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Inhofe Floor Speech: "Hostile Green Takeover: The Auto Industry Faces Environmental Thuggery"
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"Planet Has Cooled Since Bush Took Office" - Scientists Continue Dissenting - Gore Admits "I've failed badly" - Global Sea Ice GROWS!
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"Freezing Heat": Despite Unusual Cold, NASA blunders by declaring October "Hottest on Record"
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"Fixing" Global Warming Called "Another Meaningless Promise"
Inhofe Floor Speech: "Hostile Green Takeover: The Auto Industry Faces Environmental Thuggery"
Posted 11/20/2008
Hostile Green Takeover: The Auto Industry Faces Environmental Thuggery
Senate Floor Speech - November 20, 2008
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) – Ranking Member, Environment and Public Works Committee
Mr. President, Americans are once again being asked to foot the bill for yet another “urgent” bailout. In October, Congress voted for an unprecedented $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and now much of the same alarmist rhetoric is being employed to pressure members to act quickly.
The latest bailout demand making the rounds in Washington is for the Big Three auto industry. Democrats would have you believe the proposed bailout is all about saving jobs, but, having been in Washington long enough, my instincts led me to dig deeper where I unearthed green roots hiding beneath the bailout rhetoric.
It now appears that much of what you have heard in the media about the auto bailout being about “jobs” has been misleading. In fact, there are “usual suspects” working behind the scenes to subvert the auto bailout and ultimately betray auto workers.
The facts are these:
The proposed $25 billion bailout of Detroit now appears to have been hijacked by the powerful environmental lobby.
The November 19 Wall Street Journal asks:
“When is $25 billion in taxpayer cash insufficient to bail out Detroit's auto makers?” Answer: “When the money is a tool of Congressional industrial policy to turn GM, Ford and Chrysler into agents of the Sierra Club and other green lobbies.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the auto bailout has degenerated into a tool to “make Detroit a subsidiary of the Sierra Club.”
We hear proponents of the auto bailout endlessly say it’s about jobs.
But the truth is, this bailout appears to be about environmental lobbies taking over the U.S. auto industry.
The Wall Street Journal explains:
“In their public statements, proponents describe the bailout as an attempt to save jobs, American manufacturing and the middle-class way of life. But look closely and you can see that what's really going on is an attempt to use taxpayer money to remake Detroit in the image of the modern environmental movement. Given a choice between greens and blue-collar workers, Congress puts the greens first.”
And just how did this attempt at a green takeover of Detroit come about?
Congress approved $25 billion for Detroit earlier this year for “green retooling.” President Bush proposed to revise that $25 billion and allow it be used for Detroit’s general purposes by eliminating the green conditions.
But the Wall Street Journal reported, “Democratic leaders refused. They are insisting instead that the Bush Administration give Detroit another $25 billion in cash.”
"The Bush Administration's proposal is unacceptable," declared my colleague Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The Wall Street Journal asked, “If the problem is so urgent, why keep the green chains on that first $25 billion? GM in particular is saying that it may have to declare bankruptcy by the end of the year without a taxpayer capital injection. Aren't jobs at stake?”
But jobs do not appear to be the overriding concern when it comes to the proposed auto bailout.
A November 13 commentary in the Chicago Sun-Times bluntly declared that Congress should “attach environmental strings to the Big Three bailout.”
“The auto industry occupies a critical position, not just in the U.S. economy, but also in the struggle to cope with climate change and the energy crisis. The government has immense leverage right now to force the Big Three to make progress on multiple fronts and should not be afraid to use it,” Andrew Leonard wrote in the Sun-Times.
“President-elect Barack Obama has spoken many times of his ambitious plans to steer the U.S. toward a future where Americans are driving fuel-efficient cars that run on renewable energy. If the government is going to bail out the auto industry, it should do so only with the explicit requirement that the Big Three accelerate down that road as fast as they can,” Leonard demanded.
One of the key “green strings” that the environmental lobby wants to impose on Detroit is making the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards more draconian.
My colleague, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, wants conditions on the auto bailout that would mandate auto companies increase their average fuel economy to 40 miles per gallon in 10 years and then 50 miles per gallon a mere two years later in 2020. Nelson also reportedly wants requirements for an “increased production of hybrids, flex-fuel and electric vehicles,” according to Congress Daily.
My colleague, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, has also tied auto bailout money to increased CAFE standards. “Congress should require that the automakers shift to a new business model that focuses on hybrid, electric, and other next generation vehicle technologies,” Senator Feinstein wrote on November 14.
Senator Feinstein even expands the mandates to include costly global warming concerns by “requiring NHTSA to use the Energy Information Administration (EIA)'s most accurate gasoline price projection and consider global benefits from reducing greenhouse gas emissions when setting CAFE standards.”
The Wall Street Journal countered with a common sense alternative to increasing CAFE standards.
“If Congress wants to ease the immediate burden on Detroit, it could also ease the onerous fleet-mileage standards (CAFE rules) that force the companies to make cars domestically that are unprofitable. A mere tweak would help a lot -- for example, simply allow Detroit to meet CAFE standards by counting the cars it makes at home and abroad. This alone might save Chrysler from bankruptcy. But Congress won't budge on that simple change.”
This latest bout of environmental thuggery is not an isolated incident. The legislative goals of Democrats and their environmental allies reveal that saving jobs is not their highest priority.
President-elect Obama has pledged to grant California a global warming motivated waiver to allow the state to demand its own standards of emission reductions from new autos. This would essentially allow a state by state approach, thus creating a patchwork of regulatory compliance regimes in addition to the federal standard that would be even more costly for automobile manufacturers.
The Wall Street Journal summed up this attempted hostile green takeover and the efforts to create an “Environmental Motor Company” this way:
“All of this shows that Democrats don't merely want to save jobs. They want an entirely different American auto industry that serves goals other than selling cars to consumers. The green lobbies have disliked Detroit for decades -- for resisting fleet mileage standards and having the audacity to make SUVs, trucks and other vehicles that people have wanted to buy but that violate modern environmental pieties. For the greens, the bailout is their main chance to remake Detroit according to their dictates.”
The Journal continued:
“The more realistic alternative to this utopian green vision is to let GM or Chrysler file for Chapter 11 like any other company that can't pay its bills. The immediate costs would be severe, but at least bankruptcy would provide the political and legal means for them to evolve into smaller, more competitive companies. Taxpayers shouldn't be asked to finance a green industrial policy promoted by lobbyists and Congressmen who know nothing about what it takes to make a car -- much less make a profit.”
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"Planet Has Cooled Since Bush Took Office" - Scientists Continue Dissenting - Gore Admits "I've failed badly" - Global Sea Ice GROWS!
Posted By Marc Morano – 5:35 PM – Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov
‘Planet Has Cooled Since Bush Took Office’ – Scientists Continue Dissenting – Gore Admits 'I've failed badly' - Global Sea Ice GROWS!
Global Warming Theory has ‘failed consistently and dramatically’
Read Part Two of this Report Here:
Washington DC - The bad news for global warming alarmists just keeps rolling in. Below is a very small sampling of very inconvenient developments for Gore, the United Nations, and the mainstream media. Peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and prominent scientists continue to speak out to refute climate fears. The majority of data presented below is from just the past few weeks. Also see: U.S. Senate Minority Report: “Over 400 Prominent Scientists (and rapidly growing) Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007” & ‘Consensus’ On Man-Made Global Warming Collapses in 2008 - July 18, 2008 & An August 2007 report detailed how proponents of man-made global warming fears enjoy a monumental funding advantage over skeptical scientists. LINK
Bush The Cooler: 'Planet has cooled since Bush took office' – November 12, 2008
Excerpt: On this symbolic date, it seems worthwhile to reflect that the planet has not only cooled since George W. Bush took office – pause and let the significance of that one sink in – but began to chill significantly at almost precisely the moment that we signed the Kyoto Protocol, exactly ten years ago today.
National Climatic Data Center: U.S. on track for coolest year since 1997- November 12, 2008
Excerpt: The calendar year isn't exactly over yet, but the people who watch such things --- namely the National Climatic Data Center --- are reporting that through its first 10 months 2008 is shaping up to be the coolest year in the United States since 1997.
‘The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists’ - By Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, formerly a senior scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center where he received NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, and currently principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville) Excerpt: New papers Debunk Warming Fears: The first paper showed how none of 18 IPCC climate models, in over 1,000 years of global warming simulations, ever exhibits the negative feedback we have measured from global satellite data. The second paper revealed new satellite evidence that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation modulates the Earth's radiative balance by an amount that, when put into a simple climate model, can explain 75% of global warming over the 20th Century....including the slight cooling between 1940 and 1980. Since our previous publications have been basically censored by the news media, and I have now experienced scientific censorship (which I suppose was long overdue), I have decided to take my message to the people in a second book. In anticipation of trouble getting these papers published, I had already started the book awhile back...it is now about 80% finished, heavily illustrated. The working title is: The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists. My book agent is currently scouting for publishers.
UK Astrophysicist: Global Warming Theory has ‘failed consistently and dramatically’ - October 28, 2008 - By Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn, founder of the UK based long-term solar forecast group Weather Action and creator of the solar-particle based "Solar Weather Technique" of long range weather forecasting.
Excerpt: Global Warming is over and Global Warming Theory has failed. There is no evidence that CO2 drives world temperatures or any consequent Climate Change. According to Official data in every year since 1998 world Temperatures have been colder than that year yet CO2 has been rising rapidly. The rate of decline of world temperature has got more rapid since 2002; and Arctic ice has increased in the last year : ( Including maps of ice extent: Arctic ice increasing rapidly also see Increase by nearly a half million square miles) The UN IPCC predictions from 2000 have failed consistently and dramatically.
Global Sea Ice Growing at Fastest Pace on Record -- Returns to Levels from the 1980s – Daily Tech – November 7, 2008
Excerpt: An abnormally cool Arctic is seeing dramatic changes to ice levels. In sharp contrast to the rapid melting seen last year, the amount of global sea ice has rebounded sharply and is now growing rapidly. The total amount of ice, which set a record low value last year, grew in October at the fastest pace since record-keeping began in 1979.
Arctic Sea Ice Extent: In October 2008, Fastest Ever Growth
(Should we celebrate?) A Depression Would Reduce Carbon Emissions
Excerpt: So, why isn’t all the bad economic news openly embraced as positive news by those that advocate we urgently cut carbon dioxide emissions. Surely, if solutions to global warming are so pressing, the best thing that could possibly happen is a recession if not a depression?
Excerpt: (Reuters) - A slowdown in the world economy may give the planet a breather from the excessively high carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions responsible for climate change, a Nobel Prize winning scientist said on Tuesday.
Gore warns world may face civilization 'collapse' – November 19, 2008
Gore Excerpt: A new study suggests the Mayan civilization might have collapsed due to environmental disasters. […] As we move towards solving the climate crisis, we need to remember the consequences to civilizations that refused to take environmental concerns seriously.
Excerpt: Here’s a new climate change book for your Christmas reading: We’re not scared anymore Mr Gore. A climate change parody by geologist Marc Hendrickx.
Gore laments global warming efforts: 'I've failed badly' - Washington Post – November 11, 2008
Excerpt: When asked about the goal of his movie "An Inconvenient Truth"--to wake people up to an approaching global, environmental crisis-Gore said "I think it's been a failure . . . I feel, in a sense, that I've failed badly."
Excerpt: Bad news for Al Gore. Temperatures have gone down a total of .37° F. (or .205° C.) since An Inconvenient Truth was released at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2006. […] The weather/climate just hasn't cooperated with Gore and the IPCC's computer climate models. Remember, Gore said that CO2 drives temperature. It isn't happening folks.
Skeptical UK scientist mocks Gore's Nobel: 'There’s no accounting for human folly' – November 19, 2008 (By Physicist Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London.)
Excerpt: Mr. Dyson had an argument anyway with the scores of people (like Al Gore) who weren’t present to defend their belief in the dire consequences of global warming. (“There’s no accounting for human folly,” Mr. Dyson said when asked about Mr. Gore’s Nobel Prize.)
Global Warming Has Stopped – by UN IPCC Reviewer Christopher Monckton
Global Cooling? - 'Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof' - National Post – October 20, 2008
Climate change momentum fading: Asia-Pacific survey – November 19, 2008
Excerpt: “You see the same shift in focus in the public away from climate change questions to questions of economic survival and growth," said Woo, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
CO2 hysteria continues its slow death – November 20, 2008
Excerpt: at this week's summit of 21 Pacific Rim nations, global warming is barely on the agenda. In its place: the financial crisis. "The interest and focus on climate change has dissipated somewhat," said Woo Yuen Pau, CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
Prominent Geologist says ‘Global Cooling is Here’ -- Could ‘plunge Earth into another Little Ice Age!’ – November 2, 2008 – (By Geologist Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Emeritus Professor at Western Washington University, who has authored eight books and 150 journal publications.)
Excerpt: Just how much cooler the global climate will be during this cool cycle is uncertain. Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely.
Excerpt: These alternating natural climatic cycles defy the so-called "climate consensus" that human-emitted carbon dioxide was responsible totally for the recent cycle of global warming that began in the late 1970s and peaked in 1998.
Extensive global COOLING news round up on Biologist Jennifer Marohasy's website – October 31, 2008
Flashback: 'Global Warming Will Stop,' New Peer-Reviewed Study Says – April 30, 2008
Excerpt: A detailed analysis of black carbon -- the residue of burned organic matter -- in computer climate models suggests that those models may be overestimating global warming predictions. A new Cornell study, published online in Nature Geosciences, quantified the amount of black carbon in Australian soils and found that there was far more than expected, said Johannes Lehmann, the paper's lead author and a Cornell professor of biogeochemistry. The survey was the largest of black carbon ever published. […] The findings are significant because soils are by far the world's largest source of carbon dioxide, producing 10 times more carbon dioxide each year than all the carbon dioxide emissions from human activities combined. Small changes in how carbon emissions from soils are estimated, therefore, can have a large impact. […] "But this particular aspect, black carbon's stability in soil, if incorporated in climate models, would actually decrease climate predictions."
'Life-long liberal Democrat' Meteorologist rejects 'fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming' - By Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired Navy meteorologist with a PhD in physical chemistry - Excerpt: As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science, to your readers, and to the quality of the political dialogue leading up to the election. […] The global warming alarmists don't even bother with data! All they have are half-baked computer models that are totally out of touch with reality and have already been proven to be false.
Another Dissenter: Award-Winning NASA Astronaut and Moonwalker - Jack Schmitt says 'global warming scare being used as a political tool' – November 17, 2008 – (Award-winning NASA astronaut/geologist Dr. Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt – Bio here. ) Excerpt: The Planetary Society (TPS) Climate Statement: “accelerating research into global climate change through more comprehensive Earth observations.” Schmitt’s response: As a geologist, I love Earth observations. But, it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a "consensus" that humans are causing global warming in when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. "Consensus", as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science. You know as well as I, the "global warming scare" is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities. See also here.
Ski Paradise: ‘Snow-vember’ Sees Ski Resorts Open Early Around The World – November 17, 2008
Excerpt: ‘Snow-vember’ Sees Ski Resorts Open Early Around The World Skiinfo.com, is reporting bumper pre-season snow across the northern hemisphere with the Alps, Pyrenees, Scandinavia and the Rockies all receiving huge early snow falls that have brought wonderful powder snow conditions for skiers and boarders on the glacier ski areas that were already open, and led to an increasing number of resorts in Canada, Italy, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the US to open up to a month earlier than planned
By Professor Dr. William J.R. Alexander, Emeritus of the Department of Civil and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters. Excerpt: Have you not noticed the growing opposition by African countries to interference in our affairs by the old colonial powers? […] The WWF and Greenpeace are not welcome in this country. Nor are the activities of their South African lackeys. […] Your vigorous pro-environmental, anti-social actions will soon be seen as pressures by a small, affluent white community who have no concern at all for South Africa’s large and growing, economically disadvantaged black communities. […] Many thanks for all those emails urging me to continue exposing this whole climate alarmism issue for what it is.
Africa to pay for Europe's "green policies"
Excerpt: Campaigns to buy locally produced food and travel to local destinations particularly hit out against African products. Consumers in Europe are again growing more environmentally conscious and are willing to use their purchasing power to assist in what is widely seen as our era's most pressing problems - the overspending of energy and global warming. Meanwhile, European politicians have been those pressuring strongest to gain support for the Kyoto Protocol while having totally failed to lower emissions of climate gases in their own countries. In every country, emissions have steadily increased.
Dr. James Koermer, a meteorology professor at Plymouth State University presentation it titled “Inconvenient Science." Excerpt: Kevin McGuire, a fellow professor at PSU, said Koermer's presentation was "very well done." "I agree that there are a lot of uncertainties," McGuire said about the causes and nature of global climate change. […] During a presentation at the university on Wednesday, Koermer explained why there are a growing number scientists, such as himself, who don't subscribe to the popular theory on global warming. […]Koermer said just because he doesn't think man-made carbon dioxide is contributing significantly to climate change, it does not mean he is opposed to the increased use of renewable fuel sources. […] "Over millions of years there have been periods when we have been hotter than we are today," Koermer said. He added that while humans do have an impact on the climate, it is minimal compared to natural phenomena. He also said that humans are not the biggest producers of carbon dioxide and that the gas is not the most abundant green house gas in the atmosphere. That title goes to water vapor, which is produced by the world's oceans.
Another Dissenter: Astrophysicist says put IPCC reports ‘in the trash!’ – - November 20, 2008
"What I'd do with the IPCC report is to put it in the trash can because that's all it's worth," said Dennis Hollars, who holds a doctorate in astrophysics from New Mexico State University. […] Hollars, meanwhile, claimed that carbon dioxide was an insignificant component of the earth's atmosphere and that, rather than being the purveyor of doom it is currently viewed as today, it is needed in order for plants to grow.
Excerpt: “One of the central arguments of the side arguing that global warming is a natural occurrence was that temperatures were driving the increase in carbon dioxide, rather than the commonly accepted reverse. "CO2 has never led to an increase in temperature, based on historical record," said Robert Cohen, a certified consulting meteorologist.
(By Dr. Dr Jim Sprott, OBE, MSc, PhD, FNZIC, a consulting chemist and forensic scientist of Auckland.)
Excerpt: “The projections of the IPCC are simplistic, superficial, and now proven wrong. The whole issue requires a fresh start, based on the mass of irrefutable data which has been assembled.”
'Record inactivity' -- 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season 'lowest in 30-years'
Arctic sea ice extent now GREATER than in 2002
UN IPCC Scientist Ridicules Global Warming Linked National Security Fears
Another Dissenter: 'I am unconvinced' about man-made warming - Australian long-range weather forecaster Haydon Walker - November 2, 2008
More info no Walker here: http://www.worldweather.com.au
Researchers find arctic may have had less ice 6000-7000 years ago
Excerpt: Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free.
Atmospheric Scientist Dr. John Christy disputes new Antarctic claims - 'Climate models just don't have the variability that nature provides' – Disputes Antarctic and Arctic Melt Fears – October 30, 2008
Excerpt:. John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama, has done studies on climate models and says they are extremely limited tools in trying to mimic what happens in nature. He said they are unable to reproduce all of the naturally occurring influences and, as a result, give a false picture of what might be causing changes in the environment. […] "Just 1,000 years ago the Arctic was much warmer than it is today so it's interesting that they would use the term conclusively," he said. "Natural variability can account for warming since the Arctic has been warmer before."
Why the EPA should find against “Endangerment” – November 19, 2008
Excerpt: The IPCC’s AR4 was published in the spring of 2007, but to meet the deadline for inclusion in the AR4, scientific papers had to be published by late 2005/early 2006. So, in the rapidly evolving field of climate change, by grounding its TSD in the IPCC AR4 the EPA is largely relying on scientific findings that are, by late 2008, nearly 3 years out of date. And a lot has happened in those intervening three years. • Global temperatures have declined…
Physicist predicts man-made global warming fear bubble to burst in 2008 – November 16, 2008 - Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen, an MIT educated physicist, author of the book An Introduction to High-Temperature Superconductivity, and writer of the popular newspaper column "Ask the Everyday Scientist."
UK Scientist: – ‘Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables’ Not Just CO2!
By UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London - Excerpt: As I have said, over and over again, the fundamental point has always been this: climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically-selected factor is as misguided as it gets.
Excerpt: The exercise also provides some insight into how this branch of the climate science community defines the concept of consistency between models and observations, and why it is that every observation seems to be, in their eyes, "consistent with" model predictions. This post explains why Real Climate is wrong in their conclusions on falsification and the why it is that two decades of cooling can be defined as "consistent with" predictions of warming.
Excerpt: 'We can't think of any other cause, it must be us' - This is the depth to which scientific research into climate change has sunk, like a kind of prehistoric civilisation that blames thunderstorms, earthquakes and volcanoes on humanity somehow having "upset the gods". A Canadian study has concluded that we must be causing climate change because nothing else can explain it.
UN IPCC = 'Worst case of scientific malpractice in history' says Climate Scientist Dr. Spencer
[ Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, formerly a senior scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center where he received NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, is currently principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. ] Spencer Excerpt: I find it astounding that the IPCC has ignored the potential role of natural climate variability in global warming. In any other realm of science we are careful to look for alternative explanations for some phenomenon…but today, mankind is the only allowable reason for climate change. I predict that the IPCC experience will end up being the worst case of scientific malpractice in history.
MIT Climate Scientist Exposes ‘Corrupted Science’ in Devastating Critique - Sep 24, 2008
Excerpt: MIT Meteorology Professor Richard S. Lindzen, confirms how Al Gore and his minions used Stalinist tactics to subvert, suborn and corrupt a whole branch of science, citing chapter and verse in his report entitled “Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?” His answer: A resounding “NO!” Full Lindzen paper here:
Excerpt: So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.
UK scientist: ‘Green’ totalitarianism promotes 1984 style tactics - By Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography, University of London.
Excerpt: The second tactic has been to try to manufacture, in the style of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1947), an all-encompassing external threat against which there must be perpetual war. The prime example of this is ‘global warming’, which has been likened in gravity to the Great World Wars. Such a perpetual threat demands the downplaying of democracy, the legitimising of ‘Green’ totalitarianism, the destruction of markets, and the establishment of Ministries of Truth.
Skeptical Physicist Freeman Dyson: 'When science gets rich it becomes political' – November 19, 2008
Canadian scientist: ‘Scientific assumptions underlying Kyoto are false!’ - 'A revolution in climate change science' since Kyoto – November 18, 2008 (By Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa) Excerpt: In the eight years since the Kyoto Protocol was first introduced, there has been a revolution in climate change science. What we have learned is that many of the scientific assumptions underlying Kyoto are false. Climate is not naturally constant and global warming is not evidence of human interference,” he insists. “Climate change, including global warming and cooling, is perfectly normal.” Patterson contends that the sun is the reason why the 20th century has experienced some of the hottest temperatures in recent history. “My own research shows that, on all time scales, there is a very good correlation between the Earth’s temperature and natural celestial phenomena, such as changes in the brightness of the sun. The fact that the sun is now brighter than it has been in 8,000 years should have a major impact on climate.” Patterson is not alone in his claims. In fact, a large number of scientists from around the world agree that anthropogenic (human) activity is not the cause of global warming.
'Fixing' global warming called 'another meaningless promise' – Edmonton Sun – November 13, 2008
Excerpt: it's time to start thinking of "fixing" global warming the same way we do "ending" child poverty. Or "settling" native land claims. Or “shortening" medical wait times. Like these other issues, "fixing" global warming has become yet another meaningless promise that all politicians of all stripes will be paying lip service to in perpetuity. One they will spend billions of our dollars "fixing" year after year.
Australian geologist: Climate theory 'like Y2K scam' – November 7, 2008 – (By Prize-wining Geologist Dr. Ian Plimer, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide in Australia.) Excerpt: The Federal Government's emissions trading scheme has been likened to the ''Y2K scam'' by climate change sceptic Professor Ian Plimer. […] The number of hurricanes around the world was now decreasing, he said. Sea ice in western Antarctica was ''a little bit unstable'' while sea ice on the east of the continent was ''getting bigger''. ''The continent of Antarctica is actually rising.'' Well-known active volcanoes were sitting under Antarctica and ''pumping out exceptionally hot air''. Carbon dioxide levels had been ''very much higher in the past'' and the world was at one of the lowest levels of CO2 in history. ''Most of the emissions come from natural sources, and most of the emissions we don't even put into our calculations.'' Sea levels had risen 130m over the past 14,000 years, or 1cm per year, far from doomsday scenarios, he said. AAP
Excerpt: respected botanist and the author of 35 books, he had presented around 400 programmes over the years and was appreciated by audiences for his boundless enthusiasm. Yet for more than 10 years he has been out of the limelight, shunned by bosses at the BBC where he made his name, as well as fellow scientists and environmentalists. His crime? Bellamy says he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming. […] And my opinion is that there is absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide is anything to do with any impending catastrophe. The science has, quite simply, gone awry. In fact, it’s not even science any more, it’s anti-science. There’s no proof, it’s just projections and if you look at the models people such as Gore use, you can see they cherry pick the ones that support their beliefs.
Study finds Greenland Ice Melt 'Slowed Significantly' – WorldClimateReport.com – November 14, 2008
Excerpt: Despite all the talk about moulins, melting, rapid acceleration of ice, van der Wal et al. reveal that the ice movement in western Greenland over the past 17 years has … slowed significantly. […] But when we examine this article, we are most impressed with the results over the 17-year period and the lack of support for the notion that somehow the velocity of ice is increasing during a time of greenhouse gas build-up!
Greenland ice cap 'uncertainty makes future predictions almost meaningless' - -
Aussie Scientist: Human-caused global warming fears are 'heavily biased propaganda' – October 2008 - (By Atmospheric scientist William Kininmonth is the former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre. He was an Australian representative and consultant to the World Meteorological Organization on climate issues and is the author of Climate Change: A Natural Hazard.
Excerpt: In spite of claims to the contrary, there is no consensus of scientists supporting the findings and recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There exists a large and vocal group of highly qualified dissenters (often denigrated as sceptics, deniers or worse). In the absence of computer models there would be little credence given to the view that the relatively small warming of the second half of the twentieth century was due to carbon dioxide emissions; there would certainly be no credence given to the possibility of irreversible runaway global warming over the coming century. […] The likely magnitude of human-caused global warming is so low that it will not be discernible against the background of natural variability in the climate record.
Excerpt: See this 5-minute video of late great Dr. Reid Bryson on CNBC TV - 'You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling CO2' Atmospheric Scientist Bryson's last TV appearance in December 2007. Bryson is a guest on CNBC with host Joe Kernen He died in June 12, 2008 at the age of 88. This clip shows he was lucid and persuasive right until the end of his life. Some of his colleagues tried to diminish Bryson’s skepticism, ... but as you can see from video clip, Bryson was no believer in man-made warming fears. One of the "Fathers of Meteorology," Dr. Bryson, was the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.
Meteorologist says ‘don’t believe it’ to claims that October was 2nd Warmest – November 18, 2008
Excerpt: This is not surprising as NOAA has become the biggest outlier in recent months. They have thanks to Tom Peterson and Tom Karl a global data base that is worth nothing. There is little or no adjustment for urbanization, land use changes, no adjustment for bad station siting (69% of the 560 US climate stations surveyed by Anthony Watts team of volunteers were poor or very poorly sited), 2/3rds of the stations globally dropped out around 1990, the number of missing months increased tenfold in the FSU and Africa after 1990, and changes in instrumentation like here in the US that Tom Karl himself found produced a warm bias of 0.5F. Not less than 6 peer review studies have shown these issues may account for up to 50% of the warming since 1900. Trust only the satellite. In fact, this October was the 10th warmest of the 30 years of data for the MSU satellite according to UAH with only a 0.167C (0.3F) anomaly instead of the 1.1F (2nd warmest out of 129 years) as per NOAA. Unfortunately satellite data extends only back to 1979.
Global Cooling Caused by Warming? Global Cooling ‘may indeed be a consequence of the increasing atmospheric murkiness caused by warming’ - Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog – November 20, 2008 - Excerpt: Lawyers Weekly Online: It seems almost impossible that, whatever the debate about the causes of global warming, some people simply refuse to believe that any appreciable change outside normal climatic cycles is actually happening: some even say we are headed for a period of global cooling – which may indeed be a consequence of the increasing atmospheric murkiness caused by warming, but which encourages a way of thinking that fails to address our need to do something about the warming phase if we’d like to see life on Earth remain more or less as it is now.
Australian Scientist Calls Warming Fears ‘self-delusion on a grand scale’ – By Paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter of Australia's James Cook University and former chairman of the earth science panel of the Australian Research Council, who has published numerous peer-reviewed papers. Also see Carter's November 2008 paper: “The Futile Quest for Climate Control.”
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READ PART TWO OF THIS News ROUND UP
Click Here for to continue reading in Part 2
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"Freezing Heat": Despite Unusual Cold, NASA blunders by declaring October "Hottest on Record"
Posted 11/16/2008
‘Freezing Heat’: Despite Unusual Cold, NASA blunders by declaring October ‘Hottest on Record’
Admits Lack of ‘Proper Quality Control’
UK Telegraph
By Christopher Booker
November 16, 2008
The world has never seen such freezing heat
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years. [EPW Note: For temperature reality checks see: NOAA: U.S. on track for coolest year since 1997 & Earth has had “no statistically significant warming since 1995.”]
So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.
Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.
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"Fixing" Global Warming Called "Another Meaningless Promise"
Posted 11/14/2008
"Fixing" Global Warming Called "Another Meaningless Promise"
THE EDMONTON SUN
Put global warming on to-do list
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Fellow Canadians, it's time to start thinking of "fixing" global warming the same way we do "ending" child poverty. Or "settling" native land claims. Or "shortening" medical wait times.
Like these other issues, "fixing" global warming has become yet another meaningless promise that all politicians of all stripes will be paying lip service to in perpetuity.
One they will spend billions of our dollars "fixing" year after year. To no avail.
In the end, "fixing" global warming will be a boon only to present and future generations of lobbyists, activists, consultants and other rent-seekers who will be, in the famous phrase coined by Tom Wolfe, "mau-mauing the flak catchers" into eternity."
Mau-mauers" are the professional whiners who perpetually haunt the corridors of federal, provincial and municipal governments, demanding ever-increasing amounts of our money to "fix" global warming.
In response, the "flak catchers" -- complicit and cowed politicians -- will keep shovelling our money out the door to appease them, although nothing will ever be "fixed," prompting new demands for more money.
Don't look to the media for help.They're still trying to explain why U.S. president-elect Barack Obama -- the guy they've been describing for months as the jolly green giant, who would leave Prime Minister Stephen Harper choking in the dust on global warming -- has a weaker climate change plan than Harper.
A BETTER PROMISE
Yep. Harper's promising to reduce Canada's man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 3% below 1990 levels by 2020. Obama's only promising 1990 levels by 2020.
Then again, both promises are nonsense because:
(a) neither Harper nor Obama can promise anything beyond one, four-year election cycle;
(b) both targets fall laughably short of what the Kyoto accord calls for;
(c) even if the handful of industrialized countries required to reduce emissions under Kyoto achieved their targets (most, including us, won't), the fact the developing world, led by China and India, is exempt means Kyoto actually guarantees GHG emissions will go up, not down;
(d) both Obama and Harper support a cap-and-trade market in carbon dioxide, which has been a fiasco in Europe, where emissions are rising.
On the "bright" side, if Al Gore is right and humanity has only a few decades to change its ways before unstoppable man-made global warming fries us or drowns us, then we're only looking at having to pay billions of dollars annually in worthless attempts to "fix" the climate, for a relatively short time.
Which would in a twisted way be comforting, if Gore himself wasn't living an obscenely high-carbon consumption lifestyle, along with his celebrity friends, while lecturing the rest of us to take a vow of poverty, beyond the one we're already being force-fed because of the global recession.
And no, neither Gore nor his pals can wipe out their huge carbon footprints on the Earth by retroactively purchasing "carbon offsets," as they claim.
One effective way Sorry. The only effective way to reduce your GHG emissions is not to emit them in the first place.
Indeed, to paraphrase environmental journalist George Monbiot: "Every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, every pseudo-environmentalist politician, movie star, rock star, rap star and professional athlete shopping on Rodeo Drive, should be dragged out of the store and drowned."
After all, if we're going to be stupid about this, and, trust me, our politicians are, let's get serious.
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