COMMENTARY:
Global Warming Will Save America from the Right...Eventually
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by Dave Lindorff
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The future political map of America is likely to look a lot different, with much of the so-called “red” state region either gone or depopulated.Sat., 12/22/2007 - 19:21—Say what you will about the looming catastrophe facing the world as the pace of global heating and polar melting accelerates. There is a silver lining.
Look at a map of the US.
The area that will by completely inundated by the rising ocean—and not in a century but in the lifetime of my two cats—are the American southeast, including the most populated area of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. While the northeast will also see some coastal flooding, its geography is such that that aside from a few projecting sandbars like Long Island and Cape Cod, the land rises fairly quickly to well above sea level. Sure, Boston, New York and Philadelphia will be threatened, but these are geographically confined areas that could lend themselves to protection by Dutch-style dikes. The West Coast too tends to rise rapidly to well above sea level in most places. Only down in Southern California towards the San Diego area is the ground closer to sea level.
So what we see is that huge swaths of conservative America are set to face a biblical deluge in a few more presidential cycles.
Then there’s the matter of the Midwest, which climate experts say is likely to face a permanent condition of unprecedented drought, making the place largely unlivable, and certainly unfarmable. The agribusinesses and conservative farmers that have been growing corn and wheat may be able to stretch out this doomsday scenario by deep well drilling, but west of the Mississippi, the vast Ogallala Aquifer that has allowed for such irrigation is already being tapped out. It will not be replaced.
So again, we will see the decline and depopulation of the nation’s vast midsection—noted for its consistent conservatism. Only in the northernmost area, around the Great Lakes (which will be not so great anymore), and along the Canadian border, will there still be enough rain for farming and continued large population concentrations, but those regions, like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, are also more liberal in their politics.
Finally, in the Southwest, already parched and stiflingly hot, the rise in energy costs and the soaring temperatures will put an end to right-wing retirement communities like Phoenix, Tucson and Palm Springs. Already the Salton Sea is fading away and putting Palm Springs on notice that the good times are coming to an end. Another right-wing haven soon to be gone.
So the future political map of America is likely to look as different as the much shrunken geographical map, with much of the so-called “red” state region either gone or depopulated.
There is a poetic justice to this of course. It is conservatives who are giving us the candidates who steadfastly refuse to have the nation take steps that could slow the pace of climate change, so it is appropriate that they should bear the brunt of its impact.
The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.
There will be much work to be done to help the earth and its residents—human and non-human—survive this man-made catastrophe, and we can’t have these future refugee troglodytes, should their personal disasters still fail to make them recognize reality, mucking things up again.
It should be considered acceptable, in this stifling new world, to say, “Shut up. We told you this would happen.”
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Skeptical Scientists Urge World To ‘Have the Courage to Do Nothing' At UN Conference
Skeptical Scientists Urge World To ‘Have the Courage to Do Nothing' At UN Conference
December 11, 2007
BALI, Indonesia - An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to "have the courage to do nothing" in response to UN demands.
Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt message for UN climate conference participants on Monday.
"Climate change is a non-problem. The right answer to a non problem is to have the courage to do nothing," Monckton told participants.
"The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,)" Monckton added. (LINK)
Monckton also noted that the UN has not been overly welcoming to the group of skeptical scientists.
"UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I should not come to this conference. They have also made several attempts to interfere with our public meetings," Monckton explained.
"It is a circus here," agreed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans. Evans is making scientific presentations to delegates and journalists at the conference revealing the latest peer-reviewed studies that refute the UN's climate claims.
"This is the most lavish conference I have ever been to, but I am only a scientist and I actually only go to the science conferences," Evans said, noting the luxury of the tropical resort. (Note: An analysis by Bloomberg News on December 6 found: "Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year." - LINK)
Evans, a mathematician who did carbon accounting for the Australian government, recently converted to a skeptical scientist about man-made global warming after reviewing the new scientific studies. (LINK)
"We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don't cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years," Evans said in an interview with the Inhofe EPW Press Blog. Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper "Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming." (LINK)
Evans touted a new peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists appearing in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society which found "Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence." (LINK)
"Most of the people here have jobs that are very well paid and they depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They are not going to be very receptive to the idea that well actually the science has gone off in a different direction," Evans explained.
[Inhofe EPW Press Blog Note: Several other recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. For most recent sampling see: New Peer-Reviewed Study finds 'Solar changes significantly alter climate' (11-3-07) (LINK) & "New Peer-Reviewed Study Halves the Global Average Surface Temperature Trend 1980 - 2002" (LINK) & New Study finds Medieval Warm Period '0.3C Warmer than 20th Century' (LINK) For a more comprehensive sampling of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007 see "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears" LINK ]
‘IPCC is unsound'
UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports since its inception going back to 1990, had a clear message to UN participants.
"There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any effect whatsoever on the climate," Gray, who shares in the Nobel Prize awarded to the UN IPCC, explained. (LINK)
"All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this conclusion after a very long time. If you examine every single proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science somewhere fails," Gray, who wrote the book "The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001," said.
"It fails not only from the data, but it fails in the statistics, and the mathematics," he added.
‘Dangerous time for science'
Evans, who believes the UN has heavily politicized science, warned there is going to be a "dangerous time for science" ahead.
"We have a split here. Official science driven by politics, money and power, goes in one direction. Unofficial science, which is more determined by what is actually happening with the [climate] data, has now started to move off in a different direction" away from fears of a man-made climate crisis, Evans explained.
"The two are splitting. This is always a dangerous time for science and a dangerous time for politics. Historically science always wins these battles but there can be a lot of causalities and a lot of time in between," he concluded.
Carbon trading ‘fraud?'
New Zealander Bryan Leland of the International Climate Science Coalition warned participants that all the UN promoted discussions of "carbon trading" should be viewed with suspicion.
"I am an energy engineer and I know something about electricity trading and I know enough about carbon trading and the inaccuracies of carbon trading to know that carbon trading is more about fraud than it is about anything else," Leland said.
"We should probably ask why we have 10,000 people here [in Bali] in a futile attempt to ‘solve' a [climate] problem that probably does not exist," Leland added.
‘Simply not work'
Owen McShane, the head of the International Climate Science Coalition, also worried that a UN promoted global approach to economics would mean financial ruin for many nations.
"I don't think this conference can actually achieve anything because it seems to be saying that we are going to draw up one protocol for every country in the world to follow," McShane said. (LINK)
"Now these countries and these economies are so diverse that trying to presume you can put all of these feet into one shoe will simply not work," McShane explained.
"Having the same set of rules apply to everybody will blow some economies apart totally while others will be unscathed and I wouldn't be surprised if the ones who remain unscathed are the ones who write the rules," he added.
‘Nothing happening at this conference'
Professor Dr. William Alexander, emeritus of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, warned poor nations and their residents that the UN policies could mean more poverty and thus more death.
"My message is specifically for the poor people of Africa. And there is nothing happening at this conference that can help them one little bit but there is the potential that they could be damaged," Alexander said. (LINK)
"The government and people of Africa will have their attention drawn to reducing climate change instead of reducing poverty," Alexander added.
Related Links:
New UN Children's Book Promotes Global Warming Fears to Kids (11-13-2006)
Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears
New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears
Newsweek Editor Calls Mag's Global Warming 'Deniers' Article 'Highly Contrived'
Newsweek's Climate Editorial Screed Violates Basic Standards of Journalism
Latest Scientific Studies Refute Fears of Greenland Melt
EPA to Probe E-mail Threatening to ‘Destroy' Career of Climate Skeptic
Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics
Senator Inhofe declares climate momentum shifting away from Gore (The Politico op ed)
Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate
Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven "Consensus'
Global Warming: The Momentum has Shifted to Climate Skeptics
Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming - Now a Skeptic
Top Israeli Astrophysicist Recants His Belief in Manmade Global Warming - Now Says Sun Biggest Factor in Warming
Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune's Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say
Panel of Broadcast Meteorologists Reject Man-Made Global Warming Fears- Claim 95% of Weathermen Skeptical
MIT Climate Scientist Calls Fears of Global Warming 'Silly' - Equates Concerns to ‘Little Kids' Attempting to "Scare Each Other"
Weather Channel TV Host Goes 'Political'- Stars in Global Warming Film Accusing U.S. Government of ‘Criminal Neglect'
Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics
ABC-TV Meteorologist: I Don't Know A Single Weatherman Who Believes 'Man-Made Global Warming Hype'
The Weather Channel Climate Expert Refuses to Retract Call for Decertification for Global Warming Skeptics
Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release Of "Skeptic's Guide To Debunking Global Warming"
# # #
December 11, 2007
BALI, Indonesia - An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to "have the courage to do nothing" in response to UN demands.
Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt message for UN climate conference participants on Monday.
"Climate change is a non-problem. The right answer to a non problem is to have the courage to do nothing," Monckton told participants.
"The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,)" Monckton added. (LINK)
Monckton also noted that the UN has not been overly welcoming to the group of skeptical scientists.
"UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I should not come to this conference. They have also made several attempts to interfere with our public meetings," Monckton explained.
"It is a circus here," agreed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans. Evans is making scientific presentations to delegates and journalists at the conference revealing the latest peer-reviewed studies that refute the UN's climate claims.
"This is the most lavish conference I have ever been to, but I am only a scientist and I actually only go to the science conferences," Evans said, noting the luxury of the tropical resort. (Note: An analysis by Bloomberg News on December 6 found: "Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year." - LINK)
Evans, a mathematician who did carbon accounting for the Australian government, recently converted to a skeptical scientist about man-made global warming after reviewing the new scientific studies. (LINK)
"We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don't cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years," Evans said in an interview with the Inhofe EPW Press Blog. Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper "Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming." (LINK)
Evans touted a new peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists appearing in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society which found "Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence." (LINK)
"Most of the people here have jobs that are very well paid and they depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They are not going to be very receptive to the idea that well actually the science has gone off in a different direction," Evans explained.
[Inhofe EPW Press Blog Note: Several other recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. For most recent sampling see: New Peer-Reviewed Study finds 'Solar changes significantly alter climate' (11-3-07) (LINK) & "New Peer-Reviewed Study Halves the Global Average Surface Temperature Trend 1980 - 2002" (LINK) & New Study finds Medieval Warm Period '0.3C Warmer than 20th Century' (LINK) For a more comprehensive sampling of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007 see "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears" LINK ]
‘IPCC is unsound'
UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports since its inception going back to 1990, had a clear message to UN participants.
"There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any effect whatsoever on the climate," Gray, who shares in the Nobel Prize awarded to the UN IPCC, explained. (LINK)
"All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this conclusion after a very long time. If you examine every single proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science somewhere fails," Gray, who wrote the book "The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001," said.
"It fails not only from the data, but it fails in the statistics, and the mathematics," he added.
‘Dangerous time for science'
Evans, who believes the UN has heavily politicized science, warned there is going to be a "dangerous time for science" ahead.
"We have a split here. Official science driven by politics, money and power, goes in one direction. Unofficial science, which is more determined by what is actually happening with the [climate] data, has now started to move off in a different direction" away from fears of a man-made climate crisis, Evans explained.
"The two are splitting. This is always a dangerous time for science and a dangerous time for politics. Historically science always wins these battles but there can be a lot of causalities and a lot of time in between," he concluded.
Carbon trading ‘fraud?'
New Zealander Bryan Leland of the International Climate Science Coalition warned participants that all the UN promoted discussions of "carbon trading" should be viewed with suspicion.
"I am an energy engineer and I know something about electricity trading and I know enough about carbon trading and the inaccuracies of carbon trading to know that carbon trading is more about fraud than it is about anything else," Leland said.
"We should probably ask why we have 10,000 people here [in Bali] in a futile attempt to ‘solve' a [climate] problem that probably does not exist," Leland added.
‘Simply not work'
Owen McShane, the head of the International Climate Science Coalition, also worried that a UN promoted global approach to economics would mean financial ruin for many nations.
"I don't think this conference can actually achieve anything because it seems to be saying that we are going to draw up one protocol for every country in the world to follow," McShane said. (LINK)
"Now these countries and these economies are so diverse that trying to presume you can put all of these feet into one shoe will simply not work," McShane explained.
"Having the same set of rules apply to everybody will blow some economies apart totally while others will be unscathed and I wouldn't be surprised if the ones who remain unscathed are the ones who write the rules," he added.
‘Nothing happening at this conference'
Professor Dr. William Alexander, emeritus of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, warned poor nations and their residents that the UN policies could mean more poverty and thus more death.
"My message is specifically for the poor people of Africa. And there is nothing happening at this conference that can help them one little bit but there is the potential that they could be damaged," Alexander said. (LINK)
"The government and people of Africa will have their attention drawn to reducing climate change instead of reducing poverty," Alexander added.
Related Links:
New UN Children's Book Promotes Global Warming Fears to Kids (11-13-2006)
Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears
New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears
Newsweek Editor Calls Mag's Global Warming 'Deniers' Article 'Highly Contrived'
Newsweek's Climate Editorial Screed Violates Basic Standards of Journalism
Latest Scientific Studies Refute Fears of Greenland Melt
EPA to Probe E-mail Threatening to ‘Destroy' Career of Climate Skeptic
Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics
Senator Inhofe declares climate momentum shifting away from Gore (The Politico op ed)
Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate
Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven "Consensus'
Global Warming: The Momentum has Shifted to Climate Skeptics
Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming - Now a Skeptic
Top Israeli Astrophysicist Recants His Belief in Manmade Global Warming - Now Says Sun Biggest Factor in Warming
Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune's Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say
Panel of Broadcast Meteorologists Reject Man-Made Global Warming Fears- Claim 95% of Weathermen Skeptical
MIT Climate Scientist Calls Fears of Global Warming 'Silly' - Equates Concerns to ‘Little Kids' Attempting to "Scare Each Other"
Weather Channel TV Host Goes 'Political'- Stars in Global Warming Film Accusing U.S. Government of ‘Criminal Neglect'
Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics
ABC-TV Meteorologist: I Don't Know A Single Weatherman Who Believes 'Man-Made Global Warming Hype'
The Weather Channel Climate Expert Refuses to Retract Call for Decertification for Global Warming Skeptics
Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release Of "Skeptic's Guide To Debunking Global Warming"
# # #
Monday, November 19, 2007
Rat's Milk Fights Global Warming
London,
Monday 19.11.07
Vegan Heather Mills's latest bizarre outburst: 'Why don't we drink rat's milk?'
19.11.07
It has been a hotspot for tub-thumpers and eccentrics alike for more than a century.
So it was perhaps fitting that Heather Mills - fresh from her TV tirades complaining about her treatment - should choose Speakers' Corner to launch her latest onslaught.
But as the former model got on the popular London soapbox yesterday for a global awareness campaign, there was speculation her real target may have been her estranged husband Sir Paul McCartney.
For while the 39-year-old was there to unveil billboards for animal welfare charity Viva! the giant posters were draped in an ad for the National Domestic Violence helpline.
The cover - which bore the logo: "Well, he said he was sorry" and was whipped off as she made her entrance - echoed Miss Mills' previous allegations of being assaulted by the former Beatle during their marriage. Last year she also hinted she was applying for an occupation order, commonly used in domestic violence cases to decide who keeps the family home.
Officials from the charity insisted it was a "coincidence" Miss Mills' posters were covered with the ad.
A spokeswoman said: "The domestic violence posters were for an old campaign that is nothing to do with us."
The Viva! campaign, which will involve 100 billboards going up around the country, feature Miss Mills in two controversial poses.
In one, she appears to be announcing her newly-single status with the caption: "Hey Meaty, you're making me so hot!" as she writhes in a gold sequined dress. The poster aims to highlight how the meat and dairy industry is contributing to the greenhouse effect.
In the second billboard the campaigner - whose leg was amputated after a motorbike accident - sends herself up with the logo: "You haven't got a leg to stand on!" aimed at meat eaters for playing a part in global warming.
But Miss Mills triggered accusations of hypocrisy after she arrived at the launch in a gas-guzzling Mercedes 4x4 and kept the engine running for part of the morning.
She said: "The startling truth is that animals farmed for met and dairy are now one of the greatest threats to the planet.
"The United Nations last year issued a shocking report on the environmental damage being done by livestock.
"I became a vegetarian for health reasons. Then I found out about the awful animal abuse in factory farms and dairy herds and became vegan.
"The easiest and most effective way of cutting our contribution is to change our diet and go vegan. It is that simple.
"We are the only species that drinks another creature's milk so why aren't we drinking rats' milk, dogs' milk or cats' milk? That is how crazy it is."
Viva! director Juliet Gellatley said: "Heather was not the slightest bit precious about her disability and loved the idea of mocking all those who have called her a fantasist.
"Meat and dairy animals are literally destroying the Earth and are the second biggest cause of greenhouse gases at 18 per cent compared to 13.5 per cent from all the world's different modes of transport combined."
Earlier Miss Mills caused a stir with a rant on a radio chat show in which she snapped at the interviewer then stormed out halfway through.
During a 10-minute interview by Nick Ferrari on LBC radio, she complained she was being treated like a "murderer or a paedophile" before cutting him short after six minutes and walking out saying: "Let's forget it. He is just a waste of time."
The radio chat got off to a bad start when Ferrari asked her about her recent slew of TV and magazine interviews, to which Miss Mills retorted: "Shall I fall asleep now or do you want to get on with talking about global warming?" before making snoring noises.
She went on: "You don't know me as a person. To have an opinion about somebody you've never met before is pretty superficial."
When Ferrari responded, "I can have an opinion on murderers, on corrupt politicians. I don't have to meet them all", she hit back: "I am not a murderer or a paedophile. I am a charity campaigner.
"To put me in the same bracket as those is exactly why I've been treated like one."
After several more clashes Miss Mills said: "Just cut him off," and walked out.
She has previously told how her marriage breakdown drove her to the brink of suicide and is currently wrangling with Sir Paul, 65, for a slice of his £825million fortune.
Monday 19.11.07
Vegan Heather Mills's latest bizarre outburst: 'Why don't we drink rat's milk?'
19.11.07
It has been a hotspot for tub-thumpers and eccentrics alike for more than a century.
So it was perhaps fitting that Heather Mills - fresh from her TV tirades complaining about her treatment - should choose Speakers' Corner to launch her latest onslaught.
But as the former model got on the popular London soapbox yesterday for a global awareness campaign, there was speculation her real target may have been her estranged husband Sir Paul McCartney.
For while the 39-year-old was there to unveil billboards for animal welfare charity Viva! the giant posters were draped in an ad for the National Domestic Violence helpline.
The cover - which bore the logo: "Well, he said he was sorry" and was whipped off as she made her entrance - echoed Miss Mills' previous allegations of being assaulted by the former Beatle during their marriage. Last year she also hinted she was applying for an occupation order, commonly used in domestic violence cases to decide who keeps the family home.
Officials from the charity insisted it was a "coincidence" Miss Mills' posters were covered with the ad.
A spokeswoman said: "The domestic violence posters were for an old campaign that is nothing to do with us."
The Viva! campaign, which will involve 100 billboards going up around the country, feature Miss Mills in two controversial poses.
In one, she appears to be announcing her newly-single status with the caption: "Hey Meaty, you're making me so hot!" as she writhes in a gold sequined dress. The poster aims to highlight how the meat and dairy industry is contributing to the greenhouse effect.
In the second billboard the campaigner - whose leg was amputated after a motorbike accident - sends herself up with the logo: "You haven't got a leg to stand on!" aimed at meat eaters for playing a part in global warming.
But Miss Mills triggered accusations of hypocrisy after she arrived at the launch in a gas-guzzling Mercedes 4x4 and kept the engine running for part of the morning.
She said: "The startling truth is that animals farmed for met and dairy are now one of the greatest threats to the planet.
"The United Nations last year issued a shocking report on the environmental damage being done by livestock.
"I became a vegetarian for health reasons. Then I found out about the awful animal abuse in factory farms and dairy herds and became vegan.
"The easiest and most effective way of cutting our contribution is to change our diet and go vegan. It is that simple.
"We are the only species that drinks another creature's milk so why aren't we drinking rats' milk, dogs' milk or cats' milk? That is how crazy it is."
Viva! director Juliet Gellatley said: "Heather was not the slightest bit precious about her disability and loved the idea of mocking all those who have called her a fantasist.
"Meat and dairy animals are literally destroying the Earth and are the second biggest cause of greenhouse gases at 18 per cent compared to 13.5 per cent from all the world's different modes of transport combined."
Earlier Miss Mills caused a stir with a rant on a radio chat show in which she snapped at the interviewer then stormed out halfway through.
During a 10-minute interview by Nick Ferrari on LBC radio, she complained she was being treated like a "murderer or a paedophile" before cutting him short after six minutes and walking out saying: "Let's forget it. He is just a waste of time."
The radio chat got off to a bad start when Ferrari asked her about her recent slew of TV and magazine interviews, to which Miss Mills retorted: "Shall I fall asleep now or do you want to get on with talking about global warming?" before making snoring noises.
She went on: "You don't know me as a person. To have an opinion about somebody you've never met before is pretty superficial."
When Ferrari responded, "I can have an opinion on murderers, on corrupt politicians. I don't have to meet them all", she hit back: "I am not a murderer or a paedophile. I am a charity campaigner.
"To put me in the same bracket as those is exactly why I've been treated like one."
After several more clashes Miss Mills said: "Just cut him off," and walked out.
She has previously told how her marriage breakdown drove her to the brink of suicide and is currently wrangling with Sir Paul, 65, for a slice of his £825million fortune.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Global Warming's Senseless Consensus
Global Warming's Senseless Consensus
Monday , November 12, 2007
By Steven Milloy
Is there a "consensus" on global warming among the scientists participating in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?
To find out, I conducted the first-ever survey of scientists participating in the most recent IPCC report.
In early October, I e-mailed a six-question survey on climate change to 345 U.S. scientists involved in the IPCC's 2007 report.
By month's end, I had received responses from a surprising 95 scientists (28 percent).
Some of the responders claimed that the survey questions were flawed and declined to participate.
Some wanted to know, ironically enough, what was meant by the term "climate change" even though the term is part of the IPCC's name.
One IPCC-er declined to participate because, he said, the climate science debate was over.
Another, who acknowledged that current climate had probably just resulted from a "just a geological wiggle," declined because it was wrong to deny that humans are "adding undesirable stress to natural systems."
Another refused to answer, claiming that the IPCC report "is a much more powerful statement than any individual scientist can make."
One survey refusenik said, "Science is not a vote or survey. It is not democratic. It is not debatable."
Another said he didn't "see the point of frequently uninformed free-for-all style debates about topics that require diligent study instead."
Others accused me of having a biased agenda, being "reckless and irresponsible," and wanting to misrepresent the IPCC's work.
One National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist responded simply by dropping an f-bomb-laced insult into an e-mail.
This particular response and any institutional intolerance for climate skepticism, so I am informed, is being investigated by NOAA chief Vice Admiral (Ret.) Conrad Lautenbacher.
In the end, 54 of the IPCC-ers completed the survey, including such alarmist bigwigs as the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Kevin Trenberth and Tom Wigley. Trenberth and several other survey participants are lead authors of the IPCC report.
The survey results are quite illuminating about the much-touted "consensus."
The responses to the survey's first four questions were predictable — 83 percent to 90 percent of the respondents favored the view that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are driving global climate to unprecedentedly warmer temperatures and that limiting manmade CO2 emissions would reduce such climate change.
The responses to the last two questions, however, raise questions about the consensus's credibility.
Less than 50 percent of the respondents said that an increase in global temperature of 1 degree Celsius — twice the level of warming occurring during the 20th century — is flatly undesirable.
Half of the respondents said that such a temperature increase is desirable, desirable for some but undesirable for others, or too difficult to assess.
Only 14 percent said that the ideal climate was cooler than the present climate. Sixty-one percent said that there is no such thing as an ideal climate.
But if there's no agreement on whether a target climate even exists, what precisely is the point of taking action on global warming?
Other notable results from my survey include the 20 percent who bizarrely said that human activity is the principal driver of climate change.
So was climate a static phenomenon before the arrival of man? And if there was natural climate change before man, why not now also? And 44 percent don't think that current global climate is unprecedentedly warm.
The survey indicates that when asked routine questions about the role of man-made CO2, the IPCC-ers respond in the Pavlovian fashion seemingly demanded of them by the global-warming establishment.
But when asked questions off the usual script, the supposed consensus falls apart.
Don't forget that many scientists don't participate in the IPCC because they perceive it as biased.
The Pasteur Institute's Dr. Paul Reiter, for example, resigned from the IPCC because he and a colleague found themselves "at loggerheads with persons who insisted on making authoritative pronouncements, although they had little or no knowledge of our specialty."
There's also the Petition Project, where 19,000 scientists have endorsed a statement questioning the scientific basis of climate alarmism.
The whole idea of a consensus in science is dubious.
As economist John Kay recently wrote in an op-ed entitled "Science is the pursuit of truth, not consensus" (Financial Times, Oct. 10), "Statements about the world derive their value from the facts and arguments that support them, not from the status and qualifications of the people who assert them."
This week, Al Gore attacked IPCC-er John Christy for a Nov. 1 Wall Street Journal op-ed in which Christy questioned the global-warming orthodoxy.
Appearing on NBC's "Today" show, Gore described Christy as an "outlier" who no longer belonged to the IPCC and who is "way outside the scientific consensus."
Gore also said that it was wrong for the media to pay any attention to opinions outside the consensus.
Christy told me that, as far as he knows, he remains part of the IPCC process.
As to being an outlier, it just so happens that Christy's survey responses were within the 50 percent who didn't think that a 1-degree Celsius rise in global temperature was uniformly undesirable and the 86 percent who didn't think there was any such thing as an ideal climate.
The "climate consensus" notion functions primarily as a marketing tool for converting the public to a political viewpoint, rather than as a valid scientific approach toward understanding global warming.
But even then, the survey indicates that the claimed IPCC consensus is not nearly as monolithic as we've been led to believe. That alone is good reason for demanding that the IPCC scientists declare and defend their positions in a public forum.
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Monday , November 12, 2007
By Steven Milloy
Is there a "consensus" on global warming among the scientists participating in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?
To find out, I conducted the first-ever survey of scientists participating in the most recent IPCC report.
In early October, I e-mailed a six-question survey on climate change to 345 U.S. scientists involved in the IPCC's 2007 report.
By month's end, I had received responses from a surprising 95 scientists (28 percent).
Some of the responders claimed that the survey questions were flawed and declined to participate.
Some wanted to know, ironically enough, what was meant by the term "climate change" even though the term is part of the IPCC's name.
One IPCC-er declined to participate because, he said, the climate science debate was over.
Another, who acknowledged that current climate had probably just resulted from a "just a geological wiggle," declined because it was wrong to deny that humans are "adding undesirable stress to natural systems."
Another refused to answer, claiming that the IPCC report "is a much more powerful statement than any individual scientist can make."
One survey refusenik said, "Science is not a vote or survey. It is not democratic. It is not debatable."
Another said he didn't "see the point of frequently uninformed free-for-all style debates about topics that require diligent study instead."
Others accused me of having a biased agenda, being "reckless and irresponsible," and wanting to misrepresent the IPCC's work.
One National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist responded simply by dropping an f-bomb-laced insult into an e-mail.
This particular response and any institutional intolerance for climate skepticism, so I am informed, is being investigated by NOAA chief Vice Admiral (Ret.) Conrad Lautenbacher.
In the end, 54 of the IPCC-ers completed the survey, including such alarmist bigwigs as the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Kevin Trenberth and Tom Wigley. Trenberth and several other survey participants are lead authors of the IPCC report.
The survey results are quite illuminating about the much-touted "consensus."
The responses to the survey's first four questions were predictable — 83 percent to 90 percent of the respondents favored the view that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are driving global climate to unprecedentedly warmer temperatures and that limiting manmade CO2 emissions would reduce such climate change.
The responses to the last two questions, however, raise questions about the consensus's credibility.
Less than 50 percent of the respondents said that an increase in global temperature of 1 degree Celsius — twice the level of warming occurring during the 20th century — is flatly undesirable.
Half of the respondents said that such a temperature increase is desirable, desirable for some but undesirable for others, or too difficult to assess.
Only 14 percent said that the ideal climate was cooler than the present climate. Sixty-one percent said that there is no such thing as an ideal climate.
But if there's no agreement on whether a target climate even exists, what precisely is the point of taking action on global warming?
Other notable results from my survey include the 20 percent who bizarrely said that human activity is the principal driver of climate change.
So was climate a static phenomenon before the arrival of man? And if there was natural climate change before man, why not now also? And 44 percent don't think that current global climate is unprecedentedly warm.
The survey indicates that when asked routine questions about the role of man-made CO2, the IPCC-ers respond in the Pavlovian fashion seemingly demanded of them by the global-warming establishment.
But when asked questions off the usual script, the supposed consensus falls apart.
Don't forget that many scientists don't participate in the IPCC because they perceive it as biased.
The Pasteur Institute's Dr. Paul Reiter, for example, resigned from the IPCC because he and a colleague found themselves "at loggerheads with persons who insisted on making authoritative pronouncements, although they had little or no knowledge of our specialty."
There's also the Petition Project, where 19,000 scientists have endorsed a statement questioning the scientific basis of climate alarmism.
The whole idea of a consensus in science is dubious.
As economist John Kay recently wrote in an op-ed entitled "Science is the pursuit of truth, not consensus" (Financial Times, Oct. 10), "Statements about the world derive their value from the facts and arguments that support them, not from the status and qualifications of the people who assert them."
This week, Al Gore attacked IPCC-er John Christy for a Nov. 1 Wall Street Journal op-ed in which Christy questioned the global-warming orthodoxy.
Appearing on NBC's "Today" show, Gore described Christy as an "outlier" who no longer belonged to the IPCC and who is "way outside the scientific consensus."
Gore also said that it was wrong for the media to pay any attention to opinions outside the consensus.
Christy told me that, as far as he knows, he remains part of the IPCC process.
As to being an outlier, it just so happens that Christy's survey responses were within the 50 percent who didn't think that a 1-degree Celsius rise in global temperature was uniformly undesirable and the 86 percent who didn't think there was any such thing as an ideal climate.
The "climate consensus" notion functions primarily as a marketing tool for converting the public to a political viewpoint, rather than as a valid scientific approach toward understanding global warming.
But even then, the survey indicates that the claimed IPCC consensus is not nearly as monolithic as we've been led to believe. That alone is good reason for demanding that the IPCC scientists declare and defend their positions in a public forum.
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Ice Age Defrosted by Warming Ocean, Not Rise in CO2
September 27, 2007
In Hot Water: Ice Age Defrosted by Warming Ocean, Not Rise in CO2
Warmer waters in the deep Pacific triggered the end of the last ice age, preceding the rise in greenhouse gas levels
Earth's climate can be sensitive, changing after a variety of events. A volcanic eruption or meteorite impact, for instance, can send enough particles into the air to block the sun and cool the climate. A thickening blanket of greenhouse gases can trap heat. And, more commonly, according to some scientists, slight changes in Earth's orientation toward the sun can cause it to cool or warm in so-called Milankovitch cycles (named after the Serbian engineer who first described them). Now, new evidence from a marine sediment core from the deep Pacific points to warmer ocean waters around Antarctica (in sync with the Milankovitch cycle)—not greenhouse gases—as the culprit behind the thawing of the last ice age.
Ice cores drawn from Antarctica and Greenland have shown that carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere began to rise at roughly the same time as the vast ice sheets began to melt. But it remained unclear exactly which came first: melting ice and warming seas released more CO2 or more CO2 led to melting ice and warming seas.
By studying sediment cores from the deep Pacific near the Philippines, paleoclimatologist Lowell Stott of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and his colleagues revealed that the temperatures of the deepest seas rose by around 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) at least 1,000 years before sea-surface temperatures. "Even accounting for the uncertainties of the age of CO2, the deep sea warmed substantially before the CO2 began to rise," Stott says. "The deep Pacific is such an enormously large volume of water that [this warming] reflects the input of a tremendous amount of energy into the global system."
Stott and his colleagues used the isotopes of oxygen contained within the remnants of microscopic surface and deep-sea creatures to establish temperatures; they then used a radioactive isotope of carbon to date their age. Combining the two techniques showed that deep-sea creatures dealt with a warmer climate long before their surface brethren did, they report in the online edition of Science.
Because such deep seawater circulates from the coast of Antarctica, this deep-water warming implies that the Southern Ocean drove the last major climate change. Stott notes that the periodic wobble in the Earth's rotational axis described by the Milankovitch cycles led to more sunshine falling on the Antarctic at the same time—a likely cause of the warming waters. "The amount of solar energy increased at the same time as this deep-sea warming," he says. "Sea ice around the Southern Ocean was withdrawing."
According to the marine core sample, a full millennium passed—enough time for both the deep and surface waters to entirely switch places—before sea-surface temperatures and global atmospheric levels of CO2 began to rise. The greenhouse gas then further warmed the changing climate, Stott says.
This year, the sea ice around Antarctica grew to its largest extent since satellite observation began in 1979—whereas the Arctic arrived at record minimum—meaning present climate change is a far different scenario. In fact, the Milankovitch cycles would predict gradual global cooling. Man-made greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, are unequivocally driving present-day warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "This kind of study discusses the natural cycle and could help define the likely positive feedbacks we can expect in the long-term future, [for example] as temperatures warm, the ocean will want to give up more CO2, or rather absorb less," says climatologist Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies. "But it has no direct impact on attribution of 20th century warming."*
In Hot Water: Ice Age Defrosted by Warming Ocean, Not Rise in CO2
Warmer waters in the deep Pacific triggered the end of the last ice age, preceding the rise in greenhouse gas levels
Earth's climate can be sensitive, changing after a variety of events. A volcanic eruption or meteorite impact, for instance, can send enough particles into the air to block the sun and cool the climate. A thickening blanket of greenhouse gases can trap heat. And, more commonly, according to some scientists, slight changes in Earth's orientation toward the sun can cause it to cool or warm in so-called Milankovitch cycles (named after the Serbian engineer who first described them). Now, new evidence from a marine sediment core from the deep Pacific points to warmer ocean waters around Antarctica (in sync with the Milankovitch cycle)—not greenhouse gases—as the culprit behind the thawing of the last ice age.
Ice cores drawn from Antarctica and Greenland have shown that carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere began to rise at roughly the same time as the vast ice sheets began to melt. But it remained unclear exactly which came first: melting ice and warming seas released more CO2 or more CO2 led to melting ice and warming seas.
By studying sediment cores from the deep Pacific near the Philippines, paleoclimatologist Lowell Stott of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and his colleagues revealed that the temperatures of the deepest seas rose by around 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) at least 1,000 years before sea-surface temperatures. "Even accounting for the uncertainties of the age of CO2, the deep sea warmed substantially before the CO2 began to rise," Stott says. "The deep Pacific is such an enormously large volume of water that [this warming] reflects the input of a tremendous amount of energy into the global system."
Stott and his colleagues used the isotopes of oxygen contained within the remnants of microscopic surface and deep-sea creatures to establish temperatures; they then used a radioactive isotope of carbon to date their age. Combining the two techniques showed that deep-sea creatures dealt with a warmer climate long before their surface brethren did, they report in the online edition of Science.
Because such deep seawater circulates from the coast of Antarctica, this deep-water warming implies that the Southern Ocean drove the last major climate change. Stott notes that the periodic wobble in the Earth's rotational axis described by the Milankovitch cycles led to more sunshine falling on the Antarctic at the same time—a likely cause of the warming waters. "The amount of solar energy increased at the same time as this deep-sea warming," he says. "Sea ice around the Southern Ocean was withdrawing."
According to the marine core sample, a full millennium passed—enough time for both the deep and surface waters to entirely switch places—before sea-surface temperatures and global atmospheric levels of CO2 began to rise. The greenhouse gas then further warmed the changing climate, Stott says.
This year, the sea ice around Antarctica grew to its largest extent since satellite observation began in 1979—whereas the Arctic arrived at record minimum—meaning present climate change is a far different scenario. In fact, the Milankovitch cycles would predict gradual global cooling. Man-made greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, are unequivocally driving present-day warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "This kind of study discusses the natural cycle and could help define the likely positive feedbacks we can expect in the long-term future, [for example] as temperatures warm, the ocean will want to give up more CO2, or rather absorb less," says climatologist Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies. "But it has no direct impact on attribution of 20th century warming."*
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Soros' "Politicizaton of Science"
The Soros Threat To Democracy
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 9/24/2007
Democracy: George Soros is known for funding groups such as MoveOn.org that seek to manipulate public opinion. So why is the billionaire's backing of what he believes in problematic?
In a word: transparency.
George Soros & MoveOn.org: Exclusive Series
How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"?
That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program.
That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.
Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen's OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.
That's not the only case. Didn't the mainstream media report that 2006's vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer?
Turns out that wasn't what happened, either. Soros' OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases.
So what looked like a wildfire grassroots movement really was a manipulation from OSI's glassy Manhattan offices. The public had no way of knowing until the release of OSI's 2006 annual report.
Meanwhile, OSI cash backed terrorist-friendly court rulings, too.
Do people know last year's Supreme Court ruling abolishing special military commissions for terrorists at Guantanamo was a Soros project? OSI gave support to Georgetown lawyers in 2006 to win Hamdan v. Rumsfeld — for the terrorists.
OSI also gave cash to other radicals who pressured the Transportation Security Administration to scrap a program called "Secure Flight," which matched flight passenger lists with terrorist names. It gave more cash to other left-wing lawyers who persuaded a Texas judge to block cell phone tracking of terrorists.
They trumpeted this as a victory for civil liberties. Feel safer?
It's all part of the $74 million OSI spent on "U.S. Programs" in 2006 to "shape policy." Who knows what revelations 2007's report will bring around events now in the news?
OSI isn't the only secretive organization that Soros funds. OSI partners with the Tides Foundation, which funnels cash from wealthy donors who may not want it known that their cash goes to fringe groups engaged in "direct action" — also known as eco-terrorism.
On the political front, Soros has a great influence in a secretive organization called "Democracy Alliance" whose idea of democracy seems to be government controlled solely of Democrats.
"As with everything about the Democracy Alliance, the strangest aspect of this entire process was the incessant secrecy. Among the alliance's stated values was a commitment to political transparency — as long as it didn't apply to the alliance," wrote Matt Bai, describing how the alliance was formed in 2005, in his book "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics."
Soros' "shaping public policies," as OSI calls it, is not illegal. But it's a problem for democracy because it drives issues with cash and then only lets the public know about it after it's old news.
That means the public makes decisions about issues without understanding the special agendas of groups behind them.
Without more transparency, it amounts to political manipulation. This leads to cynicism. As word of these short-term covert ops gets out, the public grows to distrust what it hears and tunes out.
The irony here is that Soros claims to be an advocate of an "open society." His OSI does just the legal minimum to disclose its activities. The public shouldn't have to wait until an annual report is out before the light is flipped on about the Open Society's political action.
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 9/24/2007
Democracy: George Soros is known for funding groups such as MoveOn.org that seek to manipulate public opinion. So why is the billionaire's backing of what he believes in problematic?
In a word: transparency.
George Soros & MoveOn.org: Exclusive Series
How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"?
That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program.
That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.
Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen's OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.
That's not the only case. Didn't the mainstream media report that 2006's vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer?
Turns out that wasn't what happened, either. Soros' OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases.
So what looked like a wildfire grassroots movement really was a manipulation from OSI's glassy Manhattan offices. The public had no way of knowing until the release of OSI's 2006 annual report.
Meanwhile, OSI cash backed terrorist-friendly court rulings, too.
Do people know last year's Supreme Court ruling abolishing special military commissions for terrorists at Guantanamo was a Soros project? OSI gave support to Georgetown lawyers in 2006 to win Hamdan v. Rumsfeld — for the terrorists.
OSI also gave cash to other radicals who pressured the Transportation Security Administration to scrap a program called "Secure Flight," which matched flight passenger lists with terrorist names. It gave more cash to other left-wing lawyers who persuaded a Texas judge to block cell phone tracking of terrorists.
They trumpeted this as a victory for civil liberties. Feel safer?
It's all part of the $74 million OSI spent on "U.S. Programs" in 2006 to "shape policy." Who knows what revelations 2007's report will bring around events now in the news?
OSI isn't the only secretive organization that Soros funds. OSI partners with the Tides Foundation, which funnels cash from wealthy donors who may not want it known that their cash goes to fringe groups engaged in "direct action" — also known as eco-terrorism.
On the political front, Soros has a great influence in a secretive organization called "Democracy Alliance" whose idea of democracy seems to be government controlled solely of Democrats.
"As with everything about the Democracy Alliance, the strangest aspect of this entire process was the incessant secrecy. Among the alliance's stated values was a commitment to political transparency — as long as it didn't apply to the alliance," wrote Matt Bai, describing how the alliance was formed in 2005, in his book "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics."
Soros' "shaping public policies," as OSI calls it, is not illegal. But it's a problem for democracy because it drives issues with cash and then only lets the public know about it after it's old news.
That means the public makes decisions about issues without understanding the special agendas of groups behind them.
Without more transparency, it amounts to political manipulation. This leads to cynicism. As word of these short-term covert ops gets out, the public grows to distrust what it hears and tunes out.
The irony here is that Soros claims to be an advocate of an "open society." His OSI does just the legal minimum to disclose its activities. The public shouldn't have to wait until an annual report is out before the light is flipped on about the Open Society's political action.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Global Warming Quotes
Quotes on Global Warming
"The answer to global warming is in the abolition of private property and production for human need. A socialist world would place an enormous priority on alternative energy sources. This is what ecologically-minded socialists have been exploring for quite some time now."
- Louis Proyect, Columbia University
"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."
- Christine Stewart, Canadian Environment Minister
Friday, September 14, 2007
Bush Administration Capitulates on Global Warming?
Bush aide says warming man-made
By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst, BBC News
The US chief scientist has told the BBC that climate change is now a fact.
Professor John Marburger, who advises President Bush, said it was more than 90% certain that greenhouse gas emissions from mankind are to blame.
The Earth may become "unliveable" without cuts in CO2 output, he said, but he labelled targets for curbing temperature rise as "arbitrary".
His comments come shortly before major meetings on climate change at the UN and the Washington White House.
There may still be some members of the White House team who are not completely convinced about climate change - but it is clear that the science advisor to the President and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy is not one of them.
In the starkest warning from the White House so far about the dangers ahead, Professor Marburger told the BBC that climate change was unequivocal, with mankind more than 90% likely to blame.
The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and there's no end point, it just gets hotter and hotter
Marburger interview
Despite disagreement on the details of climate science, he said: "I think there is widespread agreement on certain basics, and one of the most important is that we are producing far more CO2 from fossil fuels than we ought to be.
"And it's going to lead to trouble unless we can begin to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we are burning and using in our economies."
Trouble ahead
This is an explicit endorsement of the latest major review of climate science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Marburger said humanity would be in trouble if we did not stop increasing carbon emissions.
"The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and there's no end point, it just gets hotter and hotter, and so at some point it becomes unliveable," he said.
Professor Marburger said he wished he could stop US emissions right away, but that was obviously not possible.
US backing for the scientific consensus was confirmed by President Bush's top climate advisor, James Connaughton.
The chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality told BBC News that advancing technology was the best way to curb the warming trend.
"You only have two choices; you either have advanced technologies and get them into the marketplace, or you shut down your economies and put people out of work," he said.
"I don't know of any politician that favours shutting down economies."
'Arbitrary' targets
Mr Bush has invited leaders of major developed and developing nations to the White House later this month for discussions on a future global direction on climate change.
It will follow a UN General Assembly session on the same issue.
Last week the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Sydney backed the UN climate convention as the right body for developing future global policy.
The European Union wants such a policy to adopt its own target of stabilising temperature rise at or below 2C.
But Mr Marburger said the state of the science made it difficult to justify any particular target.
"It's not clear that we'll be in a position to predict the future accurately enough to make policy confidently for a long time," he said.
"I think 2C is rather arbitrary, and it's not clear to me that the answer shouldn't be 3C or more or less. It's a hunch, a guess."
The truth, he said, was that we just do not know what the 'safe' limit is.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6994760.stmPublished: 2007/09/14 11:52:26 GMT© BBC MMVII
By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst, BBC News
The US chief scientist has told the BBC that climate change is now a fact.
Professor John Marburger, who advises President Bush, said it was more than 90% certain that greenhouse gas emissions from mankind are to blame.
The Earth may become "unliveable" without cuts in CO2 output, he said, but he labelled targets for curbing temperature rise as "arbitrary".
His comments come shortly before major meetings on climate change at the UN and the Washington White House.
There may still be some members of the White House team who are not completely convinced about climate change - but it is clear that the science advisor to the President and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy is not one of them.
In the starkest warning from the White House so far about the dangers ahead, Professor Marburger told the BBC that climate change was unequivocal, with mankind more than 90% likely to blame.
The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and there's no end point, it just gets hotter and hotter
Marburger interview
Despite disagreement on the details of climate science, he said: "I think there is widespread agreement on certain basics, and one of the most important is that we are producing far more CO2 from fossil fuels than we ought to be.
"And it's going to lead to trouble unless we can begin to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we are burning and using in our economies."
Trouble ahead
This is an explicit endorsement of the latest major review of climate science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Marburger said humanity would be in trouble if we did not stop increasing carbon emissions.
"The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and there's no end point, it just gets hotter and hotter, and so at some point it becomes unliveable," he said.
Professor Marburger said he wished he could stop US emissions right away, but that was obviously not possible.
US backing for the scientific consensus was confirmed by President Bush's top climate advisor, James Connaughton.
The chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality told BBC News that advancing technology was the best way to curb the warming trend.
"You only have two choices; you either have advanced technologies and get them into the marketplace, or you shut down your economies and put people out of work," he said.
"I don't know of any politician that favours shutting down economies."
'Arbitrary' targets
Mr Bush has invited leaders of major developed and developing nations to the White House later this month for discussions on a future global direction on climate change.
It will follow a UN General Assembly session on the same issue.
Last week the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Sydney backed the UN climate convention as the right body for developing future global policy.
The European Union wants such a policy to adopt its own target of stabilising temperature rise at or below 2C.
But Mr Marburger said the state of the science made it difficult to justify any particular target.
"It's not clear that we'll be in a position to predict the future accurately enough to make policy confidently for a long time," he said.
"I think 2C is rather arbitrary, and it's not clear to me that the answer shouldn't be 3C or more or less. It's a hunch, a guess."
The truth, he said, was that we just do not know what the 'safe' limit is.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6994760.stmPublished: 2007/09/14 11:52:26 GMT© BBC MMVII
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming
Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming: Analysis Finds Hundreds of Scientists Have Published Evidence Countering Man-Made Global Warming Fears
Posted on : 2007-09-12 Author : Hudson Institute News Category : PressRelease
WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.
Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.
Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."
The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.
"We have had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."
"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." "There may have been a consensus of guesses among climate model-builders," says Singer. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause." He noted that about 70 percent of the earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.
The historic evidence of the natural cycle includes the 5000-year record of Nile floods, 1st-century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and more cloudiness during the Little Ice Age. The physical evidence comes from oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, tiny sea and pollen fossils, and ancient tree rings. The evidence recovered from ice cores, sea and lake sediments, cave stalagmites and glaciers has been analyzed by electron microscopes, satellites, and computers. Temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period on California's Whitewing Mountain must have been 3.2 degrees warmer than today, says Constance Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, based on her study of seven species of relict trees that grew above today's tree line.
Singer emphasized, "Humans have known since the invention of the telescope that the earth's climate variations were linked to the sunspot cycle, but we had not understood how. Recent experiments have demonstrated that more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth create more or fewer of the low, cooling clouds that deflect solar heat back into space-amplifying small variations in the intensity of the sun.
Avery and Singer noted that there are hundreds of additional peer-reviewed studies that have found cycle evidence, and that they will publish additional researchers' names and studies. They also noted that their book was funded by Wallace O. Sellers, a Hudson board member, without any corporate contributions.
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years is available from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Global-Warming-Every-Years/dp/0742551172 /ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-6773465-0779318?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189603742&sr=1-1
For more information, please contact Dennis Avery, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow and co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, at 540-337-6354: Email: cgfi@hughes.net Hudson Institute
Posted on : 2007-09-12 Author : Hudson Institute News Category : PressRelease
WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.
Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.
Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."
The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.
"We have had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."
"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." "There may have been a consensus of guesses among climate model-builders," says Singer. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause." He noted that about 70 percent of the earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.
The historic evidence of the natural cycle includes the 5000-year record of Nile floods, 1st-century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and more cloudiness during the Little Ice Age. The physical evidence comes from oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, tiny sea and pollen fossils, and ancient tree rings. The evidence recovered from ice cores, sea and lake sediments, cave stalagmites and glaciers has been analyzed by electron microscopes, satellites, and computers. Temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period on California's Whitewing Mountain must have been 3.2 degrees warmer than today, says Constance Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, based on her study of seven species of relict trees that grew above today's tree line.
Singer emphasized, "Humans have known since the invention of the telescope that the earth's climate variations were linked to the sunspot cycle, but we had not understood how. Recent experiments have demonstrated that more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth create more or fewer of the low, cooling clouds that deflect solar heat back into space-amplifying small variations in the intensity of the sun.
Avery and Singer noted that there are hundreds of additional peer-reviewed studies that have found cycle evidence, and that they will publish additional researchers' names and studies. They also noted that their book was funded by Wallace O. Sellers, a Hudson board member, without any corporate contributions.
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years is available from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Global-Warming-Every-Years/dp/0742551172 /ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-6773465-0779318?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189603742&sr=1-1
For more information, please contact Dennis Avery, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow and co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, at 540-337-6354: Email: cgfi@hughes.net Hudson Institute
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
A Denier's Confession
A Denier's Confession
Global warming is more alarmist than alarming.
BY BRET STEPHENS
Tuesday, August 28, 2007 12:01 a.m.
The recent discovery by a retired businessman and climate kibitzer named Stephen McIntyre that 1934--and not 1998 or 2006--was the hottest year on record in the U.S. could not have been better timed. August is the month when temperatures are high and the news cycle is slow, leading, inevitably, to profound meditations on global warming. Newsweek performed its journalistic duty two weeks ago with an exposé on what it calls the global warming "denial machine." I hereby perform mine with a denier's confession
I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that Mr. McIntyre's discovery amounts to what a New York Times reporter calls a "statistically meaningless" rearrangement of data.
But just how "meaningless" would this have seemed had it yielded the opposite result? Had Mr. McIntyre found that a collation error understated recent temperatures by 0.15 degrees Celsius (instead of overstating it by that amount, as he discovered), would the news coverage have differed in tone and approach? When it was reported in January that 2006 was one of the hottest years on record, NASA's James Hansen used the occasion to warn grimly that "2007 is likely to be warmer than 2006." Yet now he says, in connection to the data revision, that "in general I think we want to avoid going into more and more detail about ranking of individual years."
I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that the world has been and will be getting warmer thanks in some part to an increase in man-made atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. I acknowledge this in the same way I'm confident that the equatorial radius of Saturn is about 60,000 kilometers: not because I've measured it myself, but out of a deep reserve of faith in the methods of the scientific community, above all its reputation for transparency and open-mindedness.
But that faith is tested when leading climate scientists won't share the data they use to estimate temperatures past and present and thus construct all-important trend lines. This was true of climatologist Michael Mann, who refused to disclose the algorithm behind his massively influential "hockey stick" graph, which purported to demonstrate a sharp uptick in global temperatures over the past century. (The accuracy of the graph was seriously discredited by Mr. McIntyre and his colleague Ross McKitrick.) This was true also of Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who reportedly turned down one request for information with the remark, "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
I confess: I understand that global warming may have negative consequences. Heat waves, droughts and coastal flooding may become more intense. Temperature-sensitive parasites such as malaria could become more widespread. Lakes may be depleted by evaporation. Animal life will suffer.
But as Bjorn Lomborg points out in his sharp, persuasive and aptly titled book "Cool It," a warming climate has advantages, too, and not just trivial ones. Though global warming will cause more heat deaths, it will also mean many fewer cold deaths. Drought may increase in some areas, but warming also means both more rain and longer growing seasons. Temperature changes will harm some wildlife in some places. But many species will benefit from a bit more warmth. Does anyone know for certain that the net human and environmental losses from global warming will exceed overall gains?
I confess: Denial never solves anything. But neither does sensational and deceptive journalism.
Newsweek illustrates this point by its choice of cover art--a picture of the sun, where the surface temperature hovers around 6,000 degrees Celsius. Given that the consensus scientific estimate for average temperature increases over the next century is a comparatively modest 2.6 degrees, this would seem a rather Murdochian way of convincing readers about the gravity of the climate threat. On the inside pages is a photograph of a polar bear stranded on melting ice. But the caption that the bears are "at risk" belies clear evidence that the bear population has risen five-fold since the 1960s. Another series of photographs, of a huge Antarctic ice shelf that quickly disintegrated in 2002, suggests the imminence of doom. But why not also mention that temperatures at the South Pole have been going down for 50 years?
I confess: It's easy to be indifferent to far-off and diffuse threats. It's hard to work toward solutions the benefits of which will not be felt in our lifetime.
Then again, if Americans are not fully persuaded of the dangers of global warming, as Newsweek laments, don't chalk it up to the pernicious influence of the so-called deniers and their enablers at ExxonMobil and Fox News. Today, global warming is variously suggested as the root cause of terrorism, the conflict in Darfur and the rising incidence of suicides in Italy. Yet the 20th century offers excellent reasons to be suspicious of monocausal explanations for the world's ills, monomaniacs intent on saving us from ourselves, and the long train of experts predicting death by overpopulation, resource depletion, global cooling, nuclear winter and prions. Also, hypocrites. When we are called on to bike to work, permanently abjure air travel, "eat locally" and so on, we expect to be led by example, not by a new nomenklatura.
I confess: Though it may surprise those who use the term "denier" so as to put me on a moral plane with Holocaust deniers, I have children for whom I would not wish an environmental apocalypse.
Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?
Some might argue it is immoral to think this way. Maybe they are the ones living in denial.
Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Global warming is more alarmist than alarming.
BY BRET STEPHENS
Tuesday, August 28, 2007 12:01 a.m.
The recent discovery by a retired businessman and climate kibitzer named Stephen McIntyre that 1934--and not 1998 or 2006--was the hottest year on record in the U.S. could not have been better timed. August is the month when temperatures are high and the news cycle is slow, leading, inevitably, to profound meditations on global warming. Newsweek performed its journalistic duty two weeks ago with an exposé on what it calls the global warming "denial machine." I hereby perform mine with a denier's confession
I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that Mr. McIntyre's discovery amounts to what a New York Times reporter calls a "statistically meaningless" rearrangement of data.
But just how "meaningless" would this have seemed had it yielded the opposite result? Had Mr. McIntyre found that a collation error understated recent temperatures by 0.15 degrees Celsius (instead of overstating it by that amount, as he discovered), would the news coverage have differed in tone and approach? When it was reported in January that 2006 was one of the hottest years on record, NASA's James Hansen used the occasion to warn grimly that "2007 is likely to be warmer than 2006." Yet now he says, in connection to the data revision, that "in general I think we want to avoid going into more and more detail about ranking of individual years."
I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that the world has been and will be getting warmer thanks in some part to an increase in man-made atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. I acknowledge this in the same way I'm confident that the equatorial radius of Saturn is about 60,000 kilometers: not because I've measured it myself, but out of a deep reserve of faith in the methods of the scientific community, above all its reputation for transparency and open-mindedness.
But that faith is tested when leading climate scientists won't share the data they use to estimate temperatures past and present and thus construct all-important trend lines. This was true of climatologist Michael Mann, who refused to disclose the algorithm behind his massively influential "hockey stick" graph, which purported to demonstrate a sharp uptick in global temperatures over the past century. (The accuracy of the graph was seriously discredited by Mr. McIntyre and his colleague Ross McKitrick.) This was true also of Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who reportedly turned down one request for information with the remark, "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
I confess: I understand that global warming may have negative consequences. Heat waves, droughts and coastal flooding may become more intense. Temperature-sensitive parasites such as malaria could become more widespread. Lakes may be depleted by evaporation. Animal life will suffer.
But as Bjorn Lomborg points out in his sharp, persuasive and aptly titled book "Cool It," a warming climate has advantages, too, and not just trivial ones. Though global warming will cause more heat deaths, it will also mean many fewer cold deaths. Drought may increase in some areas, but warming also means both more rain and longer growing seasons. Temperature changes will harm some wildlife in some places. But many species will benefit from a bit more warmth. Does anyone know for certain that the net human and environmental losses from global warming will exceed overall gains?
I confess: Denial never solves anything. But neither does sensational and deceptive journalism.
Newsweek illustrates this point by its choice of cover art--a picture of the sun, where the surface temperature hovers around 6,000 degrees Celsius. Given that the consensus scientific estimate for average temperature increases over the next century is a comparatively modest 2.6 degrees, this would seem a rather Murdochian way of convincing readers about the gravity of the climate threat. On the inside pages is a photograph of a polar bear stranded on melting ice. But the caption that the bears are "at risk" belies clear evidence that the bear population has risen five-fold since the 1960s. Another series of photographs, of a huge Antarctic ice shelf that quickly disintegrated in 2002, suggests the imminence of doom. But why not also mention that temperatures at the South Pole have been going down for 50 years?
I confess: It's easy to be indifferent to far-off and diffuse threats. It's hard to work toward solutions the benefits of which will not be felt in our lifetime.
Then again, if Americans are not fully persuaded of the dangers of global warming, as Newsweek laments, don't chalk it up to the pernicious influence of the so-called deniers and their enablers at ExxonMobil and Fox News. Today, global warming is variously suggested as the root cause of terrorism, the conflict in Darfur and the rising incidence of suicides in Italy. Yet the 20th century offers excellent reasons to be suspicious of monocausal explanations for the world's ills, monomaniacs intent on saving us from ourselves, and the long train of experts predicting death by overpopulation, resource depletion, global cooling, nuclear winter and prions. Also, hypocrites. When we are called on to bike to work, permanently abjure air travel, "eat locally" and so on, we expect to be led by example, not by a new nomenklatura.
I confess: Though it may surprise those who use the term "denier" so as to put me on a moral plane with Holocaust deniers, I have children for whom I would not wish an environmental apocalypse.
Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?
Some might argue it is immoral to think this way. Maybe they are the ones living in denial.
Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
'Hockey Stick' only 'Poor Mathematics'
October 15, 2004
Global Warming Bombshell
A prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.
By Richard Muller
Progress in science is sometimes made by great discoveries. But science also advances when we learn that something we believed to be true isnt. When solving a jigsaw puzzle, the solution can sometimes be stymied by the fact that a wrong piece has been wedged in a key place.
In the scientific and political debate over global warming, the latest wrong piece may be the hockey stick, the famous plot (shown below), published by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann and colleagues. This plot purports to show that we are now experiencing the warmest climate in a millennium, and that the earth, after remaining cool for centuries during the medieval era, suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago--just at the time that the burning of coal and oil led to an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.
I talked about this at length in my December 2003 column. Unfortunately, discussion of this plot has been so polluted by political and activist frenzy that it is hard to dig into it to reach the science. My earlier column was largely a plea to let science proceed unmolested. Unfortunately, the very importance of the issue has made careful science difficult to pursue.
But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.
But it wasnt so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.
Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? Let me digress into a short technical discussion of how this incredible error took place.
In PCA and similar techniques, each of the (in this case, typically 70) different data sets have their averages subtracted (so they have a mean of zero), and then are multiplied by a number to make their average variation around that mean to be equal to one; in technical jargon, we say that each data set is normalized to zero mean and unit variance. In standard PCA, each data set is normalized over its complete data period; for key climate data sets that Mann used to create his hockey stick graph, this was the interval 1400-1980. But the computer program Mann used did not do that. Instead, it forced each data set to have zero mean for the time period 1902-1980, and to match the historical records for this interval. This is the time when the historical temperature is well known, so this procedure does guarantee the most accurate temperature scale. But it completely screws up PCA. PCA is mostly concerned with the data sets that have high variance, and the Mann normalization procedure tends to give very high variance to any data set with a hockey stick shape. (Such data sets have zero mean only over the 1902-1980 period, not over the longer 1400-1980 period.)
The net result: the principal component will have a hockey stick shape even if most of the data do not.
McIntyre and McKitrick sent their detailed analysis to Nature magazine for publication, and it was extensively refereed. But their paper was finally rejected. In frustration, McIntyre and McKitrick put the entire record of their submission and the referee reports on a Web page for all to see. If you look, youll see that McIntyre and McKitrick have found numerous other problems with the Mann analysis. I emphasize the bug in their PCA program simply because it is so blatant and so easy to understand. Apparently, Mann and his colleagues never tested their program with the standard Monte Carlo approach, or they would have discovered the error themselves. Other and different criticisms of the hockey stick are emerging (see, for example, the paper by Hans von Storch and colleagues in the September 30 issue of Science).
Some people may complain that McIntyre and McKitrick did not publish their results in a refereed journal. That is true--but not for lack of trying. Moreover, the paper was refereed--and even better, the referee reports are there for us to read. McIntyre and McKitricks only failure was in not convincing Nature that the paper was important enough to publish.
How does this bombshell affect what we think about global warming?
It certainly does not negate the threat of a long-term global temperature increase. In fact, McIntyre and McKitrick are careful to point out that it is hard to draw conclusions from these data, even with their corrections. Did medieval global warming take place? Last month the consensus was that it did not; now the correct answer is that nobody really knows. Uncovering errors in the Mann analysis doesnt settle the debate; it just reopens it. We now know less about the history of climate, and its natural fluctuations over century-scale time frames, than we thought we knew.
If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick. Misinformation can do real harm, because it distorts predictions. Suppose, for example, that future measurements in the years 2005-2015 show a clear and distinct global cooling trend. (It could happen.) If we mistakenly took the hockey stick seriously--that is, if we believed that natural fluctuations in climate are small--then we might conclude (mistakenly) that the cooling could not be just a random fluctuation on top of a long-term warming trend, since according to the hockey stick, such fluctuations are negligible. And that might lead in turn to the mistaken conclusion that global warming predictions are a lot of hooey. If, on the other hand, we reject the hockey stick, and recognize that natural fluctuations can be large, then we will not be misled by a few years of random cooling.
A phony hockey stick is more dangerous than a broken one--if we know it is broken. It is our responsibility as scientists to look at the data in an unbiased way, and draw whatever conclusions follow. When we discover a mistake, we admit it, learn from it, and perhaps discover once again the value of caution.
Global Warming Bombshell
A prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.
By Richard Muller
Progress in science is sometimes made by great discoveries. But science also advances when we learn that something we believed to be true isnt. When solving a jigsaw puzzle, the solution can sometimes be stymied by the fact that a wrong piece has been wedged in a key place.
In the scientific and political debate over global warming, the latest wrong piece may be the hockey stick, the famous plot (shown below), published by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann and colleagues. This plot purports to show that we are now experiencing the warmest climate in a millennium, and that the earth, after remaining cool for centuries during the medieval era, suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago--just at the time that the burning of coal and oil led to an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.
I talked about this at length in my December 2003 column. Unfortunately, discussion of this plot has been so polluted by political and activist frenzy that it is hard to dig into it to reach the science. My earlier column was largely a plea to let science proceed unmolested. Unfortunately, the very importance of the issue has made careful science difficult to pursue.
But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.
But it wasnt so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.
Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? Let me digress into a short technical discussion of how this incredible error took place.
In PCA and similar techniques, each of the (in this case, typically 70) different data sets have their averages subtracted (so they have a mean of zero), and then are multiplied by a number to make their average variation around that mean to be equal to one; in technical jargon, we say that each data set is normalized to zero mean and unit variance. In standard PCA, each data set is normalized over its complete data period; for key climate data sets that Mann used to create his hockey stick graph, this was the interval 1400-1980. But the computer program Mann used did not do that. Instead, it forced each data set to have zero mean for the time period 1902-1980, and to match the historical records for this interval. This is the time when the historical temperature is well known, so this procedure does guarantee the most accurate temperature scale. But it completely screws up PCA. PCA is mostly concerned with the data sets that have high variance, and the Mann normalization procedure tends to give very high variance to any data set with a hockey stick shape. (Such data sets have zero mean only over the 1902-1980 period, not over the longer 1400-1980 period.)
The net result: the principal component will have a hockey stick shape even if most of the data do not.
McIntyre and McKitrick sent their detailed analysis to Nature magazine for publication, and it was extensively refereed. But their paper was finally rejected. In frustration, McIntyre and McKitrick put the entire record of their submission and the referee reports on a Web page for all to see. If you look, youll see that McIntyre and McKitrick have found numerous other problems with the Mann analysis. I emphasize the bug in their PCA program simply because it is so blatant and so easy to understand. Apparently, Mann and his colleagues never tested their program with the standard Monte Carlo approach, or they would have discovered the error themselves. Other and different criticisms of the hockey stick are emerging (see, for example, the paper by Hans von Storch and colleagues in the September 30 issue of Science).
Some people may complain that McIntyre and McKitrick did not publish their results in a refereed journal. That is true--but not for lack of trying. Moreover, the paper was refereed--and even better, the referee reports are there for us to read. McIntyre and McKitricks only failure was in not convincing Nature that the paper was important enough to publish.
How does this bombshell affect what we think about global warming?
It certainly does not negate the threat of a long-term global temperature increase. In fact, McIntyre and McKitrick are careful to point out that it is hard to draw conclusions from these data, even with their corrections. Did medieval global warming take place? Last month the consensus was that it did not; now the correct answer is that nobody really knows. Uncovering errors in the Mann analysis doesnt settle the debate; it just reopens it. We now know less about the history of climate, and its natural fluctuations over century-scale time frames, than we thought we knew.
If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick. Misinformation can do real harm, because it distorts predictions. Suppose, for example, that future measurements in the years 2005-2015 show a clear and distinct global cooling trend. (It could happen.) If we mistakenly took the hockey stick seriously--that is, if we believed that natural fluctuations in climate are small--then we might conclude (mistakenly) that the cooling could not be just a random fluctuation on top of a long-term warming trend, since according to the hockey stick, such fluctuations are negligible. And that might lead in turn to the mistaken conclusion that global warming predictions are a lot of hooey. If, on the other hand, we reject the hockey stick, and recognize that natural fluctuations can be large, then we will not be misled by a few years of random cooling.
A phony hockey stick is more dangerous than a broken one--if we know it is broken. It is our responsibility as scientists to look at the data in an unbiased way, and draw whatever conclusions follow. When we discover a mistake, we admit it, learn from it, and perhaps discover once again the value of caution.
Moose blamed for global warming
Norway's Moose Population in Trouble for Belching
The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.
Now poor moose are being blamed for global warming.Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.
Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway's technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.
Bacteria in a moose's stomach create methane gas which is considered even more destructive to the environment than carbon dioxide gas. Cows pose the same problem.
Norway has some 120,000 moose but an estimated 35,000 are expected to be killed in this year's moose hunting season, which starts on September 25, Norwegian newspaper VG reported.
The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.
Now poor moose are being blamed for global warming.Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.
Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway's technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.
Bacteria in a moose's stomach create methane gas which is considered even more destructive to the environment than carbon dioxide gas. Cows pose the same problem.
Norway has some 120,000 moose but an estimated 35,000 are expected to be killed in this year's moose hunting season, which starts on September 25, Norwegian newspaper VG reported.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Rupert Murdoch's climate crusade
Rupert Murdoch's climate crusade
News Corp.'s campaign against global warming includes free light bulbs, subsidized hybrids and babes in green, reports Fortune's Marc Gunther.
By Marc Gunther, Fortune senior writer
August 15 2007: 6:01 AM EDT
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Readers of the The Sun, a British tabloid best known for its bare-breasted Page Three girls, opened their newspapers to see a young woman named Keeley Hazell wearing only green paint. Ms. Hazell is the face - well, not just the face - of the paper's campaign against global warming.
When subscribers to the British satellite TV provider BSkyB order new set-top boxes, some installers now also deliver, at no additional charge, three energy-efficient light bulbs and a low-flow shower head.
Viewers of Fox-owned TV stations in the United States, meanwhile, are urged in news stories to join the FOX-e (pronounced foxy) energy team, to save money and the environment. ("Switch off lights and turn off basic appliances when you're not using them...")
What all these audiences are witnessing is a major media company tackling the problem of climate change. The surprise is that the initiative - which is sweeping and serious - comes from Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corp. (Charts, Fortune 500) and purveyor of Fox News, The New York Post and The Weekly Standard, none of which are generally regarded as friends of the earth. Soon Murdoch will own The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial pages rarely find much to admire about the likes of Al Gore.
Then again, maybe it makes sense that Murdoch's ahead of the other media barons on the climate change issue. Historically, he has proven willing to imbue his media properties with his conservative politics. Other CEOs - say, at Disney (Charts, Fortune 500) and Time Warner (Charts, Fortune 500) (parent of Fortune and CNNMoney.com), which have their own smaller-scale green projects underway - are either reluctant or unwilling to rule by fiat.
By contrast, Murdoch has boldly promised to make News Corp. carbon neutral by 2010 and to weave environmental issues and themes into his newspapers, TV shows, movies and online properties - a tricky business, particularly when it comes to news.
"Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats," Murdoch said last spring, in a speech webcast to all News Corp. employees (and available here.) "We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction."
He went on to say, "Our audience's carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours. That's the carbon footprint we want to conquer."
So it may not be coincidental that in "The Simpsons Movie," Homer dumps pig manure into a lake, with dire consequences. But News Corp. executives hasten to say that they won't force global warming stories into programming in heavy-handed ways.
"Jack Bauer's not going to be driving a Prius," says Roy Bahat, the News Corp. executive who has led the efforts on energy use and climate change. Behind the scenes, though, the Fox drama "24" will use biodiesel fuel to power generators, purchase "green power," and integrate hybrids into its production fleet. You can read a ponderous press release about the show's climate change efforts here.)
Murdoch's evolution into a climate change crusader took time. Australia, where he grew up and still owns newspapers, has been experiencing its worst drought in a century. Closer to home, his son James Murdoch, who drives a Prius to work and a hybrid SUV on weekends, has been influential. James is the chief executive of BSkyB, which became carbon neutral in 2006. "This had enormous appeal to their subscribers and employees," Bahat said.
About a year ago, Murdoch hosted an all-star team of environmental leaders at a News Corp. management conference in Pebble Beach, Ca. They included then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Al Gore, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, energy strategist Amory Lovins and solar power evangelist Bill Gross.
News Corp. hired a consultant and learned that its own carbon emissions amounted to 641,150 tons. It has promised to reduce that by 10 percent by 2012, mostly through energy efficiency measures and by buying renewable power. It will offset the rest by investing in projects to reduce emissions elsewhere; this year, News Corp. purchased its first offsets, which ended up helping to finance a wind energy project in the state of Maharashtra, India.
The climate change initiative is being felt in many corners of the Murdoch empire. Working with Wal-Mart (Charts, Fortune 500), Fox's home video unit has reduced the cardboard used in packaging DVDs. HarperCollins UK replaced its car service provider with one that uses only hybrids. Fox employees are getting incentives to buy hybrid vehicles. A MySpace channel called OurPlanet has about 120,000 "friends."
This internal work will be easier than selling the company's mission to Hollywood writers, who can be an independent lot. (As Samuel Goldwyn reportedly said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union.") Fox made a successful movie about a global warming catastrophe called "The Day After Tomorrow" in 2004, but there are only so many times you can go to that well.
Still, Murdoch should not be underestimated. He's the most powerful media mogul in the world, with big broadcast properties in India and China as well as Britain and the United States. If you think "An Inconvenient Truth" helped shift the debate, just wait to see what Rupert can do.
News Corp.'s campaign against global warming includes free light bulbs, subsidized hybrids and babes in green, reports Fortune's Marc Gunther.
By Marc Gunther, Fortune senior writer
August 15 2007: 6:01 AM EDT
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Readers of the The Sun, a British tabloid best known for its bare-breasted Page Three girls, opened their newspapers to see a young woman named Keeley Hazell wearing only green paint. Ms. Hazell is the face - well, not just the face - of the paper's campaign against global warming.
When subscribers to the British satellite TV provider BSkyB order new set-top boxes, some installers now also deliver, at no additional charge, three energy-efficient light bulbs and a low-flow shower head.
Viewers of Fox-owned TV stations in the United States, meanwhile, are urged in news stories to join the FOX-e (pronounced foxy) energy team, to save money and the environment. ("Switch off lights and turn off basic appliances when you're not using them...")
What all these audiences are witnessing is a major media company tackling the problem of climate change. The surprise is that the initiative - which is sweeping and serious - comes from Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corp. (Charts, Fortune 500) and purveyor of Fox News, The New York Post and The Weekly Standard, none of which are generally regarded as friends of the earth. Soon Murdoch will own The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial pages rarely find much to admire about the likes of Al Gore.
Then again, maybe it makes sense that Murdoch's ahead of the other media barons on the climate change issue. Historically, he has proven willing to imbue his media properties with his conservative politics. Other CEOs - say, at Disney (Charts, Fortune 500) and Time Warner (Charts, Fortune 500) (parent of Fortune and CNNMoney.com), which have their own smaller-scale green projects underway - are either reluctant or unwilling to rule by fiat.
By contrast, Murdoch has boldly promised to make News Corp. carbon neutral by 2010 and to weave environmental issues and themes into his newspapers, TV shows, movies and online properties - a tricky business, particularly when it comes to news.
"Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats," Murdoch said last spring, in a speech webcast to all News Corp. employees (and available here.) "We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction."
He went on to say, "Our audience's carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours. That's the carbon footprint we want to conquer."
So it may not be coincidental that in "The Simpsons Movie," Homer dumps pig manure into a lake, with dire consequences. But News Corp. executives hasten to say that they won't force global warming stories into programming in heavy-handed ways.
"Jack Bauer's not going to be driving a Prius," says Roy Bahat, the News Corp. executive who has led the efforts on energy use and climate change. Behind the scenes, though, the Fox drama "24" will use biodiesel fuel to power generators, purchase "green power," and integrate hybrids into its production fleet. You can read a ponderous press release about the show's climate change efforts here.)
Murdoch's evolution into a climate change crusader took time. Australia, where he grew up and still owns newspapers, has been experiencing its worst drought in a century. Closer to home, his son James Murdoch, who drives a Prius to work and a hybrid SUV on weekends, has been influential. James is the chief executive of BSkyB, which became carbon neutral in 2006. "This had enormous appeal to their subscribers and employees," Bahat said.
About a year ago, Murdoch hosted an all-star team of environmental leaders at a News Corp. management conference in Pebble Beach, Ca. They included then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Al Gore, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, energy strategist Amory Lovins and solar power evangelist Bill Gross.
News Corp. hired a consultant and learned that its own carbon emissions amounted to 641,150 tons. It has promised to reduce that by 10 percent by 2012, mostly through energy efficiency measures and by buying renewable power. It will offset the rest by investing in projects to reduce emissions elsewhere; this year, News Corp. purchased its first offsets, which ended up helping to finance a wind energy project in the state of Maharashtra, India.
The climate change initiative is being felt in many corners of the Murdoch empire. Working with Wal-Mart (Charts, Fortune 500), Fox's home video unit has reduced the cardboard used in packaging DVDs. HarperCollins UK replaced its car service provider with one that uses only hybrids. Fox employees are getting incentives to buy hybrid vehicles. A MySpace channel called OurPlanet has about 120,000 "friends."
This internal work will be easier than selling the company's mission to Hollywood writers, who can be an independent lot. (As Samuel Goldwyn reportedly said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union.") Fox made a successful movie about a global warming catastrophe called "The Day After Tomorrow" in 2004, but there are only so many times you can go to that well.
Still, Murdoch should not be underestimated. He's the most powerful media mogul in the world, with big broadcast properties in India and China as well as Britain and the United States. If you think "An Inconvenient Truth" helped shift the debate, just wait to see what Rupert can do.
Monday, July 2, 2007
BBC: "'Scepticism' over climate claims"
'Scepticism' over climate claims
The public believes the effects of global warming on the climate are not as bad as politicians and scientists claim, a poll has suggested.
The Ipsos Mori poll of 2,032 adults - interviewed between 14 and 20 June - found 56% believed scientists were still questioning climate change.
There was a feeling the problem was exaggerated to make money, it found.
The Royal Society said most climate scientists believed humans were having an "unprecedented" effect on climate.
The survey suggested that terrorism, graffiti, crime and dog mess were all of more concern than climate change.
Ipsos Mori's head of environmental research, Phil Downing, said the research showed there was "still a lot to do" in encouraging "low-carbon lifestyles".
"We are alive to climate change and very few people actually reject out of hand the idea the climate is changing or that humans have had at least some part to play in this," he added.
"However, a significant number have many doubts about exactly how serious it really is and believe it has been over hyped."
People had been influenced by counter arguments, he said.
Royal Society vice-president Sir David Read said: "People should not be misled by those that exploit the complexity of the issue, seeking to distort the science and deny the seriousness of the potential consequences of climate change.
"The science very clearly points towards the need for us all - nations, businesses and individuals - to do as much as possible, as soon as possible to avoid the worst consequences of a changing climate."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6263690.stm
Published: 2007/07/03 00:25:26 GMT
The public believes the effects of global warming on the climate are not as bad as politicians and scientists claim, a poll has suggested.
The Ipsos Mori poll of 2,032 adults - interviewed between 14 and 20 June - found 56% believed scientists were still questioning climate change.
There was a feeling the problem was exaggerated to make money, it found.
The Royal Society said most climate scientists believed humans were having an "unprecedented" effect on climate.
The survey suggested that terrorism, graffiti, crime and dog mess were all of more concern than climate change.
Ipsos Mori's head of environmental research, Phil Downing, said the research showed there was "still a lot to do" in encouraging "low-carbon lifestyles".
"We are alive to climate change and very few people actually reject out of hand the idea the climate is changing or that humans have had at least some part to play in this," he added.
"However, a significant number have many doubts about exactly how serious it really is and believe it has been over hyped."
People had been influenced by counter arguments, he said.
Royal Society vice-president Sir David Read said: "People should not be misled by those that exploit the complexity of the issue, seeking to distort the science and deny the seriousness of the potential consequences of climate change.
"The science very clearly points towards the need for us all - nations, businesses and individuals - to do as much as possible, as soon as possible to avoid the worst consequences of a changing climate."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6263690.stm
Published: 2007/07/03 00:25:26 GMT
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Alarmist Global Warming Claims Melt
Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny
(http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/450392,CST-EDT-REF30b.article)
June 30, 2007
BY JAMES M. TAYLOR
In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, "We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth." Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.
If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.
A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.
Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.
For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."
Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."
Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.
Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.
Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."
Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.
Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.
Each of these cases provides an opportunity for Gore to lead by example in his call for an end to the distortion of science. Will he rise to the occasion? Only time will tell.
James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute.
(http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/450392,CST-EDT-REF30b.article)
June 30, 2007
BY JAMES M. TAYLOR
In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, "We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth." Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.
If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.
A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.
Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.
For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."
Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."
Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.
Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.
Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."
Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.
Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.
Each of these cases provides an opportunity for Gore to lead by example in his call for an end to the distortion of science. Will he rise to the occasion? Only time will tell.
James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
They Call This a Consensus?
They call this a consensus?
Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
Saturday, June 02, 2007
CREDIT: David McNew, Getty Images File Photo
Al Gore's views have credible dissenters.
"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled."
So said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren't sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn't think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable.
Today, Al Gore is making the same claims of a scientific consensus, as do the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world. But the claims of a scientific consensus remain unsubstantiated. They have only become louder and more frequent.
More than six months ago, I began writing this series, The Deniers. When I began, I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies.
National Post's Deniers series: Scientists who challenge the climate change debate
The series
Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part IWarming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X
End the chill -- The Deniers Part XI
Clouded research -- The Deniers Part XII
Allegre's second thoughts -- The Deniers XIII
The heat's in the sun -- The Deniers XIV
Unsettled Science -- The Deniers XV
Bitten by the IPCC -- The Deniers XVI
Little ice age is still within us -- The Deniers XVII
Fighting climate 'fluff' -- The Deniers XVIII
Science, not politics -- The Deniers XIX
More on the environment
My series set out to profile the dissenters -- those who deny that the science is settled on climate change -- and to have their views heard. To demonstrate that dissent is credible, I chose high-ranking scientists at the world's premier scientific establishments. I considered stopping after writing six profiles, thinking I had made my point, but continued the series due to feedback from readers. I next planned to stop writing after 10 profiles, then 12, but the feedback increased. Now, after profiling more than 20 deniers, I do not know when I will stop -- the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily, as does the number of emails I receive, many from scientists who express gratitude for my series.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists -- the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects -- and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position.
What of the one claim that we hear over and over again, that 2,000 or 2,500 of the world's top scientists endorse the IPCC position? I asked the IPCC for their names, to gauge their views. "The 2,500 or so scientists you are referring to are reviewers from countries all over the world," the IPCC Secretariat responded. "The list with their names and contacts will be attached to future IPCC publications, which will hopefully be on-line in the second half of 2007."
An IPCC reviewer does not assess the IPCC's comprehensive findings. He might only review one small part of one study that later becomes one small input to the published IPCC report. Far from endorsing the IPCC reports, some reviewers, offended at what they considered a sham review process, have demanded that the IPCC remove their names from the list of reviewers. One even threatened legal action when the IPCC refused.
A great many scientists, without doubt, are four-square in their support of the IPCC. A great many others are not. A petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine between 1999 and 2001 claimed some 17,800 scientists in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. A more recent indicator comes from the U.S.-based National Registry of Environmental
Professionals, an accrediting organization whose 12,000 environmental practitioners have standing with U.S. government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. In a November, 2006, survey of its members, it found that only 59% think human activities are largely responsible for the warming that has occurred, and only 39% make their priority the curbing of carbon emissions. And 71% believe the increase in hurricanes is likely natural, not easily attributed to human activities.
Such diversity of views is also present in the wider scientific community, as seen in the World Federation of Scientists, an organization formed during the Cold War to encourage dialogue among scientists to prevent nuclear catastrophe. The federation, which encompasses many of the world's most eminent scientists and today represents more than 10,000 scientists, now focuses on 15 "planetary emergencies," among them water, soil, food, medicine and biotechnology, and climatic changes. Within climatic changes, there are eight priorities, one being "Possible human influences on climate and on atmospheric composition and chemistry (e.g. increased greenhouse gases and tropospheric ozone)."
Man-made global warming deserves study, the World Federation of Scientists believes, but so do other serious climatic concerns. So do 14 other planetary emergencies. That seems about right.
- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.
Email: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com.
Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
Saturday, June 02, 2007
CREDIT: David McNew, Getty Images File Photo
Al Gore's views have credible dissenters.
"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled."
So said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren't sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn't think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable.
Today, Al Gore is making the same claims of a scientific consensus, as do the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world. But the claims of a scientific consensus remain unsubstantiated. They have only become louder and more frequent.
More than six months ago, I began writing this series, The Deniers. When I began, I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies.
National Post's Deniers series: Scientists who challenge the climate change debate
The series
Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part IWarming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X
End the chill -- The Deniers Part XI
Clouded research -- The Deniers Part XII
Allegre's second thoughts -- The Deniers XIII
The heat's in the sun -- The Deniers XIV
Unsettled Science -- The Deniers XV
Bitten by the IPCC -- The Deniers XVI
Little ice age is still within us -- The Deniers XVII
Fighting climate 'fluff' -- The Deniers XVIII
Science, not politics -- The Deniers XIX
More on the environment
My series set out to profile the dissenters -- those who deny that the science is settled on climate change -- and to have their views heard. To demonstrate that dissent is credible, I chose high-ranking scientists at the world's premier scientific establishments. I considered stopping after writing six profiles, thinking I had made my point, but continued the series due to feedback from readers. I next planned to stop writing after 10 profiles, then 12, but the feedback increased. Now, after profiling more than 20 deniers, I do not know when I will stop -- the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily, as does the number of emails I receive, many from scientists who express gratitude for my series.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists -- the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects -- and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position.
What of the one claim that we hear over and over again, that 2,000 or 2,500 of the world's top scientists endorse the IPCC position? I asked the IPCC for their names, to gauge their views. "The 2,500 or so scientists you are referring to are reviewers from countries all over the world," the IPCC Secretariat responded. "The list with their names and contacts will be attached to future IPCC publications, which will hopefully be on-line in the second half of 2007."
An IPCC reviewer does not assess the IPCC's comprehensive findings. He might only review one small part of one study that later becomes one small input to the published IPCC report. Far from endorsing the IPCC reports, some reviewers, offended at what they considered a sham review process, have demanded that the IPCC remove their names from the list of reviewers. One even threatened legal action when the IPCC refused.
A great many scientists, without doubt, are four-square in their support of the IPCC. A great many others are not. A petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine between 1999 and 2001 claimed some 17,800 scientists in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. A more recent indicator comes from the U.S.-based National Registry of Environmental
Professionals, an accrediting organization whose 12,000 environmental practitioners have standing with U.S. government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. In a November, 2006, survey of its members, it found that only 59% think human activities are largely responsible for the warming that has occurred, and only 39% make their priority the curbing of carbon emissions. And 71% believe the increase in hurricanes is likely natural, not easily attributed to human activities.
Such diversity of views is also present in the wider scientific community, as seen in the World Federation of Scientists, an organization formed during the Cold War to encourage dialogue among scientists to prevent nuclear catastrophe. The federation, which encompasses many of the world's most eminent scientists and today represents more than 10,000 scientists, now focuses on 15 "planetary emergencies," among them water, soil, food, medicine and biotechnology, and climatic changes. Within climatic changes, there are eight priorities, one being "Possible human influences on climate and on atmospheric composition and chemistry (e.g. increased greenhouse gases and tropospheric ozone)."
Man-made global warming deserves study, the World Federation of Scientists believes, but so do other serious climatic concerns. So do 14 other planetary emergencies. That seems about right.
- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.
Email: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Russia knows how to prevent global warming
Russia knows how to prevent global warming - academic
30/05/2007 20:47
MOSCOW, May 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russian scientists have found a way to prevent global warming of the Earth, the director of the Global Climate and Ecology Institute said Wednesday.
Russian Academy of Sciences Academic Yury Izrael told a news conference that the method envisions air spraying of a sulfur-containing aerosol in lower stratosphere layers at a height of 10-14 kilometers (six to 10 miles). Sulfur drops would then reflect solar radiation.
According to scientists, one million tons of aerosol sprayed above the planet would make possible a reduction of solar radiation by 0.5-1%, and a reduction of air temperature by 1-1.5 degrees Celsius.
Unseasonably hot May weather with temperatures at 32.1 degrees Celsius (89.7 degrees Fahrenheit) beating a 116-year-old maximum has already seen last year's energy consumption for this time of year surpassed by about 8% in Moscow and 12% in St. Petersburg, a spokeswoman for the UES electricity monopoly said earlier.
Izrael said the method demands more detailed development, and that a relevant decision on the international level should be made for it to come into force.
However, the academic said the method is not an alternative to measures to fight climate change envisioned by the Kyoto Protocol, which contains commitments by some countries on specific volumes of greenhouse gas emission reductions.
"I don't want any contradiction of the Kyoto Protocol, but in parallel with existing methods, cheaper ones should be developed. I am advocating that work be conducted simultaneously on several methods," Izrael said.
He also said the Russian scientists' method will make the fight against warming faster and cheaper. "It is also good that it can be stopped at any moment," Izrael said.
The Russian academic said global temperature in the coming 100 years could rise by 1.4-4 degrees Celsius, which, he said, will cause droughts, floods and cyclones. He said Russia could face the extinction of 20-30% of its animals and plants if temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius.
However, Izrael said the current high temperatures in Moscow are not connected with a global climate change.
"Any fact, even the most acute should not be directly linked to climate change, but should be considered as part of temperature fluctuations," he said.
30/05/2007 20:47
MOSCOW, May 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russian scientists have found a way to prevent global warming of the Earth, the director of the Global Climate and Ecology Institute said Wednesday.
Russian Academy of Sciences Academic Yury Izrael told a news conference that the method envisions air spraying of a sulfur-containing aerosol in lower stratosphere layers at a height of 10-14 kilometers (six to 10 miles). Sulfur drops would then reflect solar radiation.
According to scientists, one million tons of aerosol sprayed above the planet would make possible a reduction of solar radiation by 0.5-1%, and a reduction of air temperature by 1-1.5 degrees Celsius.
Unseasonably hot May weather with temperatures at 32.1 degrees Celsius (89.7 degrees Fahrenheit) beating a 116-year-old maximum has already seen last year's energy consumption for this time of year surpassed by about 8% in Moscow and 12% in St. Petersburg, a spokeswoman for the UES electricity monopoly said earlier.
Izrael said the method demands more detailed development, and that a relevant decision on the international level should be made for it to come into force.
However, the academic said the method is not an alternative to measures to fight climate change envisioned by the Kyoto Protocol, which contains commitments by some countries on specific volumes of greenhouse gas emission reductions.
"I don't want any contradiction of the Kyoto Protocol, but in parallel with existing methods, cheaper ones should be developed. I am advocating that work be conducted simultaneously on several methods," Izrael said.
He also said the Russian scientists' method will make the fight against warming faster and cheaper. "It is also good that it can be stopped at any moment," Izrael said.
The Russian academic said global temperature in the coming 100 years could rise by 1.4-4 degrees Celsius, which, he said, will cause droughts, floods and cyclones. He said Russia could face the extinction of 20-30% of its animals and plants if temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius.
However, Izrael said the current high temperatures in Moscow are not connected with a global climate change.
"Any fact, even the most acute should not be directly linked to climate change, but should be considered as part of temperature fluctuations," he said.
NASA's Top Official Questions Global Warming
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin Questions Need to Combat Warming
By CLAYTON SANDELL and BILL BLAKEMORE
May 31, 2007 —
NASA administrator Michael Griffin is drawing the ire of his agency's preeminent climate scientists after apparently downplaying the need to combat global warming.
In an interview broadcast this morning on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" program, Griffin was asked by NPR's Steve Inskeep whether he is concerned about global warming.
"I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists," Griffin told Inskeep. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."
"To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change," Griffin said. "I guess I would ask which human beings are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."
Griffin's comments immediately drew stunned reaction from James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
"It's an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement," Hansen told ABC News. "It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change."
Hansen believes Griffin's comments fly in the face of well-established scientific knowledge that hundreds of NASA scientists have contributed to.
"It's unbelievable," said Hansen. "I thought he had been misquoted. It's so unbelievable."
News media inquiries to NASA headquarters about Griffin's comments prompted the space agency to make the unusual move of issuing a news release late Wednesday night.
"NASA is the world's preeminent organization in the study of Earth and the conditions that contribute to climate change and global warming," Griffin said in a statement. "The agency is responsible for collecting data that is used by the science community and policy makers as part of an ongoing discussion regarding our planet's evolving systems. It is NASA's responsibility to collect, analyze and release information. It is not NASA's mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies. As I stated in the NPR interview, we are proud of our role and I believe we do it well."
Hansen, featured prominently in Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," has been warning of the potential dangers of climate change since the 1980s.
In late 2005, he accused NASA of trying to improperly censor him after he warned that Earth's climate might be approaching a dangerous "tipping point."
The agency later fired a public affairs employee, a political appointee of the Bush administration, over the incident.
Last year, many NASA scientists were upset when reports surfaced that the agency had quietly deleted the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" from the NASA mission statement. The scientists believe research on issues like climate change will suffer as NASA shifts priorities toward exploration missions to the moon and Mars.
"Earth has always been central to NASA's science," Hansen said.
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures
By CLAYTON SANDELL and BILL BLAKEMORE
May 31, 2007 —
NASA administrator Michael Griffin is drawing the ire of his agency's preeminent climate scientists after apparently downplaying the need to combat global warming.
In an interview broadcast this morning on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" program, Griffin was asked by NPR's Steve Inskeep whether he is concerned about global warming.
"I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists," Griffin told Inskeep. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."
"To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change," Griffin said. "I guess I would ask which human beings are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."
Griffin's comments immediately drew stunned reaction from James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
"It's an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement," Hansen told ABC News. "It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change."
Hansen believes Griffin's comments fly in the face of well-established scientific knowledge that hundreds of NASA scientists have contributed to.
"It's unbelievable," said Hansen. "I thought he had been misquoted. It's so unbelievable."
News media inquiries to NASA headquarters about Griffin's comments prompted the space agency to make the unusual move of issuing a news release late Wednesday night.
"NASA is the world's preeminent organization in the study of Earth and the conditions that contribute to climate change and global warming," Griffin said in a statement. "The agency is responsible for collecting data that is used by the science community and policy makers as part of an ongoing discussion regarding our planet's evolving systems. It is NASA's responsibility to collect, analyze and release information. It is not NASA's mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies. As I stated in the NPR interview, we are proud of our role and I believe we do it well."
Hansen, featured prominently in Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," has been warning of the potential dangers of climate change since the 1980s.
In late 2005, he accused NASA of trying to improperly censor him after he warned that Earth's climate might be approaching a dangerous "tipping point."
The agency later fired a public affairs employee, a political appointee of the Bush administration, over the incident.
Last year, many NASA scientists were upset when reports surfaced that the agency had quietly deleted the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" from the NASA mission statement. The scientists believe research on issues like climate change will suffer as NASA shifts priorities toward exploration missions to the moon and Mars.
"Earth has always been central to NASA's science," Hansen said.
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Eco-Freak Quotes
THE SUSSMAN FILES
Frightening Eco-Freak Quotes from the Sussman Files
"We already have too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure."
"I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecological society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism."
"Capitalism is a cancer in the biosphere."
"The northern spotted owl is the wildlife species of choice to act as a surrogate for old-growth forest protection," explained Andy Stahl, staff forester for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, at a 1988 law clinic for other environmentalists.
"Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Pacific Northwest," he joked, "for if it hadn't, we'd have to genetically engineer it." Andy Stahl at a 1988 law clinic for environmentalists, staff forester, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund
"Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize. We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real."
"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect."
"[W]e have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
"I honor Earth First for having the guts to do the things they do. It's not for me, but I understand why they do what they do. And, ultimately, we all help each other."
"If we seek only personal redemption we could become solitary ecological saints among the masses of those we might classify as 'sinners' who continue to pollute."
"More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecological crises until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one."
"Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license.... All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."
"The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state."
"If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. It [AIDS] has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crises."
Frightening Eco-Freak Quotes from the Sussman Files
"We already have too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure."
Paul Elrich,
Stanford University biologist and Advisor to Albert Gore
"I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecological society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism."
Judi Barri of Earth First!
"Capitalism is a cancer in the biosphere."
Dave Foreman, Founder, Earth First!
"The northern spotted owl is the wildlife species of choice to act as a surrogate for old-growth forest protection," explained Andy Stahl, staff forester for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, at a 1988 law clinic for other environmentalists.
"Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Pacific Northwest," he joked, "for if it hadn't, we'd have to genetically engineer it." Andy Stahl at a 1988 law clinic for environmentalists, staff forester, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund
"Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize. We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real."
Jonathan Shell,
author of Our Fragile Earth
"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect."
Richard Benedict, an employee for the State Department
working on assignment for the Conservation Foundation
"[W]e have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Stephen Schneider,
Stanford University Professor and author
Quoted by Dixey Lee Ray in Trashing the Planet (1990)
"I honor Earth First for having the guts to do the things they do. It's not for me, but I understand why they do what they do. And, ultimately, we all help each other."
Brock Adams,
VP, Audubon Society,
quoted in the Los Angeles Times.
"If we seek only personal redemption we could become solitary ecological saints among the masses of those we might classify as 'sinners' who continue to pollute."
Bill Devall & George Sessions,
Deep Ecology: Living As If Nature Mattered Layton
"More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecological crises until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one."
Lynn White, Jr.
"The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science, (Mar. 10 1967), p 1206
"Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license.... All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."
David Brower,
Friends of the Earth
"The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state."
Keith Boulding,
originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept
"If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. It [AIDS] has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crises."
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