Joust The Facts

The Joust The Facts "Quote Of The Day" - "It's Not Easy Bein' Green" edition

Robert Tracinski writing on the electic car, that preposterous amalgam of fossil fuel snobbery and environmental ignorance foisted on Americans by modern green alchemists who seem to think fuel, in the form of electricity, miraculously appears in your house from the "ether".

Electric cars never really made any sense. They are cloaked in the sanctimony of the green movement, because they don't use nasty fossil fuels like gasoline. Instead, they use electricity, which is sent out through power lines from big power plants, which generate this electricity—how? Oh yes, by burning fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas. This is known as the "long tailpipe," which goes from the car charging up in your garage all the way back to the smokestack of a coal-fired power plant. And don't forget, electric cars also have giant batteries made from nasty toxic metals like lithium and cobalt, the manufacture of which frontloads carbon dioxide emissions.

So the electric car was always more an exercise in green paternalism—it is the future, as selected for us by our betters—than a serious attempt to solve any real or imagined problem.

And after discussing the Tesla and it's less-than-road-worthiness:

But this misses the biggest point: since when is driving a car supposed to be so complicated? The whole point of technology is to use the machine's energy and yes, to burn up natural resources, in order to save human effort. The machines are supposed to work for us; we don't work for them. This is especially true of the automobile, which is all about freedom, independence, going out on the open road and deciding on the spur of the moment where you want to go—not about filing a flight plan and having technicians talk you through your trip.

Read the whole thing at Real Clear Politics.

Related articles

The electric car mistake

A Waste Of Ink At Reuters

Reuters, apparently completely unfamiliar with both partisan political campaigning and federal responses to natural disasters, thinks the following is "newsworthy:

NJ governor pledges to vote Romney despite praising Obama

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie defended his praise for President Barack Obama after superstorm Sandy, but said he would stick with his fellow Republicans and vote for Mitt Romney in Tuesday's election.

"I endorsed Mitt Romney 13 months ago because I thought he was the best guy for the job," Christie said on Sunday during a news conference, reaffirming his support for the Republican candidate.

But support for Romney does not mean that he cannot appreciate the "good job" that Obama did while responding to the historical storm that hit the U.S. Northeast last week, Christie said. Sandy knocked out power to some 2.4 million New Jersey residents.

Governor Christie not only endorsed Mitt Romney for president, but has campaigned actively to see Mr. Romney elected.  And some journalists clowns at Reuters thinks that a few words of praise for the man ultimately at the head of the response team in a time of state emergency after a nearly unprecedented natural disaster might change Christie's vote?  I just turned to my wife and said that this may be the dumbest story I've seen this entire election.

I guess they were hoping for change.

The Joust The Facts "Quote Of The Day"

J. E. Dyer at Hot Air, writing lucidly on the (mistaken) belief in the infallibility of government by many with an almost religious fervor.  He dubs this Govfall, the religion of government infallibility.  The proximate cause, the appeals court ruling on the EPA's right to regulate your every breath.

The ruling describes the EPA’s opinion on global warming and greenhouse gases as “unambiguously correct” – which is a deeply silly formulation for characterizing any scientific theory, but would also have been considered, by our Founders and virtually all federal jurists up until the last 20-30 years, as comprehensively invalid language for any kind of judicial ruling.  Judges aren’t competent to make decisions for the public on this matter.  Their competence is in interpreting the law, not certifying scientific conclusions...

If we cannot behave, in our economic lives, as if we think catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is a much-falsified theory waiting for some solid proof, then we are not effectively free to think it.  We are constrained to behave as if we don’t.  That situation differs only by the jackbooted thugs at the door from the lifestyle of people under communist rule, in which you’re free to “think” whatever you want, as long as you say and do only government-approved things, and never speak about or live by your own beliefs.

Sometime in the last century, the weight of sentiment among those who aspire to government jobs, in any role in any of the branches, tilted toward the religion of Govfall.  It has become unendurable to them to think of the people out here doing things they disapprove of, and they have diligently enlarged the purview of government to encompass ruling on ideas and theories – always invoking the supposed disasters and wrongs that government power is either averting or redressing...

Just so.  The passage of the ACA was just another example of this, and unfortunately for the liberty of 320 million Americans it was upheld (largely) by the Supreme Court today.  I'll have more about that later.

The Joust The Facts "Quote Of The Day"

From Jazz Shaw at Hot Air, on this snowy New England Saturday, comes a pithy summary of the mindless ideology that pervades Obama decision-making.

His final point highlights the amazing reverse logic which seems to be in play here, once again comparing the Keystone XL project to California’s high speed rail line. In the latter, the White House is continuing to push a project which virtually nobody seemed to have wanted by tossing vast amounts of taxpayer money into a plan which seems almost predestined to fail. In the former, they are fighting tooth and nail to stop a project which would have been paid for by private investment and created jobs in states which desperately need them, costing the taxpayer nothing and resulting in a downstream flow of cash back into government coffers through increased commercial activity and employment.

What is to be gained from this general approach unless you’re actively looking to turn out the lights?

You can cue up Dandy Don Meredith from the early days of Monday Night Football at this point.

 

Because They're Better Human Beings, That's Why

Seen on the wall of a Boston parking garage.

I feel, somehow, inferior.

The Joust The Facts "Quote Of The Day"

Coming today from the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens, on the subject of global warming climate change.

Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.

Deceit?  How about How about the climategate emails, versions 1.0 and 2.0?   Arrogance?  How about Phil Jones of East Anglia University and Michael Mann of Penn State?  Money?  How about James Hansen of NASA?  Power, politics?  How about the oracle himself, Al Gore?

Speaking of Mr. Gore, there is a legal aphorism that at least this site attributes to him:

When the law is on your side, argue the law. When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When neither the law or the facts are on your side, hollar.

Given that Al Gore has been doing a lot more "hollaring" than arguing, perhaps the laws (of science) and the facts are not really on his side.

Exit Question:  Will Jon Huntsman need to "revise and extend" his own remarks on the topic?

HUNTSMAN: Listen, when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call into question the science of evolution, all I'm saying is that, in order for the Republican Party to win, we can't run from science.

Politicians govern by concensus.  Scientists don't.

I Blame Global Warming

Either that or animal cruelty.  Apparently we in New Hampshire are not the only ones experiencing "unusual weather."

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Thirty-five animals at a zoo in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua have frozen to death during the region's coldest weather in six decades...

Temperatures have dropped to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 13 Celsius) in the area, the coldest weather in 60 years.

Is the coldest weather in 60 years in Mexico a sign of the earth warming?  I forget.

Here's an interesting play on the claims of the warming alarmists, via Ace of Spades.

The global warmistas have a similar tactic. When asked to explain why their predictions keep failing, they will say "Well, the environment is a very complicated thing and of course we don't have a perfect model of it yet."

But when their core claims are challenged, they claim the exact opposite: They have a perfect model of everything, with all variables perfectly weighed in the equation (that's why they know, to a moral certainty, that the sun has no more than a trivial effect on changing climate), so shut up, we got this, all of this.

Well which is it?

The JTF "Quote Of The Day"

Without further introduction:

The question now emerging for climate scientists and policymakers alike is very simple. Just how long does a pause have to be before the thesis that the world is getting hotter because of human activity starts to collapse?

Read the whole thing.  In answer to the question, it's already beyond the start, and well into the race.

On Cold Shoulders And Scientific Inquiry

Ron Brownstein has a piece in National Journal discussing accusing the GOP of giving "climate science" the "cold shoulder."  In it the logic is laughable.  It's purely argument by authority.

When British Foreign Secretary William Hague visited the U.S. last week, he placed combating climate change near the very top of the world's To Do list.

"Climate change is perhaps the 21st century's biggest foreign-policy challenge," Hague declared in a New York City speech. "An effective response to climate change underpins our security and prosperity." The danger was no longer just distant thunder, he suggested, warning that the recent devastating floods in Pakistan heralded the sort of extreme events that will become more common in a warmer world. "While no one weather event can ever be linked with certainty to climate change," he said, "the broad patterns of abnormality seen this year are consistent with climate-change models."

William Hague is not a holdover from the left-leaning Labor Government that British voters ousted last spring. He's not even from the centrist Liberal Democrats who are governing in a coalition with the Conservative Party of Prime Minister David Cameron. Hague is one of Cameron's predecessors as Conservative Party leader.

His strong words make it easier to recognize that Republicans in this country are coalescing around a uniquely dismissive position on climate change. The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones.

Oh, look, Mr. Hague is a conservative, and he believes in AGW!!  Since he agrees with Mr. Brownstein, and Mr. Brownstein is obviously right, then Mr. Hague is obviously right.  Q.E.D.  So let's quote him!  All U.S. conservatives should heed the wisdom of their overseas betters.

Sorry, but that's not how it works.  Just because a British conservative (British conservatives being to the left of Democratic Senator Ben Nelson politically) happens to espouse this thinking doesn't make it correct.  You know what is more likely to sway my views?  This.  It turns out that Republican objections are not at all "uniquely" dismissive.

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it.

Professor Lewis follows with his case against the APS, and it is a fairly persuasive argument that the APS has squelched dissent to the detriment of scientific inquiry.  His suspicions have to do with research dollars - follow the money.  Where Mr. Brownstein talks about "accepted science," quoting the National Academy of Sciences (another organization likely with a financial stake), some scientists see the stamping out of the scientific method.  See, for example, the ClimateGate emails.

In another, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Suddenly the silencing of dissent is, somehow, mainstream.  Mr. Brownstein and others seek to bully those who dissent into toeing the climate change line with pronouncements from on high, shouting "heretic!" at non-believers.  It didn't work with doctors when the AMA supported ObamaCare, and it's not going to work in climate science with those who value the scientific process.

And I Suppose This Is The Result Of Global Warming, Too

Lake Erie has frozen, for the first time in 14 years.

Following a cold snap in the Northeast, Lake Erie's surface is virtually frozen over for the first time in about 14 years.

The ice ranges in thickness between paper thin along the northern shore and several inches along the southern shore, where many people are ice skating.

GoErie.com reports that the lake hasn't completely frozen since the winter of 1995-1996.

First time in 14 years.  Of course, a 'climate scientist' says that more snow can result from global warming.  On the other hand, it seems that another 'climate scientist' is speaking in much more dulcet and qualified tones about the theory.  And that IPCC 2007 assessment is looking a lot more like Swiss cheese at the moment.

In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.

It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC...

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

Must be just another anti-science Republican.

Ask A Physicist

In conclusion (p. 94, bottom) (warning: pdf.)(hat tip: krakatoa @ ace of spades)

The point discussed here was to answer the question, whether the supposed atmospheric effect has a physical basis.  This is not the case.  In summary, there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect, in particular CO2 greenhouse effect, in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics.  Thus it is illegitimate to deduce predictions which provide a consulting solution for economics and intergovernmental policy.

Which, given this work by two physicists, chips away another brick in the wall of "scientific concensus." And which the authors also address (p. 94 middle)

A theoretical physicist must complain about the lack of transparency here, and he also has to complain about the style of the scientific discussion, where advocators of the greenhouse thesis claim that the discussion is closed, and others are discrediting justified arguments as a discussion of "questions of yesterday and the day before yesterday."  In exact sciences, in particular in theoretical physics, the discussion is never closed and is to be continued ad infinitum, even if there are proofs of theorems available.

Are these gentlemen right about the lack of a CO2 greenhouse effect?  Good question, well worth a legitimate scientific discussion, one not subject to blackballing from "peer-reviewed" journals or secret data and even more secret calculations and models.

By the way, this was published in January 2009, well before the ClimateGate emails emerged.

ClimateGate's Winston Smith

From George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece:

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of The Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it. Books, also, were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made. Even the written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.

Now wrap your mind around the uncannily similar actions of a British scientist and member of the Green Party, William Connolley: (From Lawrence Solomon, writing in the Financial Post)*

But the UN's official verdict that the Medieval Warm Period had not existed did not erase the countless schoolbooks, encyclopedias, and other scholarly sources that claimed it had. Rewriting those would take decades, time that the band members didn't have if they were to save the globe from warming.

Instead, the band members turned to their friends in the media and to the blogosphere, creating a website called RealClimate.org."The idea is that we working climate scientists should have a place where we can mount a rapid response to supposedly 'bombshell' papers that are doing the rounds" in aid of "combating dis-information," one email explained, referring to criticisms of the hockey stick and anything else suggesting that temperatures today were not the hottest in recorded time. One person in the nine-member Realclimate.org team -- U.K. scientist and Green Party activist William Connolley -- would take on particularly crucial duties. Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known -Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia's articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug. 11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world's most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it -- more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred -- over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley's global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy. With the release of the Climategate Emails, the disappearing trick has been exposed. The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear.

Dr. Lindzen, Dr. Singer, those Wikipedia contributors barred from participation - William Connolley would probably refer to them as "unpersons."  He and his band were probably also working on textbooks, ones to supplant earlier versions with updated and approved versions.

*I didn't intend to borrow so much, but by clipping the large section it makes for better read.  Please go read Mr. Solomon's entire article.

12/20/09 0845: Speaking of Winston Smith. check out this section of 1984:

Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than one-hundred-and-forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.

I wonder who in the Obama administration is is tasked with making up the number of jobs "saved or created?"

Where, Exactly, Did All The Communists Get The Money To Fly To Copenhagen?

Earlier I noted that a lot of what Copenhagen was about was the redistribution of wealth, primarily that of America, which our Fearless Leader was only too happy to agree to, even if in a "non-binding" way.  And really not so much about the actual "health" of the planet.

It seems that this "redistribution" was a motivating factor for many there.

It isn't the climate that bugs "the world," or concerns about CO2, but rather the dynamism (and, as a result, unpredictability) of capitalist economies.  How easy is it to handicap a juggernaut as the American economy is, or rather, was?  Simple.  Convince a simpatico American leader to handicap it for you.

The JTF "Quotes Of The Day"

From a Times Daily Mail (UK) Online (MSM) news story - yes, there is at least one - having a look at "hiding the decline":

'Any scientist ought to know that you just can’t mix and match proxy and actual data,’ said Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

‘They’re apples and oranges. Yet that’s exactly what he did.’

And throw pears into the mix - much of the actual data were "adjusted," like this.  And a response to it all from Doctor Zero, one I wish I'd had time to write.

Dear global warming fanatics,

Please. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourselves. Take a deep breath, and try to understand what has happened to you during the past month. You need to accept that your dreams of global domination are over. Increasingly shrill attempts to terrify the masses into ignoring Climagate are only making you look foolish. The con job you’ve been running for the last thirty years is busted forever.

The JTF "Quote Of The Day"

Willis Eschenbach at Watt's Up With That? (hat tip: krakatoa at Ace)

"Those, dear friends, are the clumsy fingerprints of someone messing with the data Egyptian style … they are indisputable evidence that the “homogenized” data has been changed to fit someone’s preconceptions about whether the earth is warming.

One thing is clear from this. People who say that “Climategate was only about scientists behaving badly, but the data is OK” are wrong. At least one part of the data is bad, too. The Smoking Gun for that statement is at Darwin Zero."

They blinded me with science.  Oh, and, by the way, the "scientific concensus" may not be, at least among scientists.

The professional association for physicists is facing internal pressure from some of its most distinguished members, who say the burgeoning ClimateGate scandal means the group should rescind its 2007 statement declaring that global warming represents a dire international emergency.

What Copenhagen Is All About

A photo from Reuters:

This isn't about climate change, anthropogenic global warming, impending ecological disaster or any other of the excuses usually cited. No, this is about world socialism, the governmentally-enforced mandatory transfer of large amounts of money from fully developed nations to underdeveloped nations.

And to get there, if the earth doesn't cooperate, requires this.

And this.

And especially this.

And of course Al Gore and the other profiteers want their cut.

The Cowardly Climate Lion

Plans can change quickly when they need to, I guess.

Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday abruptly canceled a Dec. 16 personal appearance that was to be staged during the United Nations' Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which begins next week.

As described in The Washington Times' Inside the Beltway column Tuesday, the multimedia public event to promote Mr. Gore's new book, "Our Choice," included $1,209 VIP tickets that granted the holder a photo opportunity with Mr. Gore and a "light snack."

Berlingkse Media, a Danish group coordinating ticket sales and publicity for the event, said that "great annoyance" was a factor in the cancellation, along with unforeseen changes in Mr. Gore's program for the climate summit. The decision affected 3,000 ticket holders.

"We have had a clear-cut agreement, and it is unusual with great disappointment that we have to announce that Al Gore cancels. We had a huge expectation for the event. . . . We do not yet know the detailed reasons for the cancellation," said Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO of Berlingske Media, in a statement posted by the company

First, isn't anyone else offended that this guy is charging $1200 a head just to be in his magnificent presence?  "Have a light snack with The Climate Prophet himself, for only the cost of a real nice LCD TV."  And Sarah Palin gets grief for actually taking a few plane flights in the course of her bus tour for Going Rogue.

Second, just like the CRU team at East Anglia, Mr. Gore has never been one willing to actually debate knowledgeable  critics.  The CRU team poisoned the peer-review process, refused FOIA requests from non-believers, and at a minimum discussed deleting information and communications.  He avoided a debate with Lord Christopher Monckton like the plague last spring, with protective Democrats vetoing Lord Monckton's appearance before Congress while his plane was en route.

Finally, I don't think Mr. Gore will be alone in "modifying" his Copenhagen schedule.  There will be a boatload of "schedule changes" by those unwilling to answer some serious questions about data, methods, and the honesty of the researchers primarily responsible for scaring as much of the planet as they can.

They Can't Handle The Truth

So, allegedly lacking space, they threw it all away.

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

They dumped it to save space?  Perhaps.  But I'll bet most of us can think of other less charitable reasons the data might have been dumped.  Yesterday they claimed they'd release the data in full.  They didn't really mean that, though.

Because all we now have is the "adjusted data," with no record of either the raw data or the actual adjustments (and the logic behind them), scientists wishing to double and triple check the work of known liars and system manipulators would need to start with the "adjusted" data to begin their work, which is akin to taking over a train that has already been headed down a particular track to its destination.  But the group at CRU would like everyone to take their word on the adjusted data, and move along.  Right.

Other AGW climate change proponents, like MP George Monbiot, would have us believe that a couple of corrupt scientists should be dumped unceremoniously, but that the train should be allowed to continue because the evidence is still solid.

But do these revelations justify the sceptics’ claims that this is “the final nail in the coffin” of global warming theory?(8,9) Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury manmade climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed.

A wider conspiracy ... like, for example, destroying the source data?  We are left, at this point, with starting over from scratch.  The methods, the data, and the ideologically driven actions of the "scientists" at the East Anglia University CRU, and of those like Dr. Mann who were intimately involved in the ruses, are all so questionable that to soldier on as if nothing has changed shows only the religious fervor with which the proponents hold their beliefs.  If the data has been destroyed, then you'll need new data, the raw form of which would need to be released as soon as it has been obtained, prior to any analysis or manipulation, for open source analysis.  Otherwise the "truth" about AGW will continue to be solely a political argument over world governance and the tax burden and oppressiveness of government on people simply trying to live.

11/29/09 1235: More, from Christopher Booker in the Times of London: "the worst scientific scandal of our generation."

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

Note To MSM: This Is News

The hacked emails and documents from East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU) are a significant story, although some elements of the media still are running around with their fingers in their ears.  Doug Ross catches the Boston Globe, and finds the readers informing the editors.  Pwnd!  Click over to DR to enjoy the comments.  P.J. Gladnick found a similar situation in comments to another dire global warming story in the Houston Chronicle, and does a sweet impression of the HAL 9000 from 2001.  From the latter:

University of East Anglia? Hmmm... Where have I heard about this university in the recent past? Something about hacked e-mails, manipulated data, and a coverup? This editorial won't bring up the scandal that dare not speak its name but the readers are not shy about bringing it up over and over and over again:

 Oh dear .. I think you have a bit of catching up to do.

Scandal? What scandal? We're as willfully clueless about this as Charlie Gibson is about the ACORN scandal.

Apparently, the clowns on the Houston Comical editorial board do zero research prior to sitting down at the keyboard to compose their lies. The "researchers" at East Anglia have been exposed as the perpetrators of a massive fraud by manipulating statistics. Yet, here comes the Comical citing the liars at East Anglia in support of their thesis. It's all over the news - even the Houston Comical. (Maybe the editorial board doesn't read the Comical - only the press releases of the DNC.)

[...]

Bottom line here for the MSM; you can try to avoid mentioning Climategate in your global warming stories but your readers are sure to remind you of your deliberate oversight. Oh how they will remind you!

Robert Tracinski has a piece discussing the "Climategate" scandal over at Real Clear Politics.  In particular, he finds strong evidence of manipulation of the scientific climate journals' peer review process to ostracize those who don't toe the line.

But what stood out most for me was extensive evidence of the hijacking of the "peer review" process to enforce global warming dogma. Peer review is the practice of subjecting scientific papers to review by other scientists with relevant expertise before they can be published in professional journals. The idea is to weed out research with obvious flaws or weak arguments, but there is a clear danger that such a process will simply reinforce groupthink. If it is corrupted, peer review can be a mechanism for an entrenched establishment to exclude legitimate challenges by simply refusing to give critics a hearing.

And that is precisely what we find.

[...]

Another CRU scientist, Tom Wigley, suggests that they target another troublesome editor: "If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted." That's exactly what they did, and a later e-mail boasts that "The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/new editorial leadership there."

This is a story - like the ACORN videos, like the forged Bush TANG letters - that the MSM ignores at their own peril.  Eventually a story will have to be written documenting, discussing and analyzing the actions of those "scientists" who rigged the game. 

They might as well start researching and writing them now.  To wait any longer simply confirms the suspicions of those who are no longer buying their papers, and worse, the suspicions of those who will stop buying in the future.

Any Comment From Mr. Gore?

Because when a story like this breaks, on the cusp of the Copenhagen climate meeting in particular, a truly unbiased and curious media would surely track down the Prophet himself to ask a pertinent question or two.

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Well you can't exactly say you haven't been warned.  An example:

So what was in the emails?  I can reprint them here, but you might as well read some pertinent snippets at the source, or via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.

The questions at this point really are few, and they don't really have to do with AGW itself.

1. Do you still consider yourself a scientist after such efforts to falsify data, mislead, and cover up "inconvenient truths" in violation of principles of scientific discovery?
2. Should anyone involved in the manipulations and coverups have any scientific credibility left?
3. Should Al Gore have to return his Nobel Prize?
4. Should John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman and Edward Markey have to hold a press conference to explain their actions?

Summing up, let me once again quote Dr. Lindzen of MIT:

“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly exaggerated computer predictions combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age."

11/21/09 0015: To clarify, there's nothing particularly wrong with alternative energy sources, like wind, sun, nuclear, etc.  But the government shouldn't be setting up a huge enterprise to take their cut of energy proceeds in such an obvious money grab as "cap and trade" or carbon taxes.  And please don't tell me that subsidizing more expensive technologies and raising everyone's energy costs are necessary to "save the planet."  The planet doesn't need saving; science does.

The JTF "Quote Of The Day"

From Dr. Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at MIT.

“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly exaggerated computer predictions combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.

An Inconvenient Question

Asked by Phelim McAleer of Investors Business Daily of the prophet himself, Al Gore.

Last week at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Wisconsin, former Vice President Al Gore took questions from journalists about global warming for the first time in years. I attended to ask him about factual errors in his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth."

You wouldn't know it from the sparse media coverage, but the British High Court found so many errors in Gore's movie in 2007 that British schools no longer can show the film without the equivalent of a health warning.

I asked Gore if he intends to correct the record. He dodged the question, and the so-called reporters defended his right to be evasive by shutting off my mic.

He points out that these questions are increasingly important, what with the Waxman-Markey Bill waiting in the wings, and with the CBO recently reporting that the bill would drag down job and economic growth.

A House-passed bill that targets climate change through a cap-and-trade system of pollution credits would slow the nation's economic growth slightly over the next few decades and would create "significant" job losses from fossil fuel industries as the country shifts to renewable energy, the head of the Congressional Budget Office told a Senate energy panel Wednesday.

You would think a scientist with a broad grasp of the facts and issues would be pleased to dispense with such questions by answering them firmly and definitively.  They do seem to be important questions.

So, Why The Cold?

A commenter at Ace of Spades HQ made the astute and pithy observation after a global warming post that (and I'm paraphrasing here, as I can't find the exact quote):

"If only there was some huge, source of energy that could explain the climate variations.  It would have to be enormous, with natural fluctuations that could explain why sometimes we're warmer than other times.  And it would have to be in such proximity to our planet that it could affect all areas simultaneously.  I wonder..."

Well...

The BBC today notes not one, but two energy sources/reservoirs that may be worth considering.

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

[...]

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles

The key here is that climate models did not predict this flattening/falling of the temperature curve.  However, that doesn't stop some.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

Generally in science, to prove a hypothesis, models need to predict future outcomes as well as track with prior measurements.  If either looking forward or looking back are problematic then the model is bunk.  If these models took solar and ocean influences into account then why did they not predict 11 years of cooling?  Did anyone in 1998 tell us the world would cool over the next decade?  If so, I don't recall it.  I seem to recall there was "concensus" ... and general hysteria.

Add this to the recent information about Mann's hockey stick, and the rapid recovery of Arctic ice and record thickness of Antarctic ice, neither of which were predicted, and you have reason for serious questions.

Oil!! We Need More Oil! And We Need To Burn It Now!

Quick, bring back those clunkers!  We need more CO₂, and we need it now.

Latif predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. (1) "But how much? The jury is still out," he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a colder phase.

Latif said NAO cycles also explained the recent recovery of the Sahel region of Africa from the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. James Murphy, head of climate prediction at the Met Office, agreed and linked the NAO to Indian monsoons, Atlantic hurricanes and sea ice in the Arctic. "The oceans are key to decadal natural variability," he said.

Another favourite climate nostrum was upturned when Pope warned that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product of natural cycles rather than global warming. Preliminary reports suggest there has been much less melting this year than in 2007 or 2008.

In candid mood, climate scientists avoided blaming nature for their faltering predictions, however. "Model biases are also still a serious problem. We have a long way to go to get them right. They are hurting our forecasts," said Tim Stockdale of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK.

Here's the executive summary of the highlighted sections of the preceding  5 paragraphs:

Although Al Gore has been very concerned with human-caused global warming (and has scared a lot of others with his hijinx) these scientists, who remain AGW believers, conclude that

1. the NAO is likely responsible for the "strong global warming seen in the past three decades"
2. NAO cycles also explain the recovery of the Sahel region of Africa from droughts
3. NAO cycles also are linked to Arctic sea ice, Atlantic hurricanes and Indian monsoons
4. as a result "much less" melting of Arctic sea ice has occurred this year
5. scientists admit that the biases in their models are a "serious problem" that is hurting their forecasts.

Those of you still hoping for the passage of Waxman-Markey, you still want to jump off the economic cliff?  Personally, I'm going out to find a 9 mpg Hummer, so I can help keep the earth warm.

hat tip: Ace, who makes this astute observation:

"In many ways we know more about what will happen in the 2050s than next year," said Vicky Pope from the UK Met Office.

Actually you don't. It's just that the 2050's are comfortably remote in time and you have greater confidence about making predictions that won't be disproven for 40 years.

Someone Finally Read The Bill

None of the 219 Representatives who voted for Waxman-Markey actually read the bill before the vote, as it was still being assembled - with its 300 page last minute amendment - at the podium as the debate and vote were occurring.  The fine folks at National Review have gone through it now, however, in advance of Senate debate on the measure, and have discovered 50 things wrong with the bill.  Some are amusing, most are sad, and all are worth a look.  By the way, I think it's likely that the number 50 is a low estimate.  Here's a taste.

5. In addition to the permits, the bill also allows for the creation of “offsets” — the medieval-style indulgences of the carbon-footprint world. In fact, nearly all of Waxman-Markey’s carbon-reduction targets can be met with offsets alone through 2050, meaning decades before any actual reduction of greenhouse gases is required. That means huge new expenses for small businesses and consumers in return for basically zero environmental improvement.

This is, in fact, the best evidence yet that CO2 producing a large global warming effect is nonsense.  For if it were the case then this bill, as onerous as it is in terms of cost yet doing nothing to reduce emissions, would be howled at, not lauded, by the administration and other true believers.  Mr. Krugman instead took the opportunity to attack those who voted against it.  And if that wasn't enough evidence,

9. Waxman-Markey directs the EPA to ignore the real environmental impact of ethanol and other biofuels. The gigantic subsidies lavished on the farm lobby through the ethanol program encourage farmers to clear forest land to plant corn — a net environmental loss that the use of ethanol does nothing to offset.

It wouldn't be a Democrat-authored bill without union protectionism.  Here are two items that do just that.

12. Waxman-Markey provides an excuse for trade protectionism. The bill will give the Obama administration broad new powers to enact tariffs on imports from jurisdictions that have not had the poor sense to enact similar legislation, meaning that it invites both politically driven trade protectionism and retaliatory measures from abroad in the service of an empty green dream.

14. Naturally, Big Labor gets its piece of the pie, too. Projects receiving grants and financing under Waxman-Markey provisions will be required to implement Davis-Bacon union-wage rules, making it hard for non-union firms to compete — and ensuring that these “investments” pay out inflated union wages.

The former increase the cost of foreign competition once these green tariffs are applied, the latter increases the cost of doing business for non-union businesses by unilaterally ordering pay raises.  And if those cost increases weren't enough, there's this.

18. The legislation calls for the establishment of a Carbon Storage Research Corporation (CSRC) to steer $1 billion annually into the development of carbon-capture technologies. The CSRC would be funded via assessments on utility companies. Hear that? It’s the sound of another charge being added to your bill.

And, of course, ACORN gets a cut.  Another payoff to loyal Democrats.

42. Another Obama constituency, the community-organizing gang — i.e., ACORN — will be eligible to receive billions in funding as the bill “authorizes the Secretary [of Energy] to make grants to community development organizations to provide financing to businesses and projects that improve energy efficiency.” Think federally subsidized consultants paid $55 an hour to tell businesses to turn down their AC in the summer.

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.  Have a look at the whole list for the complete picture.  Then call your senator, particularly those of you in Maine, Nebraska, Louisiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  My own senators (NH), unfortunately, are set on this.  One will vote for, one against.

7/3/09 0910:  Meanwhile, why so afraid of dissenting views?  And "the largest corporate welfare program" ever?

Change In The Air

Amid all the Hope 'n Change* now taking place in Washington, there's been a steady increase in change of another kind.  Kimberley Strassel writes about it today in the Wall Street Journal as the U.S. House prepares to make another naked power and money grab under the guise of protecting the earth.  As if.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

Australia is considering their own Cap & Tax bill, and some after kicking the tires are walking away.

Mr. [Steve] Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.

Earlier we learned that the administration that was going to raise science to its rightful place in this debate is doing nothing of the kind.  (Originally in the NY Times Science blog.)

You can check out Dr. Pielke’s blog or a detailed rebuttal of how the report presents science in his area of expertise, the study of trends in natural disasters and their relation to climate change. While the new federal report (prepared by 13 agencies and the White House) paints a dire picture of climate change’s impacts, Dr. Pielke says that the authors of this new report, like those of previous reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Stern Review, cherrypick weak evidence that fits their own policy preferences. He faults all these reports for all relying on “non-peer reviewed, unsupportable studies rather than the relevant peer-reviewed literature” and for “featuring non-peer-reviewed work conducted by the authors.”

Which is, of course, exactly what Mr. Obama (while in the Senate) and his fellow Democrat senators previously accused Mr. Bush of doing.

The Cap & Tax program will raise prices for Americans on all goods and services.  The costs will be passed on to the consumer at every step of the production chain, and all in the name of cutting CO2 emissions, something that Mr. Obama calls a "contaminant," speaking of not understanding the science.  This is about government central control of economic activity, and about increasing tax receipts.  The one thing it's not about is protecting the environment.

The best evidence that this is nonsense hasn't yet been mentioned.  The fact that Al Gore is it's prime spokesman is the biggest red flag of all.

6/26/09 1600: Christopher Monckton takes apart the aforementioned administration report here (note: pdf format).

6/26/09 1625: Ooh, it looks like the environmental gestapo does not tolerate dissent.  But I thought that was the highest form of patriotism? Found at Wizbang.

*Hope 'n Change = increase in government control of, well, everything, including our lives

Premature Eulogy For The SUV

The NY Times is ready to throw the first shovel of dirt - and probably the last - on the large SUV, that most hated carbon emitter.

The fate of the Janesville, Moraine, and Newark plants was sealed this spring, when rising gas prices suddenly made S.U.V.’s unpopular, and long before President Bush approved $17.4 billion in emergency loans last week to keep G.M. and Chrysler out of bankruptcy.

While the overall new vehicle market has dropped 16 percent so far this year, sales of big S.U.V.’s have plummeted 40 percent.

With consumers shifting rapidly to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, G.M. no longer needed to produce big S.U.V.’s in Janesville as well as in a plant in Texas.

As a father of three, who travels for ski trips, visits to friends in Pennsylvania, New York (both City and upstate), and vacations in Cape Cod on occasion, and whose daughters have friends along often for even those drives around town, I can safely say that the SUV is going nowhere.  No vehicle I've seen combines the snow-worthiness, the room for tons of gear, the comfortable seating for children of all sizes, and the safety on hazardous roads of the large SUV.  We have one, which we don't use everyday for routine driving.  But it's great for getting to work in two feet of New Hampshire snow, along with those applications listed above.

Sales have dropped 40% - and will pick back up when a) the economy is better and b) gas prices fall.  Oh, wait, we only need a) to happen now.  GM, Chrysler and Ford better have contingency plans to ramp back up production in the future, or the Toyota Sequoia, Nissan Armada, Audi Q7, Infiniti QX56 and other similar vehicles will be the beneficiaries.

The Global (Warming) Sheriffs

For those of you who thought that the president-elect might be a centrist in liberals clothing, the true colors seem to be emerging in his choices for positions with influence over environmental and energy policy.  From a Wall Street Journal editorial 9 days ago, after Clinton-era EPA head Carole Browner was named "energy czar":

The Obama Administration is "sitting on some authority," Ms. Browner warned at the Center for American Progress recently. She says the White House is prepared to use that power "in the event that perhaps there can't be some sort of agreement reached with Congress on how to move legislation." In other words, Ms. Browner will use the threat of brute regulatory force as a political bludgeon if Capitol Hill declines to inflict some carbon tax on voters in the midst of a recession.

Not only will this incur colossal economic costs, but it bypasses normal democratic debate. In that sense it's suggestive of the radicalism of Mr. Obama's climate agenda. When Mr. Obama said during the campaign that he favored "nothing less than the complete transformation of our economy" in the name of global warming, we figured he couldn't mean something so utopian. Maybe he does.

Mr. Obama's latest climate related appointments are just as radical.

Signaling a break with Bush's policies on global warming, Obama named John Holdren, an award-winning environmental policy professor at Harvard University, to head the Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chair the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Obama called Holdren "one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change".

[...]

The nominees also include Jane Lubchenco, a world-renowned environmental expert and marine biologist from Oregon, who will head up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency that monitors global weather patterns and issues major storm forecasts.

These recent picks, along with the naming of Nobel-prize laureate physicist Steven Chu last week to head the Department of Energy, indicated Obama will work to unwind the energy and climate change policies of the Bush administration, which refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

AFP should have said "rightly refused to ratify" Kyoto.

On the other hand, even those who support radical cuts in carbon-dioxide emissions are realizing that the Kyoto Protocol is a failed instrument for achieving their goals. "The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge," says British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Perhaps now one country will, and at the worst possible time.

3 Related Stories

First up (and I don't have a snippet of video or a transcript but it was on in the surgeon's lounge) James Carville with Wolf Blitzer in CNN's Situation Room this afternoon, discussing former VP Al Gore's call for carbon-free energy and Mr. Carville's call for Barack Obama to make him second banana again, said the following (as accurately as I can recall).

"Al Gore has been right about more things than anyone I've known in Washington."

Take a minute to digest that.  (And if I misquoted, let me know what the actual wording was.)

Second, the Al Gore story itself.  Chicken Little speaks:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States should be making all of its electricity with renewable and carbon-free energy in 10 years, former Vice President Al Gore said Thursday.

"The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk," Gore said.

In a speech at Washington's Constitution Hall, Gore touched on an array of the nation's current woes, saying the economic, environmental and national security crises are all related...

In the movie, Gore explains how the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have grown exponentially in the last few decades and how that has led to changes in the Earth's climate, such as shrinking polar ice caps and an increase in the number of hurricanes and other violent storms.

To counteract the effects of global warming, Gore has pushed for polices that would reduce the emission of carbon dioxide, such as greater energy conservation and the development of alternative energy sources like wind and solar energy. Gore has also advocated for governments to tax the emission of carbon dioxide.

Third up?  Well, not so much, Mr. Gore: (hat tip: Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades)  Dr. Evans is an Australian scientist who spent 6 years as a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office. 

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly?... It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"...

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it...

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming...

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980)...

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect...

The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.

Only if a Republican had done it, Dr. Evans.  Only if a Republican had done it.

Read point #2 again.  Now read it again.  Once more.  Once you grasp the concept that correlation does not equal causation you will have to sit down and rethink all that you've heard from alarmists and media over the last 10-15 years.

Back to Mr. Carville and Mr. Gore.  The guy I feel bad for is Mr. Carville.  Imagine the vast numbers of people who have been telling him falsehoods the last 16 years.

Yet Another Biofuel Benefit

In addition to making the world safe from the evil pollutant CO2 (that substance that plants actually require for photosynthesis), biofuels are raising economic standards in agricultural areas.

LONDON (AFP) - Biofuels have caused world food prices to increase by 75 percent, according to the findings of an unpublished World Bank report published in The Guardian newspaper on Friday.

The daily said the report was finished in April but was not published to avoid embarrassing the US government, which has claimed plant-derived fuels have pushed up prices by only three percent.

Biofuels, which supporters claim are a "greener" alternative to using fossil fuel and cut greenhouse gas emissions, and rising food prices will be on the agenda when G8 leaders meet in Japan next week for their annual summit.

Not that I buy everything produced by World Bank analysts, but it does fit the laws of supply and demand.  Just so we're clear, this global warming seems more than a bit anemic over the last dozen or so years, and the lack of correlation with CO2 levels is noticeable to even the untrained eye.

Let Me See If I Understand This ...

The polar bear is endangered by a lack of sea ice ...

ScienceDaily (May 15, 2008) — U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne  announced May 14 that he is accepting the recommendation of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  The listing, the government says, is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat.

... a lack of sea ice that, strangely enough, suddenly doesn't exist anymore.

On a global basis, world sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were “unprecedented” for the month of April in over 25 years. Levels are the third highest (for April) since the commencement of records in 1979, exceeded only by levels in 1979 and 1982. This continues a pattern established earlier in 2008, as global sea ice in March 2008 was also the third highest March on record, while January 2008 sea ice was the second highest January on record.

Does anyone have an explanation?  Incidentally, while (prior to this year) northern hemisphere sea ice had been declining at 2.8% ... per decade ... southern hemisphere sea ice has been increasing at 4.2% per decade.  Will we be removing the designation if over the next year or two sea ice remains at higher levels?  Right, silly question.

This just in: The earth's climate changes, and always has.

*See the nifty graphs at Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit.

"Belief In" Global Warming

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal carried a Holman Jenkins Jr. column on the patron saint of rising ocean levels, Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, the former VP.  It's a very good read, if you can get past the subscriber wall.  I found one quote particularly interesting.  Mr. Jenkins first notes the psychological work of another couple of Nobel Prize winners:

How this honor has befallen the former Veep 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.

Think "global warming" as both a concept and a slogan.  It becomes irresistible to many to accept it as fact when, per their level of understanding, they have otherwise little basis to do so.

Later in the column Mr. Jenkins quotes a business associate of Mr. Gore's, Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist with a firm interested in alternative energy investments:

Mr. Khosla told a recent Senate hearing: "One does not need to believe in climate change to support climate change legislation. . . . Many executives would prefer to deal with known legislation even if unwarranted."

Let me translate.  "It doesn't matter to me if global warming exists and is man-created or not.  I can make a boatload of money if you pass the laws, and the CEO's won't mind.  They'll just pass the costs off to the consumer."  That, in a nutshell, is reprehensible.

On second thought, let's look at his specific words.  Acceptance of the truth of climate change is a "belief."  Is such a belief warranted?  What if the data don't support it?

No, really.  What if the data don't support it?

The IPCC falsified data showing a sea level rise from 1992-2002 according to Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden.  In an interview by George Murphy,  Morner cites  various examples of falsification of evidence claiming sea level rises.

Let's go to the original interview for the specifics.

So, for example, those people in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It's the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you shouldn't use...

And that is just ridiculous. Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that ... From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level] was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no trend whatsoever. We could see those spikes: a very rapid rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.

Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC's] publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a “correction factor,” which they took from the tide gauge.

"Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that."  So, what if sea levels aren't rising?  Do you still "believe" and succumb to the availability cascade ...?

12/9/07 1325: And I'll be he flew there on a private jet, too.

"Al uses his position for great personal gain. He goes from event to event delivering a similar speech, earning a large fee, and a lot of the time he doesn't actually inform the audience.

"He refused to speak to journalists and security would usher away VIP guests and the Press.

"He was being very precious and demanded his own VIP room before the event, where he held his own exclusive reception.

"The other guests were cut off. It was very clear that many guests were disappointed by this."

You Never Heard Of Videoconferencing?

There are all kinds of services now available to get people together to disseminate information.  Microsoft has NetMeeting, and there's GoToMeeting.com, for example.  But I guess the temptation to spend an idyllic holiday on a tropical isle was a little to strong.  Bali is just wonderful this time of year.  And if you have to burn boatloads of jet fuel with private planes, so be it.

BALI, Indonesia -- Never before have so many people converged to try to save the planet from global warming, with more than 10,000 jetting into this Indonesian resort island, from government ministers to Nobel laureates to drought-stricken farmers.

But critics say they are contributing to the very problem they aim to solve.

"Nobody denies this is an important event, but huge numbers of people are going, and their emissions are probably going to be greater than a small African country," said Chris Goodall, author of the book "How to Live a Low-Carbon Life."

Could it be that they're not as convinced on the data as they'd like us to believe?  Maybe.  For this is not the only recent gathering.

Two big climate conferences have been held in less than a month, both in idyllic, far-flung holiday destinations -- first Valencia, Spain, and now Bali. They were preceded by dozens of smaller gatherings. In Bangkok, Paris, Vienna, Washington, New York and Sydney, in Rio de Janeiro, Anchorage, Helsinki and the Indian Ocean island of Kurumba.

See the world!! Join the IPCC and leave your carbon footprint in all corners of the globe!

The List Of 'What Isn't' Is Shorter

Add divorce to the list of things that are.

The category?  Things that are "bad for the environment."

Heck, He's No Al Gore!

Could this kind of thing begin to take a little of the shine off of that Nobel Prize?

By John Coleman

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 an allusion [sic] 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...

...Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

And who is John Coleman?

The Weather Channel was the brainchild of former WLS-TV Chicago                 chief meteorologist and Good Morning America forecaster John Coleman,                 who took his idea to Landmark's then-chief Frank Batten.

Okay, sure, he's no Richard Lindzen.  But it's also clear that he's no Al Gore.

A 'Fake But Accurate' Nobel

I'm with Czech President Vaclav Klaus on this one.

Prague (dpa) - Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a rare vocal global- warming sceptic among heads of state, is "somewhat surprised" that former US vice president Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, the president's spokesman Petr Hajek said in a statement.

"The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct," the statement said. "It rather seems that Gore's doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace."

Klaus said in a recent speech that environmentalists' efforts to halt global warming "fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity."

So Al Gore, former VP under President Clinton, wins a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in "raising awareness" about global warming.  Well, we already know that there are numerous inaccuracies and exaggerations in "An Inconvenient Truth."  We also know that Mr. Gore's presentation was, shall we say, selective.  Perhaps the standard now for Nobel Prizes is the same as Dan Rather's was for CBS News.

Scott Johnson of Power Line has a rundown of some of the "luminaries" that have won Nobel Peace Prizes over the last 20 years, and Jay Tea gives his own rundown at Wizbang.  It's enlightening.

By the way, if we're going to talk climate science, I'll hitch my wagon to the climate scientist from MIT, and not the guy who has a Bachelor of Arts in Government.

Say, That Is Inconvenient!

A British court was forced to fully assess Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" after the government decided to distribute it widely as an "educational" film.  The verdict is .. how shall I say it ? ... rather inconvenient, I suppose.  There were 11 major inaccuracies, from polar bear deaths to sea level rises to Hurricane Katrina.  In short, all of the most notable points in the film were knocked down.

Although a full ruling has yet to be given, the Court found that the film was misleading in 11 respects and that the Guidance Notes drafted by the Education Secretary’s advisors served only to exacerbate the political propaganda in the film.

In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

The eleven are listed at the link.  Remember this the next time someone lauds Mr. Gore's work, particularly if it's the Nobel Prize committee.

Hat tip: Curt.

Save Everything!

Alas, we are all indeed doomed.  On "the sidelines at the Clinton Global Initiative" (a grandiose moniker if ever there was one) scientist Jane Goodall claims that biofuel production is hurting the rainforest.

NEW YORK, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Primate scientist Jane Goodall said on Wednesday the race to grow crops for vehicle fuels is damaging rain forests in Asia, Africa and South America and adding to the emissions blamed for global warming.

"We're cutting down forests now to grow sugarcane and palm oil for biofuels and our forests are being hacked into by so many interests that it makes them more and more important to save now," Goodall said on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative, former U.S. President Bill Clinton's annual philanthropic meeting.

This on the heels of the news that biofuels produce more greenhouse gases than petroleum-based fuels.

Growing and burning many biofuel crops may actually raise, rather than lower, greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the conclusion of a new study led by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, best known for his work on the ozone layer. He and his and his colleagues have calculated that growing some of the most commonly used biofuel crops releases around twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N₂O, also known as ‘laughing gas’) than previously thought – wiping out any benefits from not using fossil fuels and, worse, probably contributing to global warming.

‘The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuels are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto,’ Keith Smith, a co-author on the paper and atmospheric scientist from the University of Edinburgh, told Chemistry World magazine. ‘What we are saying is that [growing many biofuels] is probably of no benefit and in fact is actually making the climate issue worse.’

I guess that's a problem if you believe that greenhouse gases are the driver for global warming, a point which remains under considerable, if denied by one side, debate.  File this under "damned if you do, damned if you don't."  Could oil be not only the most plentiful and easily obtainable fuel, but the best currently available mass fuel and the most environment friendly?  You know, if only there weren't so many darn earthlings in need of cheap energy ...

 

"A Moose Once Bit My Sister ..."

The Norwegians are concerned about moose burps.  No, really.

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.

Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.

Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway's technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.

Bacteria in a moose's stomach create methane gas which is considered even more destructive to the environment than carbon dioxide gas. Cows pose the same problem.

Let's not forget that the plural of "moose" is "moose."  This doesn't even consider the moose population in Maine, or in Canada.  Or the caribou in Canada.  Or cows and sheep the world over.  I mean, there are sixty million sheep in New Zealand, and only around three million people.  Let's not forget that methane is 23 times as potent a "greenhouse gas" as CO2!

Of course, if it's really fluctuations in radiation from the sun and orbital variations that most influence earth's overall temperature, then all of this, while fascinating, is not worth worrying about.

(for those who don't recognize the title, go here.)

If Yogurt Entrepreneurs Were Climate Scientists ...

... then I'd be a bit more worried about my "environmental scorecard."  New Hampshire-based Stonyfield Farms makes (IMHO) tasteless-though-allegedly-more-healthy yogurt, but the CEO seems distracted by other considerations.  He should be punching up the flavor.

LONDONDERRY - This score card doesn't track a game. After all, winning or losing could mean the difference between life and death.

That'd a tad melodramatic, even for alarmists.

The Climate Counts score card, brainchild of Stonyfield Farm yogurt company President Gary Hirshberg, rates 56 corporations on their commitment to reduce global warming. Its goal is to influence the companies to become more environmentally friendly.

A nonprofit organization, Climate Counts is bankrolled by the Londonderry yogurt company. The program is two years in the making, but its roots reach back decades. Hirshberg studied climate at Hampshire College, graduating in 1971.

I'm impressed.  1971?  Isn't that just about the time that Global Cooling was the threat?  Oh, but we're much more sophisticated now.

"Global warming is real," Hirshberg said. "We have 10 years to do something significant about it, and we can."

And Soylent Green is people.

Climate Counts Project Director Wood Turner wants consumers to use the score card to guide purchases and investments and let companies know that their score informed decisions on whether to buy their products.

You mean like making a decision on whether to fly Jet Blue again?  Mr. Hirshberg is betting his company's rep on global warming alarmism, if the homepage of the website is any indication.  It's replete with a link about CO2 offsets and plenty of wonderful sounding links like "Wellness," "Earth Actions," and a description of the Climate Counts projects entitled, "The Way You Shop Could Change The World."  Wow.

But, being a capitalist at heart, I make my decisions based on my, and my family's, best interests.  So, while Stonyfield Farms yogurt may be healthy, it's pricey and the taste relegates it to the "only if it were one of the last options and I haven't eaten in days" bin, just ahead of brussels sprouts.  Jet Blue, on the other hand, has a good product, and if the price and time of the flights work for me I'd fly them.  And, Mr. Hirshberg, you can keep your environmental scorecard.

Choosing The Right Parents

From a financial standpoint, at least.  First there was Lebron:

James became a father for the second time early Thursday when his girlfriend, Savannah Brinson, gave birth to the couple's second son, Bryce Maximus James.

[...]

"You put everything in perspective," he said. "This is definitely special for me, being a part of the NBA and being a part of the NBA finals. It's great. Win, lose or draw, this is special for my family, especially to have another James. It doesn't get any better than this."

Then there was Tiger:

Tiger Woods failed to deliver a championship Sunday in the U.S. Open, but his wife, Elin, delivered a special prize Monday morning that he said last week was far more important than any golf title.

Woods announced on his Web site that he and Elin became the proud parents of a daughter, Sam Alexis Woods.

"Both Elin and Sam are doing well and resting peacefully," Woods wrote after becoming a father, one day after Father's Day.

Then there was the Rainbow Warrior:

NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Jeff Gordon won't have to miss a race for the birth of his daughter.

NASCAR's four-time champion became a father Wednesday when his wife, model Ingrid Vandebosch, gave birth to a girl. Gordon announced on his Web site that Ella Sofia Gordon was born Wednesday morning.

"It's been an absolutely incredible experience," Gordon said. "Ingrid came through amazingly and we're both really happy and overjoyed. We can't wait to get home and start our lives together as a family."

Congratulations, everyone.  Now, be the daddy.

When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?

Paul, who only occasionally now posts at Wizbang!, did so yesterday on his current most favored topic, global warming.  His post, "New Study Proves Global Warming Models Worthless," makes the point that if the models that some scientists are using to make predictions about global warming are off by a factor of three, regardless of whether they over- or under-estimate the effects they are essentially meaningless.  You can't know trust projections based on such a model.  Such results require going back to the drawing board.  To try and draw conclusions, or worse, make policy based on such inaccuracy is foolish at best and dishonest at worst.

I was drawn, however, to a comment left by someone who clearly disagrees with the premise that humans may not be responsible for what global warming has occurred.  Here is the comment in its entirety.

Here's what I don't get:

- do you think the earth is getting warmer, or not?

- if you do, do you have any *evidence* that global warming is caused by something else *other than* human activities?

- do you have any *reasons why* human activities can't be causing this warming?

- do you have any reasons why global warming will just *stop*?

- do you think worldwide flooding will be awesome?

I mean, I honestly don't get it. Seriously. All arguments aside, can you just explain to me why you think this way?

Consider the first question, and perhaps some data might help those considerations.  The next comment points to, amazingly, the raw data, broken down by measuring station.

Next we have "prove the negative" questions designed so that the asker doesn't really have to consider the answer.  You see, it's up to those who don't believe man has been conclusively proven to be responsible for global warming to prove to the true believers that man is not, in fact, responsible.  The scientific method involves a hypothesis, experiments that test the hypothesis, and consideration of confounding variables.  The GW alarmists would stand this on its head and require those who question the hypothesis disprove it.

And, seriously, "do you have any reasons why human activities can't be causing this warming?" is such a laughable construct for serious inquiry that I don't know where to start.

In response to the fourth question, "do you have any reasons why global warming will just stop?" I would ask "do you have any evidence that climate should be, or even has been, completely stable through time?"

And let's not even talk about worldwide flooding until we've answered the other questions, because if warming is occurring, and if said warming is not due primarily to the activities of man, then we don't really have any control over whether it occurs, do we?  So perhaps we'd better answer that question definitively.

By the way, if you keep reading from those two comments on down, there are several serious responses to the questions.

Steven Hayward, Meet Al Gore

Another film worth a look, in two parts, via Power Line (thanks).  Part One:

Part Two:

Spend the 47 minutes to have a look.  Fred Barnes quotes Mr. Hayward here:

It's important to note than Hayward, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is not a global warming denier. "Much of what Vice President Gore says about climate change is correct," Hayward says in the film. "The planet is warming. Human beings are playing a substantial role in that warming." Beyond that, however, he disagrees sharply with Gore.

"The problem with Vice President Gore and other global warming extremists is that they distort the science, grossly exaggerate the risks, argue that anyone who disagrees with them is corrupt, and suggest that solutions are easy and cheap," Hayward says. "And that's an all too convenient fiction."

I think I'd rephrase the first paragraph slightly, particularly given some of the things he discusses in the film.  "The planet seems to be warming.  Human beings may be playing a substantial role in that warming, but there are too many unknowns currently to be definitive."