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.

So who can we trust now?

From AOL Health: "Article calls study linking vaccines to autism a fraud."


(The actual article in a British medical journal is here.)


The tradition of ethical science continues.  

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?

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.

The Myth of Consensus Explodes

The American Physical Society, which has a membership of nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on global warming/climate change, and now says that many of its members don't believe in manmade global warming.
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Would someone please tell Congress? (Al Gore already knows.)
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The APS is also sponsoring public depate on the whole charade. One paper published by a member of the APS concluded that the United Nations IPCC report and its claims have been "grossly overstated by IPCC modeling."
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Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called the paper an "exposé of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors."
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I guess fifty thousand skeptical scientists are all "deniers" also. Is it too late to stop global warming legislation?

AIDS Pandemic Claims "Misdirected," Says WHO Expert

I've posted before about the overblown claims "scientists" made about the so-called AIDS epidemic. Now the story comes out that the risk of an AIDS pandemic among heterosexuals was wildly exaggerated. Essentially, unless you live in sub-Saharan Africa, or engage in homosexual sex, or use intravenous drugs, or work in the sex industry, the chance of contracting AIDS is about zero.

Let me reiterate this point -- for twenty years or more we have been blasted with the message that "all of us are at risk" when it came to AIDS. Massive campaigns were mounted to scare us into changing our behavior or face possible extermination. "Experts" were paraded through the media endlessly, repeating the same thing over and over: AIDS was killing huge numbers of people, and it was only going to get worse. One might say that there was a consensus of opinion about the dangers that AIDS posed to the world.

And now, after billions of dollars have been put into the pockets of AIDS activists and researchers, they shrug their shoulders, say "We were wrong, sorry," and walk away. The similarity to the global warming scare is remarkable. Opportunists cash in on the fear of the unknown -- I'm talking about Al Gore, of course, but also any scientist who receives a paycheck for global warming "research" (read "confirmation"). Any scientist who finds evidence contradicting the manmade global warming liturgy is in danger of killing the golden goose and must be destroyed.

In five, ten or twenty years, global warming scientists will do what they have done with the AIDS scare -- say they were wrong and walk away without a backward glance. Meanwhile, millions will have starved from food shortages, economies will teeter and collapse, and billions of people will have their lifestyles turned back a hundred years -- because of "misdirected" alarmism.

Global Warming: The Last Decade

A report from BBC News quotes scientists as saying, "The global temperature has not increased since 1998." Then follows the usual harumph, harumph as they explain that the temperature over the last ten years is not as important as the "long-term warming trend." The World Meteorological Organization says that the Earth's temperature has risen 0.74 degrees Celsius since the beginnng of the twentieth century.

Meanwhile, there is a disagreement as to which year was the warmest. NASA says it was 2005, while the UK's Hadley Centre says it was 1998.

A question comes to mind. If these two scientific agencies can't even agree on what the temperature was in a particular year within the last decade, how can they measure with any confidence the precise temperature of a year more than a century ago, when measuring instruments were crude and inaccurate? Especially when the declared increase is less than one degree?

Doubts, doubts. It's not unreasonable to have doubts about the claims.

Happiness is a Warm Light Bulb

A recent column written by H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, highlights something I've been saying for a long time -- much of the research done by "manmade global warming" scientists is sloppy and inaccurate.

The gist of their argument, of course, is that climate-caused catastrophes will occur in the future due to mankind's activities (unless the United States pays exorbitant amounts of money to the United Nations while at the same time turning our society's calendar back 100 years.) This argument is championed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Burnett points out that forecasting researchers have compiled 140 principles that can be applied to a broad range of disciplines, including science, sociology, economics and politics. Even if global warming research scientists had collected accurate data on historical temperatures (which they have not; see my discussion of the discredited "hockey stick" graph) they would still need to use sound methods to predict possible future outcomes.

From Burnett's article: "In a recent NCPA study, Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong used these principles to audit the climate forecasts in the Fourth Assessment Report. Messrs. Green and Armstrong found the IPCC clearly violated 60 of the 127 principles relevant in assessing the IPCC predictions. Indeed, it could only be clearly established that the IPCC followed 17 of the more than 127 forecasting principles critical to making sound predictions.

"A good example of a principle clearly violated is "Make sure forecasts are independent of politics." Politics shapes the IPCC from beginning to end. Legislators, policymakers and/or diplomatic appointees select (or approve) the scientists — at least the lead scientists — who make up the IPCC. In addition, the summary and the final draft of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report was written in collaboration with political appointees and subject to their approval."

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Global warming alarmists want changes on a massive scale made to the US economy and society. Our politicians have taken up the argument, beginning with outlawing incandescent light bulbs. Interference in our daily lives based on a theory supported by flawed science should astound and enrage anyone with a bit of common sense. They have managed to get laws enacted based simply on fear (and a fear of bad publicity for the politicians.)

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Our side loses if we simply sit idly by and watch it happen.

All Things Warm and Wonderful

A quick catch-up on some of the recent news on global warming.....

In a recent column by Bill Steigerwald, we find a few interesting facts: The Arctic ice cap, represented as melting so much that New York would be under water, and hapless polar bears were drowning, is now at nearly normal levels, and one expert says it's thicker than usual in some spots.

Another researcher, California meteroologist Greg Watts, finds that 70% of NASA's groundweather measuring sites fail to meet the government's own standards because they are not 100 feet from a building, are on blazing rooftops, sit next to air-conditioner exhaust fans, etc. These 1200+ sites are used to measure the "official" average annual temperature of the United States.

This news has been very under-reported in the US Media.


Real Scientific Minds
Global warming scientists who use the scientific method are starting to fight back. More than 19,000 scientists have signed a petition saying global warming is probably natural and not a crisis. (The complete list can be seen at www.oism.org/pproject.)

The International Conference on Climate Change is meeting this week in New York City. Its topic is "Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?" and according to the announcement, "More than 400 scientists, economists and experts will meet ... to challenge the claim that global warming is a 'crisis.'"

Common sense on this issue seems to be gaining traction.


Proof that Cable Started Off Right
John Coleman, who founded the Weather Channel, wants to sue Al Gore on this whole business of global warming being a hoax. In an interview on Fox News, Coleman said, "I see absolutely no evidence that CO2, carbon dioxide, is causing any warm-up in temperatures. I don't think it's happening. I'm asking the question: If Al Gore knows that CO2 forcing is invalid -- isn't really happening -- and he goes ahead and sells these carbon credits for millions of dollars, is he committing financial fraud? That is the question."

And he goes even further. Read more about it here.

Our side is winning.

Computer Models Fail to Predict Climate

This article is about -- aw, you know what it's about.

Al Gore's Snowjob - A Video Response

Since so many people were convinced by Al Gore's propaganda movie "An Inconvenient Truth," maybe the best way to refute his claims is visually. The Heartland Institute thinks so.

How UN "Scientists" Work

Much is made by global warming alarmists about the UN's Intergovernmental Panal on Climate Change (IPCC) and its findings, namely that catastrophic global warming (due to mankind's activities) can only be averted through government action.

An article in the Washington Post discusses a similar "crisis" that the UN has addressed for the last several years: the AIDS epidemic. The Post article is entitled "U.N. to Cut Estimate Of AIDS Epidemic" with the subhead "Population With Virus Overstated by Millions."

Some quotes from the article:

"JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 19 -- The United Nations' top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

"Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS.

"The United Nations' AIDS agency, known as UNAIDS....has drawn criticism in recent years [for] being politicized and not scientifically rigorous."

In essence the article says that UN "scientists" have claimed a larger catastrophe than actually existed in order to increase funding and political clout.

Sound familiar?

The Debate Ain't Over Yet, Al

John Stossel started his column "Don't Look to Government to Cool Down the Planet" with a reference to his other job:

Recently on "20/20," I said "give me a break" to Al Gore for
claiming that the global-warming debate is over and suggesting that all dissenters were in it for the money. I interviewed independent scientists who say Gore is wrong.

In this standout column, Stossel also adds a link to the Science and Public Policy Institute, which prominently displays on its website an article titled ""35 Inconvenient Truths: The Errors in Al Gore's Movie."

Stossel cites experts who criticize the UN's attempt to promote global warming alarmism. "Consensus is the stuff of politics, not science," says Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute. The scientific process ought to be left to play itself out with as little political bias as possible. Politically influenced research is poison to science.

Part of the problem is the IPCC itself. Reiter points out, "It's the inter-governmental panel on climate change. It's governments who nominate people. It's inherently political. Many of the scientists are on the IPCC because they view global warming as a problem that needs to be fixed. They have a vested interest."

Stossel also cites a member of the UN's "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" (IPCC) who disputes the so-called "consensus" view and reiterates the argument that trying to control CO2 emissions (for the purpose of slowing global warming) is ineffective and a waste of time.

This should be must-reading for everyone, but especially for those who want to clobber those blockheads who insist that the "global warming debate is over" -- blockheads like Al Gore.

A Quick Thought On: Al Gore

Al Gore makes much about the so-called "consensus" of scientific opinion that he claims supports his theory on global warming. He has recently begun the campaign to stop the media from presenting both sides of the story. Or, as he says in his propaganda piece An Inconvenient Truth, "The debate is over." In other words, the scientists voted, his side won, and we should stop checking.

The reason he wants to stop the scientific "vote" now is that he's lost every other recount he was involved in.

Challenge to "Consensus" on Global Warming

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.

The rest of the article is here.

Global Warming Claims DEBUNKED

It's been a while since I addressed global warming. Lately what's bothered me has been the absolute rage and poison the global warming alarmists have shown towards those who question their claims. It's an unattractive blend of arrogance and venom.

Speaking at the American leg of Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., referring to skeptics of man-made global warming, said "This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors."

From Al Gore: "There has been an organized campaign....to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community. In actuality, there is very little disagreement. This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science." And incredibly, "We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion."

Okay, that "consensus" bit again. In his money-making propaganda piece "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore cites a study of 928 scientific papers, none of which (Gore claims) disagree with the "consensus" opinion.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, conducted his own study of the exact same papers, and found that "only one-third backed the consensus view, while only 1 percent did so explicitly."

Meanwhile another study conducted in 2003 indicates that climate scientists are actually about evenly split over the question of whether climate change is primarily due to mankind's activities. In fact, slightly more strongly disagreed with that position than strongly agreed.

Another set of claims are: 1) The hottest 10 years in the last century have all occurred since 1980. 2) 1998 was the hottest year on record, and 2001 was the second-hottest. 3) January-March, 2002, was the hottest such period on record.

In fact, NASA recently corrected faulty data regarding its temperatures. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.

Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900.

SUMMARY: The claims of an "overwhelming consensus" and "the '90s were the hottest decade in history, and '98 the hottest year" have been debunked.

Cool News About Global Warming

A recent press release from "The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works" detailed how many former "pro global warming" scientists have changed their minds, and are now skeptics.

Dr. David Evans, a mathematician and engineer who formerly did carbon counting for the Australian government, gave a credible, logical reason for his conversion:

“I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical,” Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog.

“But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds,” Evans wrote.

“As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’”

The List

Other experts quoted in the article include Dr. Claude Allegre, a top French geophysicist; geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta; Dr. Nir Shaviv, a top Israeli scientist; Dr. Tad Murty, former Science Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada; Dr. David Bellamy, UK botanist; Dr. Chris de Freitas, climate scientist at the University of Auckland, NZ; meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson; Hans H.J. Labohm, global warming author and economist; paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson of Carlton University in Ottawa; physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw; paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa; environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa...

You get the idea. There's a lot of 'em, and they have very impressive credentials.

Next Come the Enviro-Gulags

Scientists who questioned mankind's impact on climate change have received death threats, according to a recent article in the UK Telegraph.

The debate on global warming has been "hijacked" by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions, reads the article.

Some quotes:

"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and [those scientists] feel threatened." -- Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada.

"Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges... Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science." -- Richard Lindzen, professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"The Green movement has hijacked the issue of climate change. It is ludicrous to suggest the only way to deal with the problem is to start micro managing everyone, which is what environmentalists seem to want to do." -- Dr Myles Allen, Oxford University.

"Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system." -- Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist.

Other People Say Smart Stuff VII

Mark Alexander has written another in the growing list of articles elucidating the growing realization among informed citizens that manmade global warming, and Al Gore's claim to enviro-nazi sainthood, are about to be revealed for the shams they are.

One excerpt:

For instance, Gore insists that the increased incidence of hurricanes, tornadoes, drought and other weather phenomena is the direct result of global warming.

Renowned meteorologist Dr. William Gray takes exception: "The degree to which you believe global warming is causing major hurricanes," he says, "is inversely proportional to your knowledge about these storms."

In a recent issue of Discover Magazine, Gray, described by Discover's editors as one of "the world's most famous hurricane experts," wrote, "This human-induced global-warming thing ... is grossly exaggerated. ... I'm not disputing there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930s and '40s, and then there was global cooling in the middle '40s to the early '70s. Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical ... about this global-warming thing. But no one asks us."