Global warming has wreaked havoc on athletes across Florida this week.
The fourth-ranked Florida women's tennis team opened a challenging weekend with a 5-2 win Saturday over No. 22 Texas on an unseasonably cold Saturday afternoon at Linder Stadium at Ring Tennis Complex.The L.A. Dodgers:
On another unseasonably cold, blustery day, Dodgers front office officials ventured out to the field to watch left-hander Scott Elbert throw his first bullpen session.The New York Yankees:
Torre was back to work after missing a day with a cold and flu symptoms. "Normally, you come down here to get well," he joked. It has been unseasonably cold in Tampa the last few days. ...The Houston Astros
Garner moved back the start of morning workouts by an hour for Sunday and Monday because of unseasonably cold weather in Kissimmee.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 18, 2007 08:55 PM | Email This
Global Warming is a World Socialist Party HOAX. Consider the best-selling books, "Trashing The Planet" and "Environmental Overkill" (What ever happened to common sense?), by Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, Democrat, scientist, recipient of the United Nations Peace Prize and former Governor of Washington State. Regarding the environmental movement being the next great threat to freedom, Dr. Ray said, " It became evident to me when I attended the worldwide Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro last June(early '90s). The International Socialist Party, which is intent upon continuing to press countries into socialism, is now headed up by people within the United Nations. They are the ones in the UN environmental program, and they were the ones sponsoring the so-called Earth Summit that was attended by 178 nations." Dr. Ray also stated that, " We need to ask our policy makers and those we elect to office who are supposed to make decisions to give us the evidence of the facts that are behind the decisions that we make. We should be skeptical. We shouldn't accept things just because somebody says so."
P.S. There is several Dave Mathew types on the Immigration and Politics message boards that go non-stop.
Posted by: Janet on February 18, 2007 10:24 PMThe reason for the changes is simple. With "Glolbal Warming" they found it difficult to link cooling trends to manmade CO2.
Now that we have "Climate Change" it works even better.
Lose an oragne crop - blame climate change
A blizzard in COlorado - blame climate change
Rather Orwellian ain't it?
Posted by: deadwood on February 18, 2007 10:24 PMI wouldn't mind if Seattle was 70F to 80F all year round.
Posted by: John Bailo on February 18, 2007 11:24 PMThe people who want Kyoto also complain about outsourcing jobs to China and India but since Kyoto has no restraints on these countries, Kyoto will force more outsourcing to these places with far less traditional environmental controls than we have in the US. Unfortunately, politics is more often driven by what people feel than what they can show will work.
Posted by: kw64 on February 19, 2007 05:59 AMDenver is about to break their all time record for consecutive days with snow on the ground.
Posted by: Serf in the land of Queen Christine on February 19, 2007 06:07 AMIt doesn't have to be logical or rational, it is leftist politics after all (a savage fundamentalist totalitarian religion that differs others of its ilk solely in that it denies that it is a religion).
Posted by: krm on February 19, 2007 07:11 AMhttp://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20070218-100445-1207r.htm
Posted by: Jay on February 19, 2007 07:28 AMThis is a link to Time magazine article pointing to "global cooling." Isn't it convenient that the remedy from the left was the same as we hear today for global warming today.
Posted by: JDH on February 19, 2007 07:52 AMAnd others. Our own Mayor is leading the reformulation on global-warming-speak.
The term "climate change" is quickly becoming passe.
At least six months ago, I'm so proud to point out, our own Mayor Nickels began using the term "climate disruption".
A far more ominous and comprehensive buzzterm.
You name it. Record heat, record cold and record storminess. All part of "climate disruption".
Beware. Man's activities have turned the earth's climate into a vicious, bipolar monster.
Posted by: Bart Cannon on February 19, 2007 07:56 AMJust a question: Are the posted articles about cold weather, a suuguestion by Stefan and others that global warming in not occuring or Not caused by human acitvity?
I am not here to debate it. I am just confused. Are the articles posted suppose to prove or hint that global warming is not occuring.
Just a question. I am not a climatologist or feel passionate on the issue. So for right now I am just trying to understand the general sentiments of the Sound Politics contributors.
Respectfully
Once At City
Someone above said: "NASA has noted the temperatures on Mars have been increasing over the past few years."
Hmmmmm. . . .right about the time we started sending rovers there. . . . . COINCIDENCE????
Posted by: Frank Black on February 19, 2007 08:17 AMThe World in crisis. An "ozone hole" had been discovered fourteen years earlier. A hastily proposed theory suggested that man had caused it by letting CFCs escape into the atmosphere.
Nevermind that there were no data regarding the ozone hole prior to 1978.
All the western nations signed on to the Montreal Protocol. It required that by 1995 those nations would halt the use of the most prevalent CFC, FREON.
FREON. One of the pinnacles of man's genius. The best refrigerant, by 130%. Non-toxic, non-flammible, non-corrosive.
The Montreal Protocol was sponsored by DuPont Chemicals. It just so happens that 1995 was the year that DuPont lost its patent on FREON.
Afterward we were blessed with DuPont's replacement refrigerants. Toxic, flammible, and corrosive.
Guess what? This year the ozone hole is bigger than ever, though CFCs are outlawed. Well guess what again!! The Ozone grantmongers have placed a feather in their cap, because one of their many models predicted it. Never mind that most indicated the opposite. Perhaps many models ARE needed since DuPont still manufactures FREON in India.
The same will happen with global warming after we've killed our economy and the developing nations are still spewing lusciously vast amounts of CO2.
I have much more on FREON and the ozone hole. I'd be happy to glaze anyone over on the subject off line.
Posted by: Bart Cannon on February 19, 2007 08:20 AMI don't think anyone can say what is happening. I think most of us here understand that the world goes through cycles of warming and cooling. However, most of us here don't think it abnormal, but are quite incensed that the Gorebot is creating this hellstorm of rhetoric that may ruin the world economy.
I am sure everyone here believes that whatever cycle we are in is not man-made, but as for the rest, we are not sure. We are all reading the research and we all believe that the Great One's doom and gloom scenario is just that.
How's that for a synopsis? It is not "ManMade" causes nor is it the "World Is Ending" global warming either.
There is so much anecdotal evidence suggesting we are not even in the worst 1000 year cycle of history when you look at Greenland, the Chinese dynasties, etc. etc.
Posted by: swatter on February 19, 2007 08:39 AMThose unfamiliar with Florida's climate should know that during this unseasonably cold spell I wore shorts on Saturday, Sunday and today. Cold weather in Florida is not the same as cold weather in Seattle.
I also used my heater, too, for two days Saturday - Sunday. Kept the place a comfortable 68 degrees. I don't need the heater today, though, because the weather is absolutely perfect.
The sun is shining bright, the sky is blue, and the temperature is absolutely perfect. I couldn't ask for more.
Winter is a blessing in Florida. But it has taken about two months longer than normal to get here. I had to use my air conditioner numerous times from December - January, more often than I am accustomed.
No heater today, no air conditioner today, no complaints today. That's my kind of weather.
Posted by: David Mathews on February 19, 2007 08:40 AM*********************************************
SENATE FLOOR SPEECH DELIVERED MONDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2006
I am going to speak today about the most media-hyped environmental issue of all time, global warming. I have spoken more about global warming than any other politician in Washington today. My speech will be a bit different from the previous seven floor speeches, as I focus not only on the science, but on the media's coverage of climate change.
Global Warming -- just that term evokes many members in this chamber, the media, Hollywood elites and our pop culture to nod their heads and fret about an impending climate disaster. As the senator who has spent more time speaking about the facts regarding global warming, I want to address some of the recent media coverage of global warming and Hollywood's involvement in the issue. And of course I will also discuss former Vice President Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930's the media peddled a coming ice age.
From the late 1920's until the 1960's they warned of global warming. From the 1950's until the 1970's they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.
Recently, advocates of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try to convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral issue of our generation. Last year, the vice president of London's Royal Society sent a chilling letter to the media encouraging them to stifle the voices of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism.
During the past year, the American people have been served up an unprecedented parade of environmental alarmism by the media and entertainment industry, which link every possible weather event to global warming. The year 2006 saw many major organs of the media dismiss any pretense of balance and objectivity on climate change coverage and instead crossed squarely into global warming advocacy.
SUMMARY OF LATEST DEVELOPMENTS OF MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING HOCKEY STICK
First, I would like to summarize some of the recent developments in the controversy over whether or not humans have created a climate catastrophe. One of the key aspects that the United Nations, environmental groups and the media have promoted as the "smoking gun" of proof of catastrophic global warming is the so-called 'hockey stick' temperature graph by climate scientist Michael Mann and his colleagues.
This graph purported to show that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, then spiked upward in the 20th century presumably due to human activity. Mann, who also co-publishes a global warming propaganda blog reportedly set up with the help of an environmental group, had his "Hockey Stick" come under severe scrutiny.
The "hockey stick" was completely and thoroughly broken once and for all in 2006. Several years ago, two Canadian researchers tore apart the statistical foundation for the hockey stick. In 2006, both the National Academy of Sciences and an independent researcher further refuted the foundation of the "hockey stick." http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697
The National Academy of Sciences report reaffirmed the existence of the Medieval Warm Period from about 900 AD to 1300 AD and the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1850. Both of these periods occurred long before the invention of the SUV or human industrial activity could have possibly impacted the Earth's climate. In fact, scientists believe the Earth was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland.
Climate alarmists have been attempting to erase the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period from the Earth's climate history for at least a decade. David Deming, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma's College of Geosciences, can testify first hand about this effort. Dr. Deming was welcomed into the close-knit group of global warming believers after he published a paper in 1995 that noted some warming in the 20th century. Deming says he was subsequently contacted by a prominent global warming alarmist and told point blank "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." When the "Hockey Stick" first appeared in 1998, it did just that.
END OF LITTLE ICE AGE MEANS WARMING
The media have missed the big pieces of the puzzle when it comes to the Earth's temperatures and mankind's carbon dioxide (C02) emissions. It is very simplistic to feign horror and say the one degree Fahrenheit temperature increase during the 20th century means we are all doomed. First of all, the one degree Fahrenheit rise coincided with the greatest advancement of living standards, life expectancy, food production and human health in the history of our planet. So it is hard to argue that the global warming we experienced in the 20th century was somehow negative or part of a catastrophic trend.
Second, what the climate alarmists and their advocates in the media have continued to ignore is the fact that the Little Ice Age, which resulted in harsh winters which froze New York Harbor and caused untold deaths, ended about 1850. So trying to prove man-made global warming by comparing the well-known fact that today's temperatures are warmer than during the Little Ice Age is akin to comparing summer to winter to show a catastrophic temperature trend.
In addition, something that the media almost never addresses are the holes in the theory that C02 has been the driving force in global warming. Alarmists fail to adequately explain why temperatures began warming at the end of the Little Ice Age in about 1850, long before man-made CO2 emissions could have impacted the climate. Then about 1940, just as man-made CO2 emissions rose sharply, the temperatures began a decline that lasted until the 1970's, prompting the media and many scientists to fear a coming ice age.
Let me repeat, temperatures got colder after C02 emissions exploded. If C02 is the driving force of global climate change, why do so many in the media ignore the many skeptical scientists who cite these rather obvious inconvenient truths?
SIXTY SCIENTISTS
My skeptical views on man-made catastrophic global warming have only strengthened as new science comes in. There have been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for 50% of 20th century warming.
Recently, many scientists, including a leading member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun's output.
A letter sent to the Canadian Prime Minister on April 6 of this year by 60 prominent scientists who question the basis for climate alarmism, clearly explains the current state of scientific knowledge on global warming.
The 60 scientists wrote:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605
"If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary." The letter also noted:
"'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes occur all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise.'"
COMPUTER MODELS THREATEN EARTH
One of the ways alarmists have pounded this mantra of "consensus" on global warming into our pop culture is through the use of computer models which project future calamity. But the science is simply not there to place so much faith in scary computer model scenarios which extrapolate the current and projected buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and conclude that the planet faces certain doom.
Dr. Vincent Gray, a research scientist and a 2001 reviewer with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has noted, "The effects of aerosols, and their uncertainties, are such as to nullify completely the reliability of any of the climate models."
Earlier this year, the director of the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks Alaska, testified to Congress that highly publicized climate models showing a disappearing Arctic were nothing more than "science fiction."
In fact, after years of hearing about the computer generated scary scenarios about the future of our planet, I now believe that the greatest climate threat we face may be coming from alarmist computer models.
This threat is originating from the software installed on the hard drives of the publicity and grant seeking climate modelers.
It is long past the time for us to separate climate change fact from hysteria.
KYOTO: ECONOMIC PAIN FOR NO CLIMATE GAIN
One final point on the science of climate change: I am approached by many in the media and others who ask, "What if you are wrong to doubt the dire global warming predictions? Will you be able to live with yourself for opposing the Kyoto Protocol?"
My answer is blunt. The history of the modern environmental movement is chock full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future.
The more the eco-doomsayers' predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict.
These failed predictions are just one reason I respect the serious scientists out there today debunking the latest scaremongering on climate change. Scientists like MIT's Richard Lindzen, former Colorado State climatologist Roger Pielke, Sr., the University of Alabama's Roy Spencer and John Christy, Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, Colorado State University's William Gray, atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Oregon State climatologist George Taylor and astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, to name a few.
But more importantly, it is the global warming alarmists who should be asked the question -- "What if they are correct about man-made catastrophic global warming?" -- because they have come up with no meaningful solution to their supposed climate crisis in the two decades that they have been hyping this issue.
If the alarmists truly believe that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are dooming the planet, then they must face up to the fact that symbolism does not solve a supposed climate crisis.
The alarmists freely concede that the Kyoto Protocol, even if fully ratified and complied with, would not have any meaningful impact on global temperatures. And keep in mind that Kyoto is not even close to being complied with by many of the nations that ratified it, including 13 of the EU-15 nations that are not going to meet their emission reduction promises.
Many of the nations that ratified Kyoto are now realizing what I have been saying all along: The Kyoto Protocol is a lot of economic pain for no climate gain.
Legislation that has been proposed in this chamber would have even less of a temperature effect than Kyoto's undetectable impact. And more recently, global warming alarmists and the media have been praising California for taking action to limit C02. But here again: This costly feel-good California measure, which is actually far less severe than Kyoto, will have no impact on the climate -- only the economy.
Symbolism does not solve a climate crisis.
In addition, we now have many environmentalists and Hollywood celebrities, like Laurie David, who have been advocating measures like changing standard light bulbs in your home to fluorescents to help avert global warming. Changing to more energy-efficient light bulbs is a fine thing to do, but to somehow imply we can avert a climate disaster by these actions is absurd.
Once again, symbolism does not solve a climate crisis.
But this symbolism may be hiding a dark side. While greenhouse gas limiting proposals may cost the industrialized West trillions of dollars, it is the effect on the developing world's poor that is being lost in this debate.
The Kyoto Protocol's post 2012 agenda which mandates that the developing world be subjected to restrictions on greenhouse gases could have the potential to severely restrict development in regions of the world like Africa, Asia and South America -- where some of the Earth's most energy-deprived people currently reside.
Expanding basic necessities like running water and electricity in the developing world are seen by many in the green movement as a threat to the planet's health that must be avoided.
Energy poverty equals a life of back-breaking poverty and premature death.
If we allow scientifically unfounded fears of global warming to influence policy makers to restrict future energy production and the creation of basic infrastructure in the developing world -- billions of people will continue to suffer.
Last week my committee heard testimony from Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who was once a committed left-wing environmentalist until he realized that so much of what that movement preached was based on bad science. Lomborg wrote a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and has organized some of the world's top Nobel Laureates to form the 2004 "Copenhagen Consensus" which ranked the world's most pressing problems. http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=158 And guess what?
They placed global warming at the bottom of the list in terms of our planet's priorities. The "Copenhagen Consensus" found that the most important priorities of our planet included: combating disease, stopping malaria, securing clean water, and building infrastructure to help lift the developing nations out of poverty. I have made many trips to Africa, and once you see the devastating poverty that has a grip on that continent, you quickly realize that fears about global warming are severely misguided.
I firmly believe that when the history of our era is written, future generations will look back with puzzlement and wonder why we spent so much time and effort on global warming fears and pointless solutions like the Kyoto Protocol.
French President Jacques Chirac provided the key clue as to why so many in the international community still revere the Kyoto Protocol, who in 2000 said Kyoto represents "the first component of an authentic global governance."
Furthermore, if your goal is to limit C02 emissions, the only effective way to go about it is the use of cleaner, more efficient technologies that will meet the energy demands of this century and beyond.
The Bush administration and my Environment and Public Works Committee have been engaged in these efforts as we work to expand nuclear power and promote the Asia-Pacific Partnership. This partnership stresses the sharing of new technology among member nations including three of the world's top 10 emitters -- China, India and South Korea -- all of whom are exempt from Kyoto.
MEDIA COVERAGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE:
Many in the media, as I noted earlier, have taken it upon themselves to drop all pretense of balance on global warming and instead become committed advocates for the issue.
Here is a quote from Newsweek magazine:
"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- with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth."
A headline in the New York Times reads: "Climate Changes Endanger World's Food Output." Here is a quote from Time Magazine:
"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval."
All of this sounds very ominous. That is, until you realize that the three quotes I just read were from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek Magazine and The New York Times, and Time Magazine in 1974. http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,944914,00.html
They weren't referring to global warming; they were warning of a coming ice age.
Let me repeat, all three of those quotes were published in the 1970's and warned of a coming ice age.
In addition to global cooling fears, Time Magazine has also reported on global warming. Here is an example:
"[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right... weathermen have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer."
Before you think that this is just another example of the media promoting Vice President Gore's movie, you need to know that the quote I just read you from Time Magazine was not a recent quote; it was from January 2, 1939.
Yes, in 1939. Nine years before Vice President Gore was born and over three decades before Time Magazine began hyping a coming ice age and almost five decades before they returned to hyping global warming.
Time Magazine in 1951 pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof that the planet was warming.
In 1952, the New York Times noted that the "trump card" of global warming "has been the melting glaciers."
BUT MEDIA COULD NOT DECIDE BETWEEN WARMING OR COOLING SCARES
There are many more examples of the media and scientists flip-flopping between warming and cooling scares.
Here is a quote from the New York Times reporting on fears of an approaching ice age.
"Geologists Think the World May be Frozen Up Again."
That sentence appeared over 100 years ago in the February 24, 1895 edition of the New York Times.
Let me repeat. 1895, not 1995.
A front page article in the October 7, 1912 New York Times, just a few months after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, declared that a prominent professor "Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age."
The very same day in 1912, the Los Angeles Times ran an article warning that the "Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold." An August 10, 1923 Washington Post article declared: "Ice Age Coming Here."
By the 1930's, the media took a break from reporting on the coming ice age and instead switched gears to promoting global warming:
"America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise" stated an article in the New York Times on March 27, 1933. The media of yesteryear was also not above injecting large amounts of fear and alarmism into their climate articles.
An August 9, 1923 front page article in the Chicago Tribune declared:
"Scientist Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada." The article quoted a Yale University professor who predicted that large parts of Europe and Asia would be "wiped out" and Switzerland would be "entirely obliterated."
A December 29, 1974 New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed "the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade."
The article also warned that unless government officials reacted to the coming catastrophe, "mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence" would result. In 1975, the New York Times reported that "A major cooling [was] widely considered to be inevitable." These past predictions of doom have a familiar ring, don't they? They sound strikingly similar to our modern media promotion of former Vice president's brand of climate alarmism.
After more than a century of alternating between global cooling and warming, one would think that this media history would serve a cautionary tale for today's voices in the media and scientific community who are promoting yet another round of eco-doom.
Much of the 100-year media history on climate change that I have documented here today can be found in a publication titled "Fire and Ice" from the Business and Media Institute. http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice_timeswarns.asp
MEDIA COVERAGE IN 2006
Which raises the question: Has this embarrassing 100-year documented legacy of coverage on what turned out to be trendy climate science theories made the media more skeptical of today's sensational promoters of global warming?
You be the judge.
On February 19th of this year, CBS News's "60 Minutes" produced a segment on the North Pole. The segment was a completely one-sided report, alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/16/60minutes/main1323169.shtml
It even featured correspondent Scott Pelley claiming that the ice in Greenland was melting so fast, that he barely got off an ice-berg before it collapsed into the water.
"60 Minutes" failed to inform its viewers that a 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showing that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice and mass and that according to scientists, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930's than today.
On March 19th of this year "60 Minutes" profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml
In this segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed aside in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen.
The "60 Minutes" segment made no mention of Hansen's partisan ties to former Democrat Vice President Al Gore or Hansen's receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. There was also no mention of Hansen's subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf
Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen's huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation. http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speechID=6
The foundation's money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.
"60 Minutes" also did not inform viewers that Hansen appeared to concede in a 2003 issue of Natural Science that the use of "extreme scenarios" to dramatize climate change "may have been appropriate at one time" to drive the public's attention to the issue. http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html
Why would "60 Minutes" ignore the basic tenets of journalism, which call for objectivity and balance in sourcing, and do such one-sided segments? The answer was provided by correspondent Scott Pelley. Pelley told the CBS News website that he justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of "Holocaust deniers." http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/22/publiceye/entry1431768.shtml
This year also saw a New York Times reporter write a children's book entitled" The North Pole Was Here." The author of the book, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, wrote that it may someday be "easier to sail to than stand on" the North Pole in summer. So here we have a very prominent environmental reporter for the New York Times who is promoting aspects of global warming alarmism in a book aimed at children.
TIME MAGAZINE HYPES ALARMISM
In April of this year, Time Magazine devoted an issue to global warming alarmism titled "Be Worried, Be Very Worried." http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20060403,00.html
This is the same Time Magazine which first warned of a coming ice age in 1920's before switching to warning about global warming in the 1930's before switching yet again to promoting the 1970's coming ice age scare.
The April 3, 2006 global warming special report of Time Magazine was a prime example of the media's shortcomings, as the magazine cited partisan left-wing environmental groups with a vested financial interest in hyping alarmism.
Headlines blared:
"More and More Land is Being Devastated by Drought"
"Earth at the Tipping Point"
"The Climate is Crashing,"
Time Magazine did not make the slightest attempt to balance its reporting with any views with scientists skeptical of this alleged climate apocalypse.
I don't have journalism training, but I dare say calling a bunch of environmental groups with an obvious fund-raising agenda and asking them to make wild speculations on how bad global warming might become, is nothing more than advocacy for their left-wing causes. It is a violation of basic journalistic standards.
To his credit, New York Times reporter Revkin saw fit to criticize Time Magazine for its embarrassing coverage of climate science. http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/article.php?date=2006-04-28§ion=1&id=7
So in the end, Time's cover story title of "Be Worried, Be Very Worried," appears to have been apt. The American people should be worried --- very worried -- of such shoddy journalism.
AL GORE INCONVIENIENT TRUTH
In May, our nation was exposed to perhaps one of the slickest science propaganda films of all time: former Vice President Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." In addition to having the backing of Paramount Pictures to market this film, Gore had the full backing of the media, and leading the cheerleading charge was none other than the Associated Press.
On June 27, the Associated Press ran an article by Seth Borenstein that boldly declared "Scientists give two thumbs up to Gore's movie." The article quoted only five scientists praising Gore's science, despite AP's having contacted over 100 scientists. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-06-27-inconvenient-truth-reviews_x.htm
The fact that over 80% of the scientists contacted by the AP had not even seen the movie or that many scientists have harshly criticized the science presented by Gore did not dissuade the news outlet one bit from its mission to promote Gore's brand of climate alarmism. http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257909
I am almost at a loss as to how to begin to address the series of errors, misleading science and unfounded speculation that appear in the former Vice President's film Here is what Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist from MIT has written about "An Inconvenient Truth." "A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse." http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
What follows is a very brief summary of the science that the former Vice President promotes in either a wrong or misleading way:
• He promoted the now debunked "hockey stick" temperature chart in an attempt to prove man's overwhelming impact on the climate
•He attempted to minimize the significance of Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age
•He insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most sciences believe does not exist.
•He asserted that today's Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930's were as warm or warmer
•He claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that is only true of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice.
•He hyped unfounded fears that Greenland's ice is in danger of disappearing
•He erroneously claimed that ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss on local land-use practices
•He made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way out side of any supposed scientific "consensus" and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature.
•He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing
•He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits
•He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving
•He completely failed to inform viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004
Now that was just a brief sampling of some of the errors presented in "An Inconvenient Truth." Imagine how long the list would have been if I had actually seen the movie -- there would not be enough time to deliver this speech today.
TOM BROKAW
Following the promotion of "An Inconvenient Truth," the press did not miss a beat in their role as advocates for global warming fears.
ABC News put forth its best effort to secure its standing as an advocate for climate alarmism when the network put out a call for people to submit their anecdotal global warming horror stories in June for use in a future news segment. http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2094224&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
In July, the Discovery Channel presented a documentary on global warming narrated by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw. The program presented only those views of scientists promoting the idea that humans are destroying the Earth's climate. http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=258659
You don't have to take my word for the program's overwhelming bias; a Bloomberg News TV review noted "You'll find more dissent at a North Korean political rally than in this program" because of its lack of scientific objectivity.
Brokaw also presented climate alarmist James Hansen to viewers as unbiased, failing to note his quarter million dollar grant form the partisan Heinz Foundation or his endorsement of Democrat Presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 and his role promoting former Vice President Gore's Hollywood movie.
Brokaw, however, did find time to impugn the motives of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism when he featured paid environmental partisan Michael Oppenhimer of the group Environmental Defense accusing skeptics of being bought out by the fossil fuel interests.
The fact remains that political campaign funding by environmental groups to promote climate and environmental alarmism dwarfs spending by the fossil fuel industry by a three-to-one ratio. Environmental special interests, through their 527s, spent over $19 million compared to the $7 million that Oil and Gas spent through PACs in the 2004 election cycle.
I am reminded of a question the media often asks me about how much I have received in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. My unapologetic answer is 'Not Enough,' -- especially when you consider the millions partisan environmental groups pour into political campaigns.
ENGINEERED 'CONSENSUS"
Continuing with our media analysis: On July 24, 2006 The Los Angeles Times featured an op-ed by Naomi Oreskes, a social scientist at the University of California San Diego and the author of a 2004 Science Magazine study. Oreskes insisted that a review of 928 scientific papers showed there was 100% consensus that global warming was not caused by natural climate variations. This study was also featured in former Vice President Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=259323
However, the analysis in Science Magazine excluded nearly 11,000 studies or more than 90 percent of the papers dealing with global warming, according to a critique by British social scientist Benny Peiser.
Peiser also pointed out that less than two percent of the climate studies in the survey actually endorsed the so-called "consensus view" that human activity is driving global warming and some of the studies actually opposed that view.
But despite this manufactured "consensus," the media continued to ignore any attempt to question the orthodoxy of climate alarmism.
As the dog days of August rolled in, the American people were once again hit with more hot hype regarding global warming, this time from The New York Times op-ed pages. A columnist penned an August 3rd column filled with so many inaccuracies it is a wonder the editor of the Times saw fit to publish it.
For instance, Bob Herbert's column made dubious claims about polar bears, the snows of Kilimanjaro and he attempted to link this past summer's heat wave in the U.S. to global warming - something even alarmist James Hansen does not support. http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=261382
POLAR BEARS LOOK TIRED?
Finally, a September 15, 2006 Reuters News article claimed that polar bears in the Arctic are threatened with extinction by global warming. The article by correspondent Alister Doyle, quoted a visitor to the Arctic who claims he saw two distressed polar bears. According to the Reuters article, the man noted that "one of [the polar bears] looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted." The article did not state the bears were actually dead or exhausted, rather that they "looked" that way.
Have we really arrived at the point where major news outlets in the U.S. are reduced to analyzing whether or not polar bears in the Arctic appear restful? How does reporting like this get approved for publication by the editors at Reuters? What happened to covering the hard science of this issue?
What was missing from this Reuters news article was the fact that according to biologists who study the animals, polar bears are doing quite well. Biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut, a territory of Canada, refuted these claims in May when he noted that
"Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present." http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146433819696&call_pageid=970599119419
Sadly, it appears that reporting anecdotes and hearsay as fact, has now replaced the basic tenets of journalism for many media outlets.
ALARMISM HAS LED TO SKEPTICISM
It is an inconvenient truth that so far, 2006 has been a year in which major segments of the media have given up on any quest for journalistic balance, fairness and objectivity when it comes to climate change. The global warming alarmists and their friends in the media have attempted to smear scientists who dare question the premise of man-made catastrophic global warming, and as a result some scientists have seen their reputations and research funding dry up.
The media has so relentlessly promoted global warming fears that a British group called the Institute for Public Policy Research - and this from a left leaning group - issued a report in 2006 accusing media outlets of engaging in what they termed "climate porn" in order to attract the public's attention.
Bob Carter, a Paleoclimate geologist from James Cook University in Australia has described how the media promotes climate fear:
"Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as 'if', 'might', 'could', 'probably', 'perhaps', 'expected', 'projected' or 'modeled' - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense," professor Carter concluded in an op-ed in April of this year. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html
Another example of this relentless hype is the reporting on the seemingly endless number of global warming impact studies which do not even address whether global warming is going to happen. They merely project the impact of potential temperature increases.
The media endlessly hypes studies that purportedly show that global warming could increase mosquito populations, malaria, West Nile Virus, heat waves and hurricanes, threaten the oceans, damage coral reefs, boost poison ivy growth, damage vineyards, and global food crops, to name just a few of the global warming linked calamities. Oddly, according to the media reports, warmer temperatures almost never seem to have any positive effects on plant or animal life or food production.
Fortunately, the media's addiction to so-called 'climate porn' has failed to seduce many Americans.
According to a July Pew Research Center Poll, the American public is split about evenly between those who say global warming is due to human activity versus those who believe it's from natural factors or not happening at all.
In addition, an August Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe global warming is naturally occurring is on the rise.
Yes -- it appears that alarmism has led to skepticism.
The American people know when their intelligence is being insulted. They know when they are being used and when they are being duped by the hysterical left.
The American people deserve better -- much better -- from our fourth estate. We have a right to expect accuracy and objectivity on climate change coverage. We have a right to expect balance in sourcing and fair analysis from reporters who cover the issue.
Above all, the media must roll back this mantra that there is scientific "consensus" of impending climatic doom as an excuse to ignore recent science. After all, there was a so-called scientific "consensus" that there were nine planets in our solar system until Pluto was recently demoted.
Breaking the cycles of media hysteria will not be easy since hysteria sells -- it's very profitable. But I want to challenge the news media to reverse course and report on the objective science of climate change, to stop ignoring legitimate voices this scientific debate and to stop acting as a vehicle for unsubstantiated hype.
> Here lies the text from Senator Jim Inhofe's SENATE FLOOR SPEECH DELIVERED MONDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2006 in which he lambastes the "airbrushing" of the warming trend that ocured over the entire midieval period. Let's hear what David Mathews has to say regarding this. I say if nothing else points to the questionable veracity of the alarmist's claims, this should.
Sen. Inhofe is a tool of the fossil fuels industries. He is an advocate on behalf of corporate interests and nothing else. I could care less what he says.
As to Florida's weather, I will say the following:
Florida's winter this year was a hot winter regardless of these few days of cold weather presently occurring and the smattering of other cool days in January.
The weather is clearly changing. If Sen. Inhofe says otherwise that just proves that he is an ignorant man.
But I cannot complain about today. Today is a perfect day in Florida. Absolutely perfect weather. I hope that this weather continues on for at least a few more days.
Posted by: David Mathews on February 19, 2007 09:09 AM"Climate alarmists have been attempting to erase the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period from the Earth's climate history for at least a decade. David Deming, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma's College of Geosciences, can testify first hand about this effort. Dr. Deming was welcomed into the close-knit group of global warming believers after he published a paper in 1995 that noted some warming in the 20th century. Deming says he was subsequently contacted by a prominent global warming alarmist and told point blank "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." When the "Hockey Stick" first appeared in 1998, it did just that."
Posted by: JDH on February 19, 2007 09:21 AMDo I have to point out the obvious:
1. Sen. Inhofe ain't a scientists.
2. Sen. Inhofe is a tool of the oil industry.
I could care less what Se. Inhofe says. I would trust him just as much as a trust ExxonMobil.
Any more questions? What's the weather like in your neighborhood?
Posted by: David Mathews on February 19, 2007 09:25 AMHe's not my mayor, but you are right about the changing definitions used by the global warming alarmists.
The facts as we currently know support the following conclusions:
1. There is a climatic warming trend.
This trend began at about the same time that science developed the ability to measure temperatures.
The alarmists have consistently cherry picked intervals within this period of measurements to suit their message, but the whole record indicates the while the hase been an overall 0.5 degree rise in average tempertures, if you choose only the period from 1980 to now it can look like there is steeper climb (~1.5 degrees).
2. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have risen since we began measuring tempertures.
Most of the increase has occured since WWII as a result of human activity, particularly the use of ofssil fuels to produce energy and propel our transportation systems.
What is most curious though is that most of the warming occurred prior to 1940.
3. There is no compelling evidence that CO2 is the driving force for the observed warming trend.
But that in itself is not a fatal flaw to the global warming alarmists' theory. They might actually be on to something of substance.
At the same though, the alarmists have placed a stranglehold on the funding of research into alternative theories.
This might be appropriate - if they were working with a proven mechanism! The problem though is they are not. They have put the cart ahead of the horse.
They have blinded themselves and their political masters to all alternative mechanisms on the grounds of - "But if we are right, we must act now before we destroy the planet!"
Consensus has never been a driver of science. Even though Einstein is accepted today, in the early 20th century the consensus believed his theory wrong. It wasn't until the mid 1930's that follow up research on radiactive substances provided evidence that his theories were close to true (even today physicists disagree as whether they were completly correct).
Consensus, like consistency, is the hobgoblin of scientific lightweights. Scientists, like anybody else, like to accepted by their peers.
There are also big egos and big budgets at stake. Scientists are no more altruistic than anyone else. They will vigorously defend their body of work, their professional reputations, and their source of funds (many actually have gotten wealthy on the GW gravey train).
Global Warming, now Climate Change, has grown in acceptance over the last 20 years, not so much as a result of compelling evidence, but because of political support from the left.
Because of the dirth of funding for alternative mechanisms for the warming trend we have observed, it has taken Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center nearly 10 years to complete basic studies on the effects of one such alternative mechanism. His alternative theory has solar magnetic activity affecting the densisty of cosmic radiation (not solar), which in turn affects the formation of low level atmospheric water vapor, a major player in regulating atmopheric temperature.
Svensmark's evidence is of such importance that the European Union has assigned its most prestigeous think tank in Switzerland to test his experiment using the CERN cyclotron - the biggest most modern BIG science project outside of Texas.
I suspect that the Australians and the US will follow suit in the near future, but the point here is that Svensmark's work, if shown to be right, blows the crap out of the whole Global Warming industry.
I expect CERN will try very hard to debunk Svensmark's work.
Posted by: deadwood on February 19, 2007 09:50 AM2. Sen. Inhofe is a tool of the oil industry
And Green Peace tells the truth. 0-:
Keep yacking David. We so enjoy you as a fool & a tool.
I hear AL calling you.
Posted by: Amry Medic/Vet on February 19, 2007 09:59 AMYour little examples are meaningful ... because you ignore the big examples:
1. The American Association for the Advancement of Science just decided that climate change (caused by humans) is real. But...of course you are more of an expert than the most respected group of scientists in the country.
2. The warmest month on record (as published in the Seattle Times) was ignored by you. Again, you must obviously know more than the experts.
Your silly little notes like this one....while ignoring the experts and the facts makes your arguments as believable as say....McGavick winning the governor election last year....
Does reality matter? Keep wondering...
Posted by: Facts AreMine on February 19, 2007 10:36 AMIf you read the story you will find that what is actually reported is the kenote speech by the president of the AAAS at its annual meeting.
That John Holdren would give such speech is not suprising, since he has been one of the principal proponents of global warming since the 1980's. He is also a favorite "for hire" speaker on global warming with a financial interest in promoting the subject.
Holdren has also been at the center of the environemntal and peace movments sicne the 1970's.
This is the same John Holdren that was preaching against SDI in the 1980's and opposed it right up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. After that he preached about dismantling the military and global warming.
This story is not news, but simply more of the MSM echo chamber.
Posted by: deadwood on February 19, 2007 10:54 AM1. Al Gore ain't a scientists.
2. Al Gore is a tool of the enviro-wackos.
I could care less what Al Gore says. I would trust him just as much as a trust Fidel Castro.
Posted by: obj on February 19, 2007 10:58 AMWTF are they? Never heard of them. Must be a bunch of LLL whackos. No engineer or scientist I know believes in man-made GW.
Posted by: Manco_Dollars on February 19, 2007 11:06 AMRemember you are dealing with people who put more credit in political "consensus" than in science.
Posted by: JDH on February 19, 2007 11:18 AMI don't even want to debate GW with these people, because their minds are already made up. Their pre-existing biases against Western civilization, capitalism and America preclude any useful debate. As far as I'm concerned I have NOTHING to say to these people, I show them my arse.
Posted by: Manco_Dollars on February 19, 2007 11:32 AMHere's another good read from a scientist who's also not being paid by the Oil Industry, and is even a Democrat who voted for Al Gore, but who questions the current politics of doom and gloom.
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 19, 2007 11:42 AMScroll down about a quarter of the way on this page. And take a look at the graph.
We are pretty damn cold right now, relatively speaking. The earth has spent far more time warmer than it is now. There is a Pre-Cambrian warming event, no humans present. There is a Carboniferous-Permian warming event, no humans present.
Given that the last 1.8 million years have been colder than average. How is the current climate change in any way out of the ordinary?
Depends on the time frame you look at. About one third the way down a graph of ice mass over the last 6 million years it been the trend line for that period is increasing ice mass. However if you look at the 1 million year chart we are within the normal range of changes in the ice mass.
3/4 of the way down a temperature chart for 10,000 years. The trend for the last 8000 years is cooler.
Read through the article, check the sources, and look at all the warming events in the last million years.
Climate is variable. We are mid range in the climate spectrum. We have a long way to go before the climate is any way "abnormal."
Posted by: JCM on February 19, 2007 12:26 PMGreat article! But sad in a way. There seem to be only two sides on the GW debate: the Dems/Al Gore/environmental activist side that promotes "doom and gloom" scenarios, and Republicans who are global-warming sceptics. The Republicans are quickly losing this debate in the face of the MSM, Hollywood, and popular culture. I am a Republican and scientist who is NOT a global warming sceptic. But my arguments, identical to those of the Democrat Professor in the article you linked, are becoming lost in the noise. These are rational and scientific arguments that focus on the real environmental and social impacts of temperature increase and sea level rise; the dynamic nature of Earth's climatic and ecological systems; timeframes; and, most importantly, the economic tradeoffs among coping with change, implementing engineering and technological solutions to minimize impact, and cutting greenhouse gas emissions (the most publicized but perhaps the most futile solution). I fear that Republicans are giving up their place at the table in this debate, and it will be increasingly dominated by the left that envisions a future where we are all crammed into tiny apartments in urban centers, taking our fixed-rail mass transit to work because cars are banned or gasoline has been taxed to $20/gallon.
Posted by: Ex-WA on February 19, 2007 12:30 PMOf course the global climate varies. It changes all the time and evidence suggests that we are in a warming trend. But that is all that there is "consensus" opinion on.
Wall= democrats cut and run crowed!
Posted by: dcat on February 19, 2007 12:52 PMActually there a lot of non-Republicans, especially those trained in the sciences, who don't buy the GW crap. But you won't find too many of them raising their heads for fear of losing them.
Most practicing scientists are employed either directly or indirectly by government. That means their livelyhoods are dependent on not raising the hackles of the politicians and political appointees who dispense the funds that pay their salaries.
I am no different in that respect and very much prefer to keep my decent salary and retirement account - so you won't see my name displayed here for them to see. Sorry, no tenure where I work!
Based on my knowledge of the sciences involved, and it is not insignificant, I suspect we will find out within a reasonably short period of time of say 20 years that Gore is liar and fool.
By 2030 we will once again be in a cooling phase of the global climate cycle and Gore will be dead.
I wonder if his followers will claim they caused the cooling? Probably, and they might even get away with it if they can suppress the fact that India and Russia will have by then doubled the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
What's important today is keep the skepticism alive and keep reminding the voters that Gore is still the same idiot he was in 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, etc.
It takes a pretty foolish person to make such a bet on such feeble evidence. There will be many a future Saturday Night Live joke where the punchline will be Al Gore and Global Warming.
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 19, 2007 01:33 PMJulian Simon was a controversial demographer and economist. He was a naysayer to the Malthusians, a yea-sayer to the consumers, a tilter at windmills, a man whose investigations convey a sense of joy in the experience of humanity. He was a despised critic of conventional wisdom, a man attacked by other scholars as "a hypocrite," "a criminal," and "a terrorist." At his sudden death at age 65 he continued to be a center of controversy, the kind of guy his critics are doubtless pleased to see dead.
To those who came up in the liberal academe, Simon's views may seem like a breath of brackish, Reaganite air. Simon stood for the notion that civilization was great, that man's influence on the world was beneficial (at least for mankind), that capitalism was the ultimate alembic of social life. He believed in Progress. In a career marked by polemics, he insisted that scarcity was (in an economic sense) impossible, that challenges like oil shortages and population growth motivate people to invent solutions that increase human welfare and happiness. A population explosion would mean a massive accumulation of human cerebral material that would provide the answers to all mankind's problems. One of his books on population was titled The Ultimate Resource.
He was famous for a bet he once made.
Paul Ehrlich is a demographer and ornithologist whose book titles encapsulate his viewpoint: The End of Affluence, The Population Bomb, and The Population Explosion. Ehrlich, beginning in 1968, predicted that hundreds of millions of people would shortly starve to death as population outstripped food production. He wrote that population and capitalism would shortly immiserate the bulk of humanity. Even as his predictions failed to come true (and food production far outstripped population growth, for instance), Ehrlich's prestige grew. According to Ehrlich, as population exploded, the price of commodities would skyrocket.
Simon in 1980 bet Ehrlich that prices would fall in the next decade. Resources would become less expensive as human need produced more of them. The pair agreed to pay the difference on a $1,000 basket of minerals. In 1990 Simon got a check from Ehrlich for $576.06 - the minerals had fallen in price by more than 50%. Ehrlich continued to badmouth Simon, but declined to take Simon's follow-up offer of a bet on a basket of commodities of Ehrlich's choice.
It is possible that Simon was lucky. But the mean-spiritedness with which Ehrlich and academic opinion in general treated Simon was remarkable and depressing. Simon was damned in apocalyptic terms, as if he were a Pied Piper, leading mankind toward a chilly, resource-deprived future.
Was he? We can't know for sure, but the question is empirical, and prices are a reasonable proxy for the availability of resources. At the same time, prices cannot reflect the replacement value of one-of-a-kind resources. It is difficult for informed laymen to form an intelligent opinion about issues like global warming and deforestation because they can't know the replacement cost or predict the consequences. Economic argument requires data. Discourse in this wasteland is poisoned on both sides by rhetorical absolutes that reflect only ideology. Simon at least was looking at data - the prices. Ehrlich has never adequately explained why his predictions failed to come true, nor has he ceased to make increasingly dire predictions.
Ehrlich received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award; Simon wrote a book about overcoming depression that one suspects was at least partially a result of the invective hurled his way.
Yet Simon encouraged such reactions by facing down conventional pieties with headstrong abandon. He became one of the principal advisors in the Reagan administration, urging a cutoff of funding to the International Planned Parenthood Federation. This led to the curtailment of US support for family planning worldwide. It was a sad episode because family planning represents one of the great examples of human empowerment through foreign aid. Simon, a champion of individual freedoms, in this case undercut his own ideals with blinkered dogmatism.
What did Simon make of situations like the collapse of marine ecosystems, where economic rationales do not necessarily lead to rebound? He never adequately responded to the question of the extinction of species. Such values - and surely they are values which affect the quality of life and humanity in general - were not accounted for in his philosophy.
Shortly before his death, Simon made two predictions for the coming century. The first was that "humanity's condition will improve in just about every material way." The second was that "humans will continue to sit around complaining about everything getting worse."
We can't give these folks a big enough platform from on which to speak their "truth to power." The more doom and gloom scenarios, the better. And they need to be allowed to tell Average Joe that they plan to take away his car, and increase the cost of everything in his life dramatically to fund wealth distribution schemes. Let the world know what the true Progressive view is, and no one would ever actually listen to their hateful and regressive end goals.
http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/in_our_opinion/Chicken-Little-Environmentalists-Latest-Claim-Total-Marine-Extinction-By-2048.htm
Chicken Little Environmentalists' Latest Claim: Total Marine Extinction By 2048
In their latest sky-is-falling prediction, Chicken Little environmentalists predict extinction of the earth's marine species by 2048.
According to a Science Magazine report, the Earth's marine populations will disappear by 2048 if current trends continue, resulting in less food for humans. According to Boris Worm, lead author of the article, all species will vanish, from mussels and clams to tuna and swordfish. Ocean mammals, including seals, killer whales and dolphins, will also allegedly disappear.
But beware. This is merely the latest environmentalist false alarm concocted to frighten Americans into accepting more bureaucratic coercion.
Consider that the earliest environmentalist hysterics predicted that the world would run out of food during the 19th Century. In the 20th Century, they began predicting global cooling. Later on, as you know, it was global warming. In between, the world was supposed to run out of oil by 1980, and food soon thereafter.
These false alarms would be amusing, were it not for the fact that they often lead to destructive government policies.
Thomas Malthus is perhaps the father of doomsday environmentalists. He famously prophesized in 1798 that farm production couldn't possibly keep pace with "overpopulation," and that worldwide starvation would occur in the mid-1800s.
Still waiting.
Undeterred, Paul Ehrlich curiously chose to resurrect Malthus's theory in his 1968 book The Population Bomb. Disregarding the obvious likelihood that his assertions would soon be disproven and ridiculed, he boldly stated, "the battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." In fact, Ehrlich went so far as to bizarrely label this event "The Great Die-Off."
It gets even more bizarre, believe it or not.
In 1990, a persistent Ehrlich pronounced that "starvation and epidemic disease will raise death rates over most of the planet," causing "deaths of many hundreds of millions of people in famines."
In the real world, however, famine and epidemic disease have occurred due to political oppression, rather than some sort of "overpopulation" or agricultural failure.
Climate-change alarmists have an equally embarrassing record of prediction, alternating between global cooling and global warming over the past century.
On February 24, 1895, the New York Times ran the following headline: "Geologists Think the World May be Frozen up Again." On October 7, 1912, the Times announced that a professor "Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age."
On March 27, 1933, however, the New York Times reversed course and announced global warming: "America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise."
Still following?
Climate alarmists again reversed course in the 1970s, switching back to "Global Cooling." On December 29, 1974, the New York Times proclaimed cooling temperatures, and warned, "the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade."
Newsweek Magazine joined this global cooling chorus in 1975, pleading that "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 - with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth."
Obviously, alarmists again reversed course within the decade, switching back to "Global Warming."
It's enough to make a time-traveler dizzy.
The simple fact is that climate fluctuations are the norm throughout the Earth's history, and result from natural causes. After all, the Ice Age certainly didn't end due to the internal combustion engine (although Al Gore is probably working on that theory as we speak). Ignoring this, the environmental movement repeatedly floats hysterical predictions about climate change (although obviously unable to choose between cooling and warming), overpopulation, resource eradication, worldwide starvation, and extinction.
Columnist George Will famously recalls a former classmate who bizarrely asserted that "the proof of Trotsky's genius is the fact that none of his predictions have come true." Similar logic apparently applies among environmentalists - despite failed prediction after failed prediction, their doomsday forecasts persist.
The reason? Very simply, environmentalism provides leftists a vehicle by which they impose their social and economic agenda upon the world, including a reluctant United States. As French President Jaques Chirac revealingly stated in 2000, the Kyoto Protocol constitutes "the first component of an authentic global governance."
So keep the Science Magazine report of marine extinction by 2048 in context - namely, the embarrassing 200-year record of environmentalist hysteria.
Posted by: JDH on February 19, 2007 02:34 PM
Those who doubt mankind are essentially placing a bet against human nature. They are daring mankind not to solve our problems, and thus making it even more likely that we will do so, and sooner.
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 19, 2007 02:35 PMI've read the IPCC report (the summary that's available now), and I think there's good reason to think that we will continue to have higher temperatures and sea-level rise. So, in that sense, Gore may be right. The IPCC also dismisses the dire predictions of Antarctic melting, which seems to be holding up just fine.
But what will the press report? In the same way that Katrina became Bush's fault because he dissed the Kyoto Treaty, what will the headline be if a building collapses in Venice? Or a dike fails in the Netherlands? Who will put the situation into context? When a large piece of ice breaks off Antarctica, is it because large pieces of ice break off Antartica every 10 or 20 years (but we couldn't see it happen before satellites) or is it because of global warming? Republicans took a beating with Katrina, and it became a centerpiece of An Inconvenient Truth. Nevermind hurricane Camille in the past, or the dud hurricane season in 2006.
I see Republicans losing this debate. If we want to say the predictions of the IPCC are wrong, we are facing a losing battle. I say we take those predictions as a given, and frame the debate on our terms. Those terms are: 1) productive economies are energy-intensive economies. Nobody has figured out how to achieve high living standards without consuming energy. 2) Point out the "Unpalatable Truth" to people, e.g., no flying to Cancun, give up your car, give up all those electric gizmos we've accumulated in the past 20 years. 3) U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are an increasingly small part of the world's emissions. The U.S. cannot solve the "problem," and the ability of the U.S. to contribute to the solution decreases as China's and India's economies grow. 4) Under any realistic emissions scenario, we will not stop global warming for centuries. But our models for predicting climate and sea-level rise beyond 2100 are prone to error because of a number of variables that we can't quantify, including technological change. The runaway greenhouse effect and so-called "tipping point" are not yet supported by hard science. 5) Ecosystems have dealt with much greater rates of sea level rise in just the past 10,000 years or so, and higher temperatures in the past 120,000 years. Polar bears survived that, so they'll probably survive this. 6) The potential human impact (e.g., displaced populations, drought) will either be accommodated through economic growth over the next 100 years (we found places to put 5 billion people over the past 100 years!) or be at least partially offset by more hospitable/productive conditions in higher latitudes.
In other words, GW is not the end of civilization as we know it. Should we be trying to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels? Certainly. Conserving energy? Yes. But don't lose sight of economics.
Posted by: Ex-WA on February 19, 2007 02:48 PMI just don't believe the scientific equipment is there to make these "computer" predictions.
For the record, I had to design a computer model and verify it for my graduate thesis. My work invalidated several years of research by my professor and several millions of dollars of grant funds. And in truth, my model was about the quality of these "scientists".
Posted by: swatter on February 19, 2007 03:00 PMIt is very difficult, on a year-by-year basis, to measure sea level rise. On an historical timeframe, tide gauges provide useful information, but the data has to be corrected for vertical land shifts, either subsidence or uplift (common from isostatic rebound ongoing since melting of glaciers during the last ice age). In the past 15 years or so, satellites have provided the best estimates of sea level, though they also point out that phenomena such as el Nino can have a small effect. The available data generally show that sea level is rising globally.
But you bring up a valid point: sea levels are constantly changing from tides. Superimposing a 1/2-meter sea-level rise on this daily (in Seattle, diurnal) fluctuation is not a big deal. Some coastal areas will be impacted, particularly those that are experiencing subsidence (global warming will accelerate their fate), or low-lying countries such as Bangladesh. But the 1/2-meter rise, near the upper end of the IPCC estimate at 2100, is not a universal catastrophe.
Posted by: Ex-WA on February 19, 2007 04:20 PMBe careful with those studies. If you don't reach the "Correct truth" you will be "corrected".
Posted by: Manco_Dollars on February 19, 2007 04:24 PM
I wonder how much of the IPCC report will be released, I doubt if they will release the data and how they fudged the results to get their conclusions . Have they release any data on how they came up with the ocean rising? If you leave near any body of water one of the biggest problems is beach erosion a natural effect of the water.
will they ever do studies on the cities heat island effect?
The sea level rise stuff is real simple math. You take all the ice in Greenland and in Antactica and add it to the oceans.
This is the math that Al Gore uses anyway. The problem though is that there really is no evidence that this could happen. His scenario ASSUMES that temperature trends of the last few years will continue forever.
And we all remember what ASSUME does, don't we?
Posted by: deadwood on February 19, 2007 06:01 PMI read through the above comments and must inform you that I am not impressed.
Regarding global warming, conservatives are chasing their own tail. These conservatives would much rather remain in their ignorance than make any sacrifices necessary to avoid a catastrophe.
There is nothing at all new in the above denial arguments. Just ignorance appealing to ignorance.
You conservatives will continue arguing about global warming until the oceans swallow Miami.
Posted by: David Mathews on February 19, 2007 07:24 PMHorseass.org is waiting for you.
Posted by: KS on February 19, 2007 07:38 PM> Likewise, we are not impressed with you and your premeditated ignorance, Matthews.
Okay, ks, tell me what you know about the climate?
Posted by: David Mathews on February 19, 2007 07:43 PM"There is nothing at all new in the above denial arguments." how true, experience is a great prognosticator when it comes to catastrophy prognostications. I would say.
"You conservatives will continue arguing about global warming until the oceans swallow Miami." hummm, we have once again morphed from man caused global warming to something else. I would say. Yep if I were here, and the data were not here to support mans causation, I for one would.
You are four square behind a THEORY which is poorly researched and relies on dubious models. I would say.
You are obviously poorly educated in the scientific method and predisposed to believe in impending doom. In other words, a sucker for this kind of crap. I would say.
Posted by: JDH on February 19, 2007 07:48 PM> You are obviously poorly educated in the scientific method and predisposed to believe in impending doom. In other words, a sucker for this kind of crap. I would say.
You need not become emotional, JDH.
I'd love to hear you say something about the climate, JDH. Let's begin with the basics and then proceed from there.
What can you tell me about the scientific study of the climate?
We can begin with the non-controversial stuff and move on to the more difficult concepts.
Let's talk about the climate, JDH. Tell me what you know and our conversation will begin there.
Posted by: David Mathews on February 19, 2007 08:05 PMI don't believe the goal of enlightenment, contrary to the words of Bhudda, is possible when all perception is deemed illusion. Therefore I believe it is time for someopne to once more sit under the Bhodi Tree (or it a palm tree) and reflect again upon his navel.
In doing thus we will once again be free to discuss among ourselves the facts.
Posted by: deadwood on February 19, 2007 09:02 PMDictionary: WEATHER - The state of the atmosphere at a given time and place, with respect to variables such as temperature, moisture, wind velocity, and barometric pressure.
used in a sentence:
The weather is ever changing.
> Dictionary: WEATHER - The state of the atmosphere at a given time and place, with respect to variables such as temperature, moisture, wind velocity, and barometric pressure.
> used in a sentence: The weather is ever changing.
Conservatives are absolutely, utterly hopeless if their ignorance of the climate compels them to say the above.
I will correct your error:
The weather is ever changing, but the climate is not the weather.
> I don't believe the goal of enlightenment, contrary to the words of Bhudda, is possible when all perception is deemed illusion. Therefore I believe it is time for someopne to once more sit under the Bhodi Tree (or it a palm tree) and reflect again upon his navel.
Well, Buddhism appears to have a greater knowledge of reality than conservatism.
But you should pay attention to what the Buddhists are saying:
"First, with mind's imagination, shed the covering of skin, and with the blade of wisdom, strip the flesh from off the bony frame.
"And when you have divided all the bones, and searched right down amid the very marrow, you should look and ask the question: Where is 'thingness' to be found?
"If, persisting in the search, you find no underlying object, why still cherish -- and with such desire -- the fleshly form you now possess?"
(Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva)
The Buddhists know a lot more about reality than conservatives simply because they pay attention and are not distracted by materialism and material things.
Buddhism is a most impressive religion and one which impressed me from the moment of my first encounter with its scriptures. Everyone should heed the Buddhists.
Posted by: David Mathews on February 20, 2007 04:00 AMLots.
Let's just start with this: Unless a hypothesis is put up to rigorous testing, at which the same hypothesis can fail to act as the hypothesizer predicted, there has not been scientific study. Furthermore, when one side attempts to shut down investigation by pointing to the question in play being "settled" that is inimical to scientific study. Or how about when one side seeks fefuge in political "consensus," it is generally an admission that there are serious gaps in the theory being postulated.
Posted by: JDH on February 20, 2007 07:02 AMA Climate of Tyranny
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/cni_redrum/2007/feb/20/a_climate_of_tyranny
So why are people so concerned about the state of the climate? I mean really, why are these people so concerned? Do they care about polar bears, baby seals and cute, little Arctic lemurs? Please!
These people have found the ticket to power, the fulcrum of Archimedes' dreams. They can control what we do at work, what we eat, what we drive and now, how many children we have and which people are allowed to even have them. And they do it all, for the future.
Global Warming is the ultimate mind job. The issue provides the ultimate shillelagh of guilt to beat us into acquiescence to their appalling and arrogant tyranny. Never mind that Al Gore has four kids of his own, according to John Seagar, of the North Jersey Herald:
"Yet, apart from insightful comments by former Vice President Al Gore, there has never been much public discussion about the role of human population growth in global warming."
Yes, once Tipper was safely done popping them out, Al Gore became adamantly opposed to the creation of new human life not surnamed Gore. But fear not, Planet-Lovers, Al Gore does not stand alone atop the lofty summit of detestable hypocrisy. It seems some over-credentialed moron of a Professor at The London School of Economics, probably also done with sowing his seed and reaping his rich, clean, eugenically superior uberkind, has taken up the fight against the reproductive rights of others.
"Professor Tim Dyson of the London School of Economics indicates that a 40 percent cut by 2050 in per capita carbon emissions in the developed world could be completely cancelled by global population growth."
But according to Seagar, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Predictably, it's the headlights of an oncoming freight train of government social programs. Presumably, these programs will tell all us hicks out in Jesus-land, not smart enough to have planned ahead and had ourselves born related to Gore and Dyson, how many children our benevolent state will permit us to progenate.
"What can we do? We know that family planning works everywhere. When women and couples are free to make their own informed choices, they choose to have smaller families."
It works like Hades in India and China. Those two countries are not accidentally producing too few female children. Oops, I'm sorry. I'm certain that's not what Captain Planet, John Seagar, really wanted to advocate.
"Globally, at least 350 million couples lack family planning services. Here in the United States, one-third of all births are unplanned. And the Bush Administration's family planning failures, from its Global Gag Rule to ideologically driven abstinence-only programs, contribute directly to millions of unwanted and unplanned births."
At least he got his liberal catechism straight. This really and truly is "ALL BUSH'S FAULT!™ More abortions, less global warming. Just don't ask John Seager who would pay for his old age if we were to rigorously apply Kant's Categorical Imperative to this one.
This is utter claptrap, even in the face of a preliminary data study. No society on Earth has succeeded in population controlling its way to useless dotage better than either Europe or Japan. Not a single one of these countries can hit a Kyoto emission target. By including Japan in this sample, we control for the factor that economic central planners from the EU couldn't hit the English Channel if they fell off a boat.
The demographics do not drive CO2 emissions. The United Arab Emirates has a birthrate that you won't find anywhere off a mink farm. They also do not lead the world in GHG production.
Global Warming and overpopulation may or may not be problems. We may or may not have to deal with either or both at some date down the line. However, the amateurish attempt of this author to conflate two obviously unrelated phenomena smacks special pleading overreach. It also signals a darker danger that lurks beneath the climate scare iceberg.
Untalented, troglodytic, unauthentic, miasmatic, soul-sucking jerks latch onto Global Warming to offer themselves a gravaman to dominate others. It stops being a problem, in and of itself, and starts being a ticket onto the gravy train of unearned adulation and power.
In this sense, Global Warming reminds me of Marxism. It can't be coincidence that one got cranked up in earnest scant years after the other was consigned to histories putrid dung heap.
Do as I say, not as I do. Pot meet kettle. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
Dave Matthews - you're all talk.
Posted by: dan on February 20, 2007 07:24 AMAlso, how about stating your credentials relevant to the subject at hand and let your audience be the judge or does that sound too threatening ?
Posted by: KS on February 21, 2007 09:05 AM