Make a Difference
In 1989 the UN was telling us that entire nations would be wiped off the earth if global warming were not reversed by the year 2000.
As Donna Laframboise points out, since this hasn’t happened, aren’t we at least entitled to an explanation from the same people issuing the same warnings twenty years later?
If the UN and the IPCC were religious organisations, the media would have stomped all over them and fallen about laughing.
The US Congress has voted to cut funding to the IPCC, the bloated and corrupt UN organisation charged with producing scary graphs about climate change.
Amusing graphic take on this development.
Of course, the Republicans’ proposed changes to the budget won’t make it through the Senate.
But at least the enviro-crats are no longer having it all their own way.
More from Energy Probe:
In a major victory for American taxpayers, the House of Representatives today passed a budget amendment offered by U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-9) that would prohibit $13 million in taxpayer dollars from going to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization fraught with waste and engaged in dubious science.
The amendment, which is identical to a separate bill sponsored by Luetkemeyer, was passed in a direct challenge to the president’s request to fund the IPCC, which has provided information that purports to support the administration’s call for job-killing cap-and-tax legislation.
Luetkemeyer’s amendment was one of 19 amendments highlighted this week by the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
“The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science, which is the last thing hard-working American taxpayers should be paying for at a time of out-of-control spending and historic debt, which is why I am extremely pleased that my amendment passed,” Luetkemeyer said. “It is time for Washington to combat this year’s record budget deficit and fast-growing national debt. This amendment is part of that effort.”
The IPCC advises governments around the world on climate change, and supporters of cap-and-tax legislation have used questionable findings by the IPCC as reason to support onerous legislation. Criticism of this science intensified over the last two years when emails publicly released from a university in England showed that leading global scientists intentionally manipulated climate data and suppressed legitimate arguments in peer-reviewed journals. Researchers were asked to delete and destroy emails so that a small number of climate alarmists could continue to advance their environmental agenda.
More than 700 acclaimed international scientists have challenged the claims made by the IPCC. These 700-plus dissenting scientists are affiliated with institutions like the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, the U.S. Air Force and Navy, NASA, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
A letter from 36 leading climate scientists responding to the latest round of alarmism. Longish, but worth quoting in full:
February 8, 2011
To the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate:
In reply to “The Importance of Science in Addressing Climate Change”
On 28 January 2011, eighteen scientists sent a letter to members of the U.S. House of
Representatives and the U.S. Senate urging them to “take a fresh look at climate change.” Their
intent, apparently, was to disparage the views of scientists who disagree with their contention
that continued business-as-usual increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced from the burning of coal, gas, and oil will lead to a host of cataclysmic climate-related problems.
We, the undersigned, totally disagree with them and would like to take this opportunity to briefly
state our side of the story.
The eighteen climate alarmists (as we refer to them, not derogatorily, but simply because they
view themselves as “sounding the alarm” about so many things climatic) state that the people of
the world “need to prepare for massive flooding from the extreme storms of the sort being
experienced with increasing frequency,” as well as the “direct health impacts from heat waves”
and “climate-sensitive infectious diseases,” among a number of other devastating phenomena.
And they say that “no research results have produced any evidence that challenges the overall
scientific understanding of what is happening to our planet’s climate,” which is understood to
mean their view of what is happening to Earth’s climate.
To these statements, however, we take great exception. It is the eighteen climate alarmists who appear to be unaware of “what is happening to our planet’s climate,” as well as the vast amount of research that has produced that knowledge.
For example, a lengthy review of their claims and others that climate alarmists frequently make
can be found on the Web site of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
(see http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.php). That report
offers a point-by-point rebuttal of all of the claims of the “group of eighteen,” citing in every
case peer-reviewed scientific research on the actual effects of climate change during the past
several decades.
If the “group of eighteen” pleads ignorance of this information due to its very recent posting,
then we call their attention to an even larger and more comprehensive report published in 2009,
Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on
Climate Change (NIPCC). That document has been posted for more than a year in its entirety at
www.nipccreport.org.
These are just two recent compilations of scientific research among many we could cite. Do the
678 scientific studies referenced in the CO2 Science document, or the thousands of studies cited
in the NIPCC report, provide real-world evidence (as opposed to theoretical climate model
predictions) for global warming-induced increases in the worldwide number and severity of
floods? No. In the global number and severity of droughts? No. In the number and severity of
hurricanes and other storms? No.
Do they provide any real-world evidence of Earth’s seas inundating coastal lowlands around the
globe? No. Increased human mortality? No. Plant and animal extinctions? No. Declining
vegetative productivity? No. More frequent and deadly coral bleaching? No. Marine life
dissolving away in acidified oceans? No.
Quite to the contrary, in fact, these reports provide extensive empirical evidence that these things are not happening. And in many of these areas, the referenced papers report finding just the opposite response to global warming, i.e., biosphere-friendly effects of rising temperatures and rising CO2 levels.
In light of the profusion of actual observations of the workings of the real world showing little or
no negative effects of the modest warming of the second half of the twentieth century, and
indeed growing evidence of positive effects, we find it incomprehensible that the eighteen
climate alarmists could suggest something so far removed from the truth as their claim that no
research results have produced any evidence that challenges their view of what is happening to
Earth’s climate and weather.
But don’t take our word for it. Read the two reports yourselves. And then make up your own
minds about the matter. Don’t be intimidated by false claims of “scientific consensus” or
“overwhelming proof.” These are not scientific arguments and they are simply not true.
Like the eighteen climate alarmists, we urge you to take a fresh look at climate change. We
believe you will find that it is not the horrendous environmental threat they and others have made it out to be, and that they have consistently exaggerated the negative effects of global warming on the U.S. economy, national security, and public health, when such effects may well be small to negligible.
Signed by:
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, University of Alaska1
Scott Armstrong, University of Pennsylvania
James Barrante, Southern Connecticut State University1
Richard Becherer, University of Rochester
John Boring, University of Virginia
Roger Cohen, American Physical Society Fellow
David Douglass, University of Rochester
Don Easterbrook, Western Washington University1
Robert Essenhigh, The Ohio State University1
Martin Fricke, Senior Fellow, American Physical Society
Lee Gerhard, University of Kansas1
Ulrich Gerlach, The Ohio State University
Laurence Gould, University of Hartford
Bill Gray, Colorado State University1
Will Happer, Princeton University2
Howard Hayden, University of Connecticut1
Craig Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Sherwood Idso, USDA, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory1
Richard Keen, University of Colorado
Doral Kemper, USDA, Agricultural Research Service1
Hugh Kendrick, Office of Nuclear Reactor Programs, DOE1
Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology2
Anthony Lupo, University of Missouri
Patrick Michaels, Cato Institute
Donald Nielsen, University of California, Davis1
Al Pekarek, St. Cloud State University
John Rhoads, Midwestern State University1
Nicola Scafetta, Duke University
Gary Sharp, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study
S. Fred Singer, University of Virginia1
Roy Spencer, University of Alabama
George Taylor, Past President, American Association of State Climatologists
Frank Tipler, Tulane University
Leonard Weinstein, National Institute of Aerospace Senior Research Fellow
Samuel Werner, University of Missouri1
Thomas Wolfram, University of Missouri1
Endorsed by:
Rodney Armstrong, Geophysicist
Edwin Berry, Certified Consulting Meteorologist
Joseph Bevelacqua, Bevelacqua Resources
Carmen Catanese, American Physical Society Member
Roy Clark, Ventura Photonics
John Coleman, Meteorologist KUSI TV
Darrell Connelly, Geophysicist
Joseph D’Aleo, Certified Consulting Meteorologist
Terry Donze, Geophysicist1
Mike Dubrasich, Western Institute for Study of the Environment
John Dunn, American Council on Science and Health of NYC
Dick Flygare, QEP Resources
Michael Fox, Nuclear industry/scientist
Gordon Fulks, Gordon Fulks and Associates
Ken Haapala, Science & Environmental Policy Project
Martin Hertzberg, Bureau of Mines1
Art Horn, Meteorologist
Keith Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Jay Lehr, The Heartland Institute
Robert Levine, Industrial and Defense Research and Engineering1
Peter Link, Geologist
James Macdonald, Chief Meteorologist for the Travelers Weather Service1
Roger Matson, Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists
Tony Pann, Meteorologist WBAL TV
Ned Rasor, Consulting Physicist
James Rogers, Geologist1
Norman Rogers, National Association of Scholars
Thomas Sheahen, Western Technology Incorporated
Andrew Spurlock, Starfire Engineering and Technologies, Inc.
Leighton Steward, PlantsNeedCO2.org
Soames Summerhays, Summerhays Films, Inc.
Charles Touhill, Consulting Environmental Engineer
David Wojick, Climatechangedebate.org
1 – Emeritus or Retired
2 – Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Well, it was biased. But we’ve fixed it. It’s all OK now.
That’s according to Director General Mark Thompson.
Well, good. Everyone in England who owns a TV pays for the BBC through taxes and licence fees. So it really should be unbiased, as least as far as that is realistically possible. It should be everyone’s BBC.
Like many English persons, I will be looking forward to genuinely balanced debate on the Beeb on political and environomental issues.
Australia’s ABC is paid for by every Australian. It even tells viewers and listeners they should care about what happens to the ABC, because it’s ‘your ABC.”
But it’s never been my ABC. I never hear my opinions expressed on the ABC, except maybe by a courageous lone voice quickly shouted down by a ‘balanced’ panel.
Clive Hamilton thoughtfully explains why it is not necessary to offer a variety of opinions for consideration.
It is because only one opinion is right – his:
Presenting both sides is biased when one ‘side’ is backed by a large body of peer-reviewed research and the other is not. The ‘other side’ would deserve some reporting if there were a significant minority view that had some legitimate science to sustain its claims, even if that science proves unsustainable. In the case of climate science, there isn’t. …
A number of studies have substantiated what is obvious to anyone with even a casual knowledge of the research on the science of global warming – that is, there is an overwhelming consensus on the main conclusions presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.
The trouble is Clive, there is no discussion of whether this amazing consensus actually exists.
And of course, Clive, it doesn’t. At least 31,000 scientists in the US alone agree with me. And several in Australia.
And now, Clive, even former IPCC insiders are admitting the ‘consensus’ was a complete fabrication. It wasn’t a worldwide consensus. It wasn’t even the claimed 2500 experts. It was just a couple of dozen scientists whose income depended on generating alarm.
Or, Clive, if you really think there is no peer reviewed research questioning the basis of global warming alarmism, you could start with this list of 800 peer reviewed papers.
So let’s begin to make it everyone’s ABC, Clive, by being honest about disagreements in matters of politics and environmental science.
Or is that too much to ask?
I said it three times, so it must be true.
Or it was true back in the seventies.
No matter how much they try to deny it now (just as in five years time they will all be denying they ever fell for the AGW scam) there seemed to be a consensus two decades ago that the world was cooling, it was all our fault, we only had a few years to take action to save the world.
Remember the DSSO? The Decadal Science Scare Oscillation?
Maurizio Morabito at the Spectator recounts the terrifying story of global cooling as follows:
The threat of a new ice age loomed so large in 1974 that American intelligence collated a report on the likely effects. Maurizio Morabito unearthed it
A high-priority government report warns of climate change that will lead to floods and starvation. ‘Leading climatologists’ speak of a ‘detrimental global climatic change’, threatening ‘the stability of most nations’. The scenario is eerily familiar although the document — never made public before — dates from 1974. But here’s the difference: it was written to respond to the threat of global cooling, not warming. And yes, it even mentions a ‘consensus’ among scientists.
‘A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems’, written by the CIA for ‘internal planning purposes’ in August 1974, goes a little way towards explaining why some people over a certain age experience a sense of déjà-vu when climate change is mentioned; in the mid-1970s there really was a lot of scientific discussion about global cooling. With the benefit of hindsight, reading it makes one feel wry and embarrassed. So many of the terms bandied about 35 years ago are still being employed by today’s fear-mongers, about the very opposite phenomenon.
It is as if climate scares had to follow a set pattern. Back in 1974 the usual disasters were projected: the ‘new climatic era’ was said to be bringing famine, starvation, refugee crises, floods, droughts, crop and monsoon failures, and all sorts of extreme weather phenomena. The Sahara would expand. World grain reserves, already at less than a month’s supply, would be depleted. A list of past civilisations brought down by ‘major and minor’ cooling episodes was given, which included the Indus, Hittites, Mycenaean, and the Mali empire of Africa. Any possible benefits to climate change were barely mentioned.
More parallels can be drawn. According to the CIA report, in 1974 climate science was developing ‘a successful climatic prediction model’, as indeed it still is. Government intervention had brought together eminent scientists who had previously been at odds with each other then had established a ‘scientific consensus’ on ‘global climate change’. The scientists claimed this pattern of cooling would cause ‘major economic problems around the world’. Dealing with this would, of course, require the creation of several new government agencies. The media at the time seized on all of this, just as it is doing now. Newsweek and the New York Times described the global cooling threat.
How is it that the parallels between that 1970s panic and today’s have been so little remarked upon? And it doesn’t stop there. There have even been recent attempts to label the ‘global cooling consensus’ a ‘myth’, most notably in a well-publicised article by Thomas C. Peterson, William M. Connolley, and John Fleck published by the American Meteorological Society in September 2008.
Well, plus ça change. It’s easy to miss what you do not look for. Mentions of a global cooling consensus appear as far back as 1961. I found the CIA report referred to in a 1976 newspaper article and was doubly amazed to discover it was available as a microfiche in the British Library.
So what would have prompted the CIA to compile such a dossier? The most likely explanation is what it describes as the loss of ‘a significant portion’ of the USSR’s winter wheat crop in 1972. The harvest was so poor that the CIA saw geopolitical ramifications. Its report says that ‘the politics of food’ is a complex business, which cannot be understood by ‘existing analytical tools’. So to address a political problem, they asked scientists to come up with a solution. Precisely the same thing is happening today. One might almost conclude that, in the world of climatology, theories are made to order.
Or is the problem with the general public, who cannot talk about climate except in doom-laden terms, and for whom the sky is the last animist god? This might be the most important lesson of the 1974 report on global cooling: that we need to grow up, separate climatology from fear, and recognise — much as it pains politicians and scientists — that our understanding of how climate changes remains in its infancy.
Even when it hasn’t changed.
This kind of ‘adjustment’ appears to have been so common it is hardly worth commenting on any more.
Except that we are still waiting for any kind of acknowledgement of these alterations in the lamestream media, or any discussion of why they are so important.
Put simply, the whole global warming scare is based on alleged unusual warming in the last half century. But the surface temperature readings on which these claims are based had to be manipulated to obtain a warming signal. Without these adjustments, the overall warming disappears.
These graphs, from Watts Up With That are just one example:
Data Before Manipulation Shows No Warming
'Value Added' Data Shows IPCC Warming Signal
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