by Oyvind Solstad

The beginning of the 21st Century saw the media begin flooding the airways with political speechifying and TV hype about global warming and the plight of doomed polar bears on melting ice flows. Considerable propaganda built the belief (see WND article, references at end) that mainstream scientific opinion felt global warming is a fact and is the fault of human activity.

This isn’t saying that man has not been identified as the most destructive creature on the face of the earth, or that environmentalism isn’t important or hasn’t been neglected for far too long; it’s simply that the global warming issue is a biased agenda. There is much evidence pointing to normal periodic climate fluctuations not strictly global warming, and the non-global warming proponents have started speaking up in droves. So it needs to be asked, is there global warming or not? And is it, perhaps, not an irreversible trend? Must man own up to his part in it, or is it mostly a natural phenomenon?

Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC)

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is ostensibly a group of scientists working to assess the issues and realities of global climate change. During 2004, the group began to take a pro-global warming stance and in December 2007, the IPCC and Al Gore were jointly awarded a Nobel prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.

In January of 2005, Chris Landsea (IPCC scientist, author, and reviewer), wrote an open letter about why he felt it necessary to leave his position with the IPCC 4th Assessment Report (AR4) Committee due to concerns about IPCC politicizing and their lack of neutrality regarding climate change issues.

In September 2006, Dr. David Whitehouse, a British astronomer and former science editor of the BBC, contacted Dr. Benny Peiser, moderator of the scholarly online Cambridge Conference Network (CCNet) at the Univ of Liverpool in UK, noting the impropriety of the Royal Society (of British scientists) pressuring journalists to ignore anyone with perspectives outside the IPCC consensus (Sept. 21, 2006, science policy archives at colorado.edu, Prometheus: David Whitehouse on Royal Society Efforts to Censor Archives; “The Honest Broker”).

On December 19, 2007, Whitehouse published an article in the New Statesman Online entitled Has Global Warming Stopped? (newstatesman.com/scitech/2007).  In it, he stated “The fact is, that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 and every year since 2001…. the evidence shows that global warming, as such, has ceased.”

Senate Environment Committee Cautions Media to Avoid Alarmism

On September 26, 2006. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), then chairman of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, spoke to the media from the Senate floor, asking for objective reporting on global climate issues. He stated that global warming alarmism is unsupported by the weight of scientific evidence, and proposals by activists to impose a drastic global warming prevention program were unwarranted. (Senator Challenges Media to Report Objectively, Heartland Institute Staff, Environment & Climate News,May 2007)

The Heartland Institute, a national nonprofit research and education organization, which neither accepts government funds nor conducts special-interest research, issued a press release on their web site in February 5, 2008  (Expert Comment: ESA Listing for Polar Bears Unsupported by Sound Science by Harriette Johnson) stating that climate-related  media statements are not reflecting sound science. Heartland’s board of over 100 academics and professional advisors do research and peer reviews of the institute’s publications. The release mentioned a number of examples, including a July 2006 Discovery Channel documentary narrated by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, which presented only those views promoting the idea that man is destroying the Earth’s climate.

Polar Bears Not Endangered in Most Areas

On Jan 25, 2009, Canadian polar bear expert Mitch Taylor was quoted in (FCPP) Frontier Center for Public Policy, an independent, charitable Winnipeg-based think tank, “The IPCC has claimed that there is no valid perspective on climate except their own. The arctic has experienced a warming period sufficient to reduce sea ice and harm some polar bear populations. People love polar bears and will contribute to environmental organizations that claim to be saving them. Polar bear research and conservation efforts (funding) have greatly increased following the increased public profile. Because the story is intuitive, it has been an easy sell…, even [at] senior government levels”.

Taylor indicated that polar bear populations in many other areas were not only not decreasing, but were growing.

Dissenting Voices Being Raised in the U.S. Media

The March 22, 2009 Washington WorldNetDaily.com (no author) article entitled “Shocker: Global warming simply no longer happening,” says it all.  In a same day reprint of the article, the OrthodoxyToday.org blog (Orthodox.net.com) said simply “The Global Warming Cultists will not like these latest developments.”  This is because a major spokesman against global warming is former NASA climatologist Roy W. Spencer, now with University of Alabama, Huntsville.

Spencer makes a good case:  “Remember that phrase, ‘the Earth’s greenhouse effect keeps the Earth habitably warm?’” he asks. “I’ll bet you never heard the phrase that is, quantitatively, more accurate: ‘Weather processes keep the Earth habitably cool.’”  He can say this with confidence because his own tracking records show global temperatures have been falling for at least the last five years.

Spencer’s February 26, 2007 article in the New York Post is entitled “Not That Simple – Global Warming: What We Don’t Know.” UAH climatologists Spencer and John Christy are the principal investigators compiling data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites on global temperature trends since 1978. Their data indicate that average global temperatures have only been increasing about 0.14 degrees C. per decade. This is actually at the low end of climate model projections.

So it would seem that just as much evidence has been gathered by reputable scientists to refute global warming, and possibly to assert both periodic climatic fluctuations, and even global cooling. Sadly, scientific integrity has become suspect as hacked emails have begun to surface that global warming is a fraud (ibid. references at end), according to a group of articles in World Net Daily.

Science Fraud is a Crime

Doubtless things will clarify over time as an investigation continues, spurred by Senator Inhofe, current ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Lord Christopher Monckton, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s key science advisor. According to an editorial in the  Washington Times, it is apparent that this ongoing endeavor to ‘cook the data’ and defraud the international community has had the expected major impact on this world view and now that it has been discovered, it “could end the academic careers of many prominent professors. Academics who have purposely hidden data, destroyed information, and doctored their results have committed scientific fraud.” Both Inhofe and Monckton have expressed the intent to search out the culprits and prosecute them.

“The tiny, close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the ‘global warming’ fraud,” said Monckton, “for fraud is what we now know it to be – tampered with temperature data so assiduously that, on the recent admission of one of them, land temperatures since 1980 have risen twice as fast as ocean temperatures. [The] data were altered so as to prevent a recent decline in temperature from showing in the record. In fact,” Monckton continued, “there has been no statistically significant ‘global warming’ for 15 years – and there has been rapid and significant cooling for nine years. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up. …And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offense. They are not merely bad scientists – they are crooks.”

Since this revelation of data tampering covering at least the past 20 years, it’s clear that global warming is nowhere near the foregone conclusion it has been painted to be. According to Representative Ron Paul of Texas, “Our energy policies must be based upon scientific truth – not fictional movies or self-interested international agendas. They should be based upon the accomplishments of technological free enterprise that have provided our modern civilization, including our energy industries. That free enterprise must not be hindered by bogus claims about imaginary disasters.”

References: 
World Net Daily, Senator to demand probe of global-warming ‘fraud’, Bob Unruh, Nov. 24, 2009.

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by mitododesign

Last night I was flipping through radio channels and I paused to hear a political pundit going on about how there is no global warming, and that it’s all a lie to keep us afraid and to make money for the Liberal Green Machine. His sole piece of evidence for his claim was that it snowed in New Orleans. I nearly fell out of my seat. Here is a well known radio personality, formerly a politician and an FBI agent, presumably an intelligent person, and he’s spreading this idea based on a single point of data that shows an abysmal lack of understanding of the scientific process in general and the phenomenon of climate change in particular.

I had thought that the debate over the existence of Global Warming had been decided. The data is in, the average temperature of our planet has gone up. The only thing that is still up for debate is whether or not the human race caused it. But with talking heads peddling their agendas, and they can be convincing or they wouldn’t be effective at their jobs, without the basic facts its hard to know whether to listen to the doomsayers or the naysayers. So, I’ve done a little research and gathered together some facts from neutral, reputable, scientific sources. What I found was interesting, and, while I expected some of it, I was completely surprised by other facts about what is going on with our planet.

The Scientific Method

A basic understanding of how science works is necessary to fully appreciate the weight of the evidence. It’s important to understand the steps scientists use to determine when their ideas have merit, and when they need to go back to the drawing board. Here are the basic steps involved:

Observe a phenomenon.

Formulate a Hypothesis to explain the phenomenon.

Test the Hypothesis.

If the data gathered supports the hypothesis you have a theory, if it does not, you must modify your hypothesis to incorporate the new data and test it again, go back to step 2 and repeat until the your hypothesis explains what has been observed.

Once you have a theory that fits all the facts and it has been throughly tested it must be published for peer review so that other scientists can pick it apart, find flaws with it, point out where you are wrong, duplicate your experiments or re-evaluate your data, and generally put you through a rigorous process of defending your theory. If other scientists find any flaws with your theory, you must go back to step 2 and do it all over again.

Repeat, ad infinitum. Anytime the observable data contradicts the theory the theory must be scrapped or modified. Theories that stand the test of time, after all this poking and prodding trying to prove them wrong, are generally considered reliable models.

So how long has the idea that CO2 and temperature are related been around?

“ The idea that CO2 in the air is an important determinant of global temperature is actually quite old, it was first theorized by Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) in a paper published in Philosophical Magazine 41, 237-276 (1896)” [1]

So the basic theory of the Greenhouse Effect has been around since 1896 – over a hundred years – and it is still going strong. No evidence has been found to disprove the theory that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has a direct correlation to global temperature.

There is a caveat however – it is important to point out that correlation does not imply causality. In fact there is data to suggest that there is a lag, and temperature rise actually comes before a corresponding rise in CO2 [2]. So, just because a theory stands the test of time it does not mean that the implications of that theory are not up for debate. This is one small example of why there is so much contention about Global Warming.

Our Complicated Climate

Here is the crux of the matter – our climate is so complex that there is no one easy indicator or explanation. There are so many forces and variables that drive our weather that it is difficult to predict local weather more than about three days out with any degree of accuracy. But by taking thousands of data points from all over the globe spanning over a hundred years, we can see that temperatures have been rising [3]. In fact, temperatures, on average , have been increasing steadily over the past 40 years and are higher now than at any time in the past 2000 years [4].

Now, the reason I emphasize on average is this: just because some areas may experience an unusual cold snap or winter storm it does not mean that the Earth is not warming up. Greater warming means that weather patterns will shift in unaccustomed ways – not that the whole Earth will suddenly become as sunny and warm as Miami. More heat adds more instability to the climate, allowing for such things as wind-driven arctic fronts moving farther south faster than usual and causing snow in New Orleans. Or stronger hurricanes, or tornadoes in winter, or extended and more severe fire seasons driven by stronger and more frequent Santa Ana winds. But here’s the confusing part: just because global warming is one explanation for changes in our climate, it doesn’t mean it’s the only explanation, or that the extreme weather of the past few years is a direct result of temperature increases. The jury is still out, and scientists are still gathering data. But just because science isn’t certain what affect warming will have on us doesn’t change the facts – warming is happening.

There have been periods in distant prehistory when the Earth’s temperature was much higher than it is now [5], and those who argue against global warming love to point this out, but this argument is something of a red herring. The reason global warming is such an important topic is because it affects our lives today. We did not have cities teeming with millions of people during the Mid-Cretaceous Period. In fact, it would be better if it were a man made condition because we would then have a chance to reverse it. The earth, and life on it can, and will, survive a rise in temperatures, and humans are adaptable enough that our race will survive. But will our quality of life? Flooded cities, and the threat of drought and the loss of thousands of acres of viable farmland would have a very real impact on the survival of millions of people. So it is important to sort out the tangle of forces that impact our climate so we can plan for future changes – regardless of whether we caused them or they are natural occurrences.

The Sun

Gases in our atmosphere are not the only things that affect our planet’s temperature. The biggest influence is our source of heat – the Sun. The sun goes through 11 year cycles in which the number of sunspots ebb and flow. There is evidence that during periods of low sunspot activity the Earth receives less warmth from the sun – periods of almost no sunspot activity such as the Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton minimums seem to coincide with dips in global temperature [6]. It just so happens that we are in the midst of a sunspot minimum during 2008/2009 [7], which could account for a year or two of lower temperatures in the midst of a general warming trend.

So, while there is no doubt that Global Warming is real and is happening right now, there is debate about its causes and it’s results. Every day we have more data, and we move closer to answers, but currently we don’t have those answers. And if anyone tells you that they know, beyond a doubt, what the deal is with Global Warming, ask them to prove it, because we’d all like to know.

Resources:

Library 4 Science – Global Warming Greenhouse Science – http://www.global-warming-geo-engineering.org/global-warming-science-1.html

Science Bits – The Inconvenient Truth about the Ice Core Carbon Dioxide Temperature Correlation – http://www.sciencebits.com/IceCoreTruth

Met Office – Climate Change: fact 2 – http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/2.html

NOAA/National Climactic Data Center – A Paleo Perspective on Global Warming – http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleolast.html

NOAA/National Climactic Data Center – A Paleo Perspective on Global Warming – http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleobefore.html

Sunspots and Climate – http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap02/sunspots.html

NOAA – Solar Cycle Progression – http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/

Global warming could do more than just melt polar ice. It could change our maps, and displace people from cities and tropical islands. See all National Geographic videos: video.nationalgeographic.com
Video Rating: 3 / 5

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