Global warming is not happening

[Gabrielle]

Gore gets a cold shoulder
Steve Lytte
October 14, 2007


ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.
His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.

"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."

At his first appearance since the award was announced in Oslo, Mr Gore said: "We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing."

Mr Gore shared the Nobel prize with the United Nations climate panel for their work in helping to galvanise international action against global warming.

But Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.

However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.

"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said.

During his speech to a crowd of about 300 that included meteorology students and a host of professional meteorologists, Dr Gray also said those who had linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years were in error.

He cited statistics showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed.

"The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Dr Gray said.

He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.

"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-shoulder/2007/10/13/1191696238792.html

 

[Gabrielle]

ABC contributor Cokie Roberts apparently approves of propaganda, as long as she agrees with it. The veteran journalist appeared with George Will and Sam Donaldson on Sunday's "This Week." In response to a claim by token conservative Will that Al Gore grossly exaggerates the threat of global warming, Roberts positively assessed, "The truth is, there have always been propagandists who make something popular."

Using a strained comparison, Roberts continued to justify Gore's misinformation by arguing that the former Vice President popularizes the work of climate change scientists: "Go back to the revolution....You had Tom Paine and you had the Continental Congress. So you do have the two and they both work for a debate."

If there was any confusion about what Roberts thought of the useful nature of propaganda, she cleared it up by gushing, "But good for Al Gore. He worked hard on this. He got this prize." A few minutes earlier, host George Stephanopoulos allowed Will a few minutes to offer some token denunciations of Gore. Veteran ABC journalist Sam Donaldson apparently could only take so much. Like Roberts, he also lauded Gore for doing "very important" work and derided skeptics as being in denial. Addressing Will, he hyperbolically lectured, "Now, if you and Senator [James] Inhofe want to continue to stick your heads in the sand - I'm going to make it out. I'm old enough that I probably will get out of here before the Earth collapses, but I have grandchildren, George." A bewildered Will could only wonder, "How does the Earth collapse?"

On an unrelated note, host Stephanopoulos interviewed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier in the program. He closed the segment with some comments that seemed to be aimed at portraying the liberal Pelosi as a moderate. (Her lifetime score from the American Conservative Union, by the way, is three.) Stephanopoulos commented that the House Speaker has been facing "disaffection in the Democratic base, anti-war activists." After playing a clip of protester Cindy Sheehan attacking Pelosi, he marveled, "But how strange that is that for you, though? You know, your entire career you get attacked as a San Francisco liberal and now your most vociferous opponents are on your own side." The Congresswoman quickly retorted, "Well, I'm one of the most vociferous opponents of the war."

For a comprehensive look at Stephanopoulos's history of bias, check out the anchor's section in the MRC's Profiles in Bias.

Partial transcripts of the two segments, which aired at 10:15am and 10:33am on October 14, follow.

10:15AM

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: We're just about out of time. You know, the Congressional approval ratings have taken a hit this year. A lot of that, as you know, is because of disaffection in the Democratic base, anti-war activists -

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE NANCY PELOSI: Right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Cindy Sheehan's running against you.

CINDY SHEEHAN [Speech clip]: And not only am I going to run against her, but I will beat her in California.

PELOSI: I respect the dissatisfaction with the war and myself would not give Congress high marks on ending the war. We don't have the veto - the pen to sign or not to veto. But we are doing all we can to change the debate. But I do think that many of the things we have done again that I mentioned and I won't go over again, about the safety and security of our country and the strengthening our families and protecting our environment are very important to our base and to the country. And for that reason, we are double-digit in every issue - practically every issue you can name would you vote for Democrat or Republican in relationship to health, education, and the economy, the environment, et cetera. So I'm not sad about our Democratic numbers. They're excellent. Turning Congress - the opinion of Congress around is a big task and we're working on it. And you're right, most of the - much of the dissatisfaction is from the Democratic base.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But how strange that is that for you, though? You know, your entire career you get attacked as a San Francisco liberal and now your most vociferous opponents are on your own side.

PELOSI: Well, I'm one of the most vociferous opponents of the war. And so that is more ironic. But again, I was an advocate myself. By their nature, they are dissatisfied, persistent, and just keep fighting. And I respect that. It's an important part of our democracy. And I, you know, wish this war would end as well. And we will continue to pass legislation to make that point. We happen to be blocked by 60-vote hurdle in the Senate, but the public doesn't care about that. They just want us to end the war.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Barney Frank says this is a moment of truth for liberals. Is he right?

PELOSI: It is. It's a dynamic. I don't know if it's a moment but it is a dynamic. And it is - and any issue you can name, we want it more for SCHIP, that's for sure. We want more - we want to end the war faster. Almost every category you can name, we would have rather had a higher minimum wage and done it even - well, almost every category you want to do more. And the legislative process is you do what you can pass, but you don't settle for anything that isn't bold enough, that isn't bold enough. And so I'm very proud of our caucus, the consensus we have on a bold agenda to take us in a new direction. And again, sometimes our base is not happy with that. But I think in the long run, we will prevail in next year's election with even a stronger majority and a Democrat in the White House. And I look forward to that.

10:33am

STEPHANOPOULOS: But I do want to begin, though, and I have to do this for George with the Al Gore Nobel Peace Prize because, George, when I heard this on Friday morning I said, this is designed to drive you, George Will, crazy. You don't like the Nobel Peace committee. You don't like Al Gore. You don't think global warming is a crisis.

GEORGE WILL: Right on all three counts. The New York Times, in one of those headlines that I'm sure it really believes is without editorial content said "Gore Vindicated." I suppose in that sense Yasser Arafat, world's foremost terrorist was vindicated by getting the Nobel Peace Prize. It actually was two prizes. They say he's sharing the price with the Intergovernmental Panel on -

STEPHANOPOULOS: Climate Change.

WILL: --on climate change, but they're doing two different things. The panel does the science. He does the hyperbole that gets people to pay attention to the science. And there are all kinds of scientists who are quite candid about this. The panel says over the next century we might anticipate a one-foot increase in the sea levels, approximately what we've had since 1860 without a planetary crisis. Mr. Gore says 20 feet, hence the scene in his movie where Ground Zero is inundated.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yeah.

WILL: Because he assumes all of the ice in Greenland melts, which scientists say could happen in a thousand years or more.

SAM DONALDSON: Whoa, whoa. There are now studies which suggest that within 30 years the polar ice cap may melt.

Will: It's not polar. We're talking about Greenland. Go ahead.

DONALDSON: Well it's near enough for government work. Did Al Gore deserve the prize? I think he's pointed out something and he's been the leading exponent publicly of something that's very important. Now, if you and Senator Inhofe want to continue to stick your heads in the sand - I'm going to make it out. I'm old enough that I probably will get out of here before the Earth collapses, but I have grandchildren, George.

WILL: How does the Earth collapse?

DONALDSON: Well, the Earth collapses -

COKIE ROBERTS: Well there have always - The truth is, there have always been propagandists who make something popular. Go back to the revolution. You know, oh, you had Tom Paine and you had the Continental Congress. So you do have the two and they both work for a debate. But good for Al Gore. He worked hard on this. He got this prize. The question now is what does it mean politically?

STEPHANOPOULOS: The immediate question.

ROBERTS: That's right.

DONALDSON: Nothing.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-...bc-reporters-laud-gore-applaud-use-propaganda

 

[Rasp]

Skeptics Fight on in Climate Debate

Skeptics Fight on in Climate Debate
Some scientists say politics and power are drowning out valid concerns

While Al Gore supporters everywhere were thrilled with his win of the Nobel Peace Prize last week, a British judge stole some of Gore's thunder with his finding that Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is laced with inaccuracies.

Justice Michael Burton had been asked by school governor and father of two, Stuart Dimmock, to rule on whether showing Gore's Oscar-winning movie about global warming in British schools constituted education or indoctrination.

Burton said that while the points raised in the documentary are broadly accurate, they are made in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration," and the science in the film is used "in the hands of a talented politician and communicator, to make a political statement and to support a political program."

While Burton stopped short of banning the movie from classrooms, he said that written guidance to teachers must accompany screenings to ensure that Gore's views are not being promoted uncritically.

Meanwhile, the movie continues to be shown in many Canadian high schools, prompting complaints from some parents and school officials who are concerned that students are getting only one side of the "global warming is man-made" debate.

This is why Mike Chernoff, a Vancouver businessman, offered free copies of The Great Global Warming Swindle to B.C. schools following an announcement last April by the Tides Charitable Foundation that it was giving free copies of Gore's movie to every B.C. high school.

The Great Global Warming Swindle is a controversial British documentary that argues against and attempts to disprove the widely-held theory that global warming is due to carbon emissions caused by human activity.

Last June, the Surrey, B.C., school board passed a motion that a documentary with an opposing viewpoint, such as the The Great Global Warming Swindle, be screened for students along with An Inconvenient Truth.

Surrey school trustee Heather Stilwell says that when she proposed the motion she was met with a strong reaction and "very ugly" vitriol.

"I was called a right-wing fundamentalist [George] Bush lover. All I wanted was to bring balance to the classroom."

Victoria climatologist Dr. Tim Ball, who has been arguing against man-made global warming for 30 years, found that he too was on the receiving end of much derision when he began publicly airing his view that the climate changes all the time and global warming isn't man-made.

Climatologist Dr. Tim Ball

He says he has received death threats, in fact, and that he and other scientists with the same view have been labeled "deniers" by environmentalists.

"Initially we were called skeptics, and I can live with that because all scientists should be skeptics, but what's nasty about being called a 'denier' is the holocaust connotation," says Ball, who argues that Gore's movie "would fail as a Grade 10 students' project."

He says focusing on CO₂ as the great culprit is wrong because human-produced carbon dioxide is only a very small fraction of the whole climate mechanism and doesn't drive climate change. In addition, the climate has always fluctuated between warm and cool periods.

"In the first part of the 19th century, from 1920 to 1940, the temperature rose more than it did from 1980 to now, yet human CO₂ was virtually non-existent prior to the war. Then post-war, when we started to produce huge amounts of CO₂, the temperature actually went down."

Judge Burton found nine scientific errors in Gore's movie, including the "distinctly alarmist" claim that sea level rises of seven metres could occur in the near future.

He also said there was insufficient evidence to back Gore's assertions that such events as Hurricane Katrina, species losses, and melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro are a result of global warming.

Inconvenient Inaccuracies​

Gore's movie: Sea levels could rise by up to seven metres, caused by the melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland in the near future.

Finding: This could only happen over millennia and is not in line with the scientific consensus.

Gore's movie: Rising sea levels because of man-made global warming have caused the evacuation of some Pacific islanders to New Zealand.

Finding: There is no evidence of any such evacuation having happened.

Gore's movie: Global warming could stop the Gulf Stream, triggering an ice age in Europe.

Finding: This is a scientific impossibility.

Gore's movie: The disappearance of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro is evidence of global warming.

Finding: The government's expert witness conceded this was not correct.

Gore's movie: Global warming was the cause of Hurricane Katrina.

Finding: There is insufficient evidence to show this.

Gore's movie: Global warming is causing Africa's Lake Chad to dry up.

Finding: The Government's expert conceded that this is not the case.

Gore's movie: Polar bears have drowned because of disappearing Arctic ice.

Finding: Only four polar bears drowned, and it was due to a storm.

Gore's movie: Species losses, including coral reef bleaching, are the result of global warming.

Finding: There is insufficient evidence to support this claim.

Gore's movie: Ice core samples prove that rising levels of CO2 have caused temperature increases over a period of 650,000 years.

Finding: The two graphs Gore uses to prove this do not establish what he claims.​

But Dale Marshall, policy analyst with the Suzuki Foundation, is of the opinion that the judge is wrong on all counts except the one concerning rising sea levels, and that the movie itself "does largely reflect the science."

He also points out that the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), co-winner of the Nobel with Gore, as well as numerous national academies of science, has concluded that climate change is happening because of human activity.

"You have to look at the weight of evidence," says Marshall. "The scientists who say that climate change is not driven by carbon dioxide are in the tiniest of minorities compared to the scientific community as a whole."

While the nature of science is all about continually questioning, searching and discovering, the so-called skeptics complain the anti-climate-change movement has become a powerful, well-funded lobby which insists that the man-made global warming question is settled and isn't up for debate.

But debate is what Calgary-based Friends of Science is pushing for. As far as FOS is concerned—and scientists in The Great Global Warming Swindle take the same position—the Sun is the main direct and indirect driver of climate change.

Composed of group of climate scientists from around the world, FOS says it sees an "abuse of science" in the Kyoto Protocol. According to FOS, the seemingly exclusive focus on global warming has distracted attention from reducing air and water pollution.

In a bulletin Tuesday, FOS said awarding the Nobel to Gore and the IPCC has done "inconceivable damage" to the scientific discourse around the subject of climate change.

Director John Leeson says FOS has ongoing concerns with what he calls the manipulation of scientific data in the IPCC process.

"I'm not talking about the large number of scientists who contribute their research. What we object to, and what has been demonstrated, is the process with which the bureaucrats at the summit of the process selectively use information to bolster up or support what they've already decided," says Leeson.

The Great Global Warming Swindle tells of a letter published in the Wall Street Journal in which former president of the U.S. Academy of Sciences, Professor Frederick Seitz, states that IPCC officials censored the comments of scientists and deleted 15 key sections of chapter eight, the science chapter.

One of the deleted comments read: "No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes."

In reply, the IPCC said the changes had been made in response to comments from governments, individual scientists, and NGOs.

Bell says the "climate change hysteria" gripping the world is a result of "the political exploitation of science and the hidden motives of environmental extremists." Environmentalism, he says, has become a religion, and is based more on belief than on hard science.

"Darwin was an atheist, and he got rid of God. I'm not here to argue for or against God, but once you've got rid of God you've got a vacuum. Environmentalism as a religion pre-dates Christianity and goes back to the primitive ideas of animism—worshiping nature, living in fear of nature."

In November 2006, 60 renowned scientists from around the world wrote an open letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper requesting a rational examination of the science of global warming. There was no response.

Leeson says there's a strong move afoot by economists and scientists in the U.K., Australia and New Zealand to involve a separate agency so that the IPCC doesn't have the monopoly on the information the public receives regarding climate change.

He wants the same thing for Canada. With the billions being pumped into lowering CO₂ emissions, he believes there should be more than one body investigating and providing information.

"The debate on climate change is not over. We will continue to push to make sure it comes in front of the public as much as we can."

Meanwhile, a website called Junkscience.com is offering $125,000 to anyone who can prove that climate change is being caused by human activity. So far there have been no takers. :lol:

 

[Gabrielle]

Great post, Rasp.

 

[Gabrielle]

ABC's Stossel Takes on Gore Movie, Talks to Dissenting Scientists
By Brad Wilmouth | October 20, 2007 - 13:26 ET

On Friday's "20/20," ABC's John Stossel presented the views of scientists who dissent from the Al Gore view of global warming, including two former members of the IPCC – the committee which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Gore. These scientists disagreed with the selection process of the committee's members and some of its conclusions. The ABC host disputed some of the claims in "An Inconvenient Truth," and even presented the view that increased carbon dioxide levels are the result of global warming, rather than the cause, as he took on Gore's famous graph from the movie. Stossel: "But the real inconvenient truth is that carbon increases came after temperature rose -- usually hundreds of years later. Temperature went up first. I wanted to ask Mr. Gore about that and other things, but he wouldn't agree to talk about this." (Transcript follows)

The ABC host introduced his regular "Give Me a Break" segment: "You've heard the reports. The globe is warming. And it's our fault. And the consequences will be terrible. But you should know there is another side to this story. And scientists who've tried to tell it are often threatened. Which makes me say, 'Give Me a Break.'"

Then came a number of clips of journalists relaying the purported danger of global warming, and clips of children expressing their fears of the future. After arguing that "An Inconvenient Truth" was incorrect or misleading in the way it presented the dangers of rising sea levels and the plight of polar bears in the Arctic, the ABC host then got to the movie's famous graph that the former Vice President used to argue that higher carbon dioxide levels cause temperatures to increase. Stossel: "I knew that carbon dioxide's thought to amplify temperature increases, but this shows a clear cause an effect. For 600,000 years, when carbon rose, so did temperature. It suggests that carbon levels control temperature. But the real inconvenient truth is that carbon increases came after temperature rose -- usually hundreds of years later. Temperature went up first. I wanted to ask Mr. Gore about that and other things, but he wouldn't agree to talk about this."

Stossel presented several scientists who dispute contentions by Gore and others that "the debate is over" on global warming. These scientists included Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute, Tim Ball of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, and John Christy and Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama. Stossel relayed their contentions that global warming and cooling trends have happened in the past, and related that the media had "fretted about that then, too." Stossel: "Climate changes, they point out. It always has -- with or without man. Early last century, even without today's big output of carbon dioxide, the Arctic went through a warm period. The media fretted about that then, too. And Greenland's temperatures rose 50 percent faster in the 1920s than they're rising now. Some scientists say the warming may be caused by changes in the sun or ocean currents or changes in cloud cover. Or other things we don't understand. The debate is not over."

More on the media's history of reporting on warming and cooling trends over the last century can be found in a May 2005 report by the MRC's Business and Media Institute.

Reiter and Christy had notably been members of the IPCC, and they were critical of the way governments chose the members of the committee, some of whom were merely activists instead of scientists, suggesting that politics had played too great a role.

STOSSEL: Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute and John Christy say they were members of the IPCC. That so-called group of scientists, they say, is not what people think it is.

REITER: The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is governments who nominate people. You'll find in many chapters that there are people who are not scientists at all.

STOSSEL: Who are they?

REITER: They were essentially activists.

STOSSEL: Members of groups like Greenpeace were involved. And when the IPCC report came out, not all its members agreed with what was said.


Reiter further said that he had resigned from the committee in protest because he disagreed with some of the report's findings, and had to threaten a lawsuit against the IPCC to have his name removed from the report, although, according to Stossel, the IPCC disputes this account.

Stossel then dealt with the issue of these types of global warming dissenters being "smeared as deniers," as those who support the more liberal view of global warming seek to compare their way of thinking to that of Holocaust deniers.

STOSSEL: Today, scientists like these are often smeared as "deniers."

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We have Holocaust deniers, we have climate change deniers. And to be honest, I don't think there's a great deal of difference.

LINDA DOUGLAS, ABC News: Deniers are confusing the issue and delaying solutions.


Last August, "Newsweek" ran a cover story attacking the global warming "denial machine," and the "NBC Nightly News" soon ran its own story with the same theme.

After recounting that many global warming activists, like Al Gore and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., try to discredit skeptics by accusing them of "being purchased by a 'well-funded denial machine,'" these scientists were shown denying that they receive any money because of their views, as they contended that, rather than being rewarded for their views, they have faced harassment and threats.

Stossel summed up his report: "Is this what the global warming debate has come to? One side saying, 'Shut up, dissent must not be heard'? The truth is that, while everyone agrees the earth has warmed, lots of good scientists don't agree that it's mostly our fault, and don't agree that it's going to be a catastrophe."

Below is a complete transcript of Stossel's "Give Me a Break" segment from the Friday October 19 "20/20":

JOHN STOSSEL: You've heard the reports. The globe is warming. And it's our fault. And the consequences will be terrible. But you should know there is another side to this story. And scientists who've tried to tell it are often threatened. Which makes me say, "Give Me a Break."

MATT LAUER, Today Show: -the world is heating up fast, and we have ourselves to blame.

DAWNA FRIESEN, Today Show: -global warming is real, and we humans are almost certainly the cause.

STOSSEL: Books warn that the earth is under fire, a suicidal planet's approaching a boiling point and a toxic burn. Children are frightened.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #1: I worry. My mom worries.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #2: The water might rise, and it might flood the whole town.

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #1: We won't be able to survive for long.

STOSSEL: And people say since global warming is because of man, it must be fixed by man now.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN in ad, standing in front of a moving train: Some say irreversible consequences are 30 years away.

STOSSEL: This Ad Council PSA says ignoring the coming crisis is like putting our kids in front of a train.

MAN: That won't affect me.

[The man steps off the track and leaves his daughter in front of the moving train.]

STOSSEL: What do you most worry will happen?

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #2: We'll all die.

STOSSEL: Are there some people who say this isn't true?

[Several children who are gathered say, "Yes."]

STOSSEL: Might they be right?

[Nearly all the children gathered say, "No."]

STOSSEL: How do you know they're not right?

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #3: Well, because the Earth is getting hotter.

STOSSEL: Where do you learn this?

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #1: I saw the Al Gore video.

JERRY SEINFELD, at the Academy Awards: And the Oscar goes to An Inconvenient Truth.

STOSSEL: The global warming documentary featuring Vice President Al Gore has been seen by millions. People have proclaimed him a prophet, a cultural icon, a conquering hero.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO: You are a true champion for the cause, Mr. Gore.

STOSSEL: And last week, he won a Nobel Peace Prize. The Oscars were followed by other worldwide media events.

GORE: You are Live Earth.

STOSSEL: With all this hoopla, it's no surprise that 86 percent of Americans say global warming is a serious problem.

JOHN EDWARDS: Global warming is now, by anybody's measure, a crisis.

STOSSEL: But is it a crisis? Yes, the globe is warming, but is it really all our fault? And is it true that the debate is over? No. What you think you know, may not be so. For example, in An Inconvenient Truth, Gore says if we allow the globe to warm, terrible things will happen. And:

AL GORE: Sea level worldwide would go up 20 feet.

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #3: Yeah, maybe like the height of this building.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #4: We'll probably just, like, drown, and we'll die.

GORE: This is what would happen to the sea level in Florida. This is what would happen to San Francisco Bay.

STOSSEL: Maybe. Maybe in thousands of years, says the IPCC, the group that shared last week's Nobel Prize with the Vice President. But in 100 years, the oceans might rise 7 to 24 inches, not 20 feet.

GORE: A faster buildup of heat here.

STOSSEL: Mr. Gore also talks about melting ice caps.

GORE: That's not good for creatures like polar bears-

STOSSEL: They show this heart-rending cartoon.

[Cartoon of a polar bear swimming to floating ice and trying to get on, but it breaks leaving the bear in the water.]

GORE: A new scientific study shows that for the first time, they're finding polar bears that have actually drowned.

STOSSEL: But I bet you didn't know that polar bears appear to be doing all right. Future warming may hurt them, but right now, the World Conservation Union and the U.S. Geological Survey say most populations of polar bears are stable or increasing.

GORE: There is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others-

STOSSEL: The most impressive demonstration in Mr. Gore's movie is the big graph of carbon dioxide levels.

GORE: Here's what the temperature has been on our Earth. Now, one thing that kind of jumps out at you is: Did they ever fit together?

STOSSEL: My goodness! I knew that carbon dioxide's thought to amplify temperature increases, but this shows a clear cause and effect. For 600,000 years, when carbon rose, so did temperature. It suggests that carbon levels control temperature. But the real inconvenient truth is that carbon increases came after temperature rose -- usually hundreds of years later. Temperature went up first. I wanted to ask Mr. Gore about that and other things, but he wouldn't agree to talk about this. Why should he when he and others say-

GORE: The debate's over.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: The science is agreed upon.

Governor ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R-CA): The debate is over, and the science is in.

PAUL REITER, Pasteur Institute: It's absurd for people to say that sort of thing. It's really wrong.

STOSSEL: These scientists are among those who say the debate is by no means over. John Christie and Roy Spencer won NASA's Medal for Exceptional Achievement for figuring out how to get temperature data from satellites. They agree that the Earth has warmed.

JOHN CHRISTY, University of Alabama: We all agree that it's warmed, I think. The big question is, and the thing that we dispute, is: Is it because of mankind?

STOSSEL: Climate changes, they point out. It always has -- with or without man. Early last century, even without today's big output of carbon dioxide, the Arctic went through a warm period. The media fretted about that then, too. And Greenland's temperatures rose 50 percent faster in the 1920s than they're rising now. Some scientists say the warming may be caused by changes in the sun or ocean currents or changes in cloud cover. Or other things we don't understand. The debate is not over. And, anyway, who's to say that yesterday's temperature was the perfect one. If temperatures keep rising now, these scientists say we don't know that that will be all bad.

TIM BALL, Natural Resources Stewardship Project: The fact is, when the climate changes, there are gains and there are losses.

STOSSEL: But Tim Ball, who studies the history of climate change, points out that all we hear about is the bad news from the IPCC, that massive group of global warming scientists.

RICHARD BRANSON: 2,000 scientists.

LESTER HOLT, NBC News: 2,000 scientists.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN: 2,500 scientists say the globe is getting warmer and we are to blame.

REITER: There's the most unmitigated rubbish talked about-

STOSSEL: Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute and John Christy say they were members of the IPCC. That so-called group of scientists, they say, is not what people think it is.

REITER: The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is governments who nominate people. You'll find in many chapters that there are people who are not scientists at all.

STOSSEL: Who are they?

REITER: They were essentially activists.

STOSSEL: Members of groups like Greenpeace were involved. And when the IPCC report came out, not all its members agreed with what was said.

ROY SPENCER, University of Alabama: We were not asked to look at a particular statement and sign our names to it at all.

REITER: I got very frustrated, and I resigned.

STOSSEL: But the IPCC still listed Reiter as part of the so-called consensus.

REITER: I contacted the IPCC and said, "Look, I've resigned. I don't want to have anything more to do with this." And they said, "Well, you've been involved, so you're still on the list."

STOSSEL: Only when he threatened to sue, he says, did they take his name off the report. The IPCC denies that that happened. Today, scientists like these are often smeared as deniers.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We have Holocaust deniers, we have climate change deniers. And to be honest, I don't think there's a great deal of difference.

LINDA DOUGLAS, ABC News: Deniers are confusing the issue and delaying solutions.

STOSSEL: Often they're accused of being purchased by a "well-funded denial machine."

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: These corporate toadies lying to you and telling you that global warming doesn't exist.

GORE: The illusion of a debate has been purchased with millions of dollars a year-

STOSSEL: Aren't you guys all on the take?

BALL: I wish I was. I wouldn't be driving a 1992 car and living in a leaky apartment.

STOSSEL: These scientists all say they don't get any money from business, yet some have been threatened. One email said, "You will not live long enough to see global warming."

BALL: And even more direct than that.

REITER: We stick our necks out. We do get hurt.

STOSSEL: Is this what the global warming debate has come to? One side saying, "Shut up, dissent must not be heard." The truth is that, while everyone agrees the earth has warmed, lots of good scientists don't agree that it's mostly our fault, and don't agree that it's going to be a catastrophe. So when the Nobel Prize winner says-

GORE: The debate's over. The debate's over.

STOSSEL: I say, "Give Me a Break."

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-w...-takes-gore-movie-talks-dissenting-scientists

 

[Gabrielle]

NewsBusters readers are well aware of the recent controversy involving Al Gore’s schlockumentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”��”��

A few weeks ago, a British judge cited nine errors in the film. Team Gore responded Thursday in a rebuttal published at the Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog.

Now, famed climate change skeptic Christopher Monckton, in a detailed report published by the Science and Public Policy Institute, not only refuted Gore’s defense of the movie's contents, but also listed a total of 35 errors in the award-winning abomination responsible for most of the global warming hysteria sweeping the planet (emphasis added):

Al Gore’s spokesman and “environment advisor,”��”�� Ms. Kalee Kreider, begins by saying that the film presented “thousands and thousands of facts.”��”�� It did not: just 2,000 “facts”��”�� in 93 minutes would have been one fact every three seconds. The film contained only a few dozen points, most of which will be seen to have been substantially inaccurate.

The judge concentrated only on nine points which even the UK Government, to which Gore is a climate-change advisor, had to admit did not represent mainstream scientific opinion.

Ms. Kreider then states, incorrectly, that the judge himself had never used the term “errors.”��”�� In fact, the judge used the term “errors,”��”�� in inverted commas, throughout his judgment.

[…]

Ms. Kreider then says, “The process of creating a 90-minute documentary from the original peer-reviewed science for an audience of moviegoers in the U.S. and around the world is complex.”��”��

However, the single web-page entitled “The Science”��”�� on the movie’s official website contains only two references to articles in the peer-reviewed scientific journals. There is also a reference to a document of the IPCC, but its documents are not independently peer-reviewed in the usual understanding of the term.

Ms. Kreider then says, “The judge stated clearly that he was not attempting to perform an analysis of the scientific questions in his ruling.”��”�� He did not need to. Each of the nine “errors”��”�� which he identified had been admitted by the UK Government to be inconsistent with the mainstream of scientific opinion.

Ms. Kreider says the IPCC’s results are sometimes “conservative,”��”�� and continues: “Vice President Gore tried to convey in good faith those threats that he views as the most serious.”��”�� Readers of the long list of errors described in this memorandum will decide for themselves whether Mr. Gore was acting in good faith. However, in this connection it is significant that each of the 35 errors listed below misstates the conclusions of the scientific literature or states that there is a threat where there is none or exaggerates the threat where there may be one. All of the errors point in one direction – towards undue alarmism. Not one of the errors falls in the direction of underestimating the degree of concern in the scientific community. The likelihood that all 35 of the errors listed below could have fallen in one direction purely by inadvertence is less than 1 in 34 billion.

Readers are strongly encouraged to review the entire report, as well as all 35 errors chronicled by Monckton. Your attention is critical, for Gore’s film, though powerfully and convincingly presented, is indeed a work of fiction, and its veracity should be questioned with every conceivable opportunity.

Any other conclusion is facile and devoid of logic.

Make no mistake: as was clearly intended by the film’s producers, its star, and our woefully biased media, this celluloid canard has provoked tremendous international alarm concerning global warming that is neither warranted nor beneficial.

It should come as no great surprise that such was forecast in April when NewsBusters warned readers of the dangers associated with Gore’s propaganda. For those that have forgotten, a federal judge cited “An Inconvenient Truth”��”�� in his ruling against the government for its financing of overseas projects that supposedly contribute to climate change.

At the time, I cautioned (emphasis added): “[T]he alarmism running through society concerning this issue, and being flamed by Gore and his sycophant cadre in the media and Hollywood, clearly carries risks that an obedient and complicit press ignore.”��”��

Six months later, these warnings seem rather prescient, as the hysteria has now officially begun to impact energy policy as evidenced by Thursday’s decision in Kansas to deny a license to an electricity producer for the construction of a new coal-fired power plant. Ominously, concerns over carbon emissions and their supposed impact on climate change were cited in the state's announcement regarding the matter.

Maybe just as cautionary, it appears Europe is going to start requiring carbon dioxide emissions warnings in advertisements for new cars, as well as imposing taxes on automobiles releasing the greatest amount of "greenhouse gases."

As a result, it should be crystal clear that the efforts on the left and by the media are beginning to have a policy impact not just here, but across the globe.

Sadly, this is just the beginning. Consider the proposal by House Energy and Commerce Committee chair John Dingell (D-MI) who in September offered a rather painful carbon emissions plan that would establish an additional 50 cent tax on gasoline as well as scale back the deductability of the interest on mortgages for some homeowners.

Lest we not forget House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Cal.) call for a European-style cap-and-trade program that reins in corporate carbon dioxide emissions.

These are but two of the dangerous schemes being tossed around Washington that would have potentially catastrophic impacts upon the economy, and have gained steam as a direct consequence of Gore's indoctrination campaign aided and abetted by a green media.

It has therefore become imperative for all supporters of liberty, democracy, and capitalism to fight the propagandist forces in our nation seeking to undermine our very way of life.

If you think that's putting too fine a point on the situation, ask yourself how you're going to provide electricity to your home, and what it's going to cost, if the warm-mongers have their way, and no more coal-fired OR nuclear power plants are built in this country.

Try also to imagine how our economy, and, therefore, your personal finances, are going to suffer as countries like China, India, Russia, and Brazil are allowed unfettered expansion of their energy creation while America curtails its own all to solve a problem that has yet to be proved either exists or can be mitigated by anything under man's control.

If you don't think one movie can cause this much political and economic upheaval, please recall what "The China Syndrome" did to catalyze the No Nukes movement in the '80s, and how America is still suffering from the hysteria it provoked 28 years ago.

The only remaining question is whether we are going to learn from this horrendous past mistake, or once again allow our economic and energy policies to be controlled by misplaced and erroneous environmental alarmism.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/20/35-errors-discovered-al-gore-s-film

 

[Gabrielle]

The global-warming hucksters

Posted: October 23, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

The scaremongers are not always wrong. The Trojans should have listened to Cassandra. But history shows that the scaremongers are usually wrong.

Parson Malthus predicted mass starvation 250 years ago, as the population was growing geometrically, doubling each generation, while agricultural production was going arithmetically, by 2 percent or so a year. But today, with perhaps 1 percent of our population in full-time food production, we are the best-fed and fattest 300 million people on Earth.

Karl Marx was proven dead wrong about the immiseration of the masses under capitalism and the coming revolution in the industrial West, though they still have hopes at Harvard.

Neville Chute's "On the Beach" proved as fictional as "Dr. Strangelove" and "Seven Days in May." Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" never exploded. It fizzled when the Birth Dearth followed the Baby Boom.

"The Crash of '79" never happened. Instead, we got Ronald Reagan and record prosperity. The Club of Rome notwithstanding, we did not run out of oil. The world did not end in Y2K, when we crossed the millennium, as some had prophesied. "Nuclear winter," where we were all going to freeze to death after the soot from Reagan's nuclear war blotted out the sun, didn't quite happen. Rather, the Soviet Empire gave up the ghost.

Is then global warming – a steady rise in the temperature of the Earth to where the polar ice caps melt, oceans rise 23 feet, cities sink into the sea and horrendous hurricanes devastate the land – an imminent and mortal danger?

Put me down as a disbeliever.

Like the panics of bygone eras, this one has the aspect of yet another re-enactment of the Big Con. The huckster arrives in town, tells all the rubes that disaster impends for them and their families, but says there may be one last chance they can be saved – but it will take a lot of money. And the folks should go about collecting it, right now.

This, it seems to me, is what the global-warming scare and scam are all about – frightening Americans into transferring sovereignty, power and wealth to a global political elite that claims it alone understands the crisis and it alone can save us from impending disaster.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, from which China and India were exempt, the United States was to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels, which could not be done without inducing a new Depression and reducing the standard of living of the American people. So, we ignored Kyoto – and how have we suffered? The Europeans who signed on also largely ignored it. How have they suffered?

We are told global warming was responsible for the hurricane summer of Katrina and Rita that devastated Texas, Mississippi and New Orleans. Yet Dr. William Gray, perhaps the nation's foremost expert on hurricanes, says he and his most experienced colleagues believe humans have little impact on global warming and global warming cannot explain the frequency or ferocity of hurricanes. After all, we had more hurricanes in the first half of the 20th century than in the last 50 years, as global warming was taking place.

"We're brainwashing our children," says Gray. "They're going to the Gore movie ('An Inconvenient Truth') and being fed all this. It's ridiculous. ... We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realize how foolish it was."

Gray does concede that for a scholar to question global warming can put his next federal grant in mortal peril.

While modest warming has taken place, there is no conclusive evidence human beings are responsible, no conclusive evidence Earth's temperature is rising dangerously or will reach intolerable levels and no conclusive evidence that warming will do more harm than good.

The glaciers may be receding, but the polar bear population is growing, alarmingly in some Canadian Indian villages. Though more people on our planet of 6 billion may die of heat, estimates are that many more may be spared death from the cold. The Arctic ice cap may be shrinking, but that may mean year-round passage through northern Canadian waters from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the immense resources of the Arctic made more accessible to man. Why else did Vladimir Putin's boys make their dash to claim the pole?

The mammoth government we have today is a result of politicians rushing to solve "crises" by creating and empowering new federal agencies.

Whether it's hunger, poverty or homelessness, in the end, the poor are always with us, but now we have something else always with us: scores of thousands of federal bureaucrats and armies of academics to study the problem and assess the progress, with all their pay and benefits provided by our tax dollars.

Cal Coolidge said that when you see 10 troubles coming up the road toward you, sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, because nine of them will fall into the ditch before they get to you. And so it will be with global warming, if we don't sell out America to the hucksters who would save us.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/staticarticles/article58279.html

 

[Gabrielle]

Global warming to blame for fires, says Harry Reid
To astonishment of reporters, Senate majority leader makes link

(This guy is a dangerous freak )

Is there a political angle to the wildfires raging through Southern California?

You betcha – at least according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who said global warming is at least partly responsible for the blazes.

"One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming," the Nevada Democrat told reporters, emphasizing the need to pass the Democrats' comprehensive energy package.

Pressed by astonished reporters on whether he really believed global warming caused the fires, he appeared to back away from his comments, saying there are many factors that contributed to the disaster.

Meanwhile, President Bush has declared a state of emergency in California and sent Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator David Paulison to San Diego to assess the situation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress would consider sending more aid to California.

"So far, [state officials] have been able to avail themselves of whatever is available from the federal government," the Northern California Democrat said. "We may have to expand on that as the fires continue to rage."

The California congressional delegation is reportedly drafting a resolution expressing Congress' support for the first responders and pledging to make resources available to help stop the fires.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58317

 

[Gabrielle]

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, delivered a startling and historic two hour speech on the Senate floor Friday about "recent developments which are turning 2007 into a ‘tipping point' for climate alarmism."

The Senator cautioned that bills being proposed by various members of Congress "come at a time when the science is overwhelmingly taking away the basis for alarm." These "so-called ‘solutions' to global warming...will have no measurable impact on the climate," and "will create huge economic harm for American families and the poor residents of the developing world who may see development hindered by unfounded climate fears."

In addition, Inhofe went right after the Global Warmingist-in-Chief Al Gore, as well as others in the media responsible for inciting all this hysteria (partial video of the speech available here):

We are currently witnessing an international awakening of scientists who are speaking out in opposition to former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, the Hollywood elitists and the media-driven "consensus" on man-made global warming.

We have witnessed Antarctic ice GROW to record levels since satellite monitoring began in the 1970's. We have witnessed NASA temperature data errors that have made 1934 -- not 1998 -- the hottest year on record in the U.S. We have seen global averages temperatures flat line since 1998 and the Southern Hemisphere cool in recent years.

These new developments in just the last six months are but a sample of the new information coming out that continues to debunk climate alarm.

After this introduction, Inhofe spoke about:

Hollywoodans like Leonardo DiCaprio and Laurie David targeting children with climate fears
Four essential points which totally debunk global warming hysteria
Various entities that are distorting the facts and ignoring the climate history of Greenland
Antarctic ice rising to its highest level since records have been kept
The southern hemisphere is already experiencing a cooling from its 1998 peaks
The weather measurement scandal at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Climate fears are largely being driven by unproven computer models
Al Gore's refusal to accept wagers or engage in debates concerning his theories
Hysteria over polar bear extinction has absolutely no observable validity
The number of former warm-mongers that have become skeptics
Science not being determined by consensus
Politics governing the UN's IPCC
$50 Billion having been spent internationally on spreading global warming fears
Skeptics being labeled as traitors
Hundreds of skeptical scientists to be heard from in upcoming Senate report
Carbon mandates don't reduce temperatures
The Senator passionately concluded:

In conclusion, I would simply point out that climate alarmism has become a cottage industry in this country and many others, but a growing number of scientists and the general public are coming around to the idea that climate change is natural and that there is no reason for alarm. It is time to stop pretending that the world around us is headed for certain doom and that Kyoto-style policies will save us - when in fact, the biggest danger lies in these policies themselves. As I have noted, new studies continue to pile up debunking alarm and debunking the very foundation for so called "solutions" to warming.

I know this was a long, long speech, but I just want the real people, not the money driven liberals and the Hollywood elitists, but the real people who are out there raising their families and working hard to know that help is on its way and that all the UN and media driven hype to sell American down the river will fail.

And that truth, as Winston Churchill said, "is incontrovertible, ignorance can deride it, panic may resent it, malice may destroy it, but there it is."

Bravo, Senator! Bravo!

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...ms-gore-warm-mongers-historic-two-hour-speech

 

[Gabrielle]

Funding Global Warming Hysteria
By Noel Sheppard | October 27, 2007 - 11:33 ET

As media regularly accuse every scientist skeptical of man's role in global warming as being on the payroll of Big Oil, you almost never see a news report addressing the funding of those responsible for spreading climate alarmism.

This all changed Thursday when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published an op-ed by the John Locke Foundation's Paul Chesser detailing how one environmental advocate receives funds from largely liberal donors to encourage state governments to impose strict regulations on all things speculated to be causing global warming.

Chesser's fabulous expose began (emphasis added throughout, h/t James Dellinger):

Imagine you are an advocacy group and want to sway a government's policy development, but really want to keep your activism a secret. You could learn a lot by observing and then avoiding the practices of the Center for Climate Strategies, a group of global warming worrywarts.

CCS in recent years has approached many states, including Washington, with an inexpensive, tantalizing offer: to establish and manage a process for climate change policy development. The results are a study legitimized by government that promotes onerous regulations, property rights infringement through smart growth initiatives, and new taxes and fees on fuels and utilities.

CCS operates in Washington in nearly the same way it's worked in every other state where it's been hired. First a governor (such as Gov. Chris Gregoire) issues an executive order declaring global warming a problem that must be confronted through state policy. Then a so-called stakeholder (political appointees and special interests, really) panel considers dozens of CCS-created policy options -- most of which impinge upon individual rights, increase energy costs, or add to the cost of government -- that ostensibly reduce CO2 emissions in the state. CCS holds the hand of the group through several meetings and its decision-making, until the threats to personal liberty and financial well-being are established as official government philosophy. Ideally (to CCS), legislatures will adopt them and add to everyone's cost of living. Nanny-staters celebrate.

In doing this, CCS claims it is not acting as an anti-global warming advocate. Yet, look at how the finances of this organization work:

CCS comes to states promising to bring money with them to pay for their greenhouse-gas reduction development. Who foots the bill? Several foundations on the global warming panic train: the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The (Ted) Turner Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, the Energy Foundation, and many others. For example, the state of Washington is paying only $200,000 for CCS' services -- half of what their cheap process has cost in other states.

Then CCS controls the entire policy development: the agenda, scheduling and oversight of their meetings; the CO2 reduction options that stakeholders consider; analysis (which is not an examination of cost/benefit or climate impact) of those options; the voting process; the changing and/or elimination of options; and the writing of all meeting minutes, presentations and reports.

Virtually every one of CCS's greenhouse gas-reducing options, which stakeholders find almost impossible to eliminate or alter (as if they wanted to) because the voting procedures are stacked against it, will curtail individual freedom or further burden taxpayers and consumers. Rather than surveying stakeholders in an up-or-down vote, options are instead considered already approved unless enough members (who are political appointees, with almost no scientists or economists) are bold and knowledgeable enough to object to them.

Ominously, this advocacy is destined to arrive at a state capital near you:

CCS has conducted this cookie-cutter process in more than a dozen states, and more are in its sights. The motives, tactics and plans are not hard to see, but they are a threat.

Of course, CCS is doing nothing wrong here, and the reader should not infer such. Instead, as this global warming debate continues, and media regularly question the funding of virtually every individual and organization refuting the supposed consensus regarding the science involved, shouldn't the same scrutiny be applied to those advancing the hysteria?

Or, would that be too much like journalism?

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/27/funding-global-warming-hysteria

 

[Gabrielle]

Emirates airline executive rubbishes Gore's climate film


A top executive of Dubai-based carrier Emirates on Thursday rubbished Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary on climate change, saying he did not believe the film's scientific theory on global warming.
"Don't talk to me about global warming... I just do not buy it whatsoever," Maurice Flanagan, Emirates executive vice chairman, said at a regional aviation conference in Singapore.

"Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' is absolute rubbish," added Flanagan, who said he had watched the documentary three times.

The 2006 documentary, which won former US vice president Gore the Nobel Peace Prize last month, details scientific theory about global warming and its impact.

The aviation industry has been listed by some as among the main contributors of carbon dioxide emissions which are blamed for global warming.


http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071101070424.js2m0ph2&show_article=1

 

[-88-]

The deceit behind global warming

No one can deny that in recent years the need to "save the planet" from global warming has become one of the most pervasive issues of our time. As Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, claimed in 2004, it poses "a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism", warning that by the end of this century the only habitable continent left will be Antarctica.

Inevitably, many people have been bemused by this somewhat one-sided debate, imagining that if so many experts are agreed, then there must be something in it. But if we set the story of how this fear was promoted in the context of other scares before it, the parallels which emerge might leave any honest believer in global warming feeling uncomfortable.

The story of how the panic over climate change was pushed to the top of the international agenda falls into five main stages. Stage one came in the 1970s when many scientists expressed alarm over what they saw as a disastrous change in the earth's climate. Their fear was not of warming but global cooling, of "a new Ice Age".

For three decades, after a sharp rise in the interwar years up to 1940, global temperatures had been falling. The one thing certain about climate is that it is always changing. Since we began to emerge from the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago, temperatures have been through significant swings several times. The hottest period occurred around 8,000 years ago and was followed by a long cooling. Then came what is known as the "Roman Warming", coinciding with the Roman empire. Three centuries of cooling in the Dark Ages were followed by the "Mediaeval Warming", when the evidence agrees the world was hotter than today.

Around 1300 began "the Little Ice Age", that did not end until 200 years ago, when we entered what is known as the "Modern Warming". But even this has been chequered by colder periods, such as the "Little Cooling" between 1940 and 1975. Then, in the late 1970s, the world began warming again.

A scare is often set off — as we show in our book with other examples — when two things are observed together and scientists suggest one must have been caused by the other. In this case, thanks to readings commissioned by Dr Roger Revelle, a distinguished American oceanographer, it was observed that since the late 1950s levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere had been rising. Perhaps it was this increase that was causing the new warming in the 1980s?

Stage two of the story began in 1988 when, with remarkable speed, the global warming story was elevated into a ruling orthodoxy, partly due to hearings in Washington chaired by a youngish senator, Al Gore, who had studied under Dr Revelle in the 1960s.

But more importantly global warming hit centre stage because in 1988 the UN set up its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC). Through a series of reports, the IPCC was to advance its cause in a rather unusual fashion. First it would commission as many as 1,500 experts to produce a huge scientific report, which might include all sorts of doubts and reservations. But this was to be prefaced by a Summary for Policymakers, drafted in con-sult-ation with governments and officials — essentially a political document — in which most of the caveats contained in the experts' report would not appear.

This contradiction was obvious in the first report in 1991, which led to the Rio conference on climate change in 1992. The second report in 1996 gave particular prominence to a study by an obscure US government scientist claiming that the evidence for a connection between global warming and rising CO2 levels was now firmly established. This study came under heavy fire from various leading climate experts for the way it manipulated the evidence. But this was not allowed to stand in the way of the claim that there was now complete scientific consensus behind the CO2 thesis, and the Summary for Policy-makers, heavily influenced from behind the scenes by Al Gore, by this time US Vice-President, paved the way in 1997 for the famous Kyoto Protocol.

Kyoto initiated stage three of the story, by formally committing governments to drastic reductions in their CO2 emissions. But the treaty still had to be ratified and this seemed a good way off, not least thanks to its rejection in 1997 by the US Senate, despite the best attempts of Mr Gore.

Not the least of his efforts was his bid to suppress an article co-authored by Dr Revelle just before his death. Gore didn't want it to be known that his guru had urged that the global warming thesis should be viewed with more caution.

One of the greatest problems Gore and his allies faced at this time was the mass of evidence showing that in the past, global temperatures had been higher than in the late 20th century. In 1998 came the answer they were looking for: a new temperature chart, devised by a young American physicist, Michael Mann. This became known as the "hockey stick" because it showed historic temperatures running in an almost flat line over the past 1,000 years, then suddenly flicking up at the end to record levels.

Mann's hockey stick was just what the IPCC wanted. When its 2001 report came out it was given pride of place at the top of page 1. The Mediaeval Warming, the Little Ice Age, the 20th century Little Cooling, when CO2 had already been rising, all had been wiped away.

But then a growing number of academics began to raise doubts about Mann and his graph. This culminated in 2003 with a devastating study by two Canadians showing how Mann had not only ignored most of the evidence before him but had used an algorithm that would produce a hockey stick graph whatever evidence was fed into the computer. When this was removed, the graph re-emerged just as it had looked before, showing the Middle Ages as hotter than today.

It is hard to recall any scientific thesis ever being so comprehensively discredited as the "hockey stick". Yet the global warming juggernaut rolled on regardless, now led by the European Union. In 2004, thanks to a highly dubious deal between the EU and Putin's Russia, stage four of the story began when the Kyoto treaty was finally ratified.

In the past three years, we have seen the EU announcing every kind of measure geared to fighting climate change, from building ever more highly-subsidised wind turbines, to a commitment that by 2050 it will have reduced carbon emissions by 60 per cent. This is a pledge that could only be met by such a massive reduction in living standards that it is impossible to see the peoples of Europe accepting it.

All this frenzy has rested on the assumption that global temperatures will continue to rise in tandem with CO2 and that, unless mankind takes drastic action, our planet is faced with the apocalypse so vividly described by Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth.

Yet recently, stage five of the story has seen all sorts of question marks being raised over Gore's alleged consensus. For instance, he claimed that by the end of this century world sea levels will have risen by 20 ft when even the IPCC in its latest report, only predicts a rise of between four and 17 inches.There is also of course the harsh reality that, wholly unaffected by Kyoto, the economies of China and India are now expanding at nearly 10 per cent a year, with China likely to be emitting more CO2 than the US within two years.

More serious, however, has been all the evidence accumulating to show that, despite the continuing rise in CO2 levels, global temperatures in the years since 1998 have no longer been rising and may soon even be falling.

It was a telling moment when, in August, Gore's closest scientific ally, James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was forced to revise his influential record of US surface temperatures showing that the past decade has seen the hottest years on record. His graph now concedes that the hottest year of the 20th century was not 1998 but 1934, and that four of the 10 warmest years in the past 100 were in the 1930s.

Furthermore, scientists and academics have recently been queuing up to point out that fluctuations in global temperatures correlate more consistently with patterns of radiation from the sun than with any rise in CO2 levels, and that after a century of high solar activity, the sun's effect is now weakening, presaging a likely drop in temperatures.

If global warming does turn out to have been a scare like all the others, it will certainly represent as great a collective flight from reality as history has ever recorded. The evidence of the next 10 years will be very interesting.

"�ÂԚ¢ Scared to Death: From BSE To Global Warming — How Scares Are Costing Us The Earth by Christopher Booker and Richard North (Continuum, Ôš£16.99) is available for Ôš£14.99 + Ôš£1.25 p&p. To order call Telegraph Books on 0870 428 4115 or go to books.telegraph.co.uk.

 

[Gabrielle]

Circumcision on Decline in Africa Due to Global Warming
By Noel Sheppard | November 2, 2007 - 20:55 ET

Maybe the finest example of Global Warming Derangement Syndrome to date is the claim by an Australian mammologist and paleontologist that climate change has reduced circumcision rates in Africa.

I kid you not.

Aside from his other lofty credentials, Tim Flannery is also a global warming activist, or did you guess that from the introduction?

Regardless, in his new book, "An Explorer's Notebook," Flannery, according to the excerpt published by Australia's The Age, should be rushed to the nearest sanitarium for emergency GWDS treatment (emphasis added for your entertainment pleasure):


left Europe to return home via Africa. A mate had started an ecotourism venture in Kenya and had asked me to come along on a 14-day safari. I agreed, both because I wanted to help him with his conservation effort and because I was keen to talk to the people living in northern Kenya, a land afflicted by drought. We saw lion, giraffe, elephant and rarer creatures such as Grevy's zebra, which I was particularly taken with. It is the largest and most elegantly striped of all zebras, and is a kind of living fossil whose lineage goes back about 3 million years. A few years ago there were about 5000, but today only 2000 survive, in part because of east Africa's chronic low rainfall - a result of climate change.

At the remote camp of Sarara, north of Nairobi, I asked village elders about the drought. This is the homeland of the Samburu people, traditional cattle grazers who have developed an intricate system of subsistence. There was an air of despair about these dignified old men as they explained that the weather patterns and signs of rain are now so altered that their long experience is no longer useful in advising the youth where to lead the cattle. Apparently American food aid is all that's keeping many in the region from starvation.

That evening I learnt of a most remarkable consequence of the drought. The Samburu circumcise their youths in grand ceremonies, which are held every seven years or so, when enough cattle and other foods have accumulated to support such celebrations. Circumcision represents a transition to manhood, and until a youth has passed it he can't marry. But it's been 14 years since a circumcision ceremony has been held here. There are now 40,000 uncircumcised young men, some in their late 20s, waiting their turn. All of the eligible young women, tired of waiting, have married older men (multiple wives are allowed), so there are no wives for the new initiates.

I could never have imagined that climate change would have such an effect on an entire society.

Honestly, folks, there's no way you can make this stuff up!

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...n-rates-africa-decline-because-global-warming

 

[Gabrielle]

Global Warming Tutorial Media Should be Required to Watch
By Noel Sheppard | November 4, 2007 - 20:34 ET

While media members fawn over Hollywood productions about manmade global warming such as Al Gore's schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and Leonardo DiCaprio's box office disaster "The Eleventh Hour," they should take time out of their busy propagandist schedules to view a lecture that Australian research professor Bob Carter recently gave.

In fact, it should be required viewing for any member of the press who wants to report about climate change, for it more thoroughly and concisely explains the science refuting the current alarmism than anything to date.

During the roughly 37-minute lecture given at the Annual Conference of the Australian Environmental Foundation on September 8th in Melbourne (luckily caught on videotape, multiple links to follow), Carter debunked the hysterical claims regularly espoused by warm-mongers such as:

Today's temperatures deviate from historical norms
Today's temperatures will cause extinctions
Today's temperatures are caused by rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
In fact, and not to give too much away, one of Carter's rather startling observations is that a greater threat to mankind moving forward is the cooling trend that has likely already started, and that all this hysteria over a nominal warming period is distracting us from preparing for the colder temperatures destined to come.

As an added bonus, although the contents are highly scientific and, at times complicated, viewers will appreciate Carter's candid, personable delivery, as well as his sense of humor.

As such, without further ado, I strongly recommend NewsBusters readers take about a half-hour of their time to fully understand just how absurd the media's claims of imminent doom at the hands of global warming are.

Enjoy: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQQGFZHSno

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...rming-tutorial-media-should-be-required-watch

 

[Gabrielle]

If the founder of The Weather Channel spoke out strongly against the manmade global warming myth, might media members notice?

We're going to find out the answer to that question soon, for John Coleman wrote an article published at ICECAP Wednesday that should certainly garner attention from press members -- assuming journalism hasn't been completely replaced by propagandist activism, that is.

Coleman marvelously began (emphasis added, h/t NB reader coffee250):

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in [sic] allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.

[...]

I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious.

Let's hope so, John; let's hope so.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...-founder-global-warming-greatest-scam-history

 

[Gabrielle]

NASA Debunks Part of Global Warming Myth, Will Media Report It?
By Noel Sheppard | November 14, 2007 - 12:23 ET

Is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration filled with climate change deniers?

Such seems likely to be alleged by hysterical alarmists in the press when and if they read a new study out of NASA which determined that "not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming."

Goes quite counter to all the recent media reports, as well as assertions by Nobel Laureate Al Gore, that low ice conditions in the Arctic are all the fault of that despicable -- albeit essential to life and naturally occurring! -- gas carbon dioxide.

Of course, it's quite unlikely many climate alarmists will even hear about this study, for today's green media wouldn't want to do anything that destroys their illusion that there's a scientific consensus regarding this matter.

As such, consider yourself fortunate to be apprised of the highlights (emphasis added throughout):

A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.

[...]

The team of scientists found a 10-millibar decrease in water pressure at the bottom of the ocean at the North Pole between 2002 and 2006, equal to removing the weight of 10 centimeters (four inches) of water from the ocean. The distribution and size of the decrease suggest that Arctic Ocean circulation changed from the counterclockwise pattern it exhibited in the 1990s to the clockwise pattern that was dominant prior to 1990.

Reporting in Geophysical Research Letters, the authors attribute the reversal to a weakened Arctic Oscillation, a major atmospheric circulation pattern in the northern hemisphere. The weakening reduced the salinity of the upper ocean near the North Pole, decreasing its weight and changing its circulation.

"Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming," said [James Morison of the University of Washington's Polar Science Center Applied Physics Laboratory].

Somehow I imagine Morison won't be interviewed by any of the major television networks any time soon, especially as the study concluded that this circulation pattern may already be reversing possibly leading to increased ice levels in this area in coming years:

The Arctic Oscillation was fairly stable until about 1970, but then varied on more or less decadal time scales, with signs of an underlying upward trend, until the late 1990s, when it again stabilized. During its strong counterclockwise phase in the 1990s, the Arctic environment changed markedly, with the upper Arctic Ocean undergoing major changes that persisted into this century. Many scientists viewed the changes as evidence of an ongoing climate shift, raising concerns about the effects of global warming on the Arctic.

Morison said data gathered by Grace and the bottom pressure gauges since publication of the paper earlier this year highlight how short-lived the ocean circulation changes can be. The newer data indicate the bottom pressure has increased back toward its 2002 level. "The winter of 2006-2007 was another high Arctic Oscillation year and summer sea ice extent reached a new minimum," he said. "It is too early to say, but it looks as though the Arctic Ocean is ready to start swinging back to the counterclockwise circulation pattern of the 1990s again."

Once again, another in a seeming litany of reports emerging offering scientific alternatives for climate change beyond it being all man's fault.

And folks wonder why so many people are skeptical concerning the anthropogenic impact on long-term weather patterns.

Of course, one thing's for certain: this news definitely won't make "An Inconvenient Truth" producer Laurie David happy!

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...part-global-warming-myth-will-media-report-it

 

[Gabrielle]

Shocking Stanford Luncheon: ”�’Is Global Warming a Myth?’
By Noel Sheppard | November 15, 2007 - 13:14 ET

Don't weep for the youth of America, for about a week after the Harvard Crimson published a shocking editorial antagonistic to Nobel Laureate Al Gore, Stanford University held a luncheon entitled "Is Global Warming a Myth?"

Adding to your likely surprise, the guest speaker was the world-renowned global warming skeptic S. Frederick Singer.

Maybe even more astounding, the Stanford paper gave his speech a rather positive review (emphasis added throughout):

The former space scientist and government scientific administrator, who is co-author of the bestselling book, "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years," claimed that observed warming is produced by the sun and that "human contribution is negligible." Singer's research suggests that for the past million years, the Earth has gone through warming and cooling phrases that have lasted about 1,500 years each. He writes that these phases are in no way correlated with carbon dioxide levels.

[...]

The speaker explained that the recent warming the Earth has experienced is not dangerous and is not something humans could alter. Global warming activists such as Al Gore, Singer chided, are hyping the problem. He said that such activists have not come close to demonstrating that human-generated greenhouse gases are contributing to global warming.

Amazingly fair representation of likely what Singer said, correct? The author, Mima Mohammed, chose not to reference noted alarmists in order to discredit the speaker's points, even as they went counter to the Global Warmingist-in-Chief's.

Rather refreshing, don't you think?

Of course, the folks at Think Progress and Media Matters wouldn't agree, but I digress as the article began presenting a number of inconvenient truths most media members have been hiding from the public:

If politicians truly wanted to make a change to affect energy use, Singer said, they would have to increase taxes on gasoline, which would decrease use of vehicles. He believes that such taxes would hit people of low income the hardest.

The speaker claimed that many businesses, such as the wind farm industry, are making money off the global warming hype. Singer said that it is essential to convince the proponents of global warming that what they are doing is counterproductive and will not make any difference to the climate.

Yet, what was likely most surprising was the following:

Paul Craft ”�’09, an editor at The Stanford Review, said he appreciated the speaker's unconventional views.

"He made an interesting argument - the nature of science is to have a debate about the evidence," Craft said. "Therefore, I think it's healthy to have dissenting opinions regardless of where you stand of the issue."

How delightful: Someone that understands how science works, and that the debate is far from over.

We need more objective journalists like Craft and Mohammed, wouldn't you agree?

Bravo, Stanford - which is a lot coming from a Bear!

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/11/15/shocking-stanford-luncheon-global-warming-myth

 

[Gabrielle]

Not Enough Parking for Private Jets Going to UN Climate Conference
By Noel Sheppard | November 23, 2007 - 16:32 ET

As climate alarmists from all over the world head to Bali to talk about the sacrifices regular folks have to make to save the planet from global warming, it seems certain media will ignore all the private jets clogging the tiny airport.

As if it’s not enough that the United Nations Climate Change Conference is being held at what NewsBusters reported as "a truly beautiful tropical island paradise," the management of the nearby airport has issued a warning to attendees that they are going to have to park their private jets somewhere else.

I kid you not.

Tempo Interaktif reports that Angkasa Pura - the management of Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport are concerned that the large number of additional private charter flights expected in Bali during the UN Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) December 3-15, 2007, will exceed the carrying capacity of apron areas. To meet the added demand for aircraft storage officials are allocating "parking space" at other airports in Indonesia.

The operational manager for Bali's Airport, Azjar Effendi, says his 3 parking areas can only accommodate 15 planes, which means that some of the jets used by VIP delegations will only be allowed to disembark and embark their planes in Bali with parking provided at airports in Surabaya, Lombok, Jakarta and Makassar.

Talk about your really inconvenient truths

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...king-private-jets-going-un-climate-conference

 

[Gabrielle]

Your Computer is Causing Global Warming
By Noel Sheppard | December 4, 2007 - 17:24 ET

Did you know that you're causing global warming just by reading this article on your computer screen?

Or that a medium-sized server has the same annual carbon footprint of an SUV that gets 15 miles to the gallon?

Well, shame on you for not being aware of just how harmful to the environment your laptop is, because according to an English environmental organization called Global Action Plan, the Information and Computer Technology industry is about to surpass the aviation industry in annual carbon dioxide emissions.

I kid you not.

Here are some of the highlights of this organization's paper on the matter entitled "An Inefficient Truth":

Gartner, the ICT research and advisory company, estimates that the manufacture of ICT equipment, its use and disposal accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions which is equivalent to the aviation industry
Servers and data centres have become integral to business but as the size and capacity of these servers increase, so too does the energy consumed by them
The intensive power requirements needed to run and cool data centres now account for around a quarter of the ICT sector's CO2 emissions
It is estimated that a medium-sized server has roughly the same annual carbon footprint as an SUV vehicle doing 15 miles per gallon
The manufacturing process for computers is very energy intensive. A recent study at the United Nations University in Tokyo found that most electrical products consume around 95% of lifecycle fossil fuels when in use; however, 75% of PC fossil fuel consumption has already happened before the computer is even switched on for the first time
Furthermore, the study found that the manufacture of one PC requires about 1.7 tonnes of raw materials and water, and consumes over ten times the computer's weight in fossil fuels.
So, do the world a favor and turn your darned computer off!

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/12/04/your-computer-causing-global-warming

Wow! Sounds
December 4, 2007 - 17:51 ET by jdhawk
Wow! Sounds like Armegeddon!

But, before we all dive off a cliff like lemmings, let's start with what air is made of:
Dry air is primarily made up of nitrogen (78.09%) and oxygen (20.95%). The remaining 1% is made up of argon (0.93%), carbon dioxide (0.03%) and other trace gases (0.003%). Water vapor (water in its gaseous state) is also present in air in varying amounts.

So, of all the ingredients that make up air, C02 makes up only .03%. That's only 38 out of every 100,000 molecules of air are carbon dioxide.

What part of .03% is contributed by man? Mankind's addition of more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is only one molecule of CO2 for every 100,000 molecules of air every 5 years!

See the article here for the full explanation: http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm .

 

[Gabrielle]

How Gore and Media Fabricated a Global Warming Consensus
By Noel Sheppard | December 5, 2007 - 17:22 ET

How often in the past couple of years have you heard a climate alarmist refer to a so-called scientific consensus concerning man's role in global warming?

Almost any time you see a report on the subject, correct?

Have you ever considered how this belief that a consensus exists came to be, and if it actually means anything?

Answering such questions is the Wall Street Journal's Holman W. Jenkins Jr, whose op-ed Wednesday should be must reading for citizens, media representatives, and especially politicians that actually believe an overwhelming majority of scientists around the world are drinking Al Gore's Kool-Aid (h/t NBer dscott, emphasis added throughout):

A] Nobel has never been awarded for the science of global warming. Even Svante Arrhenius, who first described the "greenhouse" effect, won his for something else in 1903. Yet now one has been awarded for promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis.

How this honor has befallen the former Veep [Al Gore] could perhaps be explained by another Nobel, awarded in 2002 to Daniel Kahneman for work he and the late Amos Tversky did on "availability bias," roughly the human propensity to judge the validity of a proposition by how easily it comes to mind.

Their insight has been fruitful and multiplied: "Availability cascade" has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; "informational cascade" for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd's beliefs; and "reputational cascade" for the rational incentive to do so.

Mr. Gore clearly understands the game he's playing, judging by his resort to such nondispositive arguments as: "The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona."

Here's exactly the problem that availability cascades pose: What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?


Fascinating, wouldn't you agree? But there was more:

Less surprising is the readiness of many prominent journalists to embrace the role of enforcer of an orthodoxy simply because it is the orthodoxy. For them, a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.

[...]

Now let's suppose a most improbable, rhapsodic lobbying success for Mr. Gore, [Vinod Khosla of the venture capital firm Gore now works for], and folks on their side of the table--say, a government mandate to replace half the gasoline consumed in the U.S. with a carbon-neutral alternative. This would represent a monumental, $400 billion-a-year business opportunity for the green energy lobby. The impact on global carbon emissions? Four percent--less than China's predicted emissions growth over the next three or four years.

Don't doubt that this is precisely the chasm that keeps Mr. Gore from running for president. He could neither win the office nor govern on the basis of imposing the kinds of costs supposedly necessary to deal with an impending "climate crisis." Yet his credibility would become laughable if he failed to insist on such costs. How much more practical, then, to cash in on the crowd-pleasing role of angry prophet, without having to take responsibility for policies that the public will eventually discover to be fraudulent.

All with media's help, of course.

In the end, a consensus concerning this issue is as much a media concocted illusion as the myth that carbon dioxide is causing the planet to warm beyond historical norms.

We can only hope such inconvenient truths will dawn upon enough press representatives before the United States kowtows to domestic and international socialist pressures to implement draconian measures whose only result will be our financial ruin.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...ore-media-fabricated-global-warming-consensus