one or more of the fundamental tenets of global warming orthodoxy, have learned to couch their conclusions carefully. They argue, for instance, that while their research does not match up with this or that point in global warming theory, or would seem to undermine this or that conclusion, they are not denying that humans are causing global warming and they cannot account for the discrepancy between their work and the theory’s predictions.

These scientists have learned the hard lesson that when reality and the theory conflict, for professional reasons, they’d better cling to the theory: shades of Galileo recanting his theory that the earth revolves around the sun under pressure from the Inquisition. Though there are many good books on global warming, The Deniers is among the most effective in showing how science is being fundamentally undermined in the current politicized atmosphere of climate research. In addition, like no other book or paper I know, it provides a concise but thorough overview of the myriad weaknesses of the consensus view, the quality and substance of the criticisms of that view, and the stellar qualifications of those scientists labeled derisively as “deniers.”

This book should be read by anyone who seriously wants to understand where and why substantive debate remains concerning climate change and why there is so much vitriol surrounding what until recently was a relatively quiet, unheralded, or unnoticed (except by its practitioners) field of science. If a person could read only one book this year on climate change, this is the one I’d pick.

The Minor "Greenhouse Gases" CO2 and CH4 Not The Cause Of Global Warming

2008-03-18T22:42:00.000-07:00

This study clearly shows that the "greenhouse gases" carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) do not cause significant global warming or climate change. They did not do so in the past and can not reasonably be considered to be doing so now.
Peter

Preprint in press for Physical Geography (July 4, 2007)
Quantitative implications of the secondary role of carbon dioxide climate forcing in the past glacial-interglacial cycles for the likely future climatic impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcings
Willie Soon (wsoon@cfa.harvard.edu)
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Abstract: A review of the recent refereed literature fails to confirm quantitatively that
carbon dioxide (CO2) radiative forcing was the prime mover in the changes in
temperature, ice-sheet volume, and related climatic variables in the glacial and
interglacial periods of the past 650,000 years, even under the “fast response” framework
where the convenient if artificial distinction between forcing and feedback is assumed.
Atmospheric CO2 variations generally follow changes in temperature and other climatic
variables rather than preceding them. Likewise, there is no confirmation of the often posited
significant supporting role of methane (CH4) forcing, which – despite its faster
atmospheric response time – is simply too small, amounting to less than 0.2 W/m2 from a
change of 400 ppb. We cannot quantitatively validate the numerous qualitative
suggestions that the CO2 and CH4 forcings that occurred in response to the Milankovich
orbital cycles accounted for more than half of the amplitude of the changes in the
glacial/interglacial cycles of global temperature, sea level, and ice volume.

Consequently, we infer that natural climatic variability – notably the persistence of insolation forcing at key seasons and geographical locations, taken with closely-related thermal, hydrological, and cryospheric changes (such as the water vapor, cloud, and ice-albedo feedbacks) –suffices in se to explain the proxy-derived, global and regional, climatic and
environmental phase-transitions in the paleoclimate. If so, it may be appropriate to place
anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions in context by separating their medium-term
climatic impacts from those of a host of natural forcings and feedbacks that may, as in
paleoclimatological times, prove just as significant.

1. A rare but incomplete consensus on the relationship between CO2 concentration, temperature, and ice-sheet volume
One of the most notable, but somewhat surprising, consensus conclusions from ice-core
drilling projects and researches at both poles (see e.g., Fischer et al. 2006; Masson-
Delmotte et al. 2006) is the fact that the deduced isotopic temperatures lead other climatic responses, including especially the atmospheric levels of minor greenhouse gases like CO2 and CH4. Fischer et al. (1999) first reported that atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased by 80 to 100 ppm 600± 400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations (or glacial terminations) in Antarctica and that relatively high CO2 levels
can be sustained for thousand of years during glacial inception scenarios when the
Antarctic temperature has dropped significantly. Later, Monnin et al. (2001) and Caillon
et al. (2003) offered clear evidence that temperature change drove atmospheric CO2
responses during more-accurately dated periods near glacial terminations I (at about 18
kyr before present, BP) and III (at about 240 kyr BP), respectively.

(Continued here:)

Global Warming, Population Growth And Temperature Data.....No Correlation

2008-03-18T00:34:00.000-07:00

Global warming: What does the data tell us?
Authors: E. X. Alban, B. Hoeneisen
(Submitted on 23 Oct 2002)
Abstract: We analyze global surface temperature data obtained at 13472 weather stations from the year 1702 to 1990. The mean annual temperature of a station fluctuates from year to year by typically +-0.6oC (one standard deviation). Superimposed on this fluctuation is a linear increase of the temperature by typically 0.40oC per century ever since reliable data is available, i.e. since 1702. The world population has doubled from 1952 to 1990, yet we see no statistically significant acceleration of global warming in this period. We conclude that the effect of humankind on global warming up to 1990 is 0.0 +- 0.1oC.
Comments:
9 pages, 12 figures
Subjects:
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics (physics.ao-ph)
Report number:
USFQ-30-2002
Cite as:
arXiv:physics/0210095v1 [physics.ao-ph]

Global warming: What does the data tell us?
E. X. Alb´an and B. Hoeneisen
Universidad San Francisco de Quito
19 February 2002
Abstract
We analyze global surface temperature data obtained at 13472 weather
stations from the year 1702 to 1990. The mean annual temperature of
a station fluctuates from year to year by typically ±0.6oC (one standard
deviation). Superimposed on this fluctuation is a linear increase
of the temperature by typically 0.40±0.01oC per century ever since
reliable data is available, i.e. since 1702 (errors are statistical only,
one standard deviation). The world population has doubled from 1952
to 1990, yet we see no statistically significant acceleration of global
warming in this period. We conclude that the effect of humankind
on global warming up to 1990 is 0.0 ± 0.1oC. Therefore, contrary to
popular belief, the data support the view that human activity has had
no significant effect on global warming up to the year 1990 covered by
this study.

The Physics Case Against CO2 Caused Global Warming

2008-03-17T23:57:00.000-07:00

10. arXiv:0707.1161 [pdf, other]
Title: Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
Authors: Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner
Comments: 114 pages, 32 figures, 13 tables (some typos corrected)
Subjects: Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics (physics.ao-ph)

Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
Authors: Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner
(Submitted on 8 Jul 2007 (v1), last revised 11 Sep 2007 (this version, v3))
Abstract: The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation.

In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.

The End Of The Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming Is Nigh....(Near)......

2008-03-14T19:18:00.000-07:00

It is apparent that people on both sides of the big pond are becoming aware of the great global warming scam....praise the instant communication powers of the Internet.....thank Al Gore for inventing the Internet!
Peter

The mammoth global warming scam
Tuesday, 11th March 2008
source
More evidence from the International Conference on Climate change last month which produced the Manhattan Declaration (see post below) of the way in which scientists who are sceptical about man-made global warming find their work is suppressed. A detailed piece on the website of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works reports:

During the conference, scientists revealed the lack of tolerance science journals and institutions have exhibited for skeptical climate views.

‘We [fellow skeptical scientists] talked mostly of work and upcoming papers and went through the standard ritual of griping about journal editors and the ridiculous hoops we sometimes have to jump through to get papers published. But some of the guys had absolute horror stories of what happened to them when they tried getting papers published that explored non-‘consensus’ views. Really outrageous and unethical behavior on the parts of some editors. I was shocked,’ wrote conference participant Dr. William M. Briggs, a climate statistician who serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review, on his blog on March 4. (LINK)

Prominent Hungarian Physicist Dr. Miklós Zágoni, a former global warming activist who recently reversed his views about man-made climate fears and is now a skeptic, presented scientific findings at the conference refuting rising CO2 fears. Zágoni’s scientific mentor Hungarian scientist, Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist, resigned from his post working with NASA because he was disgusted with the agency’s lack of scientific freedom. Miskolczi, who also presented his peer-reviewed findings at the conference, said he wanted to release his new research that showed "runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations," but he claims NASA refused to allow him. ‘Unfortunately, my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results,” Miskolczi said according to a March 6 Daily Tech article. (LINK) [Note: Clarification from original posting. Miskolczi worked with NASA, not Zágoni.]

Meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological Society's (AMS) Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, noted that many of his scientific colleagues did not attend the conference because they “feared their attendance might affect their employment.” D’Aleo described the fear of retribution many skeptics face as a “sad state of affairs.” But D’Aleo noted that he believes there is ‘very likely a silent majority of scientists in climatology, meteorology, and allied sciences who do not endorse what is said to be the ‘consensus’ position.’

Other scientists have echoed these claims. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, asserted in December 2007 that skeptics have a much harder time publishing in peer-reviewed literature. ‘Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media,’ Paldor, who was not in attendance at the New York conference, wrote in December.

From this post, and in particular if you follow the links, you will find a wealth of other information which illuminates the mind-blowing scale of the global warming scam and how it has been perpetrated — for example, that proponents of MMGW have been funded over the past decade to the tune of $50 BILLION whereas the sceptics have received a meagre $19 MILLION. In other words, MMGW is a giant cash cow for scientific researchers, while those who refuse to latch onto the poisoned udder find they risk professional suicide. Even so, the number of scientists now ‘coming out’ to declare that MMGW is a monumental fraud is growing by the day.

In such nations as Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Russia, Argentina, New Zealand, Portugal, and France, groups of scientists have recently spoken out to oppose and debunk man-made climate fears… Atmospheric Physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh and a founding member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, also announced his skepticism on February 18, 2008. “Sorry folks, but we're not exactly buying into the Global Hysteria just yet. We know a great deal about atmospheric physics, and from the onset, many of the claims were just plain fishy,” Peden wrote. (LINK)

In January 2008, environmental scientist professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder and director of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, announced publicly that he considered CO2 related climate fears to be ‘dangerous nonsense.’ Domingos, who retired in 2006, has more than 150 published articles in the research fields of Thermodynamics, Numerical Methods in Fluid Mechanics and Meteorological Forecast. ‘There are measurable climate changes but there is also an enormous manipulation in reducing everything to CO2 and equivalents. The main gas producing the green house effect is water vapor. The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning,’ Domingos said…

In addition, at least one scientist publicly pondered reconsidering his view of man-made climate fears after Senate report of 400 scientists was released in December. ‘It (the Senate 400 scientists report) got me thinking: I'm an environmental scientist, but I've never had time to review the “evidence” for the anthropogenic causes of global warming,’ wrote environmental scientist Professor Rami Zurayk of the American University in Beirut on December 27, 2007. (LINK) ‘When I said, in my opening speech for the launch of UNEP's (United Nations Environment Program) Global Environment Outlook-4 in Beirut: “There is now irrevocable evidence that climate change is taking place...” I was reading from a statement prepared by UNEP. Faith-based science it may be, but who has time to review all the evidence? I'll continue to act on the basis of anthropogenic climate change, but I really need to put some more time into this,’ Zurayk wrote.

Oh dear. How many once-stellar scientific reputations are about to come crashing down over this? Let’s start with the Royal Society and work steadily downwards…

Can We Return To Global Climate Sanity?

2008-03-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

I do not believe we can rest until we see and understand the complete picture regarding global warming and climate change. The issue involves more than some mysterious hypothetical computer climate models and esoteric physics related to the behavior of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). As pointed out in the following article, this issue involves everyone on Earth and includes experts in climatology, meteorology, economics, geology, energy, engineering.....and of course it involves politics. We all need to learn all we can.
Peter

An Extraordinary Event: Global Climate Sanity
Alan Caruba
For the last two days, March 2-4, I and about five hundred other people attended the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, including some of the world’s leading authorities on climatology, meteorology, economics, energy, and other fields of knowledge.It was an extraordinary event, held in New York and sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that has been among those leading the effort to educate and inform the public about the mountain of lies that have led them to believe that the Earth is experiencing a huge increase in heat, a "global warming," that is allegedly the direct result of human activities, primarily from the use of energy that includes coal, natural gas, and oil.

The conference message is simplicity itself: There is no “consensus” on global warming. The science is not “settled.” Indeed, this conference marks a highpoint in the effort to rescue the planet from people who regard their fellow human beings as a cancer afflicting the Earth.This hoax, generated out of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, actually included some IPCC members who have labored long and hard to dispute the IPCC reports on the basis of real science, not the spurious claims based largely on flawed and even deliberately false computer models.

In breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners, some of these now-famed global warming “dissenters” and “deniers” presented talks complete with Power Point presentations filled with statistics and charts that disputed the alleged facts of the IPCC. These presentations were then augmented by a series of panels on paleoclimatology, climatology, the impacts of the global warming hoax, its affect on the economics of both developed and developing nations, and how it twists the politics of our nation and others.

What made this event so extraordinary was that it is, to my knowledge, the first time since the global warming hoax was perpetrated back in the 1980s (it had been preceded by a campaign in the 1970s asserting – correctly – that we are closer to the next ice age) that such a gathering has occurred. It has taken three decades to bring together these experts and the reason why is fairly simple. The forces behind the global warming hoax, the environmental organizations, have been heavily funded by foundations and, as in the United States, by billions of government dollars directed to research on the climate. These groups have garnered more money from membership and the sales of all manner of books, publications, DVDs and other items. Still others have made their money by suing the government and having their legal fees reimbursed along with any other rewards.

The “stars” of the conference were men with impeccable credentials, but largely unknown to the general public because the media has been enthralled the global warming hoaxers, either deliberately or by virtue of being disinterested in the actual science involved. Too many have failed their commitment to journalism’s high standards and they have failed a public that depends on them to explain these complex issues.

For decades, the headlines have heralded all manner of crisis to the point of absurdity whereby now blizzards are attributed to warming tends. This passed year has seen significant and unusual blizzard conditions worldwide and this too, the public has been told, results from a dramatic warming that is not occurring. For me, there was the particular pleasure of actually meeting many of those who have been on the front lines of disputing the hoax, but our work is far from finished.

Much damage is being done to America by legislation based on the global warming lies, particularly as regards their impact on the provision of the energy this nation requires to be competitive in the global marketplace and to sustain our lifestyle. Our political candidates all subscribe to the global warming hoax. The leaders in the Senate and House all advocate it as well. The result is legislation that forces the nation to literally burn its food crops – notably corn – in order to turn it into an efficient fuel additive, ethanol. This in turn is forcing up the cost of food. It is legislation that does not permit for the exploration and extraction of energy reserves such as oil and natural gas along 85% of our nation’s continental shelf, nor in Alaska where billions of barrels of oil remain untapped.

It is legislation that grants huge subsidies – a form of hidden tax – to wind and solar energy, the two most inefficient and unreliable forms of energy. It is legislation that bans the future use of incandescent light bulbs.In short, America is gripped by a form of life-threatening insanity perpetrated by the Greens and legislated by politicians who haven’t a clue about the ways they are wrecking our economy in the name of global warming. So this extraordinary conference, drawing men and women from as far away as Australia, New Zealand, China, the United Kingdom and Europe, may well be the last best hope to turn away from a future that will be marked by the undermining of America’s and Europe’s economies.

© Alan Caruba, March 2008

An#">source:

What Is The Issue Of Global Warming Really About? Climatology? No. It Is About FREEDOM

2008-03-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic speaks on the efforts to control global warming and the dangers they pose to freedom. He is a man who is highly qualified to make these observations. He has more to say on the subject. Science? No. Politics and ideology? Yes, very much so.
Peter

Fighting Words
After two days of toiling through an ocean of charts, graphs and complicated mathematical equations, attendees of the Heartland Institute's 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in Manhattan were provided a starker, significantly less esoteric warning from the president of the Czech Republic over breakfast Tuesday morning. "It is not about climatology," the recently re-elected, Mises and Hayek-quoting Vaclav Klaus intoned darkly. "It is about freedom."

As the sole head of state willing to stand before the self-congratulatory United Nations Climate Change Conference last September and loudly register his dissent from the international groupthink on anthropogenic (i.e. manmade) global warming, Klaus was already a highly-regarded hero in these skeptic quarters. His speech this week, however, went far beyond his UN confrontation in terms of both its relentless defiance -- try to imagine a more scathing indictment of messianic environmentalists than Klaus's description of them as "imprisoned in the Malthusian tenets and in their own megalomaniac ambitions" -- and the Czech president's willingness to draw explicit comparisons between modern environmentalism and communism:

If I am not wrong I am the only speaker from a former communist country and I have to use this as a comparative -- paradoxically -- advantage. Each one of us has his or her experiences, prejudices and preferences. The ones that I have are, quite inevitably, connected with the fact that I have spent most of my life under the communist regime. A week ago I gave a speech at an official gathering at the Prague Castle commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1948 communist putsch in the former Czechoslovakia. One of the arguments of my speech there...went as follows: "Future dangers will not come from the same source. The ideology will be different. Its essence will, nevertheless, be identical.

The attractive, pathetic, at first noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of the common good, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice man and his freedom in order to make this idea a reality." What I had in mind was, of course, environmentalism and its current strongest version, climate alarmism.These are, as they say, fighting words.

AFTER I'D RUN A GAUNTLET of polite-yet-stoic Secret Service agents and persevered through a scheduling snafu or four, Vaclav Klaus kindly granted TAS a short interview (in English!) in a suite at the Times Square Marriott. At turns animated and sternly reserved, Klaus carries himself with remarkable poise and exudes a passion for principled policy that is impressive when one considers he's been fighting political battles since 1989. It does not take long to get the impression this is a man who does not suffer fools gladly. "I was in Iceland a year or two ago and I enjoyed very much the words of the Prime Minister who said, 'Vaclav Klaus is very often politically incorrect, but he's usually correct politically,'" Klaus chuckled. "I like this playing with words, which is for me motivation to continue."

What's more, contrary to the blustery outrage in the international press over his crashing of the United Nations apocalypse party, the president's views may not be quite so far out as his colleagues would have their constituencies believe. Shades of Obama's NAFTA kerfuffle, Klaus insisted he was far from shunned during the three days of General Assembly receptions, meals, and cocktail parties following his speech."The funny [part of the] story is that many of them told me, 'Thank you very much for what you were saying. My views are similar,'" Klaus recalled. "So I say, 'Then why don't you say the same?'" The president pushed his voice up a couple registers before mimicking their response: "'Oh, it is impossible and it needs courage.' And so on."

Klaus shook his head, as if he were a competitive captain of a football team spoiling for a fight on game day, only to be hindered by the bunch of scared-of-their-own-shadow wimps the coach has inexplicably recruited. I asked Klaus if it was frustrating for him, as a trained economist -- he's held academic posts at the Forecasting Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Prague School of Economics -- to operate in a political world populated with those who so frequently behave as if they are allergic to facts and basic statistics?

"It's not frustrating if you believe it is your task to fight all forms of irrationalities and to fight the political correctness approach which is killing any serious discussion," Klaus shot back, not without some heat. Far from being a detriment to political careers, this former Minister of Finance said he believed the social and economic sciences had more to offer realist politics than many currently concede and frets global warming skeptics may be focusing too much on science alone. "Regulation, centralization versus decentralization -- that for me is something that is not just about freedom in a political sense, but another layer, another dimension of the discussion," Klaus explained.

This is a matter of philosophical consistency for Klaus, who has expressed serious misgivings about centralized power of the European Union as well."When I [talk about] the standard social science and the standard economic approach, it's not just saying you must be a libertarian to stress and promote freedom," he continued. "The standard social science and economic approach will tell you something about the irrationalities of centralization, the irrationalities of over-regulation, the irrationality of the bureaucratization of our lives. This is something I don't hear quite often enough."

Is it any wonder the Competitive Enterprise Institute is honoring Klaus at its upcoming annual dinner? Our time was almost up, but in light of our discussion of the "irrationalities of centralization," I couldn't help but ask the president for his thoughts on the recent election in Russia -- a country he has maintained friendly ties with."I must say the Russian elections are not the same elections as in the United States of America or in the Czech Republic," Klaus answered with slow and deliberate care. "So in this respect we both wouldn't be happy to have such elections. But on the other hand, when I look at it in a historical perspective and compare it with the past in Russia, when I compare it with much of Asia, in this respect, these elections were relatively okay. I would not have a highbrow negativistic approach which is quite popular in some circles."

Before I could follow up I noticed Klaus's ceaselessly amiable scheduler leaning into my line of vision across the room. When he was certain I saw him he shot me a half plaintive, half apologetic look. Time to wrap it up. Klaus gave a little single nod of the head, a one-pump handshake, thanked me for the interview and then was on to another. Queries about missile defense, Putin's successor and the U.S. presidential election would have to wait. It was a shame, really: I've met state legislators less candid than this head of state. This isn't the kind of thing the EU exports, is it?

Source

Global Warming Alarmists Stifle Debate

2008-02-29T11:46:00.000-08:00

Does anyone read the Wall Street Journal? Everyone should know that one of the leading promoters of the myth a man-caused global warming, RealClimate.org, are actively trying to stifle debate or discussion of the issue. (See the article below.) These are just some of the tactics being used against global warming skeptics. We should all be outraged. Our politicians should be nailed to the wall and forced to recognize that there is no consensus about the causes of global warming. In fact, we may actually be in one of Earth's global cooling cycles. Think about this and get involved.
Peter

Source:
JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL
Chilling Effect
Global warmists try to stifle debate.
February 25, 2008
John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all promise bold action on climate change . All have endorsed a form of cap-and-trade system that would severely limit future carbon emissions. The Democratic Congress is champing at the bit to act. So too is the Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of companies led by General Electric and Duke Energy.

You'd think this would be a rich time for debate on the issue of climate change. But it's precisely as sweeping change on climate policy is becoming likely that many people have decided the time for debate is over. One writer puts climate change skeptics "in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial," another envisions "war crimes trials" for the deniers. And during the tour for his film "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore himself belittled "global warming deniers" as unworthy of any attention.

Take the reaction to Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg's latest book, "Cool It," which calls for a reasoned debate on global warming. Mr. Lomborg himself leans left, and he opens his book by declaring his belief that "humanity has caused a substantial rise in atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels over the past centuries, thereby contributing to global warming." But he has infuriated environmentalists by saying it is necessary to debate "whether hysterical and head-long spending on extravagant CO2-cutting programs at an unprecedented price is the only possible response." To do so, he says, it will be necessary to cool the doomsday rhetoric, allowing a measured discussion about the best ways forward. "Being smart about our future is the reason we have done so well in the past. We should not abandon our smarts now."

Mr. Lomborg's solution is to avoid discredited cap-and-trade programs, in which developing nations limit economic growth while they fruitlessly try to convince booming economies such as India and China to do the same. His alternative: "Let's focus on research and development. Let's focus on noncarbon-emitting technologies like solar, wind, carbon capture, energy efficiency and also, let's realize the solution may come from nuclear fission and fusion." He laments that the climate change issue has been demagogued by ideological groups on both sides, "and the ones who are making panicky or catastrophic claims simply have better press." At the end of the day, he ruefully acknowledges that potential progress and the sorts of solutions he advocates "are just boring things."

* * *
Let's hope Mr. Lomborg is wrong in his fear that the media are uninterested in showcasing a real debate on climate change. The proof may be found next week, when hundreds of scientists, economists and policy experts who dissent from the "consensus" that climate change requires radical measures will meet in New York to discuss the latest scientific, economic and political research on climate change. Five tracks of panels will address paleoclimatology, climatology, global warming impacts, the economics of global warming and political factors. It will be keynoted by Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who has argued that economic growth is most likely to create the innovations and know-how to combat any challenges climate change could present in the future. (Information on the conference is here.)

The conference is being organized by the free-market Heartland Institute and 49 other co-sponsors, including a dozen from overseas. Heartland president Joseeph Bast says its politically incorrect purpose is to "explain the often-neglected 'other side' of the climate change debate. This will be their chance to speak out. It will be hard for journalists and policy makers to ignore us."

I wonder. Already, environmental groups have sent out their opinion to their media friends that the conference is simply a platform for corporate apologists and can safely be ignored. One group alleges the conference will have "no real scientists" present despite an impressive array of speakers such as Patrick Michaels, a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Critics point out that ExxonMobil gave nearly $800,000 to Heartland between 1998 and 2005 and that the group's board of directors include several people with ties to energy companies. The authors of the blog Real Climate don't engage the issues raised by the conference but instead attack it as stuffed with shills. When Heartland experts tried to respond to those charges, they were blacklisted from the comments section of the Real Climate Web site.

All this has led the Western Standard, a Canadian magazine sympathetic to the global warming skeptics, to predict that "the gathering will be completely ignored, even though it's being held in the news media capital of the world." Let's hope not. Global warming is too important a subject not to debate, and we in the U.S. may rue the day we rushed pell-mell into expensive and shortsighted solutions when much more rational and cost-effective ones were readily available.

Wisdom Of Rudyard Kipling

2008-02-27T22:49:00.000-08:00

I keep six honest serving-men:(They taught me all I knew)Their names are What and Where and When And How and Why and Who.
The Elephant's Child

by Rudyard Kipling

Government-Controlled Grand Funding Is Corrupting Science And Harming Us All

2008-02-26T09:41:00.000-08:00

Here is a thoughtful essay about our current state of affairs regarding government-controlled funding of scientific research. The methodology, or what goes on behind the scenes with regard to funding goes a long way toward explaining how we have gone so far astray with the myth of man-caused global warming. He cites other scientific problems, but right now, global warming, and what to do about it, has the greatest potential for harm.
Peter

source:

The Trouble With Government Grants
by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MDby Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD

Flush with success in creating an atom bomb, the U.S. federal government decided it should start funding nonmilitary scientific research. A government report titled "Science, the Endless Frontier" provides the justification for doing this. It makes the case that "science is the responsibility of government because new scientific knowledge vitally affects our health, our jobs, and our national security" (Bush, 1945). Accordingly, the government established a Research Grants Office in January, 1946 to award grants for research in the biomedical and physical sciences. It received 800 grant applications that year. The Research Grants Office is now known as the Center for Scientific Review (CSR), and it processes applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In 2005 CSR received 80,000 grant applications.

The System
Investigators seeking an NIH grant submit a 25-page Research Plan that begins with an abstract placed in a half-page box on the form. The Specific Aims of the project, preferably two to four, come next (recommended length, 1 page). The applicant must show that these objectives are attainable within a stated time frame. As one NIH center (the National Cancer Institute) advises in its online Guide for Grant Applications, "A small, focused project is generally better received than a diffuse, multifaceted project." The other components of the Research Plan are Background and Significance (3 pages); Preliminary Studies the applicant has done (6-8 pages); Research Design and Methods (about 15 pages); and, if applicable, Human Subjects and Vertebrate Animals considerations. The investigator must also submit a detailed budget for the project on a separate form.

The Center for Scientific Review "triages" applications it receives. A cursory appraisal eliminates one-third of the applications from any further consideration, and it selects the remaining two-thirds for competitive peer review. CSR sends each application to a Study Section it deems best suited to evaluate it. Peers in Molecular Oncogenesis, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cell Structure and Function, Hematopoiesis, HIV/AIDS Vaccine, and 167 other Study Sections review grant applications. Each Study Section has 12-24 members who are recognized experts in that particular field. Members meet three times a year to review 25-100 grants at each meeting. Two members read an application and then discuss it with the other section members who collectively give it a priority score and percentile ranking (relative to the priority scores they assign to other applications). An advisory council then makes funding decisions on the basis of the Study Section’s findings, "taking into consideration the [specific NIH] institute or center’s scientific goals and public health needs" (Scarpa, 2006). CSR’s slogan is "Advancing Health through Peer Review."

With a budget of $28 billion, the director of NIH reports that it currently funds 22 percent of all the grant applications it reviews (Zerhouni, 2006). Among these, multi-year R01 grants are the mainstay of research by medical school faculties. And in 2005, the NIH funded only one in eleven (9.1%) of the unsolicited R01 research grant applications it reviewed (Mandel and Vesell, 2006). In 1998 the NIH funded 31 percent of its grant applications, and since 2003 grant appropriations have lagged behind inflation (Zerhouni, 2006). The National Science Foundation awards $6 Billion in grants each year. This independent federal agency funds 28 percent of the 40,000 annual grant proposals it receives.

Twenty-six federal granting agencies now manage 1,000 grant programs. Even clinical trials of drugs, vaccines, and devices, where industry may profit from the outcome, have come under the purview of government. Zarin and colleagues (2005) reviewed ClinicalTrials.gov records and found that the federal government currently funds 9,796 (51%) of the 19,355 interventional trials being conducted. Industry sponsors 4,734 (24%); and universities, foundations, and other organizations, 4,825 (25%).

Under the current system scientists are expected to spend time drafting, writing, and refining unsolicited R01 grant applications, despite a less than one in ten chance of success.

Ethics of Writing Grant Proposals
Ethics in science and society "describe appropriate behavior according to contemporary standards" (Friedman, 1996). Two standards that scientists follow for writing grant proposals are: 1) Keep it safe and survive, and 2) Don’t lie if you don’t have to.
Pollack (2005) addresses the first ethic, noting that the paramount motivational factor for scientists today is the competition to survive. A scientist’s most pressing need, which supersedes the scientific pursuit of truth, is to get her grant funded – to pay her salary and that of her staff, to pay department bills, and to obtain academic promotion. The safest way to generate grants is to avoid any dissent from orthodoxy. Grant-review Study Sections whose members’ expertise and status are tied to the prevailing view do not welcome any challenge to it. A scientist who writes a grant proposal that dissents from the ruling paradigm will be left without a grant. Speaking for his fellow scientists Pollack writes, "We have evolved into a culture of obedient sycophants, bowing politely to the high priests of orthodoxy."

Applicants following the ethic of "keep it safe and survive" propose research that will please the reader-peers and avoid projects that might displease them. An NIH pamphlet on grant applications reinforces such behavior by stating, "The author of a project proposal must learn all he can about those who will read his proposal and keep those readers constantly in mind when he writes." (Ling, 2004a).

With regard to the second ethic, Albert Szent-Györgyi said, "I always tried to live up to Leo Szilard’s commandment, ‘don’t lie if you don’t have to.’ I had to. I filled up pages with words and plans I know I would not follow. When I go home from my laboratory in the late afternoon, I often do not know what I am going to do the next day. I expect to think that up during the night. How could I tell them what I would do a year hence?" (Moss, 1988, p.217). This long-time cancer researcher, discoverer of vitamin C, and Nobel laureate was unable, despite multiple attempts, to obtain a government grant.

Friedman (1996) describes a variant of this ethic where an investigator applies for a grant to do a study that he has already completed. With this grant awarded and money in hand he publishes the study and uses the funds on a different project. The misrepresentation enables the investigator to remain one project ahead of his funding. Apparently enough seasoned investigators do this that the academic community views the practice as sound "grantsmanship."

Apollonian Research
When the peer review grant system was established in 1946 people assumed that scientific progress occurs in an evolutionary incremental and cumulative fashion. Having a panel of experts judge the worth of each research proposal seeking funds seemed then to be the best way to allocate federal tax dollars for research. This system assumes that a majority of specialists in a given field will know where truth lies and how best to get there and find it (Ling, 2004b). But as Hall (1954) and Kuhn (1962) later showed, periodic upheavals and revolutions in science disrupt an otherwise steady growth of scientific knowledge. Long-cherished ideas are replaced wholesale by new ones that lead science in a different direction.

The grant system fosters an Apollonian approach to research. The investigator does not question the foundation concepts of biomedical and physical scientific knowledge. He sticks to the widely held belief that the trunks and limbs of the trees of knowledge, in, for example, cell physiology and on AIDS, are solid. The Apollonian researcher focuses on the peripheral branches and twigs and develops established lines of knowledge to perfection. He sees clearly what course his research should take and writes grants that his peers are willing to fund. Forced by the existing grant system to follow such an approach, Pollack (2005) argues that scientists have defaulted into becoming a culture of believers without rethinking the fundamentals.

Intuitive geniuses, like Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur, Ernest Rutherford, and Albert Einstein, take a Dionysian, transformational approach to science. Their research relies on intuition and "accidental" discoveries. Szent-Györgyi describes intuition as "a sort of subconscious reasoning, only the end result of which becomes conscious." The Dionysian scientist knows the direction he wants to follow into the unknown, but "he has no idea what he is going to find there or how he is going to find it. Defining the unknown or writing down the subconscious is a contradiction in absurdum." And, citing Pasteur, who said, "A discovery is an accident finding a prepared mind," Szent-Györgyi notes that "accidental" discoveries are rarely true accidents (Moss,1988, pp. 216-217).

Although it is the Dionysian method of research that produces transformative scientific breakthroughs, peers possessing the power to judge grants do not support this kind of research. They abuse the trust and power of government, which does not know science, to advance their own careers and, in some cases, protect their investments in companies that profit from the reigning paradigm. Knowing this government might be more amenable to supporting potentially transformative, Dionysian research.

To make matters worse, this system is replacing other sources of funding that formerly supported Dionysian scientists. Ling (2004b) observes, "Oversupply of scientists, the rising cost of living and of research, the decline of private foundations and scientific niches which these foundations once sustained [has] completed the dismantling of the socio-economic environment which once protected revolutionary scientists and their young followers."

Unassailable Paradigms
Paradigms in the biomedical and climate sciences that have achieved the status of dogma are:

Cholesterol and saturated fats cause coronary artery disease.

Mutations in genes cause cancer.

Human activity is causing global warming through increased CO2 emissions.

A virus called HIV (human immunodeficiency) causes AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome).

The damaging effects of toxins are dose-dependent in a linear fashion down to zero. Even a tiny amount of a toxin, such as radiation or cigarette smoke, will harm some people.

The membrane-pump theory of cell physiology based on the concept that cells are aqueous solutions enclosed by a cell membrane.

Scientists that question these state-sanctioned paradigms are denied grants and silenced (Moran 1998). But valid questions nevertheless have been raised about each of these established orthodoxies.

The idea that cholesterol causes coronary heart disease is now close to being dogma, and investigators that question the lipid hypothesis need not apply for funding. But there is growing evidence that the hypothesis is wrong, as Ravnskov (2000) documents in The Cholesterol Myths.

Aneuploidy (an abnormal number and balance of chromosomes), instead of mutation-produced oncogenes, may well prove to be the true cause of cancer (Bialy, 2004; Duesberg and Rasnick, 2000; Miller, 2006).

The human-caused global-warming paradigm is most likely false (Soon et al., 2001; Editorial, 2006). Two climate astrophysicists, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, present evidence that shows the climate of the 20th century fell within the range experienced during the past 1,000 years. Compared with other centuries, it was not unusual (Soon and Baliunas, 2003). Unable to obtain grants from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), Soon (personal communication, August 31, 2006) observes that NASA funds programs mainly on social-political reasoning rather than science.

Duesberg (1996), Hodgkinson (2003), Lang (1993-2005), Liversidge (2001/2002), Maggiore (2000), and Miller (2006), among others, have questioned the germ theory of AIDS. All 30 diseases (which includes an asymptomatic low T-cell count) in the syndrome called AIDS existed before HIV was discovered and still occur without antibodies to this virus being present. At a press conference in 1984 government officials announced that a newly discovered retrovirus, HIV, is the probable cause of AIDS, which at that time numbered 12 diseases (Duesberg, 1995, p. 5). Soon thereafter "HIV causes AIDS" achieved paradigm status. But, beginning with Peter Duesberg, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, a growing number of scientists, physicians, investigative journalists, and HIV positive people have concluded that HIV/AIDS is a false paradigm. The NIH awarded Duesberg a long-term Outstanding Investigator Grant and a Fogarty fellowship to spend a year on the NIH campus studying cancer genes, and he was nominated for a Nobel Prize. When Duesberg publicly rejected the HIV/AIDS paradigm the NIH and other funding agencies ceased awarding him grants. Government-appointed peer reviewers have rejected his last 24 grant applications. Peter Duesberg (personal communication, September 20, 2006) writes: When I was the blue-eyed boy finding oncogenes and "deadly" viruses, I was 100% fundable. Since I questioned the HIV-AIDS hypothesis of the NIH's Dr. Gallo, and then the cancer-oncogene hypothesis of Bishop-Varmus-Weinberg-Vogelstein etc. I became 100% unfundable. I was transformed from a virus- and cancer-chasing Angel to ‘Lucifer’."

Rather than being harmful, as predicted by the linear no threshold hypothesis, low doses of radiation are actually beneficial (Calabrese, 2005; Hiserodt, 2005). Its beneficial effect is based on hormesis, where radiation in small doses stimulates immune system defenses, prevents oxidative DNA damages, and suppresses cancer. The dose must exceed a certain threshold to stop having a simulative and start having an inhibitory effect on the body and become toxic – and in high doses, fatal (Miller, 2004).

Research in cell physiology is based on the concept that the cell, the basic structural unit that makes up all living things, is an aqueous solution of chemicals enclosed within a cell membrane. Drug research adheres to the concept that a drug’s action is mediated by fitting into a specific receptor site on the cell membrane. Ling (2001) and Pollack (2001), however, make a strong case that the membrane paradigm of cell physiology is wrong. They show that cell function does not depend on the integrity of the cell membrane, and membrane pumps and channels are not what they seem. These investigators hypothesize that the three main components of a living cell – proteins, water, and potassium ions – are structured together in a gel-like matrix, where the cell’s water is organized into layers alongside proteins. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a product of this view of cell physiology, known as the association-induction hypothesis, which was first proposed by Gilbert Ling in 1962. For more than 45 years government granting agencies, guided by their "expert" peer-reviewers’ verdicts, have refused to provide funds for this pioneering investigator to pursue research on this hypothesis, even after it brought about the important medical technology of MRI (Ling 2004b). Despite multiple attempts, Gerald Pollack (personal communication, September 13, 2006) also has been unable to obtain government grants to conduct research on this alternative hypothesis of cell physiology.

Peer review enforces state-sanctioned paradigms. Pollack (2005) likens it to a trial where the defendant judges the plaintiff. Grant review panels defending the orthodox view control the grant lifeline and can sentence a challenger to "no grant." Deprived of funds the plaintiff-challenger is forced to shut down her lab and withdraw. Conlan (1976) characterizes the peer-review grant system as an "incestuous ‘buddy system’ that stifles new ideas and scientific breakthroughs."

Science is self-correcting and, in time, errors are eliminated, or so we are taught. But now with a centralized bureaucracy controlling science, perhaps this rhetoric is "just wishful thinking" (Hillman, 1996, p.102). Freedom to dissent is an essential ingredient of societal health. Braben (2004) contends that suppressing challenges to established orthodoxy sets a society on a path to its doom.

Science in Service to the State
Over the last 60 years a new power structure, the state, has taken control of information. It uses federal tax money to fund and control research through the peer-review grant system. It forms mutually advantageous partnerships with industry and the academic community, which do its bidding. The state holds sway over education. And to round out its control of information an increasingly powerful centralized government bureaucracy has persuaded the mainstream media to accept and espouse state-approved ideas. The Western tradition of information ethics dating from ancient Greece to the 20th century, characterized by freedom of speech and inquiry, has been co-opted by government. Knowledge advances by questioning accepted paradigms (Hillman, 1995). The state thwarts this and requires its tax-funded scientists to conform to the official establishment view on such things as global warming and HIV/AIDS.

Government-sponsored scientific research reflects the biases, preferences, and priorities of its leaders (Moran, 1998). The state uses science to further its social and political purposes.
Its actions follow Lang’s First Law of Sociodynamics, where "The power structure does what they want, when they want; then they try to find reasons to justify it. If this does not work, they stonewall it (Lang, 1998, p. 797).

When inconvenient facts challenge paradigms the state promotes, it justifies them by consensus. If polar bear experts (Amstrup et al., 1995) find that the bear population in Alaska is increasing, placing doubt on the government’s stance on climate change, this finding is dismissed as being outside the consensus and ignored. Science magazine supports the prevailing view, stating, "There is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change" that accounts for "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years" (Oreskes, 2004).

In 21st century America, consensus and computer models masquerade as science. They supplant experimental data. As Corcoran (2006) puts it, "Science has been stripped of its basis in experiment, knowledge, reason and the scientific method and made subject to the consensus created by politics and bureaucrats." Reduced to a belief system, a majority of scientists and groups like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can declare, without having to provide scientific evidence, that they believe humans cause global warming. This alone makes the hypothesis become an established fact and received knowledge (Barnes, 1990). Peer review compounds the problem. It competes with objective evidence as proof of truth.

Computer models purporting to make sense of complex data, particularly with regard to climate change, have replaced the scientific goal of supplanting complicated hypotheses with simpler ones (Pollack, 2005). Researchers offer computer models as evidence for global warming. When unsound assumptions and faulty data render one model unreliable, other improved ones are constructed to justify the state’s desire to promulgate this "truth," which it can use to exert greater control over the economy and technological progress.

AIDS research serves the interest of the state by focusing on HIV as an equal opportunity cause of AIDS. This infectious, egalitarian cause exempts the two primary AIDS risk groups, gay men and intravenous drug users, from any blame in acquiring this disease(s) owing to their behavioral choices. Duesberg, Koehnlein, and Rasnick (2003) hypothesize that AIDS is caused by three other things, singly or in combination, rather than HIV: 1) long-term, heavy-duty recreational drug use – cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, and nitrite inhalants; 2) antiretroviral drugs doctors prescribe to people who are HIV-positive – DNA chain terminators, like AZT, and protease inhibitors; and 3) malnutrition and bad water, which is the cause of "AIDS" in Africa. HIV/AIDS has become a multibillion-dollar enterprise on an international level. Government, industry, and medical vested interests protect the HIV/AIDS paradigm. The government-controlled peer review grant system is a key tool for protecting paradigms like this.

Grant Reform
Bauer (2004) proposes that there be mandatory funding of contrarian research, along with a science court set up to adjudicate technical controversies. In addition, science journalism needs to investigate established orthodoxies more vigorously.
Pollack (2005) proposes several remedies to the competitive peer review grant system. Government should establish forums where the most significant challenge paradigms can compete openly with their orthodox counterparts in civilized debate. Open-minded "generalists" who have no stake in the outcome should adjudicate, like a jury does in law. Pools of money should be set aside to support multiple grants on selected schools of thought. Training grants that encourage curiosity and thinking outside the box should be made available. And the NIH should provide lifetime support for a select cohort of Dionysian scientists.

The peer review grant system stifles innovation and protects reigning paradigms, right or wrong. The 60-year experiment of "Advancing Health through Peer Review," the NIH Center for Scientific Review’s slogan, has failed. It needs to be dismantled. Tax-funded research would be better conducted and more productive if government allocated funds directly to universities and foundations to use as they see fit for advancement of the biomedical and physical sciences.
One alternative to the competitive peer review grant system that the NIH and NSF might consider for funding specific research projects is DARPA, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency. This agency manages and directs selected research for the Department of Defense. At least up until now it has been "an entrepreneurial technical organization unfettered by tradition or conventional thinking" within one of the world’s most entrenched bureaucracies (Van Atta et al., 2003). Eighty project managers, who each handles $10-50 million, are given free reign to foster advanced technologies and systems that create "revolutionary" advantages for the U.S. military. Managers, not subject to peer review or top-down management, provide grants to investigators who they think can challenge existing approaches to fighting wars. So long as the state controls funding for research, managers like this might help break the logjam of innovation in the biomedical and physical sciences.

Science under the government grant system has failed and new kinds of funding, with less government control, are sorely needed.

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Van Atta, R.H., Lippitz, M.J., Lupo, J.C., Mahoney, R. & Nunn, J.H. (2003). Transformation and transition: DARPA’s role in fostering an emerging revolution in military affairs. Volume 1 – Overall assessment. Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analysis. Retrieved August 28, 2006, from http://www.darpa.mil/body/pdf/P-3698_Vol_1_final.pdf
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This paper, titled "The Government Grant System: Inhibitor of Truth and Innovation?", was published in the Spring 2007 issue of the Journal of Information Ethics 2007;16:59-69.
May 16, 2007
Donald Miller (send him mail) is a cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparednessand writes articles on a variety of subjects for LewRockwell.com.His web site is www.donaldmiller.com

Zombie Or Democrat?

2008-02-26T09:18:00.000-08:00

This is meant to be humorous.....

Zombie = Democrat...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWpU8sX10_4&NR=1