UN's Global Warming group: "You gonna believe us, or your lying eyes?"

Breitbart (among others) writes that the United Nations climate panel's report may not be as objective as they want us to believe.

"An exhaustive United Nations report that claimed with 95% certainty that humans are responsible for global warming left out data that found the planet has stopped warming over the last 15 years, because it did not fit with the climate change agenda it wanted to advance." 

An earlier draft of the United Nations report, which was not used, acknowledged its climate models “do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10–15 years.” In other words, reality slapped their predictions in the face and took its lunch money.

As the UK's Sun News says, "The issue is important because if the Earth is not warming as greenhouse gas emissions rise, it strikes at the heart of the theory of man-made global warming and suggests natural factors may be the greatest influence on climate."

Many Uncertainties

"Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown" was the headline for a recent Reuters story. It turns out that almost none of the climate scientists predicted the lack of warming that has occurred in recent years.

Climate science has something in common with horoscopes and fortune tellers. Confidence in their predictions is higher when the results are either so vague, or so far in the future, that accuracy can't be measured. For example, we had predictions of arctic ice melting, raising the sea level by anywhere from three to twenty feet, flooding coastlines and destroying cities. When this didn't happen, predictions got fuzzy. It turns out that "global warming" can manifest itself by extremely hot weather, or by extremely cold weather. Extreme precipitation or extreme drought. More violent hurricanes, or fewer violent hurricanes. Climate scientists making predictions covered all their bases. Except now they're struggling to come up with an explanation for the lack of global warming. And, the article says, "some experts say their trust in climate science has declined because of the many uncertainties." 

"The climate system is not quite so simple as people thought," said Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg.  

"My own confidence in the data has gone down in the past five years, said Richard Tol, an expert in climate change and professor of economics at the University of Sussex in England.

About that "consensus" on manmade global warming....

Often global warming alarmists will argue as though the science on manmade global warming is settled, that a mere handful of kooks disagree with their conclusion, and that few, if any, reputable scientists disagree with it.  The editor of "Physics and Society," a publication of the American Physics Society, wrote these words:

There is a considerable presence in the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.

Hello Racists!

High Priest (and major profiteer) of global warming Al Gore says that global warming skeptics "are this generation's racists" and must be marginalized just as racists were during the civil rights movement. "My generation asked old people 'Explain to me again why it is okay to discriminate against people because their skin color is different?' And when they really couldn't answer that question with integrity, the change really started."

"Answer the question with integrity." This lies at the heart of the matter.  PRO-manmade (anthropogenic) global warming (AGW) activists such as Gore have been caught time after time cheating, misrepresenting, and deceiving in order to score points in the "conversation."

• Gore admitted pushing subsidies for corn-based ethanol, despite evidence showing lack of results, simply to score political points in Iowa.
• The Climategate e-mails show that scientists privately conspired to punish editors of peer-reviewed journals for publishing studies that disputed AGW, while publicly deriding any research that was not published in those same journals.
• Hysterical claims -- inevitably followed by calls for more government funding --  have been shown to be based on a single author's words, discredited data, or sloppy research.
• Claims of horrendous consequences have been "adjusted" when reality fails to match earlier predictions.  

The lack of integrity in the methods shown by the pro-AGW side, combined with their religious fervor in attacking anyone who dares to even question them -- Gore's "marginalization" process -- is enough to make a reasonable person question their conclusions.

Unreliable Research?

“There is an intellectual conflict of interest that pressures researchers to find whatever it is that is most likely to get them funded.” – John Ioannidis

The Atlantic magazine recently published a story entitled “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science.”  The story is a profile of statistician and medical doctor John Ioannidis, and of his work. His work -- the debunking of medical research, specifically medical research that is flawed, biased and potentially harmful.  Among his most startling conclusions:

>> Forty-one percent (41%) of the most highly regarded medical findings from 1992-2005 had subsequently been shown to be wrong or significantly exaggerated.  These were widely accepted and commonly used findings such as hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women, vitamin E to reduce the risk of heart disease,  coronary stents to ward off heart attacks, and daily low-dose aspirin to control blood pressure and prevent heart attacks and strokes.

According to Dr. Ioannidis, the reason for such flawed research becoming common practice was basically this – 

1) if a researcher is attracted to a concept that has a good chance of being wrong, and 

2) said researcher is motivated (for whatever reason; “money and power” come to mind) to prove it right, and 

3) there is wiggle room on how the evidence is collected or assembled, then 

4) the researcher will probably succeed in proving wrong theories as right.

The kicker, as it almost always is, is money.  Sound familiar?

Al Gore: Politics, not science, motivated him

While Vice President, Al Gore pushed for subsidies for corn-based ethanol. He cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate in 1994 upholding the Environmental Protection Agency's requirement that ethanol be part of all gasoline additives.  As a result, 41% of the total corn crop that was previously raised for food (for people or livestock) is now diverted to fuel production.  This diversion has resulted in higher food prices.  (I've written on this before.)

Now, at a recent "green" conference in Athens, Gore confessed that the subsidies were a bad idea.  The energy conversion ratio from corn to fuel "is very small."  His support for the subsidies was based on his own political ambitions, not science.  Gore said, "I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee....and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

We knew all this before.  The only thing newsworthy about this story is that Gore confessed in public.

Yahoo News and Global Warming

Yahoo News posted one of its biased stories with this headline: "Poll: Most Republicans do not believe in climate change." It went on to say essentially that Republicans were a bunch of ignorant rubes who ignored the findings of  "97 percent" of scientists.


I tried several times -- even splitting it into several parts in case length was the issue --  to post the following comment, but for some reason Yahoo failed to publish it.  I wonder why?  

"Of course there's doubt about the theory of anthropogenic (manmade) global warming (AGW.)  First, scientists who promote AGW are rewarded with prestige, praise and millions (if not billions) of dollars in government funding.  Skeptical scientists are ridiculed, demonized, threatened and denied professional advancement by those whose funding is threatened. 

"Moreover, many of the claims have had to be withdrawn after evidence of shoddy scientific methods, overstatement, and outright fraud have come to light. Credible, respected scientists have condemned the effects of politicization on scientists and their research.  The "Climategate" e-mails exposed a culture of deceit, vindictiveness and lack of openness among the pro-AGW's leading authorities and institutions.  

"The UN's IPCC has based many of its claims on misrepresentation of scientific findings, shoddy science -- in one case on mere speculation by a single scientist -- and absolute worst-case (and least likely) scenarios. The InterAcademy Council, made up of top scientists from several leading scientific groups, criticized the IPCC for reporting "high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence" and for "making vague statements [whose vagueness] make them difficult to refute."  

"The pro-AGW's highest-profile champion, Al Gore, was contradicted and criticized for one of his claims by Dr. Wieslav Maslowski -- the very scientist whose research Gore was citing as "evidence."

"Given all of this, anyone who is not the least bit skeptical about the apocalyptic predictions being made is proceeding on something other than logical, much less scientific, thought."

Money corrupts, and government money corrupts absolutely

This is the the professional description of physicist Harold Lewis:

Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board


On October 6, 2010, Harold Lewis resigned his membership in the American Physical Society (APS), a membership he had maintained for sixty-seven years.  His reason?  The APS position on climate change/global warming, and the way funding has forced or coerced scientists into endorsing the manmade global warming theory.  In his letter to APS president Curtis Callan, Lewis wrote the following passage:


"It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion."


In it's response to Lewis's charges, the APS denied that, as an organization, it benefits financially.  They also said that the society maintains the highest ethical standards because, well, it maintains the highest ethical standards. 

Ice Ice Baby

It's been a while since I've commented on global warming.  The news for the last several months has just been confirming what I've been saying for years.  But this headline from Yahoo News prompted me to get back on the subject:  "Climate: new study slashes estimate of ice cap loss."

The first paragraph:

"Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming debate, should be halved, according to Dutch and U.S. scientists."

Every new discovery seems to undo the argument of the "manmade global warming" crowd.

Other People Say Smart Stuff, Too - Part XXI

From "Meltdown of the climate 'consensus' " by Matt Patterson:

"What does the best evidence now tell us? That man-made global warming is a mere hypothesis that has been inflated by both exaggeration and downright malfeasance, fueled by the awarding of fat grants and salaries to any scientist who'll produce the "right" results."

Global Warming - The Other Side

Sine Al Gore has decided to come out of his brightly-lit bunker, I thought it appropriate to give airtime to what the arguments are that counter his. (Yes, this is long. You have to want it.)

PART ONE


PART TWO


PART THREE


PART FOUR



PART FIVE



PART SIX


PART SEVEN

"Bad science and bad politics"

A succinct recap of the eroded credibility of scientists and organizations (IPCC, I'm talking to you!) that promote the theory of manmade global warming, and how it happened.  An excerpt:

"By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, [activists have] discredited the entire climate-change movement. The political damage will be severe.... Skeptics up, Obama down, cap-and-trade dead.”

They'd Better Check His E-Mails

From the UK Telegraph:

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article

"The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine."

More Evidence That AGW* is Bunk

* AGW = Anthropogenic ("manmade") Global Warming

Britain's David Rose, writing in the UK Daily Mail ("The mini Ice Age starts here") points out several factors disputing the global warming alarmists's arguments. One passage that destroys a cherished alarmist claim -- that Arctic ice will be gone by 2013 -- bears emphasis:

"According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this."

Contrary to what Al Gore and others would have us believe, the science is definitely not settled.

Our Version of M. Moore

Journalist, documentarian and film maker Phelim McAleer has suddenly become a thorn in the global warming alarmists' side. And they're not handling it well. In fact, they're resorting to physical force to silence him.



And here's what "the debate is over" means to Al Gore.



This whole climate change conference in Copenhagen has proven very embarrassing for Gore. Go, Karma!

Karma Kicks Gore in the Rear

"Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up" blared the headline on a (UK) Times Online news article. Gore finally got called down on one of his bogus claims -- by the scientist whose research he was referencing.

From the article: "Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore."

Just How Serious Is Climate Change?

Well, you could say "it depends."

This video by Americans for Prosperity shows what attendees at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen are doing to save the planet from manmade global warmng.

Other People Say Smart Stuff, Too - Part XVIII

In the wake of the revelations of fraud and mafia-like machinations by scientists selling the idea of manmade global warming, Dr. Ian Pilmer had a pithy observation in a UK news story about him:

“If you have to argue your science by using fraud, your science is not valid.”

Global Warming Fraud Exposed

Okay, I wanted to let this story mature a bit before I commented on it. In a nutshell: a hacker obtained e-mails and other documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit – a world-renowned climate change research center.

The unguarded e-mails suggest a couple of things. First, that global warming alarmist scientists around the world manipulated data to support their contention that mankind is responsible for global warming which result in global disaster. One e-mail refers to a “trick” being employed to massage temperature statistics to “hide the decline” (in global temperature.)

Other documents indicate a conspiracy to intimidate and/or blackmail editors at science journals into refusing to publish articles from global warming skeptics. The point that skeptics are "not published enough" in scientific journals has been one of the main arguments made by global warming alarmists. One excerpt:

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”

One article asks if this is "the final nail in the coffin of Anthropogenic Global Warming." Don't count on it. Once politicians get a whiff of a chance to control and tax citizens, it's hard to get them to face reason. What should be an earthquake in the scientific world will likely not get much play in the mainstream media.

Are We All Crazy?

A disturbing presentation (at least part of one) courtesy of TT: