Here’s a great op-ed from today’s Journal, authored by 16 scientists who write that there’s no need to panic about global warming. Their opener:
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.
In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”
In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.
The rest here.
Good editorial, but even I think the Lysenko comparison goes too far. Yes, they try to enforce uniformity. But gulags? They couldn't even get a single professor fired!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHansenism instead of Lysenkoism?
"… The fossil fuel kingpins who profit from the public’s fossil fuel addiction, some of them multi-billionaires, are loosely knit, but with a well-understood common objective of maintaining the public’s addiction. These kingpins have the resources to be well aware of the scientific knowledge concerning the consequences of continued exploitation of fossil fuels. However, they choose not only to ignore those facts, but to support activities intended to keep the public ill-informed. These kingpins are guilty of high crimes against humanity and nature. " External Link
Hansen goes on to contemplate conviction in an international court of justice as unlikely, but he clearly supports it.
Intellectually, they're already there. See Climategate 1.0 and 2.0. See an ongoing stream of public statements by warmist politicians and scientists. They don't need a Russian gulag, so don't wait for one.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse--Begin quote--
climate "scientist" Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” --End quote--
Richb's comment "Doesn't it occur to Mr. Trenberth, that's it's because global warming doesn't exist?"
So called "global warming" is the biggest case of fraud so far in the 21st century. I see people making fun of us for falling for it like we see people who fell for snake oil salesman in the 19th century. The sky ain't falling and carbon isn't pollution.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse**Long Ago**
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -H.L. Mencken
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.” — also H.L. Mencken
**Today**
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseProfessor Daniel Botkin: "The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe."
Ottmar Edenhoffer, ipcc official: "We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy...Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization...One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore."
Scientists discover that mankind cannot increase the heat of the planet. In other news, scientists discover that the sun rises in the sky without the assistance of strings.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't think the evidence indicated in the IPCC data suggests that humans cannot affect climate. Bjorn Lomborg is far closer to the heart of the matter when he argues that the poverty of suppressing economic activity would cause more suffering and relieve less heat than something so simple as painting city pavements a lighter shade of grey. The theoretical increase in deaths by heat - even if prevention were neglected - would be outnumbered by the decreases in deaths from the cold.
Even blind acceptance of worst-case climate models is not identical to accepting the solutions proposed by the radical lobbies. Nor does denying the larger plurality of ecological models - as do many conservatives - entail that people are unwilling to take steps to secure themselves against the effects of changing environments.
It is very similar to the circumstances which pitted the well being of the bald eagle against the distant Africans threatened by the mosquitos most easily controlled by DDT. The environmental lobby carefully measured the thickness of eagle eggs, and found their preservation more important than the lives DDT could save from Malaria - A disease that has killed more human beings than has war.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere has never been a valid, scientifically based study that showed that DDT caused eggs to thin.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe one study that was done, put the chickens in a hot, stress filled storage area and fed them a diet poor in calcium. Oh, by the way, they also overdosed them on DDT.
To those still engaged in the perpetual algoregasm over AGW - please - I know a sure-fire technique, the single greatest contribution that each of you can make immediately to stop the spread of that killer carbon dioxide and initiate termination of this most horrid of impending global catasphrophies - and each of you can execute this action RIGHT NOW and splendor, bask and glow in the immediate results... STOP BREATHING.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat about panicking about global cooling? Okay, I am from Wisconsin so I am used to this. If you like hockey you will love this link.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIgnore. Spam.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDude, enough with the blog flogging ... it's just rude.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePerhaps the brightest light among the authors is Burt Rutan, whose views on climate history, noted Wired in a July 2003 interview, reflect his taste in architecture.
The aerospace pioneer, Wired tells us, dwells ‘in a white pyramid on the edge of the desert…Inside…a floor-to-ceiling mural depicting three large white pyramids glowing against a lush tropical background; toward the front, a strange creature strides across a white veranda. The mural was painted a week ago, and everyone is ogling it.
"Giza plaza, 17,000 years ago," he explains. "See, I think the pyramids were made by aliens before the last ice age, and the ice destroyed them and they were just put back together by the Egyptians." Is he serious? "I've seen them and I'm an engineer, and you can't tell me that the technology is ancient Egyptian. If you were a superior race and you knew your time on Earth was ending, wouldn't you build something really big so people would know you'd been there?"…
Rutan turns to the mural and says, "You know that face on Mars? NASA did the dumbest thing. They said it wasn't a face, it was a pile of rocks. If they'd said it was a face, they'd have full funding!"
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