There is no significant scientifically established
correlation between human activity and the warming of the earth's
climate.
The Climategate scandal caused independent scientists and laymen around
the globe to take a much closer look at the information that was being
presented in support of Anthropogenic (i.e., man-made) Global Warming
(AGW), and the overwhelming conclusion was that the there was no credible
and conclusive evidence to support the hypothesis. And it was further
shown that the scenarios predicting that the planet was nearing the
tipping point for a series of catastrophic climate disasters, was totally
invalidated by an examination of the facts, as well as a review of the
earth's climate history. What came to light during this investigation
was the following:
Climate science research is almost exclusively funded by
governments around the world. Between 1989-2009, the U.S.
government alone spent $79 billion. To keep the money flowing,
it was necessary to have a compelling "story" of a pending
apocalypse to justify that sort of investment. The narrative of
global Armageddon became the researchers' only fixed "fact", with
all scientific data being freely manipulated as necessary in order
to fit that predetermined scenario.
Politicians with a totalitarian bent saw the regulation of carbon
as a potent tool for generating massive new tax revenues and for
redistributing the world's wealth, while at the same time,
justifying the expansion of regulatory control over businesses and
the personal activities of all citizens. Consequently, a symbiotic
relationship was established between the politicians who handsomely
funded the research, and the climate scientists, who fabricated a
useful justification for government intervention.
People well connected to the government, such as Al Gore, saw an
opportunity to make a financial killing by manipulating the
environmental legislation in a favorable way. Gore and others
invested heavily in carbon trading schemes which would generate
millions in profits once the pending cap-and-trade laws were
passed. These people then engaged in their own propaganda
campaigns in order to influence a favorable outcome. Gore's film,
An Inconvenient Truth was one notable example.
The information presented below chronicles the facts that have been
uncovered as a consequence of the many investigations being conducted
subsequent to the original leaked East Anglia Climate Research Unit
documents which triggered the Climategate scandal. A number of people
have done an excellent job of summarizing the skeptics viewpoint. After
reviewing the material below, I would recommend further investigation
at the sources listed in the Skepticism section.
Climategate Overview:
Those of us keeping abreast of the climate literature have known for quite
some time that the explanation for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)
relating to climate change, was far from the entire story, with almost all
dissenting opinion having been actively suppressed. But the full extent
of the problem was not made clear until November 19, 2009, when
approximately 160 megabytes
of data files and email correspondence was leaked from Britain's
government-funded University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU).
An initial review of this material revealed four damning facts:
Current global temperature data was being actively manipulated in
order to conceal real-world temperature declines that did not
support the computerized climate models that were being used to
predict runaway global warming. Additionally, historical data
showing that during the Medieval Warm Period (900-1300 AD), the
earth had been warmer than what was seen today, thereby shattering
any causal connection between man made CO2 and
temperature rise.
For quite some time, as is a normal part of any scientific
peer-review process, independent scientists and organizations had
been requesting the release of the raw temperature data used by
the CRU in determining its results. Nevertheless, the CRU had
continually refused to make their data available. (And now we
understand why!) Additional requests for the data were made under
the UK's Freedom of Information laws, and the scientists at the CRU
are seen discussing how to circumvent these laws, including
destroying correspondence and the temperature data itself, rather
than allow it to be seen by others.
A review of the source code for the computerized models used to
predict the significant global temperature gains being reported,
showed that much of it was completely unintelligible to the
programmers charged with maintain it, and in some cases, these
programs could not be made to reproduce similar results previously
obtained by others using the same code base and data sets. This
code was in a constant state of manipulation in order to produce
predetermined results.
The correspondence shows a small group of scientists frequently
discussing ways to subvert the normal scientific peer-review
process. This included having climate papers only be "reviewed"
by one another, or by people already fully committed to the belief
in AGW, stopping publication of any papers that were skeptical of
AGW, and working to remove editors from scientific journals that
were willing to publish any dissenting opinions.
Soon after the release of the CRU files, this event came to be known as
Climategate. However, none of this came as a real shock to a
group of skeptical scientists who had been questioning the AGW results
for some time, but had been effectively barred from publishing their
analyses in standard scientific journals and media outlets. In this way,
the general public had been manipulated through the presentation of an
unchallenged propagandist viewpoint, into supporting drastic government
interventionist policies in order to stave off the supposed pending crisis
to all of humanity.
The Facts Revealed:
The real impact of the Climategate scandal was to cause people
across the globe to finally begin to examine all of the information used
by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
in support of its assessment report, used by every government to back up
its environmental policies. Let's examine the results of this
investigations.
Description
Date
Sources
All AGW computer models predicted a steady increase in global
temperatures. However, for the past 11+ years, the global
temperatures have not increased, and in fact, decreased, despite
a continuing rise in CO2, countering the theory of a
causal connection between increasing carbon dioxide and rising
temperatures.
A close group of climate scientists (Phil Jones, Michael Mann,
Keith Briffa, Malcolm Hughes, Robert Bradley, Tim Osborn, et al)
"peer-reviewed" one another's papers, insuring that only those
which supported the view of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)
as an imminent worldwide danger, would make it through their
process. Quoting Phil Jones:
"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC
report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have
to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
Scientific journals which published climate research were either
headed up by "true believers", or else pressure was applied by the
AGW scientists to insure that dissenting opinions were never
published. Non-compliant journals were harassed and "punished".
"The Soon & Baliunas paper couldn't have cleared a 'legitimate'
peer review process anywhere. That leaves only one possibility--that
the peer-review process at Climate Research has been hijacked by a
few skeptics on the editorial board."
"I told Mike that I believed our only choice was to ignore this
paper. They've already achieved what they wanted--the claim of a
peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now,
but the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper,
which will be ignored by the community on the whole..."
"This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not
publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature'."
"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..."
"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."
The East Anglia basic historical climate data used to forecast
future climate trends was heavily manipulated to "produce" the
desired results.
"I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan
material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying
to milk something out of that. ... I don't think it'd be productive
to try and juggle the chronology statistics any more than I
already have"
"So, if we show Keith's series in this plot, we have to comment
that 'something else' is responsible for the discrepancies in this
case. Perhaps Keith can help us out a bit by explaining the
processing that went into the series and the potential factors that
might lead to it being 'warmer' than the Jones et al and Mann et al
series?? We would need to put in a few words in this regard.
Otherwise, the skeptics have an field day casting doubt on our
ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates"
"Indeed, if the non-temperature signal that causes the decline in
tree-ring density begins before 1960, then a short 1931-60 period
might yield a more biased result than using a longer 1881-1960
period."
The code for the computer climate models was freely manipulated
in order to force the desired results. Despite their best efforts,
the programmers could never get these programs to run properly,
occasionally producing nonsensical results. And the data sets used
by these programs were clearly in a hopeless state. Here are
samples of some of the code comments left by the programmers:
"stop in 1960 to avoid the decline"
"stop in 1940 to avoid the decline"
"but why does the sum-of-squares parameter OpTotSq go negative?!!"
"and already I have that familiar Twilight Zone sensation."
"this renders the station counts totally meaningless."
"Oh yeah - there is no 'supposed', I can make it up. So I have :-)"
"As we can see, even I'm cocking it up!"
"yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our
databases"
"recent decline in tree-ring density has been ARTIFICIALLY REMOVED"
"Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!"
"artificially removed (i.e. corrected) the decline"
"we know the file starts at yr 440, but we want nothing till 1400"
"It's botch after botch after botch."
"Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue
the case for junking the inherited program suite."
"As far as I can see, this renders the [weather] station counts
totally meaningless."
"So what's going on? I don't see how the 'final' precip file can
have been produced from the 'final' precipitation database, even
though the dates imply that. The obvious conclusion is that the
precip file must have been produced before 23 Dec 2003, and then
redated (to match others?) in Jan 04."
"You can't imagine what this has cost me -- to actually allow the
operator to assign false WMO [World Meteorological Organization]
codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially
when dealing with a 'Master' database of dubious provenance ..."
"OH F--- THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and
just when I thought it was done, I'm hitting yet another problem
that's based on the hopeless state of our databases."
East Anglia's Phil Jones wrote that he was using Michael Mann's
"Nature trick" to "hide the decline" in actual
temperature data. This was the same "trick" previously used by
Mann to produce the infamous "hockey stick" temperature graphs
which has since been totally discredited.
East Anglia scientists broke the UK's Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) laws by refused to release the raw global temperature record
data used in their climate computer models, despite repeated
requests by scientists interested in attempting to review and
reproduce their results.
When East Anglia scientists could no longer evade the FOIA requests
to release their data, they then reported that all of the original
global temperature data had been conveniently destroyed, insuring
that no one would ever be able to check their results. However, in
an email from Phil Jones to Michael Mann dated 02/02/05, Jones
states:
"The two MMs [Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick] have been after
the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a
Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the
file rather than send to anyone."
Shortly after the East Anglia scandal broke, it was revealed that
the New Zealand government's National Institute of Water and
Atmospheric Research (NIWA) was also found to have been
manipulating its own temperature data to manufacture a rising
trend.
Scientists from East Anglia created the website RealClimate.org in order to
promote the anthropogenic global (AGW) warming message. William
Connolley, a Green Party activist and software engineer, was one
of the nine member on the newly formed team. He became an editor
at Wikipedia and, starting in 2003, began rewriting climate-related
entries so as to eliminate all references to information
contradicting the AGW story.
"'He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the
scientists who were skeptical of the band,' Solomon explains.
'Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world's most
distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets,
followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie
Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.'"
"Through his role as a Wikipedia administrator, Connolley is said
to have created or rewritten 5,428 unique Wikipedia entries."
"'When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he
removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions
disappeared at his hand,' Solomon wrote. 'When he disapproved of
the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred
— over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him
found themselves blocked from making further contributions.'"
"Facts about the Medieval Warm Period and criticism of global
warming doctrine were purportedly scrubbed from Wikipedia's pages."
It was next discovered that, like East Anglia, NASA had been
stonewalling Freedom of Information requests for over two years.
Once the information was released, it was discovered that they too
had been manipulating the temperature data and issuing false findings.
Additional research into the temperature data for both Darwin,
Australia and Russia show the extent of fraud used in manipulating
the temperature data.
A researcher reported that important tree ring growth data, used
as a proxy for temperature reconstruction, was held by Queens
University of Belfast, but that the University refused to make the
data available for analysis.
A former top climate scientist and NASA manager was convicted of
defrauding the government of $50,000 by diverting these NASA
climate funds to his wife's company, highlighting the role that
government funding of climate research plays in driving the
researchers to produce "results" that will keep the funds flowing.
Ground-based temperature data sets such as those maintained by the
Hadley Centre Climatic Research Unit, greatly exaggerate temperature
rise when compared to the more reliable satellite-based readings
taken of the lower troposphere.
The IPCC governmental advisory report's claimed that the Himalayan
glaciers were receding faster than anywhere else in the world and
would be gone by 2035. Whoops, that estimate came from a
report that predicted their demise by the year 2350.
Sorry, for the alarm, it was just a typo! Additionally, the
Himalayan glaciers were reported to currently cover 500,000 square
kilometers when, in fact, the actual glaciers span roughly
33,000 square kilometers. Missed it by just over 1,500%!
It was also revealed that Syed Hasnain, who made the original
prediction, realized this and other errors in the IPCC report
back in 2008, but did not inform the head of the IPCC, saying:
"My job is not to point out mistakes."
Of course, it was also later determined by Michael Zemp from the
World Glacier Monitoring Service, that:
"There are simply no observations available to make these sorts
of statements."
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN climate change panel, said
that besides the Himalayan glacier error, there may be other errors
in the IPCC report, but was not more specific.
The IPCC advisory report's claim that global warming is already
affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters such as
hurricanes and floods, was shown to be based upon a 2007
unpublished report that had not been subjected to peer-review. By
the time the paper was actually published in 2008, it included the
disclaimer:
"We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship
between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."
It was discovered that the IPCC claim that global warming might
destroy 40% of the Brazilian rainforest, was based upon an
unsubstantiated claim by eco-campaigners who had little scientific
expertise.
It was discovered that the IPCC report incorrectly stated that 55%
of the Netherlands was below sea level, when the actual figure is
only 26%. Fact checking at the IPCC was so lax, that even simple
errors such as this could and did find their way into its report.
The IPCC published inaccurate data on the global production of wave
powered electricity, which was also wrongly attributed to the
website of a commercial wave-energy company.
While doomsday predictions point to recent annual decreases in
the total amount of Arctic ice, the record increases in the
accumulating Antarctic ice and snow is conveniently ignored.
"The doomsday portraits of Antarctica's glaciers reacting to a
global climate change should be blurry at best. Consensus on
changes in ice sheet thickness and their causes is difficult,
and therefore of limited use on either side of the global
warming debate."
Data concerning the warming of other planets in the solar system,
indicating the sun as a major influence of earth's temperature
rise, has been ignored by the AGW supporters.
"But how do we square the fact that almost every planet in our
solar system is simultaneously undergoing temperature change
and volatile weather patterns. Does this not suggest that
global warming is a natural cycle as a result of the evolving
nature of the sun?"
"Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C
since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on
Earth over approximately the same period. Since there is no
known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates
could be natural phenomena."
Warming trends in temperature data sets around the world are now
seen to be due to local factors such as land development (Urban
Heat Island Effect), and not attributable to actual global warming.
Any actual warming experienced across the earth during the past 30
years is well within the normal temperature fluxuations seen at
least twice before in the past 1,000 years. Quoting John Christy,
a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in
Huntsville, and a former lead author on the IPCC:
"The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of
global change"
Phil Jones, the East Anglia Climate Research Unit scientist at the
center of the Climategate scandal, admitted the following:
He lacks "organizational skills", has trouble "keeping
track" of information, and that his record keeping is
"not as good as it should be", as excuses for how he came
to "lose" (some say intentionally destroy) all of the
important original temperature data.
The world was quite possibly warmer in medieval times than
now (as many have been reporting for years), suggesting
that global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon after
all.
There has been no "statistically significant" warming of
the earth over the past 15 years.
An examination of the data used to support the IPCC claims of a
man-made increase in hurricanes and cyclones was cherry-picked to
show the resired results. When all data was examined, no
statistically significant increase is observed.
In Britain, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Royal
Statistical Society (RSS) both call for scientific data and
evidence compiled by climate researchers to be made publicly
available for scrutiny. The RSC said:
"The apparent resistance of researchers from the CRU at the
University of East Anglia to disclose research data has been
widely portrayed as an indication of a lack of integrity in
scientific research. ... It may also be necessary to incorporate
an independent auditing system into peer review with the ability
to demand access to raw data sets to ensure best practices are
being adhered to."
Dr Don Keiller, deputy head of life sciences at Anglia Ruskin
University said:
"What these emails reveal is a detailed and systematic conspiracy
to prevent other scientists gaining access to CRU data sets. Such
obstruction strikes at the very heart of the scientific method,
that is the scrutiny and verification of data and results by one's
peers."
Professor Darrel Ince, from the department of computer science at
the Open University said:
"A number of climate scientists have refused to publish their
computer programs; what I want to suggest is that this is both
unscientific behaviour and, equally importantly ignores a major
problem: that scientific software has got a poor reputation for
error."
Three of the world's four global temperature datasets have been
shown to be be seriously tainted. This includes the data from:
1. East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU); 2. NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies (GISS); and 3. National Climatic Data
Center (NCDC). The remaining Japanese dataset remains to be
investigated.
Japanese scientists, investigating arctic wind patterns determined
that:
"Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in
recent years is down [sic] to
the region's swirling winds and is not a direct result of global
warming"
"The study does not question that global warming is also melting
ice in the Arctic, but it could raise doubts about high-profile
claims that the region has passed a climate "tipping point" that
could see ice loss sharply accelerate in coming years."
The UN admitted that a 2006 study showing that livestock (meat)
production was responsible for 18% of the total greenhouse gas
emissions — exceeding those produced by transportation
— was flawed and overstated the impact. The UN had used
this study to recommend less meat and milk production worldwide
in the name of environmentalism.
Nils-Axel Mörner, the formerly chairman of the International
Commission on Sea Level Change (INQUA), after spending the past
35 years studying sea levels around the world, declared that the
talk about rising sea levels was a "colossal scare story".
Quoting from the article:
"Despite fluctuations down as well as up, 'the sea is not rising,'
he says. 'It hasn't risen in 50 years.' If there is any rise this
century it will 'not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an
uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm'. And quite apart from examining
the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent
heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by
Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about."
"The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so
certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent
wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions,
whereas his findings are based on 'going into the field to observe
what is actually happening in the real world'."
Mike Hulme and Martin Mahony, from the School of Environmental
Sciences at the University of East Anglia, write in a paper
entitled, Climate Change: what do we know about the
IPCC?, that the consensus claims made by the IPCC in
support of manmade global warming are fabrications. They state
(pages 10-11):
"Claims such as '2,500 of the world's leading scientists have
reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant
influence on the climate' are disingenuous. That particular
consensus judgement, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is
reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of
detection and attribution studies; other IPCC authors are experts
in other fields."
Over 31,000 American scientists have signed a petition stating
that there is no convincing evidence that human-related activities
are causing catastrophic climate change, and urge the U.S.
government to reject the Kyoto global warming agreement, along
with all other similar proposals.
Arctic ice volume has increased 25% since May of 2008.
"In 2008, less than half of the ice (47%) was greater than two
metres thick. Now, more than 75% of the ice is greater than two
metres thick. In 2008, 18% of the ice was more than three metres
thick. This year that number has increased to 28%. There has
been nearly across the board ice thickening since 2008. There
was slightly more 4-5 metre ice in 2008, due to the big crunch
in the summer of 2007."
In response to criticism over it corrupted temperature data (due
to urban heat effects) and the fact that 90% of their climate
measuring sites do not meet the government's own standards for
obtaining accurate temperature measurements, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has simply redefined the
nature of its collection methods so as to reassert the validity
of the use of its data. On the
NOAA website, it makes the following statement:
"But for detecting climate change, the concern is not the absolute
temperature — whether a station is reading warmer or cooler
than a nearby station placed on grass — but how that
temperature changes over time. "
All of which is so much handwaving, because if temperature
increases are due to urban heat island effects, then it makes no
difference whether those increases are absolute or relative, they
have nothing to do with actual global temperature trends. NOAA
then goes on to state:
"Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United
States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years? No."
As the article's author points out:
"This is another clearly deceptive political answer. If one
actually looks at the temperature trend in the United States
over the last 50 years, you will see something quite different
from what NOAA says. From 1960 to the late 1970s, the United
States temperature was clearly falling. From that point on,
there was a two-decade warming trend through the 1980s and
1990s. That warming trend ended in the late 1990s and there
has been no warming since."
The IPCC apparently relied upon the opinion of a single scientist,
J. Lean, to author the chapter in its climate report which states
that solar activity is not a major influencer of earth's climate.
This conclusion runs counter to scientific research put forward by
others such as Dr. Willie Soon, Henrik Svensmark and Nir Shaviv.
The Norwegian government first noted the lack of evidence backing
up the IPCC conclusion, and a representative stated:
"I would encourage the IPCC to [re-]consider having only one solar
physicist on the lead author team of such an important chapter.
In particular since the conclusion of this section about solar
forcing hangs on one single paper in which J. Lean is a coauthor."
The article continues with the following statement:
"Dr. Soon has presented solar irradiance data showing global
temperatures during the past century have almost precisely
mirrored solar output. The Danish National Space Center further
reported that solar output by the end of the 20th century had
reached its highest amount in at least 1,000 years."
Long after the infamous "hockey stick" temperature graph was
discredited by showing that the data used to produce it had been
heavily manipulated by its author Michael Mann, Mann himself now
back-pedals in an attempt to distance himself from accepting
full responsibility for its intent and use. As quoted from an
article in the UK Telegraph:
"[S]peaking to the BBC recently, Prof Mann, a climatologist at
Pennsylvania State University, said he had always made clear
there were "uncertainties" in his work.
'I always thought it was somewhat misplaced to make it a central
icon of the climate change debate,' he said. "
A new review of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment
Agency, concluded that the IPCC's 2007 report was biased towards
overstating the negative consequences of any global warming,
while ignoring the beneficial effects.
"Maarten Hajer, director of the Netherlands Environmental
Assessment Agency, which is funded by the Dutch government, said
the IPCC's summary conclusions focused on the potential dangers
of climate change because 'that is what the politicians wanted
to know.'"
"But since the 2007 report's publication, he said, 'the times have
changed,' and the public now is demanding a fuller, more
transparent look at how the IPCC comes up with its conclusions.'"
In addition, the Dutch agency determined that the IPCC had made
"another significant error" in projecting a 50-60% decrease
in anchovy production off the west coast of Africa, due to
"an erroneous interpretation of the literature references."
"The literature in fact suggests a 50% to 60% decrease in
'extreme wind and seawater turbulence, with some effects on the
anchovy population that were not quantified'."
It is hard to believe that a supposedly scientific community, using
peer review procedures, could allow errors of this magnitude to
propagate through its literature for years by accident. Every new
fact uncovered casts doubt on the validity and objectivity of all
other aspects of the IPCC organization and on every one of its
conclusions.
On April 14, 2010, The University of East Anglia reported that
their own internal
investigation, headed up by Lord Oxburgh, had concluded that
Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, and other members of the Climate Research
Unit (CRU) had conducted themselves in an exemplary manner, and
all were exonerated of any wrongdoing.
However, on July 19th, Anthony Watts reports:
"Now from Bishop Hill we learn that it appears that the Oxburgh
investigation let Dr. Phil Jones endorse what evidence (papers
he's published) to review."
So much for conduction an impartial inquiry! For additional
information on the true nature of the "investigation", see
the accompanying Climate Audit article by Steve McIntyre.
[It also makes one wonder about the independence and accuracy
of a similar internal investigation conducted by Penn State, which
similarly cleared its professor, Michael Mann, of any wrongdoing.]
Further research into the satellite-based weather data compiled
by the U.S. government-funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) reveals that the record is seriously
corrupted and may be inaccurately reporting values up to 15
degrees Fahrenheit in excess of actual real-world temperatures.
For example:
Reports that temperatures in the great lakes had increased
by 10-15 degrees where unfounded and completely at odds with
common sense observations.
NOAA reported idiotic surface temperatures as high as 600
degrees F in residential areas of Wisconsin and a boiling
400+ degrees F in northern Lake Michigan.
Investigations have revealed that the temperature sensors is at
least five of the weather satellites are seriously degraded and
reporting inaccurately.
"The U.S. physicist [Dr Charles R. Anderson]
agrees there may now be thousands of
temperatures in the range of 415-604 degrees Fahrenheit
automatically fed into computer climate models and contaminating
climate models with a substantial warming bias. This may have
gone on for a far longer period than the five years originally
identified. Anderson continues, 'One has to marvel at either
the scientific incompetence this reveals or the completely
unethical behavior of NOAA and its paid researchers that is
laid open before us.'"
"Dr. Anderson sums up saying; 'It is now perfectly clear that
there are no reliable worldwide temperature records and that
we have little more than anecdotal information on the temperature
history of the Earth.'"
The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the carbon "offset" trading
project which was initiated by political insiders like Al Gore,
to make a fortune off of the anticipated draconian "Cap-and-Trade"
regulations that were to come out of Washington D.C. and other
governmental bodies, collapsed, due in no small part to the
changing political winds resulting from the Climategate affair.
"Unlike most real markets, the carbon market was created by banks
and governments so that new investment opportunities could
seamlessly dovetail with specific government policies. It's a
fantasy casino based on a doctrine of pure science fiction.
Certainly, gaming the system has always been at the top on the
agenda of the new green eco-trader. Most people, investors
included, might innocently ask the fundamental question, "what's
the point of having a CO2 commodities market?" The answer to that
question should be obvious by now, and you can certainly look to
the initial stakeholders in the various international climate
trading bodies for a "Who's Who" list of individuals that have
actively been pushing the global warming concept from its
inception."
The Global Warming Policy Foundation of the UK reports that an
international panel's review of all 18,531 sources referenced
in the UN's IPCC report reveal that 5,587 were not peer reviewed,
qualifying them as "grey literature" rather than as sound
science, and despite IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri's statement:
"The IPCC uses only peer-reviewed scientific literature."
R. S. Knox and D. H. Douglass, from the Department of Physics and
Astronomy, University of Rochester, recently published a paper
in the International Journal of Geosciences titled, Recent
energy balance of Earth, which disputes the ocean warming
data and conclusions previously reported by J. M. Lyman and others.
Rather than showing a positive rate of change resulting in a net
energy storage increase, the data actually demonstrates a negative
rate of change. As stated in the abstract:
"A recently published estimate of Earth's global warming trend is
0.63 ± 0.28 W/m2, as calculated from ocean heat content
anomaly data spanning 1993-2008. This value is not representative
of the recent (2003-2008) warming/cooling rate because of a
'flattening' that occurred around 2001-2002. Using only 2003-2008
data from Argo floats, we find by four different algorithms that
the recent trend ranges from -0.010 to -0.160 W/m2 with a typical
error bar of ±0.2 W/m2. These results fail to support the
existence of a frequently-cited large positive computed radiative
imbalance."
The InterAcademy Council (IAC), a consortium of the world's top
scientific academies, conducted a review of the the UN's IPCC
report and determined the following:
"A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change found there was 'little evidence' for its claims
about global warming."
"It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of
climate change and made 'substantive findings' based on little
proof."
Also of interest is the following comment concerning IPCC
chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri:
"Dr Pachauri has been accused of a conflict of interest, which he
denies, after it emerged that he has business interests attracting
millions of pounds in funding. One, the Energy Research Institute,
is set to receive up to £10 million in grants from taxpayers
over the next five years."
The faulty and manufactured global climate data was used to craft
the Kyoto
Protocol, which has then become the justification for
significant pieces of legislation, such as California's
Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Once this legislation
was in place, regulators then applied tactical lessons learned from
the Climategate "scientists", by exaggerating their estimates of
pollution levels in order to further support their intervention
into both personal behavior and business processes. As the San
Francisco Chronicle reports:
"California grossly miscalculated pollution levels in a scientific
analysis used to toughen the state's clean-air standards [...]
The pollution estimate in question was too high - by 340
percent, according to the California Air Resources Board"
[Emphasis added]
"Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board,
offered no explanation when The Chronicle questioned her
about the diesel emissions miscalculation. [...] Nichols was
emphatic, though, when asked whether she has concerns about other
scientific calculations made by air board scientists. 'No, no, no,
no, no, no, no and no,' she said."
What type of person maintain such rigid adherence to data that has
already been shown to be off by 340 percent? This is only possible
for those who have arrived at their conclusion independent from the
data in the first place!
On October 8, 2010, Hal Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Physics at
the University of California, Santa Barbara, resigned from the
American Physical Society (APS) after sixty-seven years of
membership. Here are a few excerpts from his
letter of resignation:
"For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being
an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am
forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from
the Society.
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. I would almost
make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this
challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone
along with it.
[...]
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no
longer represents me ..."
William
Connolley, a climate science blogger, was stripped of his
editing position at
Wikipedia, for his actions
in falsifying and distorting the encyclopedia's climate science
record.
"His career as a global warming propagandist has now been stopped,
following a unanimous verdict that came down today through an
arbitration proceeding conducted by Wikipedia. In the decision,
a slap-down for the once-powerful Connolley by his peers, he has
been barred from participating in any article, discussion or forum
dealing with global warming. In addition, because he rewrote
biographies of scientists and others he disagreed with, to either
belittle their accomplishments or make them appear to be frauds,
Wikipedia barred him — again unanimously — from
editing biographies of those in the climate change field."
Upset with a cultural trend that is now moving away from a belief
in the inevitability of an AGW climate crisis, the American
Geophysical Union (AGU) has organized a group of climate
researchers to fight back in an attempt to reignite a fire under
this issue, which would then insure continued government research
funding and the imposition of carbon legislation that is now all
but dead. As John Abraham of St. Thomas University said:
"This group feels strongly that science and politics can't be
divorced ..."
"The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has
been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed."
If the AGU is not willing to rely upon the "truth" of
their position, then what are they counting on? Science is an
intellectual pursuit concerned only with the facts of reality,
while government (i.e., politics) is a repository of force.
Apparently the AGU is now preparing to apply a bit of force in
order to "prevail"! Well, they've already tried subterfuge
and lying, so what's left?
Using $1.1 million in grant money from the Joyce Foundation (of
which Barack Obama was then a board member!), Richard Sandor
founded the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in 2000. The purpose
of the exchange was to profit from what appeared to be the
inevitable carbon cap-and-trade environmental regulations soon
to be coming from governments around the world, and Al Gore was
a major investor in this scheme. However, the Climategate scandal
stuck a wrench into the political machinery, forestalling the
passage of these bills, and the CCX along with it's counterpart,
the European Climate Exchange (ECX), were sold to Intercontinental
Exchange (ICE) on April 30, 2010. Now, just six months later,
ICE has announced that it will suspend all carbon trading before
the end of the year.
"Al Capone tried to use Prohibition to muscle in on a piece of all
the action in Chicago. The CCX's backers wanted to use a new
prohibition on carbon emissions to muscle in on a piece of, quite
literally, all the action in the world."
"But according to an advisory posted to the exchange's website,
participants simply didn't want to trade in carbon credits without
a legal requirement that they do so."
Tom Nelson states: "After claiming that he never deleted any
emails, Phil Jones now admits deleting emails."
As reported in the UK Guardian on 11-24-09, Phil Jones is quoted as
saying:
"Some of the emails probably had poorly chosen words and were sent
in the heat of the moment, when I was frustrated. I do regret
sending some of them. We've not deleted any emails or data
here at CRU. I would never manipulate the data one bit - I
would categorically deny that."
[Emphasis added]
However, in a new article in Nature dated 11-15-10, when asked
about deleting emails, he had this to say:
"When Jones is now asked if he deleted such messages, he says:
'No, I deleted e-mails as a matter of course just to keep
them under control.'
"Then Muir Russell was correct? Had Jones broken the spirit of the
law? 'Not necessarily, if you've deleted them ahead of time,' he
says. 'You can't second guess what's going to be requested.'
Jones goes back and forth on his motivations. Deleting e-mails
would simplify his life if people requested them in the future,
but that was not why he got rid of them, he says. 'I deleted
them based on their dates. It was to keep the e-mails under
control,' he repeats."
What is the real purpose of the United Nation's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?
Bernard Potter of the Swiss newspaper Neue
Zürcher Zeitung, interviewed IPCC joint chairman Ottmar
Edenhofer, and in an article titled IPCC Official: "Climate
Policy Is Redistributing The World's Wealth", summarized
his conclusion as follows:
"Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental
protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar
Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an
economy summit during which the distribution of the world's
resources will be negotiated."
Specifically, Edenhofer had these comments:
"[I]f global emission rights are distributed [...] on a per capita
basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of
money will flow there."
"Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately
from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in
Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but
one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War."
"[O]ne must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's
wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil
will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from
the illusion that international climate policy is environmental
policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy
anymore."
"[W]e need to see that successful climate policy requires other
global trade and financial policies."
"[T]here is always the risk that individual rationality leads to
collective stupidity. Therefore, one cannot solve the climate
problem alone, but it has to be linked to other problems. There
must be penalties and incentives: global CO 2-tariffs and
technology transfer."
In an article titled "What happened to the 'warmest year on
record': The truth is global warming has halted", David Rose
reports the following:
"But buried amid the details of those two Met [British
Meteorological] Office statements 12 months
apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications - not
just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a
whole."
"Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that
for some, to paraphrase former US Vice President Al Gore, is really
inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped."
"The question now emerging for climate scientists and policymakers
alike is very simple. Just how long does a pause have to be before
the thesis that the world is getting hotter because of human
activity starts to collapse?"
Never fear. It doesn't matter if it gets warmer or colder. It
doesn't matter if it rains, snows or there is a prolonged drought.
It doesn't matter if the weather is one thing here and something
completely different elsewhere on the globe. It doesn't matter
because the advocates of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) will
confirm that every bit of climate data, no matter
what it happens to be, is a positive indicator of global warming.
Quoting Anthony Watts in The Daily Caller:
"From the Independent, March 20th, 2000:
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the
climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,
within a few years winter snowfall will become 'a very rare and
exciting event.' 'Children just aren't going to know what snow
is,' he said."
"Now, for the second year in a row, the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales is covered with
snow. Meanwhile, AGW proponents like the Guardian's George Monbiot
are furiously spinning to make it look like AGW causes more snow,
rather than less, as the CRU scientist said 10 years ago."
And, quoting Dr. Richard North of the EU Referendum, commenting on
George Monbiot's (i.e. "Moonbat") new defense of global
warming:
"It is not that he [Monbiot] does
not have a case (even if it is not very good). What makes him so
deservedly look the fool it that he, alongside the climate
establishment, has spent the last decade or more trying to convince
us that milder winters are a sure sign of global warming. Now, in
the manner of Winston Smith, Moonbat seems to believe that he can
rewrite history and we will not notice."
We knew it was coming. With industrial carbon credit trading
off the table for now, the environmental movement shifts its
focus to the individual. As reported on EurActive, a
European environmental site, in an article titled "Rio+20:
UN hears fresh ideas to 'green' economy":
"A UN meeting this week took stock of stakeholders' expectations
for the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development, set to take
place in 2012."
"The 2012 summit is expected to agree on a political document that
will guide action on sustainable development policy for decades
to come and give birth to a World Environment Organisation."
"A report summarising the submissions suggests that the green
economy will rely on 'rigorously enforced environmental laws,
taxation based on environmental impact' and 'personal carbon
quotas'."
"Personal carbon quotas relate to the maximum quantity of CO2 each
of us may emit into the atmosphere per year without increasing the
level of current global emissions."
"On the economic aspects of green legislation, stakeholders
admitted that 'a transition to a green economy will involve
some winners and some losers'."
"Some stakeholders even called for political commitments to
stabilise the world's population to deal with increased pressure
on natural resources. In late 2009, a UN report suggested that
halting the rise in Earth's population would be a major help in
the fight against global warming."
If you are a U.S. citizen, just how much of your money is wasted
on 'Climate Change'? According to Art Horn in his Pajamas Media
article,
it is $10.6 million each and every day.
"This year, your government will spend in the neighborhood of $4
billion on global warming research, despite the fact that there
has been no global warming since 1998, and despite all of the
billions that have been spent so far yielding no conclusive
evidence that using fossil fuels to make energy has any significant
effect on Earth's temperature.
Check the American Association for the Advancement of Science's
2011 budget request, and go to chapter 15: Climate Change in the
FY 2011 Budget. The numbers are staggering. In 2011, your
government will spend $10.6 million a day to study, combat, and
educate about climate change."
Christopher Booker writes in The Telegraph, that the BBC
and the British government's MET (meteorological) Office continue
to play fast and loose with climate data and its reporting to the
general public. For example, on the BBC program Horizon
airing on 01-24-11, Booker reports:
"The most telling moment, however, came in an interview between
[Sir Paul] Nurse and a computer-modelling scientist from Nasa,
presented as a general climate expert although he is only a
specialist in ice studies. Asked to quantify the relative
contributions of CO2 to the atmosphere by human and natural
causes, his seemingly devastating reply was that 7 gigatons
(billion tons) are emitted each year by human activity while
only 1 gigaton comes from natural sources such as the oceans.
This was so much the message they wanted that Nurse invited him
to confirm that human emissions are seven times greater than
those from all natural sources.
This was mind-boggling. It is generally agreed that the 7 billion
tonnes of CO2 due to human activity represent just over 3 per cent
of the total emitted. That given off by natural sources, such as
the oceans, is vastly greater than this, more than 96 per cent of
the total. One may argue about the "carbon cycle" and how much
CO2 the oceans and plants reabsorb. But, as baldly stated, the
point was simply a grotesque misrepresentation, serving, like many
of the programme's other assertions, only to give viewers a wholly
misleading impression."
Booker continued to give other example of bending the facts during
the show. He then turned to a discussion of the MET Office's
01-20-11 issuing of a press release with the headline, "2010
&mdash a near record year", which claimed that 2010 was
hotter than any other year in the past decade. Booker continues:
"When [Dr Benny Peiser and Dr David Whitehouse, of the Global
Warming Policy Foundation] examined the original data from which
this claim was derived — compiled by the University of East
Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and the Met Office's Hadley Centre
— it clearly showed 2010 as having been cooler than 2005
(and 1998) and equal to 2003. It emerged that, for the purposes
of the press release, the data had been significantly adjusted.
Comparing the actual data for each year, from 2001 to 2010, with
that given in the press release shows that for four years the
original figure has been adjusted downwards. Only for 2010 was
the data revised upwards, by the largest adjustment of all,
allowing the Met Office to claim that 2010 was the hottest year
of the decade."
David Evans,
a mathematician and engineer who has been consulting with the
Australian Greenhouse Office and Department of Climate Change for
over nine years, modeling carbon pools in agricultural systems,
recently spoke to an Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, Australia.
These are excerpts from his remarks:
"Let's set a few things straight. The whole idea that carbon
dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based
on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the
1990s."
"The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes
everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water
to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around
and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does
it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the
carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed
that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet,
which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is
also a greenhouse gas."
"Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the
1960s, many thousands of them every year. ... During the warming
of the late 1970s, '80s and '90s, the weather balloons found no
hot spot. ... This evidence proves that the climate models are
fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the
temperature increases due to carbon dioxide."
"This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s."
"At this point, official "climate science" stopped being a
science."
"Finally, to those who still believe the planet is in danger from
our carbon dioxide emissions: Sorry, but you've been had. Yes,
carbon dioxide is a cause of global warming, but it's so minor
it's not worth doing much about."
In 2005, the United Nations predicted that by 2010, there would be
50 million "climate refugees" created as a result of the
consequences of climate change. This information was posted on
their website, accompanied by a map showing the areas to be
devastated by flooding, desertification, increased hurricane
activity and ice cap and permafrost melting.
Gavin Atkins of Asian Correspondent recently wondered
What
happened to the climate refugees?, and investigated the
claims by looking at census data for many of the areas predicted
to be most vulnerable. He discovered that populations in many of
these regions had not decreased as people fled the purported havoc
of global warming, but instead had increased substantially during
the past decade.
After Atkins article was published on April 11th and picked up by
other news agencies, the UN quickly and quietly tried to cover up
this latest mistake by removing the page and map from their site.
However, thanks to Google Cache, both were able to be retrieved
and can be viewed as part of the Daily Caller's article.
But have no fear, for the UN, instead of apologizing for their
gross error, is now stating that there will certainly be 50
million climate change refugees, only by 2020!
In Forbes, Patrick Michaels discusses the steady stream of
incorrect climate predictions that the United Nations has made
over the past decade, from climate refugees (see above), to lost
glaciers, to melting polar ice caps, to widespread destruction of
rainforests, to severe coastal flooding, to droughts. He then
makes the following very important observations:
"Is all of this due to chance?"
"Scientists, as humans, make judgemental errors. But what is odd
about the UN is that its gaffes are all in one direction. All
are exaggeration of the effects of climate change. ... No one has
found analogous errors in the other direction."
"In an unbiased world there should be an equal chance of either
underestimating or overestimating the climate change and its
effects, which allows us to test whether this string of errors
is simply scientists behaving normally or being naughty."
"What's the chance of throwing a coin six times and getting all
heads (or tails)? It's .015. Most scientists consider the
.050 level sufficient to warrant retention of a hypothesis,
which in this case, is that the UN's climate science is biased."
In Forbes, James Taylor discusses the latest attempt by climate
science researchers to fudge the data in order to create the
desired end result.
"Faced with the embarrassing fact that sea level is not rising
nearly as much as has been predicted, the University of Colorado's
NASA-funded Sea Level Research Group has announced it will begin
adding a nonexistent 0.3 millimeters per year to its Global Mean
Sea Level Time Series. As a result, alarmists will be able to
present sea level charts asserting an accelerating rise in sea
level that is not occurring in the real world."
"United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
computer models project approximately 15 inches of sea level rise
during the 21st century."
"Satellite measurements, however, show global sea level rose merely
0.83 inches during the first decade of the 21st century (a pace of
just 8 inches for the entire century), and has barely risen at all
since 2006. This puts alarmists in the embarrassing position of
defending predictions that are not coming true in the real world."
"[T]he current pace of 8 inches of sea level rise for the present
century is essentially no different than the 7 inches of sea level
rise that occurred last century. However, with an artificially
enhanced 9.2 inches of sea level rise, alarmists can claim sea
level is rising 31 percent faster than it did last century."
Just when the climate alarmists were thinking that things couldn't
get any worse for their cause, scientists from the US National
Solar Observatory (NSO) and the US Air Force Research Laboratory
report that the sun appears to be heading into a sustained period
of low solar activity which could result in a dramatic cooling
leading to a mini Ice Age within the next decade.
"The Sun normally follows an 11-year cycle of activity. The
current cycle, Cycle 24, is now supposed to be ramping up towards
maximum strength. Increased numbers of sunspots and other
indications ought to be happening: but in fact results so far are
most disappointing. Scientists at the NSO now suspect, based on
data showing decades-long trends leading to this point, that Cycle
25 may not happen at all."
"An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second
Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots
[which occurred] during 1645-1715. Early records of sunspots
indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the
late 17th century. ... This period of solar inactivity also
corresponds to a climatic period called the 'Little Ice Age' when
rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained
year-round at lower altitudes."
"The big consequences of a major solar calm spell, however, would
be climatic. The next few generations of humanity might not find
themselves trying to cope with global warming but rather with a
significant cooling."
James Hansen, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space
Studies, and a very vocal proponent for Anthropogenic Global
Warming, is accused of enriching himself by over $1.7 million,
through contributions of funds and services from the environmental
organizations whose agendas he actively promoted.
"In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., a group claims
NASA is withholding documents that show James Hansen failed to
comply with ethics rules and financial disclosures regarding
substantial compensation he earned outside his $180,000
taxpayer-paid position as director of the Goddard Institute for
Space Studies."
"Federal rules prohibit government employees from receiving certain
types of income outside their job. Employees are required to file
Form 17-60 in writing before any outside activity. And annually,
they're required to submit Form SF 278, after receiving outside
compensation."
"Mark Hess, chief of communications for the Goddard Space Center,
sent Fox News NASA's response to Horner's FOIA request. It said
in many cases the documents Horner requested did not exist. Horner
claims they should, if Hansen was complying with the law."
Funds and services alleged to have been received include:
Between $333,000 and $500,000 from the Dan David Foundation
$550,000 from the Asahi Glass Foundation
$100,000 from the Norwegian Sophie Prize
$48,164 from speaking fees
$15,000 participation fee waiver from the
W.J. Clinton Foundation
$720,000 in free legal advice from George Soros'
Open Society Institute.
The state of Maryland had added a mandatory course in
"environmental literacy" to the requirements for graduation
from high school.
"But what is that? That is the question State Senator J. B.
Jennings is asking. "Is it going to be fact-based? Or is it
going to be theory-based, which is usually politically, theory
driven. And you can think, it's going to be about global warming
or climate change."
"The new rule is a regulation from the State Board of Education,
not a law passed by the legislature, so it lays out no specifics.
Governor Martin O'Malley offers no real details but praises it,
saying it will "infuse core subjects with lessons about
conservation and smart growth and the health of our natural world."
"That is not really education," says Ebell. "It's propaganda and
its designed to raise up a new generation of easily led and poorly
educated and misinformed students."
Just how dangerous is climate change? Well, according to the
United Nations, it's apparently so deadly that the UN security
council is contemplating the creation of an international
"Green Helmet" security force that could "step into conflicts
caused by shrinking resources" and "keep the peace in an
era of climate change".
"'A good first step would be to acknowledge the realities of
climate change and its inherent implications to international
peace and security,' [German ambassador to the UN Peter Wittig]
wrote."
"'The security council should join the general assembly in
recognizing climate change as a threat to international peace
and security. It is a threat as great as nuclear proliferation
or global terrorism,' Marcus Stephen, the president of Nauru,
wrote in a piece in the New York Times."
Even though this is all just talk up to this point, a discussion
concerning the creation of a military unit that justifies its use
of force against people across the globe based upon environmental
concerns, is chilling in its implications. This is nothing less
than another attempt by the UN to redistribute the worlds wealth
and resources through its Agenda 21
program, and to build an armed force that will impose it upon any
recalcitrant nation or group of individuals.
New Research conducted at the European Organization for Nuclear
Research (CERN) has demonstrated that the theory of the Dutch
physicist, Henrik Svensmark, are correct and that the sun is
primarily responsible for the variations in the earth's
temperature. As Lawrence Solomon explains:
"CERN [...] has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel
chamber that precisely recreated the Earth's atmosphere. In
this chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American
institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could
never be done — demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the
formation of molecules that in Earth's atmosphere can grow and
seed clouds, the cloudier and thus cooler it will be. Because
the sun's magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach
Earth's atmosphere (the stronger the sun's magnetic field, the
more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the
sun determines the temperature on Earth."
However, following in the long standing tradition of government
funded researchers and the main stream media, these results have
been downplayed by CERN and gone unreported by the press. In an
interview, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the Director General of CERN said:
"I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but
not to interpret them."
Which led Nigel Calder to conclude:
"CERN has joined a long line of lesser institutions obliged to
remain politically correct about the man-made global warming
hypothesis. It's OK to enter 'the highly political arena of the
climate change debate' provided your results endorse man-made
warming, but not if they support Svensmark's heresy that the Sun
alters the climate by influencing the cosmic ray influx and cloud
formation."
"The once illustrious CERN laboratory ceases to be a truly
scientific institute when its Director General forbids its
physicists and visiting experimenters to draw the obvious
scientific conclusions from their results."
Just as back in October 2010, when Hal Lewis, Professor Emeritus
of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara
resigned
from the American Physical Society (APS) over disputes regarding
its climate-change position, now, on September 13, 2011, Nobel
prize-winner, Dr. Ivar Giaever, has also resigned from that
organization for similar reasons.
In a letter to the APS, Dr. Giaever states:
"Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did
not renew it because I can not live with the statement below:
Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are
changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate.
Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane,
nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil
fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural
processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in
the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems,
security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce
emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton
changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the
evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how
can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a
whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to
~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to
me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both
human health and happiness have definitely improved in this
'warming' period."
New reports from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)
indicate that the US Government, the EU and the UN's IPCC have
colluded to create hidden communication channels, in order to
conceal correspondence relating to the political agenda behind
climate change research.
"CEI has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide
official correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which
correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed
are subject to FOIA. This 'cloud' serves as a dead-drop of sorts
for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report
being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with
millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars."
"This effort has apparently been conducted with participation
— thereby direct assistance and enabling — by the
Obama White House which, shortly after taking office, seized
for Holdren's office the lead role on IPCC work from the Department
of Commerce. The plan to secretly create a FOIA-free zone was then
implemented."
"This represents politically assisting the IPCC to enable UN, EU
and U.S. bureaucrats and political appointees avoid official email
channels for specific official work of high public interest,
performed on official time and using government computers, away
from the prying eyes of increasingly skeptical taxpayers.'
The Berkeley Earth Surface
Temperature (BEST) project attempts to clarify the controversy
surrounding the questionable temperature datasets used by past
climate researchers, as noted in a number of the links above.
This is being done by reanalyzing data from a far larger number
of of temperature measuring stations (39,000 vs. 7,280) and then
making the data and analysis public, available for peer review.
Preliminary results from land-based measurements only (not
including ocean temperature data) support the contention that
global temperature is rising. However, as they report on their
site:
"Land warms more than oceans, so when we include the ocean we
expect the total global warming to be less."
Despite the missing ocean temperature data, the researchers,
Richard and Elizabeth Muller and Robert Rohde, issued a
preliminary report [PDF link] stating:
"[The BEST] study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average
world land temperature of approximately 1 degree C since the
mid-1950s."
"The [BEST] study did not assess temperature changes in the oceans,
which according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) have not warmed as much as land. When averaged in, they
reduce the global surface temperature rise over the past 50 years
— the period during which human effect on temperature is
discernable — to about two thirds of one degree Centigrade."
Notice the implication in the last paragraph that the temperature
rise is due to human action, without actually stating it. Only
later in the Wall Street Journal
did Richard Muller, at the very end of his article, clarify this:
"How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the
likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that."
"The Earth is warmer than it was 100-150 years ago. But that was
never in contention - it is a straw man argument. The magnitude
and causes are what skeptics question."
"[The researchers] admit that the influence in recent decades of
oceanic temperature cycles has been unappreciated and may explain
most, if not all, of the global warming that has taken place,
stating the possibility that the 'human component of global warming
may be somewhat overstated.'"
"The findings of the BEST global surface analysis match the finding
of other global temperature metrics. This isn't surprising, as much
of the same base raw data was used. There's a myth that NASA GISS,
HadCRUT, NOAA's, and now Berkeley's source data are independent of
one another. That's not completely true. They share a lot of common
data from GHCN, administered by NOAA's National Climatic Data. So
it isn't surprising at all they would match."
And some of his disagreements:
"The way they dealt with my surfacestation data in analysis was
flat-out wrong, and I told them so days ahead of this release.
They offered no correction, nor even an acknowledgement of the
issue."
"They didn't adequately deal with that 1% [urban regions] in my
opinion, by doing a proper area weighting."
"The rush to judgment they fomented before science had a chance to
speak is worse than anything I've ever seen."
As expected, promoters of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) have
jumped on the BEST data, claiming that it undercuts the position of
AGW skeptics. For example, the lead-in to an article in The
Economist reads:
"A new analysis of the temperature record leaves little room for
the doubters. The world is warming."
The article is careful to avoid attributing the temperature rise
to man-made causes, but the implication is clear — the
doubters are those who are skeptical regarding man's responsibility
for these rises. These implications are properly addressed by
Matt Ridley on his blog, The Rational Optimist.
An article in the Canadian Free Press reports on the confluence
of data pointing towards the possibility of a coming global cooling
rather than warming period.
"US solar physicists announced in June 2011 that the Sun appears to
be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean
that the Earth — far from facing a global warming problem
— is actually headed into a mini Ice Age. The announcement
came from scientists at the US National Solar Observatory (NSO)
and the US Air Force Research Laboratory. Three different analyses
of the Sun's recent behavior all indicated that a period of
unusually low solar activity may be about to begin."
"Fred Dardick reports, 'We are in the midst of the convergence of
three major solar, ocean, and atmospheric cycles all heading in
the direction of global cooling. Last year the Southern Hemisphere
experienced its coldest winter in 50 years and Europe just went
through two particularly cold winters in a row, and the cooling
trend has just begun. The likelihood of a repeat of the great
frost of 1709 is growing every day.' This was the time of the
Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) and for periods either side of it,
many European rivers which are ice-free today — including
the Thames — routinely froze over, allowing ice skating
and even for armies to march across them in some cases."
"A government researcher who wrote a controversial report on dead
polar bears was asked to take a polygraph test by a federal agent
investigating allegations of scientific misconduct."
"In 2006, Monnett and Gleason published a report describing their
sightings of apparently drowned polar bears in the Arctic. The
report drew public attention to the plight of the bears as the
climate changes and ice melts."
"Last year, someone at the Department of the Interior alleged that
acts of scientific misconduct may have been committed in relation
to that report."
The UK Mail is reporting that Prof Judith Curry, the second named
co-author of the four research papers released by the BEST
(Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature) team, is refuting the claims
of Professor Richard Muller, that the Earth continues to warm at
the same rate observed during the last half of the 20th century.
Excerpts from the article state:
"Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and
Atmospheric Sciences at America's prestigious Georgia Institute
of Technology, said that Prof Muller's claim that he has proven
global warming sceptics wrong was also a 'huge mistake', with no
scientific basis."
"Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia
University's Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST
project seem to be trying to 'hide the decline' in rates of global
warming."
"In fact, Prof Curry said, the project's research data show there
has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the
Nineties — a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail
on Sunday has obtained."
"'There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn't
stopped,' she said. 'To say that there is detracts from the
credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.'"
"[A] report to be published today by the Global Warming Policy
Foundation includes a graph of world average temperatures over
the past ten years, drawn from the BEST project's data and revealed
on its website."
"This graph shows that the trend of the last decade is absolutely
flat, with no increase at all — though the levels of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly."
And what does Professor Muller have to say about this:
"[H]e admitted it was true that the BEST data suggested that world
temperatures have not risen for about 13 years. But in his view,
this might not be 'statistically significant', although, he added,
it was equally possible that it was — a statement which left
other scientists mystified."
Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is reporting that the
greenhouse gas observation satellite, IBUKI,
which was launched in June 2009, shows that the most heavily
industrialized areas of the world, including most of Europe and
the eastern half of the United States, not only contribute less
CO2, but actually act as CO2 absorbers. Quoting the article:
"Bizarrely, the IBUKU [sic] maps prove exactly the opposite of all
conventional expectations revealing that the least industrialized
regions are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases on the planet."
"Yes, you read that correctly: the U.S. and western European
nations are areas where CO2 levels are lowest. This new evidence
defies the consensus view promoted by mainstream newspapers, such
as the New York Times."
"JAXA boasts that, 'we can reduce the error of the estimated
values when we introduce IBUKI's observation data compared to
that of the values calculated in a conventional way based on
ground observation data.'"
"Thus, the unthinkable could be made real: the greenhouse gas
theory of climate change may collapse in the face of empirical
evidence that industrialization is shown to have no link to
global warming."
Following up on the recently released JAXA satellite data, Jo Nova
published the charts for the CO2 (shown below) and methane
measurements, showing that the industrial, first-world countries
predominantly act as carbon sinks (blue dots) while underdeveloped,
third-world countries are net carbon producers (red dots).
"This isn't that much of a surprise to me. I'd figured out some
time ago that trees and bamboo could consume far more CO2 than I
'produce' via burning oil and gas. I've also pointed out that The
West is largely letting trees grow, while mowing our lawns and
having the clippings 'sequestered' in land fills (along with an
untold tonnage of phone books and junk mail?) while the 3rd world
is busy burning and cutting down their forests. The simple fact
is that 'jungle rot' will beat out my 'gallon a day' of Diesel
any time. Basically, we in the west grow far more wheat, corn,
soybeans, wood, lawns, shrubs, etc. than we burn oil. In the 3rd
world, they burn their sequestering plants. (And it takes one heck
of a lot more wood to cook a meal than it does coal via a highly
efficient furnace / electric generator / microwave oven.) But it's
nice to see it documented in aggregate in the 'facts in the air'."
Anthony Watts reviews the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) data
for the past decade in the United States and demonstrates that both
summer and winter temperatures reveal a cooling trend.
Additional charts provided in the article break down the data
by geographic region. And when the data is examined over the past
15 years, starting in 1996, the trend line is almost completely
flat, showing just a slight decrease in average temperature.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been circulating a PDF
slideshow
which provides talking points used to bolster its ongoing claim
for man-made global warming. In one example, the EPA displays
two pictures showing the dramatic shrinking of Alaska's Muir
Glacier between 1941 and 2004, stating that, "Glaciers in the
United States and around the world have generally shrunk since the
1960s."
However, what the EPA so conveniently failed to mention was that
there was nothing special about the 1960s date that they cherry
picked, and that the Muir Glacier has been melting since at least
the year 1760, with ten times the ice loss having occurred prior
to the 1960s, as this USGS map
reveals:
This is not just a misunderstanding of the data, but a clear
example of how the government outright lies to the public as part
of its effort to sell its program for expanding regulation and
control over our lives.
It is not as if there was any need to further confirm the
junk status of much of what has passed for climate science
research, and yet a second round of hacked emails exchanges from
the UK's Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia
have just been released. Apparently culled from the same files
taken back in 2009, these focus on the political agenda
driving the climate message, and the role that the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has played in
that regard. As James Delingpole puts it:
"In other words, what these emails confirm is that the great
man-made global warming scare is not about science but about
political activism."
Here are a few preliminary excerpts culled from the newly released
material relating to the IPCC methodology:
Bob Carter [on centralized decision-making]:
"It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no
matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions
are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group."
Tom Wigley [on deception by the IPCC]:
"Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have
been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by
individual authors and by IPCC [...]"
Jonathan Overpeck [on letting the ends justify the means]:
"The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to
guid[e] what's included and what is left out."
"I agree w/ Susan [Solomon] that we should try to put more in
the bullet about "Subsequent evidence" [...] Need to convince
readers that there really has been an increase in knowledge
— more evidence. What is it?"
Phil Jones [on packing the IPCC]:
"Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital —
hence my comment about the tornadoes group."
"Useful ones [for IPCC] might be Baldwin, Benestad (written on
the solar/cloud issue — on the right side, i.e
anti-Svensmark), Bohm, Brown, Christy (will be [sic] have to
involve him ?)
Humphrey/DEFRA [on the governmental agenda]:
"I can't overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the
project as a message that the Government can give on climate
change to help them tell their story. They want the story to
be a very strong one and don't want to be made to look foolish."
"Somehow we have to leave the[m] thinking OK, climate change is
extremely complicated, BUT I accept the dominant view that
people are affecting it, and that impacts produces risk that
needs careful and urgent attention."
Phil Jones [on selectively manipulating the message]
"We don't really want the bullshit and optimistic stuff that
Michael has written [...] We'll have to cut out some of his
stuff."
Michael Mann [on manipulating the propaganda]
"the important thing is to make sure they're loosing the PR
battle. That's what the site [Real Climate] is about."
Thomas J. Crowley [on how sociology trumps science]
"I am not convinced that the "truth" is always worth reaching
if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships"
Leopold Haimberger [on manipulating data to fit preconceptions]
"It is interesting to see the lower tropospheric warming
minimum in the tropics in all three plots, which I cannot
explain. I believe it is spurious but it is remarkably robust
against my adjustment efforts."
Mike Hulme [on religious influences on science]
"My work is as Director of the national centre for climate
change research, a job which requires me to translate my
Christian belief about stewardship of God's planet into
research and action."
Phil Jones [on circumventing Freedom of Information]:
"I've been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One
way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be
to delete all emails at the end of the process"
Keith Briffa [on circumventing Freedom of Information]
"UEA does not hold the very vast majority of mine [potentially
FOIable emails] anyway which I copied onto private storage
after the completion of the IPCC task."
However, of all the material released so far, the most damning are
those where the participants speak casually of their fealty to
"the cause" of global warming. This clearly demonstrates
that it is not truth that they seek, but a preordained outcome that
motivates their efforts, and science be damned. Consider the
following [emphasis added]:
Michael Mann:
"By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his
roughly 1500 year reconstruction??? It would help the
cause to be able to refer to that reconstruction as
confirming Mann and Jones, etc."
"They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of
the synthetic example, referring to the J. Cimate [sic] paper
(which should be finally accepted upon submission of the
revised final draft), so that should help the cause
a bit."
I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don't know what she
think's she's doing, but its not helping the cause"
Berger:
"Many thanks for your paper and congratulations for
reviving the global warming."
The UK's Mail Online reports that the new round of Climategate 2.0
emails show how the British media conspired with the University of
East Anglia (UEA) climate scientists to control the information
that was presented to the public. Here are a few excerpts from
this article:
"Britain's leading green activist research centre spent
£15,000 on seminars for top BBC executives in an apparent
bid to block climate change sceptics from the airwaves"
"[The emails] show that University staff vetted BBC scripts, used
their contacts at the Corporation [BBC] to stop sceptics being
interviewed and were consulted about how the broadcaster should
alter its programme output."
"BBC insiders say the close links between the Corporation and the
UEA's two climate science departments, the Climatic Research Unit
(CRU) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research, have had a
significant impact on its coverage. "
"In 2007, the BBC issued a formal editorial policy document,
stating that 'the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal
space being given to the opponents of the consensus' — the
view that the world faces catastrophe because of man-made carbon
dioxide emissions."
Scientist Nils-Axel
Mörner has studied sea level data for 45 years, and has
concluded that most of what the IPCC has to say on the subject
is an outright fabrication. What follows are a few quotes from
his article:
"As someone with some expertise in the field, I can assure the
low-lying countries that this is a false alarm. The sea is not
rising precipitously. "
"Our findings are straightforward: there is no ongoing sea level
rise. The sea level there has been stable for the last 50 years
or so, after falling some 20cm in around 1960; it was well below
the present level in the 18th century and some 50 to 60cm above
the present in the 17th century. So it is clear that sea levels
rise and fall entirely independently of so-called 'climate change'."
"But the best-known 'victim' of rising sea levels is, without
doubt, the Maldives. This myth has been boosted by the opportunism
of Mohamed Nasheed, who stars in a new documentary called The
Island President. The film's tagline is 'To save his country, he
has to save our planet'. It is a depressing example of how
Hollywood-style melodrama has corrupted climate science. Nasheed
has been rehearsing his lines since being elected in 2009. 'We
are drowning, our nation will disappear, we have to relocate the
people,' he repeatedly claims."
"If this is what President Nasheed believes, it seems strange that
he has authorised the building of many large waterside hotels and
11 new airports. Or could it perhaps be that he wants to take a
cut of the $30 billion fund agreed at an accord in Copenhagen for
the poorest nations hit by 'global warming'? Within two weeks of
Copenhagen, the Maldives foreign minister Ahmed Shaheed wrote to
the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton to express support for
the accord."
"The IPCC's Fourth Assessment claimed that 'there is strong
evidence' of sea level rising over the last few decades. It goes
as far as to claim: 'Satellite observations available since the
early 1990s provide more accurate sea level data with nearly global
coverage. This decade-long satellite altimetry data set shows that
since 1993, sea level has been rising at a rate of around 3mm yr-1,
significantly higher than the average during the previous half
century. Coastal tide gauge measurements confirm this observation,
and indicate that similar rates have occurred in some earlier
decades.' Almost every word of this is untrue."
"This is a scandal that should be called Sealevelgate. As with
the Hockey Stick, there is little real-world data to support the
upward tilt. It seems that the 2.3mm rise rate has been based on
just one tide gauge in Hong Kong (whose record is contradicted by
four other nearby tide gauges). Why does it show such a rise?
Because like many of the 159 tide gauge stations used by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it is sited on
an unstable harbour construction or landing pier prone to uplift
or subsidence. When you exclude these unreliable stations, the 68
remaining ones give a present rate of sea level rise in the order
of 1mm a year."
"We must learn to take the environmentalists' predictions with a
huge pinch of salt. In 2005, the United Nations Environment
Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million
climate refugees by 2010. That was last year: where are those
refugees?"
Lord Christopher Monckton reports from the UN Climate Summit
underway in Durban, South Africa. He summarizes the real purpose
of the summit as follows:
"The profiteering UN bureaucrats' ... plans to establish a world
government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with
the non-problem of 'global warming' are now well in hand."
"Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the
now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers
out of what they lovingly call 'the process' have been beavering
away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is
'Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the
Convention'."
"The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN's
skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to
call 'transparent impenetrability', are not just off the wall
— they are lunatic."
And what are some of the mail points in that document?
Institutes a New International Climate Court: The
purpose of which is to redistribute wealth from Western
nations to third-world countries in order to make
"reparations" for its "climate debt".
Establishes the Rights of Mother Earth: The intent
is to place the "rights" of nature above those of man,
enslaving humanity to the earth — with the UN's
court conveniently sitting in judgment.
Bans War and Defense Forces: Because they contribute
to climate change.
Sets a New Global Temperature Target: This "target"
is two degrees C below current temperature levels, which
would result in massive human deaths.
Sets New CO2 Emission and Concentration Targets:
These targets would require massive deindustrialization
efforts, resulting in many more human deaths.
Here is a chart showing the geological timeline of the earth's
mean temperature. The area to the right indicates the recent
history. Sort of puts things into perspective!
A review of the Climategate 2.0 documents reveals that the
Department of Energy may have been working in concert with the
certain heads of climate research organizations in order to keep
publically funded raw climate data out of the "wrong hands".
As reported in the Fox News article:
"Dr. Phil Jones, told colleagues repeatedly that the U.S.
Department of Energy was funding his data collection — and
that officials there agreed that he should not have to release
the data."
"'Work on the land station data has been funded by the U.S. Dept
of Energy, and I have their agreement that the data needn't be
passed on. I got this [agreement] in 2007,' Jones wrote in a
May 13, 2009, email to British officials, before listing reasons
he did not want them to release data."
"Two months later, Jones reiterated that sentiment to colleagues,
saying that the data 'has to be well hidden. I've discussed this
with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they
are happy about not releasing the original station data.'"
[...]
"[C]limate change researcher and blogger Steve McIntyre forwarded
FoxNews.com an email exchange from 2005 in which climate scientist
Warwick Hughes asked an official at a DOE lab if he could get the
data that the government paid Jones to collect."
"'I am asking you to provide me with the following data ... DoE
has been funding [the data] since the 1980s,' Hughes noted in his
request.'
"But Tom Boden, of the DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, told
Hughes at the time that the DOE itself did not have the data, and
that 'you will need to contact Phil [Jones] directly. I spoke
today with the DOE program manager who indicated Phil was not
obligated under the conditions of past or present DOE proposal
awards to provide these items.'"
Government agencies have stepped up their efforts to track down
the person responsible for leaking the Climategate I and II
correspondence. The U.S. Department of Justice has now sent a
letter to three of the most prominent climate science skeptics,
Tallbloke of
Tallbloke's Talkshop,
Steve McIntyre of
Climate Audit and Jeff Id of
The Air Vent,
demanding that they preserve certain correspondence on their
computers.
In addition, the UK police conducted a
raid
on Tallbloke's home and confiscated two computers and a router.
An open letter to all political candidates, signed by sixteen
scientists, appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Here are a few
excerpts:
"A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may
have to consider what, if anything, to do about 'global warming.'
Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that
nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to
stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing
number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that
drastic actions on global warming are needed."
"Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming
for well over 10 years now. [...] But the warming is only missing
if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving
water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2."
"This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen
it before — for example, in the frightening period when
Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. "
"Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked
carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a
message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling
scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's
economy."
"Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and
improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back
expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are
based on alarming but untenable claims of 'incontrovertible'
evidence."
The MET (UK Meteorological Office) and the University of East
Anglia Climatic Research Unit reported that a new assessment of
more than 30,000 temperature measuring stations reveal that
there has been no warming of the earth during the past 15
years. None.
"Meanwhile, leading climate scientists [stated] that, after
emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th
Century, the sun is now heading towards a 'grand minimum' in its
output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening
of the season available for growing food."
Recent observations of the sun indicate that it is heading into
Cycle 25 of sunspot activity.
"According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is
a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in
the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the
'Dalton minimum' of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the
meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe
fell by 2C."
"However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could
be as deep as the 'Maunder minimum' (after astronomer Edward
Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the 'Little
Ice Age' when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of
Holland froze solid."
The MET claims that the solar influence is small when compared
to the effects of man-made CO2, and will have minimal impact on
global temperatures, but other experts disagree. Henrik Svensmark,
the director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark's
National Space Institute states:
"'It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists
that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going
to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.'
He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum
would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer
models that are being undermined by the current pause in
global-warming. "
Climate alarmist groups, including 350.org, The League of
Conservation Voters and Citizen Engagement Lab, have begun a
campaign to replace the 63% of meteorologists who believe that
global warming is the product of natural causes with those who
will report the weather with a more anthropogenic global warming
slant.
"Concerned that too many 'deniers' are in the meteorology business,
global warming activists this month launched a campaign to recruit
local weathermen to hop aboard the alarmism bandwagon and expose
those who are not fully convinced that the world is facing man-made
doom."
"'Our goal is nothing short of changing how the entire profession
of meteorology tackles the issue of climate change,' the group
explains on their website."
In other words, these groups want to turn the entire profession of
meteorology into a propaganda and indoctrination machine for their
views.
"The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from
the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan,
have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows."
"The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around
50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being
replaced by new snowfall."
"The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and
glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data.
Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest
caps — Greenland and Antarctica — is much less than
previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas
and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the
discrepancy."
"The reason for the radical reappraisal of ice melting in Asia is
the different ways in which the current and previous studies were
conducted. Until now, estimates of meltwater loss for all the
world's 200,000 glaciers were based on extrapolations of data from
a few hundred monitored on the ground. Those glaciers at lower
altitudes are much easier for scientists to get to and so were
more frequently included, but they were also more prone to melting."
Forty-nine former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter
to the current administrator, expressing their displeasure at the
space agency's advocacy of anthropogenic, CO2-based, global warming
(i.e., climate change) , while ignoring evidence that undermines
the theory.
"We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the
Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including
unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the
claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a
catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated,
especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data.
With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of
thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in
the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS
leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.
"The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate
change is unbecoming of NASA's history of making an objective
assessment of all available scientific data prior to making
decisions or public statements.
"As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA's advocacy of an
extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible
overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate.
We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and
unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this
subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA,
NASA's current or former scientists and employees, and even the
reputation of science itself."
Anthony Watts reports on the newly published paper by Henrik
Svensmark, demonstrating the high correlation between supernova
events in our region of the galaxy and bio-diversity on the earth.
This data supports Svensmark's theory that cosmic rays are the
dominant controlling factor of earth's climate. He also inverts
the CO2 model as Watts explains:
"Some geoscientists want to blame the drastic alternations of hot
and icy conditions during the past 500 million years on increases
and decreases in carbon dioxide, which they explain in intricate
ways. For Svensmark, the changes driven by the stars govern the
amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Climate and life control CO2,
not the other way around."
This chart shows the correlation between marine invertebrate genera
count (bio-diversity) in blue, and supernova rates in black.
The following chart by Watts, summarizes Svensmark's cosmic ray
hypothesis:
According to a paper published back in 2000 in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, James Hansen and the GISS team
stated:
"..we argue that rapid warming in recent decades has been driven
mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as
chlorofluorocarbons, CH4, and N2O, not by the products of fossil
fuel burning, CO2 and aerosols..
If sources of CH4 and O3 precursors were reduced in the future,
the change in climate forcing by non-CO2 GHGs in the next 50 years
could be near zero. Combined with a reduction of black carbon
emissions and plausible success in slowing CO2 emissions, this
reduction of non-CO2 GHGs could lead to a decline in the rate of
global warming, reducing the danger of dramatic climate change."
Oh well, when your previous work doesn't fit today's narrative,
bury it!
Global warming: second thoughts of an environmentalist
German green energy investor, Fritz Vahrenholt, rethinks his
position on anthropogenic global warming. A few excerpts from
his article:
"Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
are quite certain: by using fossil fuels man is currently
destroying the climate and our future. We have one last chance,
we are told: quickly renounce modern industrial society —
painfully but for a good cause."
"For many years, I was an active supporter of the IPCC and its CO2
theory. Recent experience with the UN's climate panel, however,
forced me to reassess my position. In February 2010, I was invited
as a reviewer for the IPCC report on renewable energy. I realised
that the drafting of the report was done in anything but a
scientific manner. The report was littered with errors and a
member of Greenpeace edited the final version. These developments
shocked me. I thought, if such things can happen in this report,
then they might happen in other IPCC reports too."
Using tree-ring data, scientists at the Johannes Gutenberg
University in Mainz, Germany, have reconstructed temperatures over
the past 2000 years, concluding that there has been an overall
cooling trend during that period.
"'We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures
during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low,' says Esper.
'Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy,
as they will influence the way today's climate changes are seen in
context of historical warm periods.'"
"In addition to the cold and warm phases, the new climate curve
also exhibits a phenomenon that was not expected in this form. For
the first time, researchers have now been able to use the data
derived from tree-rings to precisely calculate a much longer-term
cooling trend that has been playing out over the past 2,000 years.
Their findings demonstrate that this trend involves a cooling of
-0.3°C per millennium due to gradual changes to the position
of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and
the sun."
"'This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant,'
says Esper. 'However, it is also not negligible when compared to
global warming, which up to now has been less than 1°C. Our
results suggest that the large-scale climate reconstruction shown
by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely
underestimate this long-term cooling trend over the past few
millennia.'"
"New paper blames about half of global warming on weather
station data homogenization.
"Authors Steirou and Koutsoyiannis, after taking homogenization
errors into account find global warming over the past century was
only about one-half [0.42°C] of that claimed by the IPCC
[0.7-0.8°C]."
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) alarmist constantly refer to a
2009 survey that supposedly showed that 98% of all scientists
believe in global warming, thus confirming an almost universal
consensus on the subject. Is this true?
Larry Bell took a closer look and reported his finding in Forbes.
Here is what he discovered:
The survey asked exactly two questions:
When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that
mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or
remained relatively constant?
Do you think human activity is a significant
contributing factor in changing mean global
temperatures?
As the following chart shows, of 10,257 surveys sent, only 3,146
responded. Of those respondents, only 77 were found to have had a
sufficient level of peer-reviewed publications to be considered
suitable subjects. Of that small group, 75 answered yes to
question #2.
And this is how the 98% consensus figure was derived!
Read the full articles for a more comprehensive review of the
survey methodology.
A new paper to be published by Watts, Jones, McIntyre and
Christy, titled, "An area and distance weighted analysis of
the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology
Network temperatures and temperature trends," reanalyses the
surface temperature data measurement stations across the United
States.
Using a new classification system designed to better account for
the siting of these devices, what this study shows is that
temperature data reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) has over-reported temperature rises by a
factor of two. In other words, the reported North American
temperature increases were double the actual amounts, leading to
erroneous conclusions derived from this inaccurate data.
Richard Muller, a physics professor at he University of California
at Berkeley and the head of the
Berkeley Earth Surface
Temperature (BEST) team, has been promoting himself as a prior
climate skeptic who has recently "converted" to a believer in and
supporter of the view that the earth is warming at alarming rates
and that that warming is principally due to man's activity in
producing CO2.
The Australian science writer, Jo Nova, takes Muller to task,
declaring that of his three major claims, he gets only one half
right.
He's a converted skeptic. No he's a dishonest alarmist.
The world has warmed by 0.3°C/decade. "Half right"
That it's mostly due to man-made emissions. He has no
evidence, except the weakest of weak correlations.
The National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of
Colorado issued a widely distributed report claiming that Arctic
sea ice had diminished to the lowest extent in recent era,
breaking the previous low record established in 2007.
Well what constitutes a "record" depends upon what data set you
select. Here is the NSIDC ice extent chart, for 1979-2012:
But, as Steven Goddard points out on his Real Science site,
satellite data for polar cap ice data did not begin in 1979, but
actually extends back to 1967. In the following chart, using
data from a 1990 IPCC report, the rapid gain in polar ice between
1974 and 1979 is revealed, demonstrating that ice sheet extent at
the poles is cyclical.
Only by selectively cherry-picking the data, are people fooled
into believing that what is currently observed in the Arctic is
a man-made catastrophe.
Jonathan DuHamel has the following to say in his WryHeat column:
"In an earlier announcement, NSIDC said 'Sea ice extent dropped
rapidly between August 4 and August 8. While this drop coincided
with an intense storm over the central Arctic Ocean, it is unclear
if the storm prompted the rapid ice loss.' NSIDC called the storm
'The Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012' and noted the storm caused
'mechanical break up of the ice and increased melting by strong
winds and wave action during the storm.' Nothing to do with global
warming. A similar event happened in 2007 to cause the lower sea
ice extent reported then."
See his article (link to the right) for additional interesting
information.
There has been no global warming — ZERO — during
the past sixteen years. Be sure to keep it quiet!
"The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according
to new data released last week.
"The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists,
reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was
no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
"This means that the 'plateau' or 'pause' in global warming has
now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when
temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had
been stable or declining for about 40 years.
"The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on
land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any
media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported. "
The latest revelations out of the UK relate to how the BBC acted
as a propaganda machine for the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)
movement.
"Guiltiest of all, in my book, is the BBC. Without the BBC's
relentless propagandising on behalf of the alarmist cause
everywhere from the Today programme to Springwatch to the
hysterically doom-mongering reportage of Roger Harrabin and
David Shukman the public appetite for climate action at all costs
would not have been nearly so strong or undiscriminating. Nor
would our politicians have been quite so desperate to prove their
green credentials with lunatic policies like the Climate Change
Act."
"The damage this has done to our country is incalculable: it has
warped the minds of the young and impressionable, giving them
utterly misleading notions about the state of climate science and
the health of the planet; it has nudged our politicians into
making truly fatuous decisions which have a deleterious influence
on all our lives; it has lent a veneer of wholly unmerited moral
credibility to the schemings of "green" politicians"
While the final report is not due to be released for another year,
"expert reviewer" Alec Rawls has leaked the Second Order Draft of
AR5, the Working Group I's contribution to the IPCC Fifth
Assessment Report Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science
Basis. The full document may be found
here.
Quoting from IPCC Draft Report:
"Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or
cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system
(e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999).
The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does
not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence
of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud
link. We focus here on observed relationships between GCR and
aerosol and cloud properties."
[Emphasis added]
And as Rawls then points out:
"The admission of strong evidence for enhanced solar forcing
changes everything. The climate alarmists can't continue to
claim that warming was almost entirely due to human activity over
a period when solar warming effects, now acknowledged to be
important, were at a maximum. The final draft of AR5 WG1 is not
scheduled to be released for another year but the public needs to
know now how the main premises and conclusions of the IPCC story
line have been undercut by the IPCC itself."
[Emphasis added]
Marc Morano of Climate Depot further reports on the findings of
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the
University of Colorado, who compared differences between the
previous AR4 report and the current AR5 draft. Pielke states:
"IPCC AR5 draft shows almost complete reversal from AR4 on trends
in drought, hurricanes, floods and is now consistent with
scientific literature"
The C3 Headlines site provides the following charts using AR5
data:
and from them concludes:
Modern atmospheric global warming from CO2 has disappeared
during the 21st century.
Modern surface global warming, from a CO2 "warmed" atmosphere,
has disappeared.
All of the above 3 factual points contradict the IPCC "expert"
predictions, which this newest IPCC report reveals.
The IPCC climate models based on the CO2 hypothesis are
worthless — they can't predict squat, essentially.
Anthony Watts also published the following chart which shows how
the IPCC models of atmospheric methane, which have for years been
projecting an accelerating rise, continue to massively exaggerate
the concentrations in relation to reality.
The climate scientists at NASA, who in the past have played a very
large role in promoting the view that global warming is primarily
a manmade phenomenon (i.e., AGW), have now released a new report
highlighting a "dawning realization" that the variability
in the sun's radiant output may contribute significantly in
determining the earth's overall climate. The article opens with:
"In the galactic scheme of things, the Sun is a remarkably constant
star. While some stars exhibit dramatic pulsations, wildly
yo-yoing in size and brightness, and sometimes even exploding, the
luminosity of our own sun varies a measly 0.1% over the course of
the 11-year solar cycle.
There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that
even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect
on terrestrial climate. A new report issued by the National
Research Council (NRC), "The Effects of Solar Variability on
Earth's Climate," lays out some of the surprisingly complex ways
that solar activity can make itself felt on our planet.
Understanding the sun-climate connection requires a breadth of
expertise in fields such as plasma physics, solar activity,
atmospheric chemistry and fluid dynamics, energetic particle
physics, and even terrestrial history. No single researcher has
the full range of knowledge required to solve the problem. To
make progress, the NRC had to assemble dozens of experts from
many fields at a single workshop. The report summarizes their
combined efforts to frame the problem in a truly multi-disciplinary
context."
That's quite a shift in viewpoint from the position, only a few
short years ago, that the issue of AGW was a closed book with
nearly universal scientific consensus.
Accompanying the chart above, the report states:
"Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) presented persuasive evidence that solar variability is
leaving an imprint on climate, especially in the Pacific."
and
"In recent years, researchers have considered the possibility that
the sun plays a role in global warming. After all, the sun is the
main source of heat for our planet. The NRC report suggests,
however, that the influence of solar variability is more regional
than global. The Pacific region is only one example."
and
"Raymond Bradley of UMass, who has studied historical records of
solar activity imprinted by radioisotopes in tree rings and ice
cores, says that regional rainfall seems to be more affected than
temperature."
and
"Much has been made of the probable connection between the Maunder
Minimum, a 70-year deficit of sunspots in the late 17th—early
18th century, and the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, during
which Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold
winters. The mechanism for that regional cooling could have been
a drop in the sun's EUV output; this is, however, speculative.
[...]
Indeed, the sun could be on the threshold of a mini-Maunder event
right now.
[...]
'If the sun really is entering an unfamiliar phase of the solar
cycle, then we must redouble our efforts to understand the
sun-climate link,' notes Lika Guhathakurta of NASA's Living with
a Star Program."
and
"Hal Maring, a climate scientist at NASA headquarters who has
studied the report, notes that 'lots of interesting possibilities
were suggested by the panelists. However, few, if any, have been
quantified to the point that we can definitively assess their
impact on climate.' Hardening the possibilities into concrete,
physically-complete models is a key challenge for the researchers."
Hmmm, maybe it's a good thing that those people skeptical of the
viewpoint that man's activity had been conclusively proven to be
the primary determinant in creating catastrophic global warming,
were not put
to death prematurely for considering that there might be other
factors involved, or for questioning the logic chain leading from
the available facts to the stated conclusions.
Back on 11-22-11, a second set of email correspondence was leaked
from the UK's Climate Research Unit at the University of East
Anglia. Included with that release was a password-protected
encrypted file, presumably containing the remainder of the emails
originally hacked. The assumption was that this "lock box" file
was retained as protection against legal action which might be
brought against the original hacker, "Mr. FOIA", should his
identity be discovered.
Today, blogger, Tom Nelson, received a message containing the
password key. Here are a few excerpts from the accompanying
letter:
"Subject: FOIA 2013: the password"
"It's time to tie up loose ends and dispel some of the speculation
surrounding the Climategate affair."
"Releasing the encrypted archive was a mere practicality. I didn't
want to keep the emails lying around."
"I prepared CG1 & 2 alone. Even skimming through all 220.000
emails would have taken several more months of work in an
increasingly unfavorable environment."
"Dumping them all into the public domain would be the last resort.
Majority of the emails are irrelevant, some of them probably
sensitive and socially damaging."
"To get the remaining scientifically (or otherwise) relevant emails
out, I ask you to pass this on to any motivated and responsible
individuals who could volunteer some time to sift through the
material for eventual release."
"I don't expect these remaining emails to hold big surprises. Yet
it's possible that the most important pieces are among them.
Nobody on the planet has held the archive in plaintext since CG2."
Read the entire article for a justification of why "Mr. FOIA"
released the original batches of emails.
In a recent mathematical analysis by three German scientists, six
overlapping natural cycles were discovered that account for almost
all temperature change that has occurred over the past 250 years
— the period for which high quality temperature records have
been maintained. Their conclusion, assuming that they are correct
in their model, is that the dominant cycles peaked around the year
2000 and that we are now rapidly moving towards cooler temperatures.
They also conclude that human activity has played little role in
determining the earth's past or current temperature. Read more
here.
On May 10th, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) announced that:
"[T]he daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the
first time since measurements began in 1958. ... It marks an
important milestone because Mauna Loa, as the oldest continuous
carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement station in the world, is the
primary global benchmark site for monitoring the increase of this
potent heat-trapping gas."
So what does this mean? Well, it depends upon whom you ask. As
reported at Climate Depot:
"Former Vice President Al Gore declared the 400 ppm level 'A sad
milestone. A call to action.' New York times reporter Justin
Gillis compared trace amounts of CO2 to 'a tiny bit of arsenic or
cobra venom' and warned that rising CO2 means 'the fate of the
earth hangs in the balance.' The New Yorker Magazine declared
'Everything we use that emits carbon dioxide needs to be replaced
with something that doesn't.' And a UK Guardian editorial declared
'Swift political action can avert a carbon dioxide crisis.'"
Yet, despite all the doomsayers, as reported by Plant Fossils of
West Virginia, and illustrated in the following chart, throughout
the earth's history, atmospheric CO2 has most typically ranged
between 2,000 and 8,000 ppm (black line), with only one other
significant drop to todays range of 400 ppm or less during the
Carboniferous period.
Also, note that the earth's average temperature (blue line) has
only been as low as today's values twice in the past — during
the late Ordovician and late Carboniferous Periods. What is
particularly interesting is that despite CO2 levels exceeding 4,000
ppm in the late Ordovician period, this coincided with an ice age!
As the entire chart shows, there is no direct correlation between
CO2 and the earth's temperature.
Until climate models can account for the actual known historical
record, there is no reason to believe that they can do an accurate
job of predicting the future.
In an article titled, "Global Warming Alarmists Caught Doctoring
'97-Percent Consensus' Claims," information is reported
concerning John Cook's paper
which claims that there is a 97.2% endorsement by the scientific
community of the AGW hypothesis that human actions are
substantially responsible for global warming. Here is some of
what the Forbes article has to say:
"As is the case with other 'surveys' alleging an overwhelming
scientific consensus on global warming, the question surveyed had
absolutely nothing to do with the issues of contention between
global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics. The question
Cook and his alarmist colleagues surveyed was simply whether humans
have caused some global warming. The question is meaningless
regarding the global warming debate because most skeptics as well
as most alarmists believe humans have caused some global warming.
The issue of contention dividing alarmists and skeptics is whether
humans are causing global warming of such negative severity as to
constitute a crisis demanding concerted action."
"Cook and his colleagues, for example, classified a peer-reviewed
paper by scientist Craig Idso as explicitly supporting the
'consensus' position on global warming 'without minimizing' the
asserted severity of global warming. When Popular Technology asked
Idso whether this was an accurate characterization of his paper,
Idso responded, 'That is not an accurate representation of my
paper.' ... It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an
endorsement of CO2-induced global warming.?"
"When Popular Technology asked physicist Nicola Scafetta whether
Cook and his colleagues accurately classified one of his
peer-reviewed papers as supporting the 'consensus' position,
Scafetta similarly criticized the Skeptical Science classification."
"'Cook et al. (2013) is based on a straw man argument because it
does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that
human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since
1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was
induced by human emission,' Scafetta responded. 'What my papers
say is that the IPCC [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change] view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the
global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun.'"
Read the entire article for many additional comments
So what is left of the UN's IPCC advisory report? Absolutely nothing.
Every conclusion that it draws rests upon global temperature data that
has been shown to be useless in its native form, even before being
artificially manipulated by pseudo-scientists in order to manufacture
false apocalyptic projections. And why would these "scientists" do
such a thing? As is often the case, the answer is money. It is estimated
that in America alone, since 1989, the U.S. government has spent over
$79 billion on climate science. As the single significant source
of funding for this research, it doesn't take much imagination to realize
that the dollars only continue to flow so long as there is a "problem"
that needs to be addressed. Not even Congress is going to spend $79
billion just to be told that everything is fine. So it is imperative
that the funding mechanism continue to be well greased with doom and gloom
scenarios. And the same is true for other countries. This is the tragic,
but predictable consequence of government subsidization of scientific
research, which inevitably results in replacing the search for truth as
embodied by the facts of nature, with the generation of political
propaganda in support of man-made policy agendas.
And what is the UN's overally response in light of these revelations?
Have they decided to reevaluate their conclusions in response to all this
new information? The answer is no. And the reason is that concern over
preserving the environment is merely a smokescreen intended to hide the
real agenda. As FOX news reported
on September 8, 2010, the UN's Secretary General and his staff met to
discuss ways of reasserting the UN's influence on the world stage,
including:
"how to restore 'climate change' as a top global priority after
the fiasco of last year's Copenhagen summit"
"how to continue to try to make global redistribution of wealth
the real basis of that climate agenda, and widen
the discussion further to encompass the idea of 'global public goods'"
So "climate change" is simply seen as a convenient tool to be used
to extract wealth from producer countries and redistribute it to the
non-producers. And since that goal remains unaffected by any revelations
of the anti-scientific foundations underlying climate research, there is
no need to change course.
When Science Isn't Working, Try Intimidation
....
Reviewing the information above reveals an orchestrated effort by various
climate scientists and government agencies to not only manipulate
non-compliant data to fit predetermined conclusions, but to actively work
to suppress all dissenting opinion and research from receiving an equal
hearing. And if that were not enough, as Reason
Magazine reported back in 2006, we find people like David Roberts from
the website Grist who propose
taking things a step further:
"When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the
impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble
to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these
bastards [i.e., climate-change deniers]
-- some sort of climate Nuremberg."
"One Australian columnist has proposed outlawing 'climate change
denial'. 'David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust
denial', she wrote. 'Perhaps there is a case for making climate
change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after
all.'"
That's right. If you are unconvinced by the manufactured data and refuse
to accept the prepackaged "official" party line, then you are not simply
wrong. You are not even judged to have made a moral error. No, you
stand along side Nazi war criminals who murdered millions of innocent
people, and as one who is irredeemably evil, deserving a
Nuremberg-styled trial for crimes against humanity.
And the death-threats have even made it into the environmentalist's public
media campaigns, as seen in this advertisement:
Now, that's intimidation that should shut up the opposition!
Did you make it all the way through? It's certainly understandable if you
didn't. The 10:10 organization,
a global warming reduction group founded in 2009 by Franny Armstrong, and
professing to have over 104,000 signing sponsors, concluded that in the
wake of all the negative facts which had recently surfaced, the organizers
needed to reenergize public awareness of their belief in the pending global
environmental disaster. And they decided that the best way do do that was
to show school children, employees, or any others who did not fully support
their view, simply being killed! No argument. No trial. No rights. No
rule of law. Just simple, direct judgment and immediate termination by the
self-appointed saviors of the environment.
In the wake of widespread public backlash, the organization pulled the
video, and Armstrong had the following to
say:
"With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and
decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to
bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making
people laugh. [...] Many people found the resulting film extremely
funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to
anybody we have offended. [...] Unfortunately in this instance we
missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn."
Did you find the video funny? If not, then try to imagine the beliefs
and values held by those that do. These are people who see human life
as worthless, and can openly joke about exterminating anyone who simply
disagrees with them. When interviewed once the controversy exploded,
did Armstrong demonstrate that she understood what was wrong with her
approach? No. Her
response was:
"Clearly we don't really think they should be blown up, that's just a
joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a
good place to start?"
Just how far a leap is it from the mental states of the team of around
100 like-minded activists who worked to produce this film, to actual
amputations and executions? It is people who hold these same views that
have made it possible for the likes of Mao, Stalin and Hitler to murder
millions of innocent people, always in the name of a greater good. As
Armstrong says,
"Oh well, we live and learn. Onwards and
upwards". And she means it! On its
Backstory page,
10:10 indicates that George Monbiot is one of its muses. See the section
below for a more detailed discussion of the
philosophical principle that drive people such as these.
.... or Brainwashing:
With the acceptance of the anthropogenic global warming narrative on the
wane in light of all of the above facts, the environmental/political
activists are shifting to a new tactic: outright indoctrination through
the government run schools. In a piece titled, "Maryland
Adds Environmental Literacy in High Schools", Fox News reports
that Maryland is the first state to add a mandatory course in
"environmental literacy" (whatever that is) to the requirements for
graduation from high school. Of particular note is the fact that this
new requirement was not implemented through the legislative process, but
was the result of a fiat mandate issued by the MD State Board of Education
and has no specified purpose or proposed curriculum.
Sarah Bodor of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation supports the initiative
and says there is no mandate. "People express concern about the
content but what is important to know is that this new requirement
doesn't actually mandate any content at all."
Oh well then. No problem!
The state education board leaves all content up to local school boards
and a state official says "local systems will implement the requirement
as they see fit."
[T]he local school boards won't get any extra money, so a group called
the North American Association of Environmental Education offers a
guide for teachers. An early passage from the guide says "consumption
of natural resources, air and water pollution, and the impacts of
climate change are among the many complex challenges that threaten
human health, economic development, and national security." It goes
on to talk about the need to "take informed action." And that raises
some eyebrows.
"That is not really education," says [Myron] Ebell [of the Competitive
Enterprise Institute]. "It's propaganda and its designed to raise up a
new generation of easily led and poorly educated and misinformed
students."
This is indoctrination, pure and simple. Impressionable students are to
be exposed to a failed narrative about man's destructive impact on the
environment, without recourse to alternative viewpoints, or more
importantly, to real facts. And if there is any question that this is
a program that will be designed to foster critical and independent thought,
then please refer back to the first segment of the No Pressure video
immediately above for and example of just how
that sort of behavior is to be tolerated.
It All Sounds Familiar:
1974
1975
1977
1977
1987
2001
It's an old story. It wasn't that long ago that the same sort of people
who currently tell us that we are on the verge of worldwide destruction
due to "global-warming", were proclaiming that we were on the verge of
worldwide destruction due to "global-cooling" and over-population. If you
are old enough, you might remember some of these memorable quotes:
"After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an
assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have
reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting
colder."
[New York Times, Jan. 30, 1961]
".. civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate
action is taken against problems facing mankind"
[George Wald, Biologist, Harvard University, April 10, 1970]
Due to increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor:
"the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze,
and a new Ice Age will be born"
[Newsweek Magazine, January 26, 1970]
By 1995:
"..somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of
living animals will be extinct."
[Senator Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley,
Look Magazine, April, 1970]
The world will be:
"11 degrees colder in the year 2000 (this is about twice what it
would take to put us into an ice age)"
[Kenneth Watt, Ecologist, speaking at Swarthmore University,
April 19, 1970]
"We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of
this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human
habitation"
[Barry Commoner, Biologist at University of Washington,
The journal Environment, January, 1970]
"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small
increases in food supplies we make"
[Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April, 1970]
"air pollution ... is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands
of lives in the next few years alone"
[Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April, 1970]
"By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight
reaching earth by one half ..."
[Life magazine, January, 1970]
"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation"
[Denis Hayes, Earth Day organizer, The Living Wilderness,
Spring, 1970]
"By the year 2000 ... the entire world, with the exception of
Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine"
[Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness,
Spring, 1970]
"By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group
of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry
people..."
"If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will
not exist in the year 2000."
[Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September,
1971]
"Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over
the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an
ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000."
[Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1972]
"An international team of specialists has concluded from eight
indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling
trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere."
[New York Times, Jan. 5, 1978]
"The Cooling World: There are ominous signs that the earth's
weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these
changes may portend a drastic decline in food production... The
evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to
accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to
keep up with it... Last April, in the most devastating outbreak
of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300
people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in
thirteen U.S. states. ... The central fact is that ... the earth's
climate seems to be cooling down." [emphasis added]
[Newsweek, April 28, 1985]
"New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now."
[i.e., by 2004]
[St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 17, 1989]
"[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the
heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought,
causing crop failures and food riots ... [By 1996] The Platte
River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black
blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates,
strip paint from houses and shut down computers."
[Michael Oppenheimer, from his book "Dead Heat," 1990]
Whoops again! With over forty years to see these predictions realized,
there was no worldwide famine. No end to civilization. No ice age.
No mass species extinction. No American dust bowl. Britain is still
intact. The North Pole still has a 3.82 million square mile ice mass.
If New York sucks, its not due to its mimicing Florida. And there is
still enough sunlight to require SPF 45. Yet, I don't remember getting
an apology from any of these people, their sponsoring universities, or a
retraction published in any of the major magazines.
And despite their utter failure at accurate predictions, every one of
these purveyors of doom was being funded from the same government trough,
and consequently, demanding exactly the same "solution" as is being
proposed today: complete regulation over the behavior of every individual
and businesses by government overseerers. If the true goal of these
policies was human salvation, then the lessons of history and the
Climategate facts should give one pause. But if the actual goal is gaining
control as a means to increased power, then ignoring all these bothersome
facts, as is being done, begins to make a perverted sort of sense.
Now, take a look at this table put together by a blogger known as Kaz,
titled:
Climate
Change Timeline — 1895-2009. This documents the
histrionics reported in the media over the past hundred years regarding
our imminent death by cooling or heating. The only consistent thing is
that none of the end-of-the-world scenarios has ever come to pass.
On March 1st, 2013, Anthony Watts published a nice summary
of Global Cooling articles from the 1970s, along with this fun little
video clip narrated by Leonard Nimoy:
What About Al Gore?:
It was the IPCC report that allowed the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change to share the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore back in
2007.
However, there was another interesting event that took place in
2007 that went generally unreported by the American media. Gore
attempted to have his 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth, shown
to British school children as a documentary which presented scientific
fact. This was challenged by concerned individuals and eventually
ended up in court where a judge was asked to review the content and
render judgment.
The result was that An Inconvenient Truth was declared to be a
"political film" which could not be shown in the schools, and was
determined to be riddled with the following nine significant errors:
Responding to Gore's claim that a "near future" rise in sea
levels, up to 20 feet, the judge ruled that "The Armageddon
scenario ... is not in line with the scientific consensus."
Where Gore claims that Pacific atolls "are being inundated
because of anthropogenic global warming", the judge
rules that there was no evidence of any evacuation having yet
happened.
Gore claimed that global warming was shutting down the Atlantic
Gulf Stream, but the judge said that that was "very
unlikely".
Gore claimed that two graphs showing increases in CO2
and rising temperatures demonstrated "an exact fit" and
causal correlation. The judge said that "the two graphs do
not establish what Mr Gore asserts".
Gore argued that global warming was directly responsible for
the melting snow on Mt. Kilimanjaro. But the judge ruled that
other factors were much more likely to be the cause.
Gore argued that the drying of Lake Chad was due to global
warming. The judge said there was insufficient evidence and
that other causes were much more likely.
Gore blamed Hurricane Katrina on global warming, but the
judge ruled that there was "insufficient evidence to show
that".
Gore claimed that polar bears were seen swimming up to 60 miles
in order to find new ice. The judge said that the only
scientific evidence presented related to four bears, and that
did not support Gore's thesis.
Gore argued that global warming was bleaching coral reefs
around the world, but the judge stated that it was difficult to
separated the stress on reefs due to temperature from other
factors including over-fishing and pollution, so Gore's claims
were unjustified.
In addition, Gore based many of the film's fundamental points on Michael
Mann's fraudulent "hockey stick" temperature graph (or as Bill Whittle
calls it, "Mann-made global warming") which has since been thoroughly
debunked, thereby invalidating all subsequent conclusions. A thorough
discussion of the many other errors in this film can be found
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here.
Keep up the good work Mr. Gore!
If you ask what Al Gore's vested interest is in global-warming, it turns
out to be the same answer as for the research scientists: the government
money. Gore is an investor in
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm which makes
money from involvement with energy companies that ultimately score taxpayer
funding from government handouts and grants. Gore has also invested
significantly in Chicago Climate
Exchange (CCX) a trading outlet for Carbon Credits, which will become
lucrative, only if government-imposed energy caps are placed upon
businesses and individuals worldwide. The bottom line is summed up in the
title of the UK Telegraph's article: Al Gore could become world's first carbon billionaire. Yes, Gore
stands to gain considerably from a climate crisis—whether real or
imagined, and is an example of the new breed of "businessmen" who rely
upon leveraging government contacts to acquire a sizable portion of the
tax dollars being extracted from productive wealth creators and
redistributed to these "Political
Entrepreneurs". [Update: Unfortunately for Mr. Gore, the CCX has
expired
and will stop carbon trading by the end of 2010])
Due to increasing publicity being given to the advocates of the
global warming hypothesis, and in direct response to Al Gore's An
Inconvenient Truth, the British television producer Martin Durkin,
created a documentary titled
The
Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired on UK television
on March 8, 2007, presenting a variety of specialists disputing many
of the scientific "facts" used to back up the claim that an
Anthropogenic Global Warming crisis was imminent.
Despite a few errors of its own, this film exposed many serious flaws
in Gore's scientific arguments, while at the same time arguing that
political ideology and government research funding were primary drivers
for the underlying scientific corruption — arguments that were
substantiated by the Climategate scandal. Click on the image to the
left to view 75 minute video.
Well, scientific facts and the resulting shift in public opinion have
not been going Al's way over the past decade, and he is definitely not
happy about this. On August 4th, 2011, Gore gave a speech to a group
at the Aspen Institute, where he expressed his deep-seated feeling about
those who disagree with his personal views on man-made global warming.
If you are interested, you can listen to the short, profanity-laden,
audio clip to the right.
Beyond the raw emotional hatred he feels for anyone who does not fully
buy into his official party line, the most interesting statement he
makes is his lament that "there is no longer a shared reality on
an issue like climate". Here, Gore shows his totalitarian
stripes, demanding that everyone simply must agree with him or,
as his tone so clearly implies, else.
Media Reporting On Climategate:
Another possibly more important question is why has most of this
information which challenges the AGW orthodoxy not been reported by
American main stream media outlets? Reviewing the reference sources
below, it becomes clear that almost every report originated either in
the UK, or from independent internet reporters. American newspapers,
radio, television and major magazines have remained virtually silent on the
subject of Climategate, with a few minor exceptions, while National Public
Radio (NPR) continuing its active propaganda machine in service of the
government's takeover of the entire US economy as the only possible
solution to avoiding an Armageddon that is not coming. There is an agenda
operating here, with the media organizations having transformed themselves
from the role of reporter of the facts, into organs for government policy
indoctrination. The failure to report on the ongoing Climategate story
clearly demonstrates why these established media outlets deserve the rapid
death they are currently experiencing. They have failed in their purpose
of objectively reporting verified facts, and can no longer be relied upon
as a source of unbiased information.
As reported by James Taranto in the
Wall Street Journal,
one very clear example of the media bias in action can be seen in the
difference between The New York Times' response to the release of the
leaked material from the East Anglia Climate Research Unit as compared
to that released by WikiLeaks, concerning the U.S. Embassy and war efforts.
On The Climategate Documents:
"The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all
manner of private information and statements that were never intended
for the public eye, so they won't be posted here."
— New York Times, Nov. 20, 2009
On The WikiLeaks Documents:
"The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands
of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field
intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. ... The
Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest,
illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of
American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match."
— New York Times, Nov. 29, 2010
The Philosophy Behind The Environmental
Movement:
On December 14, 2009, George Monbiot published an article in Britain's
The Guardian, where he laid bare his soul and explained, in
no uncertain terms, the philosophy and intent behind the environmental
movement.
In this article, when describing the then coming 2009 Copenhagen climate
summit, Monbiot states:
"This is the moment at which we turn and face ourselves. Here,
in the plastic corridors and crowded stalls, among impenetrable texts
and withering procedures, humankind decides what it is and what it will
become."
And as with all good socialists, the issue for Monbiot is not what will
we, as individuals, become. The only relevant question is
what will be the transformation for humanity as a whole
— with all of the inconsequential individuals simply forced to
conform to the single-minded collective will.
And who is to decide this bold new direction for humanity? Well, for
Monbiot that's a moot point as the decision has already been cast,
with the consequences of that foregone decision sprinkled throughout
the remainder of the article. Consider such prescient observations as
the following:
"The meeting at Copenhagen confronts us with our primal tragedy."
"Now we find ourselves hedged in by the consequences of our
nature, living meekly on this crowded planet for fear of provoking
or damaging others. We have the hearts of lions and live the
lives of clerks."
"The summit's premise is that the age of heroism is over."
"[I]t is ... a battle between two world views. The angry
men who seek to derail this agreement, and all such limits on
their self-fulfilment, have understood this better than we
have."
"[F]ossil fuels have granted the universal ape amplification
beyond its Paleolithic dreams. [... allowing] us to live in
blissful mindlessness"
"The angry men know that this golden age has gone; but they
cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching
their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around"
"All those of us whose blood still races are forced to
sublimate, to fantasise. In daydreams and video games we find
the lives that ecological limits and other people's interests
forbid us to live."
"There is no space for heroism here; all passion and power
breaks against the needs of others. This is how it should
be."
As Ayn Rand once wrote:
"Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his
own destroyer — and that is the way he has acted through most of
his history."
This article correctly summarizes the real issue behind the environmental
movement. I agree that it is concerned with nothing less than the
redefinition of humanity. And the vision of that new humanity is as a
passive video-gamer, vicariously placated by virtual-acts that were once
undertaken in reality. With our lion hearts caged, and all thoughts of
heroism ground out of existence, we should all voluntarily accept our new
place as clerks and stewards of the planet, and sacrifice ourselves in
service to "other people's interests". Nothing more can be expected
when the "original sin" of our human nature unavoidably leads to "primal
tragedy".
The basic thrust of the article rests upon the simple assertions that:
Anthropogenic climate change is an established threat that is
bringing with it massive global devastation
Attempts to manipulate political bodies to force behavioral and
economic changes have been ineffective
Any attempts at geoengineering solutions to this problem are far
too risky to attempt
Bioengineering of humans poses acceptable risks
So, in the eyes of these researchers, engineering solutions to the planet
are simply too dangerous to contemplate, but humanity is apparently an
expendable resource that is readily available for experimentation! And
remember, this is a paper scheduled for a journal on ethics! Let's
examine some of the specific ideas being discussed:
One possibility under consideration is something straight out of A
Clockwork Orange:
Atlantic: "You suggest that humans could be given meat alongside a
medication that triggers extreme nausea, which would then cause a
long-lasting aversion to meat eating."
Liao: "I think it's important to note that it wouldn't necessarily
need to be a pill. We have also toyed around with the idea of a
patch that might stimulate the immune system to reject common bovine
proteins, which could lead to a similar kind of lasting aversion to
meat products."
Another promising idea considered superior to improving resource
utilization, would be to engineer humans to be shorter and lighter!
Atlantic: "Your paper also discusses the use of human engineering to
make humans smaller."
Liao: "[S]ize reduction could be one way to reduce a person's
ecological footprint. For instance if you reduce the average U.S.
height by just 15cm, you could reduce body mass by 21% for men and 25%
for women, with a corresponding reduction in metabolic rates by some
15% to 18%, because less tissue means lower energy and nutrient needs."
And taking things a bit further:
"Liao: "[W]e looked into cat eyes, the technique of giving humans cat
eyes or of making their eyes more catlike. The reason is, cat eyes see
nearly as well as human eyes during the day, but much better at night.
We figured that if everyone had cat eyes, you wouldn't need so much
lighting, and so you could reduce global energy usage considerably."
But certainly we're not talking about thought control, right?
Atlantic: "In the paper you also discuss the pharmacological
enhancement of empathy and altruism, because empathy and altruism
tend to be highly correlated with positive attitudes toward the
environment."
Liao: "What we have in mind has more to do with weakness of will. For
example, I might know that I ought to send a check to
Oxfam, but because of a weakness of
will I might never write that check. But if we increase my empathetic
capacities with drugs, then maybe I might overcome my weakness of will
and write that check."
Liao: "If you're very pessimistic about the world, and you take a drug
that will cause you to develop a more positive outlook, then in some
sense those are beliefs that you already desired. In a case like that
the ethical issues might fall away on account of the fact that you
previously desired those beliefs, and that you're aware of the
consequences of taking the drug."
And what are the ethical considerations for individual freedom?
Atlantic: "In your paper you suggest that some human engineering
solutions may actually be liberty enhancing. How so?"
Liao: "That's right. It's been suggested that, given the seriousness
of climate change, we ought to adopt something like China's one child
policy. There was a group of doctors in Britain who recently advocated
a two-child maximum. But at the end of the day those are crude
prescriptions—what we really care about is some kind of fixed
allocation of greenhouse gas emissions per family. If that's the case,
given certain fixed allocations of greenhouse gas emissions, human
engineering could give families the choice between two medium sized
children, or three small sized children. From our perspective that
would be more liberty enhancing than a policy that says "you can
only have one or two children." A family might want a really good
basketball player, and so they could use human engineering to have one
really large child."
Liao: "If you crave steak, and that craving prevents you from making a
decision you otherwise want to make, in some sense your inability to
control yourself is a limit on the will, or a limit on your liberty.
A meat patch would allow you to truly decide whether you want to have
that steak or not, and that could be quite liberty enhancing."
Here is some
Newspeak that
even has George Orwell spinning in his grave!
The fact that a position such as this can get discussion space and a
reasonable hearing in a main stream publication such as The Atlantic
is an indictment of just how pervasive the radical environmental message
has penetrated our culture.
Or consider the views of the activist Derrick Jensen, an
anarcho-primitivist who has been hailed as the poet-philosopher
[sic!] of the environmental movement. Jensen sees all
manner of human civilization as untenable and calls for an end to
industrial society, with the return of mankind to the state of cavemen.
In a 2005 interview with
No
Compromise, Jensen stated:
"I want to bring down civilization. ... It is really clear that for
the past 6,000 years, civilization has been killing the planet ...
and I will do whatever it takes to get there."
And during an interview in
Democracy NOW!,
on November 26, 2010, Jensen had the following to say:
"Derrick, you've written, 'Civilization is not and can never be
sustainable.'"
"Yeah. Several years ago, I was riding around in a car with a friend
of mine, George Draffan, with whom I've written a couple books. And
I was just making conversation. I said, "So, George, if you could
live at any level of technology that you want to, what would it be?"
And he was not in a very good mood that day, and he said, "That's a
really stupid question, Derrick, because we can fantasize whatever
we want, but the truth is there's only one level of technology that's
sustainable. And that's the Stone Age."
In an apparent failed attempt to provide a practical demonstration of
what he envisions for all of us,
Wikipedia quotes
Jensen as saying:
"In order to save the planet, I once stopped using toilet tissue and
used my bare hand. I did this for two months. But even as stinky as
Western culture is, it wasn't nearly as stinky as my hand. So I quit
using my bare hand. I use ferns instead. To all those ferns who met
such an end, I apologize. Hell, maybe I'll just use friggin' Charmin
again."
However, frustration over the fact that the world does not bend to his will
has led Jensen to propose what he calls a culture of resistance,
which is merely a euphemism for organized acts of violent destruction aimed
at all aspects of modern civilization. Consider the following statements:
"There can be no real peace when living with someone who has already
declared war ... There is only one language that they understand, and
everyone here knows what it is. Yet we don't speak of it openly."
— A Language Older Than Words (2000)
"Every morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should write or blow
up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I'm not sure
that's right."
— A Language Older Than Words (2000)
"I was once being interviewed by a dogmatic pacifist and he felt that I
wanted all activists to act like assassins. That's not true. What I
want is for all activists to act like they are serious about their
resistance and that might include assassinations."
— Truthout (09-05-10)
"There are two million dams in the United States. There's about 70,000
dams over six-and-a-half-feet tall. And if we only took out one of
those dams every day, it would take 200 years to take them all out."
— Democracy NOW! (11-26-10)
Kari Norgaard is a professor of sociology and environmental studies at
the University of Oregon. In a
paper
presented to the Planet Under Pressure conference in London,
Norgaard argues that individuals who doubt the catastrophic
consequences of anthropogenic climate change are exhibiting a
"sickness" needing to be "treated". On a societal
level, she compares resistance to the implementation of large scale
political programs to address climate change "to racism or slavery
in the U.S. South."
As Anthony Watts reports
here,
there was so much controversy over her pronouncements, that the original
press release, which included the statement:
"Resistance at individual and societal levels must be recognized
and treated before real action can be taken to effectively address
threats facing the planet from human-caused contributions to
climate change"
was silently edited to remove the phrase "and treated". How
convenient, when your positions are so easily mutable in response to
public controversy.
In a more recent
open letter
to President Obama, Norgaard suggests that in regard to environmental
matters:
"Don't wait for public consensus on climate change."
"Americans have been remarkably out of step in our understanding of
climate change. ...
Public opinion does matter in a democracy, but this is a time when
following it would be a serious mistake."
In other words, consensus in a democracy is desirable if it aligns with
your personal views, but when it does not, the views of the citizens should
be ignored and the president should act as a dictator, imposing his will
upon the ignorant. When you cannot convince others, there is always
force waiting in the wings!
After enough time has passed, with the ideas of Monbiot, Jensen,
Norgaard, and others going substantially unchallenged, we finally
begin to see the influences of their philosophy echoing in the
mainstream press. Take for instance this
article
which appeared in Forbes magazine. The author, Steve Zwick, proposes
his "solution" for dealing with those who have not climbed
aboard the catastrophic, anthropogenic, climate change bandwagon.
Quoting from the article:
"We know who the active denialists are — not the people who buy
the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let's start
keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let's make them
pay. Let's let their houses burn until the innocent are rescued.
Let's swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let's force them
to bear the cost of rising food prices."
After receiving considerable blowback regarding his plan, Zwick felt it
necessary to later go back and amend his article with a disclaimer that
he was not actually inviting people to burn down the houses of others.
But that seems disingenuous, as his true feelings are clearly on display.
And of course, like all good statists, he was not suggesting that
individuals should take personal responsibility for their own beliefs
and actions, but instead turn that function over to government thugs who
will implement their "plans" upon their behalf.
But not everyone is as "reasonable" as Mr. Zwick. Take for
instance Austrian professor Richard Parncutt, who has no interest in
merely burning down houses. No, he has much bigger and bolder plans
for you and me. He writes:
"In this article I am going to suggest that the death penalty is
an appropriate punishment for influential GW deniers. ...
I have always been opposed to the death penalty in all cases ...
The death penalty is barbaric, racist, expensive, and is often
applied by mistake. ... Even mass murderers should not be executed,
in my opinion. ... GW [Global Warming] deniers fall into a
completely different category ... the death penalty is an appropriate
punishment for GW deniers who are so influential that one million
future deaths can with high probability be traced to their personal
actions."
Yes, your disagreement with Mr. Parncutt and his merry band of "scientists"
who have given us everything discussed above, is sufficient grounds for
your summary execution in his estimation. And Parncutt doesn't just limit
his thinking to those who disagree with him about climate change.
Apparently disagreeing on any sufficiently important subject will earn you
the death penalty. For example:
"That raises the interesting question of whether and how the Pope and
his closest advisers should be punished for their consistent stand
against contraception in the form of condoms. ... The number of people
dying of AIDS would have been much smaller if the Catholic Church had
changed its position on contraception in the 1980s. ... We are
talking about millions of deaths, so according to the principle I have
proposed, the Pope and perhaps some of his closest advisers should be
sentenced to death.
To attempt to justify his views, Parncutt offers up the following
statistics:
"For the purpose of argument, let's give the GW deniers the benefit
of the doubt and imagine that the scientists are wrong with a high
probability, say 90%. If they are right, some 100 million people
will die as a direct result of GW. Probably more like a billion,
but this is a conservative estimate. If the probability of that
happening is only 10%, then effectively "only" 10 million people
will die."
"If they are right ..." Yes, he is proposing to execute people
based upon an "if"! An "if" offered up by the same
mythical, homogeneous, and fully unified group of "scientists" that
the progressives constantly conjure up. That group that has failed to
make a single credible measurable prediction about earth's climate. Then,
based upon these unsupported "estimates" he offers the following startling
statement:
"Consider this: If ten million people are going to die with a
probability of 10%, that is like one million people dying with a
probability of 100%."
What!? Well, professor Parncutt is an expert on the
psychology of music, which more than qualifies him to hold court on
geoclimatic issues, while absolving him of being held accountable for
such advanced subjects as math or logic.
Then, in the best 1984 tradition, Parncutt suggests:
"If a jury of suitably qualified scientists estimated that a given GW
denier had already, with high probability (say 95%), caused the deaths
of over one million future people, then s/he would be sentenced to
death. The sentence would then be commuted to life imprisonment if
the accused admitted their mistake, demonstrated genuine regret, AND
participated significantly and positively over a long period in
programs to reduce the effects of GW (from jail) — using much
the same means that were previously used to spread the message of
denial. At the end of that process, some GW deniers would never admit
their mistake and as a result they would be executed. Perhaps that
would be the only way to stop the rest of them. The death penalty
would have been justified in terms of the enormous numbers of saved
future lives."
Here the curtain is ripped away to reveal the true motivations of scum
such as Parncutt. He doesn't really care to control your actions —
it is control of your mind and soul that he seeks! For a dramatization of
the psychology of such people, I recommend the short story, "A
Thousand Deaths", by Orson Scott Card, which appears in his
anthology, "Maps in a Mirror" and the paperback collection,
"Flux".
A copy of Parncutt's original article, discussed above, may be found
here.
After considerable blowback from a number of websites, Parncutt
significantly revised his article, a copy of which may be found
here.
A comparison between the two versions is instructive. It's quite a
transition to move within less than 24 hours from suggesting "the
death penalty is an appropriate punishment for influential GW
deniers." to "I wish I had a good solution."
For additional information and comments on the nutty professor, check out
articles at
Watts
Up With That? and
Jo
Nova.
Agenda 21
Which brings us back to the United Nations, the self-appointed advocate
and enabler behind the environmentalist cause, dedicated to seeing that
the goals of those such as Jensen and Monbiot are realized in all of
their bloody infamy.
While the press and public have been intently distracted with the pros
and cons of anthropogenic global warming, the UN has been quietly working
to promote it's real goals through a program known as Agenda 21,
initiated in 1992 and billed as a plan to promote sustainable
development throughout the world. Now, as the cause of global
warming wanes in the face of the Climategate scandal and the mounting
scientific date undermining it, watch how the political/environmental
conversation is morphing into calls for the need to impose regulations
and taxes upon all of us in order to support "sustainability."
A review of the information on the UN's Agency 21 website reveals the
following goals:
Unite all nation in a common effort for sustainable development,
with the UN ultimately acting as a super-government having
authority over the remainder of the world's national governments.
National governments are required to "strengthen institutional
structures to allow the full integration of environmental and
developmental issues, at all levels of decision-making."
A massive redistribution of wealth from the rich (developed)
countries to the poor (undeveloped) ones under the guise of
creating "a more efficient and equitable world economy". In
other words, eliminate world poverty in the name of promoting
sustainable livelihoods and reduce the standard of living in
developed countries as a necessity for reducing environmental
stress.
Developed countries are to provide health care for undeveloped
countries.
Global financial institutions are to be funded by rich countries
in order to implement the environmental policies dictated by the
UN.
By recognizing the "increasing interdependence of the community
of nations", and working to "overcome confrontation",
"foster a climate of genuine cooperation and solidarity",
"strengthen national and international policies", and by
adapting "to the new realities", strong countries are to
be subjugated to the weak.
Use the UN's now discredited IPCC report as justification for
throttling the economies of developed countries.
Adjust all land-use and resource policies to mitigate changes to
the atmosphere, promote bio-diversity, conserve resources,
minimize pollution, promote sustainability, provide shelter for
all, promote sustainable construction, energy distribution, and
transportation.
"Transfer" environmentally sound technology from the
developers to those with a need. (i.e., steal it.)
Promote education, public awareness and training. (In other
words, an active propaganda campaign.)
The actual underlying goal of Agenda 21 is abundantly clear:
The complete subjugation of the world's population by a global
totalitarian regime, and the destruction of every pocket of advanced
civilization through massive wealth redistribution.
Still not convinced? Then consider the latest proposal heading to the UN,
as reported in the
Vancouver Sun.
Here are a few excerpts:
"Bolivia will this month table a draft United Nations treaty giving
"Mother Earth" the same rights as humans — having just passed
a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other
natural things in the South American country."
"The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity
that humans have sought to "dominate and exploit" — to the point
that the "well-being and existence of many beings" is now threatened."
"It also establishes a Ministry of Mother Earth, and provides the
planet with an ombudsman whose job is to hear nature's complaints
as voiced by activist and other groups, including the state."
"The UN debate begins two days before the UN's recognition April 22
of the second International Mother Earth Day"
The following video by John Anthony presents an excellent overview of
the methodology being used to implement Agenda 21 in the United States.
(15 minutes)
The following video presents an overview of how Agenda 21 will impact your
life.
(20 minutes)
"Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will
allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions
and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense."
"We're the only species evolved enough to consciously go extinct for
the good of all life, or which needs to. Success would be humanity's
crowning achievement."
When Ayn Rand wrote,
"There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe:
existence or non-existence — and it pertains to a single
class of entities: to living organisms."
she was honoring the natural choice to value life. Here we have nature
turned on it's head, with people proudly proclaiming death as their
standard and goal. And regardless of whether it is pursued with good
humor or with blinding rage, it is hatred for life and the pursuit
of death that is the real meaning and purpose of the philosophy
driving the environmental movement.
In Summary:
Monbiot, Jensen, Agenda 21 and VHEMT perfectly articulates the polarity
that exists between the environmentalists' view of mankind as a meek,
collective destroyer, to be relegated to living no better than a
mindless beast (or worse), and those held by Ayn Rand of men as heroic
beings capable of unparalleled achievement and limitless potential.
So, who is the destroyer and who is the savior? The choice is yours.
Either lay down you copy of Atlas Shrugged and accept your role
as a hapless, mindless sheep or nomadic caveman — or grasp your
copy firmly in hand and wield it as the tool it was intended to be,
standing proudly in the long tradition of our Paleolithic ancestors
who knew how to dream of a better future and then work creatively to
realize it.
The Practical Consequences Of The
Environmental Movement:
Setting aside for a moment the anti-life moral philosophy of many who
populate the environmental movement, let's consider the immediate practical
consequences of their ideas.
Life is not automatic, but requires an ongoing process of decision-making
in order to sustain itself. The basic resources of time, energy and money
are limited, and choices must be made as to the best investment of each
in order to further one's life and maximize one's happiness. And one
must consider both the long as well as short term consequences of each
option when making a decision. For example, with limited funds, one might
face the choice of buying a new car or taking a family vacation this year?
Should you invest in braces for your child, or save that money for their
college education? Is it better to purchase a home or rent? Should you
take that new job that pays better, or stick with the one you enjoy more?
Would it be wiser to take a fifty dollar bonus and put it in the bank, pay
down credit card debt, or have some fun and buy lottery tickets? Each
decision trades off one set of costs and benefits for another.
When making personal decisions, the consequences are generally limited
to one's own life and to those who choose to associate with you. But when
governments become involved in political actions that are imposed upon
everyone by force, the consequences are magnified and affect huge numbers
of individuals. And if these governments base their decisions on poor or
faulty information, the consequences can become disasters. This is the
real legacy of the environmental movement.
Consider the case of Australia as reported in an
article by
Christopher Booker. For many years, the Australian government has been
a big proponent of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Listening to the
forecasts from various environmental groups, the government shifted its
focus away from historical protective measures against damaging floods,
and towards drought prevention. Booker reports the consequences:
"Ever more alarming facts are emerging to show how Brisbane's floods
were made infinitely worse by cockeyed decisions inspired by the
obsession of the Australian authorities with global warming.
For years, Australia's warmists have been advising the authorities
that the danger posed to the country by global warming is not floods
but droughts: not too much rain but too little. One result, in
Brisbane, was a relaxation of planning rules, to allow building on
areas vulnerable to flooding in the past. [...] Instead of investing
in its flood defences, Australia spent $13 billion on desalination
plants. (Queensland's was recently mothballed because of the excess
of rain.)
Last week's most disturbing revelation, however, was the contribution
to Brisbane's flooding by the South East Queensland Water company's
massive release of water from its Wivenhoe dam upstream from the city.
Last spring, Queensland's prime minister, the drought- and
warming-obsessed Anna Bligh, ordered the water company not to allow
any releases from the dam because water was such a "precious
resource" that none must be wasted."
Following the "logic" of the unproven claim that global warming is
the direct result of human activity releasing carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere, governments around the world have tripped over themselves as
they taken huge amounts of wealth from the pockets of their citizens
in order to fund "green" industries and practices that do not utilize
carbon-based fuels. This includes activities such as the construction of
wind and solar farms. As Tom McGhie
reported
on January 9, 2011, concerning the UK's investment in wind generation,
results align with actual scientific expectations rather than conforming
to the wishful prophecies of the politicians-cum-environmentalists:
"The failure of Britain's wind farms to produce electricity in the
extreme cold will cost billions of pounds, create an economic crisis
and lead to blackouts, leading industrialists have warned.
Now Mr Nicholson predicts that the Government will encourage power
companies to build billions of pounds worth of standby power stations
in case of further prolonged wind failures.
Industry regulator Ofgem has already calculated that the cost of
achieving sustainable energy targets — set by Brussels but
backed by the British Government — will amount to £200
billion
[$319 billion], which will
mean that annual household fuel bills will double to about £2,400
[$3,830] on average within the next
ten years.
So little energy was generated then that the National Grid, which is
responsible for balancing supply and demand of energy in the UK, was
forced to ask its biggest users — industry — to ration
supplies.
Mr Nicholson said: "We can cope at the moment because there is still
not that much power generated from wind. But all this will change.
What happens when we are dependent on wind turbines for 30 per cent
of our power and there is suddenly a period when the wind does not
blow and there is high demand?"
Good question.
Or consider the 2001
findings
of Cornell scientist Roger Segelkern concerning the suitability of
corn-based ethanol production which is being subsidized in the United
States:
"Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient
process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable,
subsidized food burning."
Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to
ethanol, 131,000 Btu are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol. One
gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 Btu. "Put
another way," Pimentel said, "about 70 percent more energy is
required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in
ethanol. Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a net
energy loss of 54,000 Btu."
Ethanol from corn costs about $1.74 per gallon to produce, compared
with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline. "That helps
explain why fossil fuels — not ethanol — are used to
produce ethanol," Pimentel said. "The growers and processors can't
afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol. U.S. drivers couldn't afford
it either, if it weren't for government subsidies to artificially
lower the price."
Most economic analyses of corn-to-ethanol production overlook the
costs of environmental damages, which Pimentel says should add
another 23 cents per gallon. "Corn production in the U.S. erodes
soil about 12 times faster than the soil can be reformed, and
irrigating corn mines groundwater 25 percent faster than the natural
recharge rate of ground water."
The approximately $1 billion a year in current federal and state
subsidies (mainly to large corporations) for ethanol production are
not the only costs to consumers, the Cornell scientist observes.
Subsidized corn results in higher prices for meat, milk and eggs
because about 70 percent of corn grain is fed to livestock and
poultry in the United States.
The average U.S. automobile, traveling 10,000 miles a year on pure
ethanol (not a gasoline-ethanol mix), would need about 852 gallons of
the corn-based fuel. This would take 11 acres to grow, based on net
ethanol production. This is the same amount of cropland required to
feed seven Americans.
If all the automobiles in the United States were fueled with 100
percent ethanol, a total of about 97 percent of U.S. land area would
be needed to grow the corn feedstock. Corn would cover nearly the
total land area of the United States."
And that $1 billion subsidy back in 2001 had risen to somewhere between
$5.5 and 7.3 billion by 2006,
carrying on annually at least through 2010. Each of those dollars being
spent on a boondoggle like this, if left in the hands of the individuals
or businesses that originally earned them, is a dollar that might have
fed, clothed or brought delight to someone's life, rather then being
flushed away in pursuit of someone else's false dream.
Then there is the case of DDT, which was banned from use in the
United States
by the EPA in 1972, and later by the World Health Organization (WHO), as a
result of environmentalist junk science, starting with Rachael Carson's
book Silent Spring. During the original EPA hearings, considerable
evidence both for and against DDT was presented, and yet, at its
conclusion, Hearing Examiner Edmund M. Sweeney issued the following
statements as a part of his findings:
DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man.
DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man.
The use of DDT under the registrations involved here do not have
deleterious effects on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild
birds, or other wildlife.
So what? The EPA and WHO banned it, despite the lack of sound scientific
evidence of harm. However, in 2006, nearly 30 years later, without relying
on any studies that were not available back in the 1960s, the
WHO
reversed its ban.
"DDT has been banned globally for every use except fighting disease
because of its environmental impacts and fears for human health.
WHO says there is no health risk, and DDT should rank with bednets
and drugs as a tool for combating malaria, which kills more than one
million each year."
"Overlooked in all the hoopla over the announcement, however, is the
terrible toll in human lives (tens of millions dead — mostly
pregnant women and children under the age of 5), illness (billions
sickened) and poverty (more than $1 trillion dollars in lost GDP
in sub-Saharan Africa alone) caused by the tragic, decades-long ban.
Much of this human catastrophe was preventable, so why did it happen?
Who is responsible? Should the individuals and activist groups who
caused the DDT ban be held accountable in some way?"
Ideas do have consequences, and bad ideas can lead to tragic results.
These four examples just scratch the surface when it comes to evaluating
the true costs associated with the implementation of an environmentalism
based upon political agendas rather than solid scientific research
— costs measured not just in dollars, but in untold levels of
misery and uncountable human deaths. Environmentalism, just like any
other authoritarian program imposed on others by force, is a crime
against humanity and must be denounced and treated as such.
Skepticism Over Predictions of Anthropogenic
Climatic Catastrophe:
One result of the Climategate scandal has been to make information and
viewpoints skeptical of man-made climate Armageddon more readily available
to the general public, through books and articles published in the main
stream press. Here are a few sources of information presenting the
case that there is far from sufficient data available to predict a coming
worldwide disaster.
Here is an excellent 12 minute video that demonstrates exactly how
the climate models that are being used to predict the runaway CO2-based
global warming simply do not conform to the facts:
JoNova is a freelance science
writer who maintains a website reporting on current events in the
climate science field. She has summarized many climate facts in two
short pamphlets titled
The Skeptics
Handbook, I and II.
In a talk entitled
Climate
Models Go Cold, reproduced in the Financial Post, engineer David
Evans explains how the original idea that carbon dioxide production
was predominantly responsible for the earth's global warming was based
upon a climate model hypothesis formulated in the 1960s, which by the
mid 1990s had been completely disproved by three decades of temperature
measurements.
This Climategate site
currently operates as an alternate news aggregator of information
relating to the fraudulent methods used to promote the political
agenda of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Heaven and Earth
For people who wish to get a more comprehensive overview of the
issues impacting the climate change debate, I highly recommend
reading Ian Plimer's book:
Plimer is a geologist who presents a comprehensive history of the
earth's climate, explaining exactly what we know and do not know about
factors influencing it. In his heavily researched book, he brings
together information from a number of scientific disciplines (there
are over 2,300 footnote references) to present a comprehensive picture
that sheds real light on issues related to the current climate change
debate. He demonstrates the following:
With a proper historical perspective, there is absolutely
nothing out of the ordinary regarding our current climate
variability and trends.
The earth has been much warmer in the past, and while we
experienced a mild late-20th century warming followed by the
much under-reported 21st century cooling trend, there is
nothing here that does not fit into the historical validated
variability for climate.
There is absolutely no correlation between CO2
levels and temperature.
The earth is a self-balancing system that sequesters
CO2 in the oceans (among other processes) and that
is why there has never been a run-away greenhouse effect in the
history of the earth, despite much higher CO2 levels
than we currently experience.
Historically, mankind has prospered when temperatures were
warmer than the current levels.
There is still a great deal about earth dynamics that we do not
fully understand or monitor, but which likely plays a huge role
in determining earth's climate.
The computerized climate models used to "predict" global
warming ignore huge amounts of known data as well as all the
dynamic factors for which there is little data available, and
therefore fail to come close to being able to predict the
earth's climate; something easily demonstrated by the fact
that they cannot properly model well known historical results
when given accurate historical data.
The UN's IPCC reports on global warming are filled with bad
data, much of which has been publicly discredited over the past
few years, but which goes unreported in the main stream press
There is a lot more to this book and it is a fascinating read just for
the education that you will gain into the current state of sciences
relating to the earth, atmosphere, oceans, glaciers and sun. But the
important issue here is that no one who has not read this book and is
ready to address the issues it raises, should be making any
pronouncements regarding climate change — let alone passing
legislation that will affect the lives of us all.
Read it, and then write to the President and your congressional
representatives and demand that they too read this book and demonstrate
a real knowledge of the science behind global warming before casting
an uninformed vote on this issue. Of course, be prepared for them to
ignore this request, because the real political goal behind the IPCC
and the push to regulate CO2 has nothing to do with
scientifically-based environmental concerns, and everything to do with
the further consolidation of power in the hands of governments seeking
nothing less than total control over every aspect of their subjects'
lives.
Other Climate Review Websites:
The following websites are a good source for additional research,
providing a mixture of commentary and/or analysis on the subject of
climate and climate science research, both in support, neutral, or
skeptical of the United Nations' IPCC theory concerning the scope and
validity of Anthropogenic (i.e., man-made) Global Warming (AGW).