Not Cool Anymore - Global warmism's winter of discontent.
Ubiquitous
invented global warming, eight years later we handed a decisive presidential
victory to an avowed global warmist. And while the message of Barack Obama's
candidacy on this subject was a bit muddled--he was for "change," while global
warmists say they want to stop "climate" change--there is a widespread belief
that the voters handed President Obama a mandate to "do something" about
global warming.
A poll released last week by the Pew Research Center, however, calls this into
question. In the New York Times's "Dot Earth" blog, Andrew Revkin described
the findings:
According to the survey of 1,503 adults, global warming, on
its own, ranks last out of 20 surveyed issues. . . .
Although the more general issue of protecting the environment
ranked higher than climate (named by 41 percent of the poll
subjects) that figure was 15 percentage points lower than in
the same poll a year ago.
Revkin also links to a Rasmussen survey that finds Americans increasingly
skeptical about the science behind global warmism:
Forty-four percent (44%) of U.S. voters now say long-term
planetary trends are the cause of global warming, compared
to 41% who blame it on human activity. . . .
In July 2006, 46% of voters said global warming is caused
primarily by human activities, while 35% said it is due to
long-term planetary trends.
Why have global warmists lost ground with the public? One obvious reason is
the recession. "The economy" and "jobs" top the Pew list of top priorities,
and both have increased sharply over the past couple of years. People who are
afraid of something real--losing their jobs or the value of their assets--have
little energy left for esoteric and hypothetical terrors.
Another reason is that it is really cold out. Past Pew surveys were also taken
in January, so that the figures can be construed as seasonally adjusted, but
this has been an especially harsh winter, which seems to provide experiential
evidence against the claims of global warmism.
Of course, this feeling is illusory: Weather is different from climate, and it
is possible to have cold winters even amid a long-term trend toward hotter
weather--just as, for example, the stock market has down days during a bull
market.
Global warmists, however, have squandered their credibility in making this
point, because they never fail to seize on a hurricane or a sweltering summer
day as "evidence" to make their case. In fact, so cynical is the public about
the claims of global warmists that the clichéd response to a _pleasant_ winter
day is, "If this is global warming, bring it on."
An additional problem is that whereas global warmists are _emotionally_
consistent--in a constant state of alarm, accompanied by contempt, even
hatred, for those who dare ask questions--their claims are filled with logical
inconsistencies. A reader spotted a hilarious example in this Los Angeles
Times article:
Even if by some miracle of environmental activism global
carbon dioxide levels reverted to pre-industrial levels,
it still would take 1,000 years or longer for the climate
changes already triggered to be reversed, scientists said
Monday.
The gas that is already there and the heat that has been
absorbed by the ocean will exert their effects for centuries,
according to the analysis, published Monday in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Science.
Over the long haul, the warming will melt the polar icecaps
more than previously had been estimated, raising ocean levels
substantially, the report said.
And changes in rainfall patterns will bring droughts
comparable to those that caused the 1930s Dust Bowl to
the American Southwest, southern Europe, northern Africa
and western Australia.
"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon
dioxide, the climate would go back to normal in 100 years,
200 years," lead author Susan Solomon, a senior scientist
at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
said in a telephone news conference. "That's not true." . . .
Solomon said in a statement that absorption of carbon dioxide
by the oceans and release of heat from the oceans - the one
process acting to cool the Earth and the other to warm it--will
"work against each other to keep temperatures almost constant
for more than 1,000 years."
Is it absolutely crucial to the planet's future that we curtail greenhouse
gases this instant, or would it not make any difference anyway? If the latter,
what sense does it make to be alarmed? And that last quote by Solomon is a
classic head-scratcher. We're supposed to _worry_ that temperatures will be
"almost constant for more than 1,000 years"? That's what they mean by global
warming?
Weather forecast for the year 3009: _Plus ça change, plus c'est la même
chose._
Ubiquitous
By John Coleman
The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments
across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact
laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints.
Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic
turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have led tthe public
to be skeptical that any runaway global warning. There is now awareness that
there may be reason to question whether CO2 is a pollutant and a significant
greenhouse gas.
How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government?
And how will we ever stop it?
The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the
Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps
Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the
opportunity to obtain major funding from the Navy for doing measurements and
research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was
conducting atomic bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute's areas of
interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the
University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the
environment from the burning of fossil fuels. Revelle tagged on to Suess
studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957. The paper raises the
possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and
causing atmospheric warming. It seems to be a plea for funding for more
studies. Funding, frankly, is where Revelle's mind was most of the time.
Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure
the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide. In 1960 Keeling published his first
paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the
increase to the burning of fossil fuels.
These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming,
even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse
gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny
fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures.
Now let me take you back to the1950s when this was going on. Our cities were
entrapped in a pall of pollution from the crude internal combustion engines
that powered cars and trucks back then and from the uncontrolled emissions
from power plants and factories. Cars and factories and power plants were
filling the air with all sorts of pollutants. There was a valid and serious
concern about the health consequences of this pollution and a strong
environmental movement was developing to demand action. Government accepted
this challenge and new environmental standards were set. Scientists and
engineers came to the rescue. New reformulated fuels were developed for cars,
as were new high tech, computer controlled engines and catalytic converters.
By the mid seventies cars were no longer big time polluters, emitting only
some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes. Likewise, new fuel
processing and smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants
and their emissions were greatly reduced, as well.
But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very
existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue. So the research papers
from Scripps came at just the right moment. And, with them came the birth of
an issue; man-made global warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of
fossil fuels.
Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing.
Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger for funding saw
this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants began to flow
and alarming hypothesis began to show up everywhere.
The Keeling curve showed a steady rise in CO2 in atmosphere during the period
since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. As of today, carbon
dioxide has increased from 215 to 385 parts per million. But, despite the
increases, it is still only a trace gas in the atmosphere. While the increase
is real, the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about 41
hundredths of one percent.
Several hypothesis emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric
component of CO2 might cause a significant warming. But they remained
unproven. Years have passed and the scientists kept reaching out for evidence
of the warming and proof of their theories. And, the money and environmental
claims kept on building up.
Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a
Canadian born United Nation's bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking
for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong
organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he
developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political
operatives from the UN to continue a series of meeting.
Strong developed the concept that the UN could demand payments from the
advanced nations for the climatic damage from their burning of fossil fuels to
benefit the underdeveloped nations, a sort of CO2 tax that would be the
funding for his one-world government. But, he needed more scientific evidence
to support his primary thesis. So Strong championed the establishment of the
United Nation's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This was not a pure climate study
scientific organization, as we have been led to believe. It was an
organization of one-world government UN bureaucrats, environmental activists
and environmentalist scientists who craved the UN funding so they could
produce the science they needed to stop the burning of fossil fuels. Over the
last 25 years they have been very effective. Hundreds of scientific papers,
four major international meetings and reams of news stories about climatic
Armageddon later, the UN IPCC has made its points to the satisfaction of most
and even shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
At the same time, that Maurice Strong was busy at the UN, things were getting
a bit out of hand for the man who is now called the grandfather of global
warming, Roger Revelle. He had been very politically active in the late 1950's
as he worked to have the University of California locate a San Diego campus
adjacent to Scripps Institute in La Jolla. He won that major war, but lost an
all important battle afterward when he was passed over in the selection of the
first Chancellor of the new campus.
He left Scripps finally in 1963 and moved to Harvard University to establish a
Center for Population Studies. It was there that Revelle inspired one of his
students to become a major global warming activist. This student would say
later, "It felt like such a privilege to be able to hear about the readouts
from some of those measurements in a group of no more than a dozen
undergraduates. Here was this teacher presenting something not years old but
fresh out of the lab, with profound implications for our future!" The student
described him as "a wonderful, visionary professor" who was "one of the first
people in the academic community to sound the alarm on global warming," That
student was Al Gore. He thought of Dr. Revelle as his mentor and referred to
him frequently, relaying his experiences as a student in his book Earth in the
Balance, published in 1992.
So there it is, Roger Revelle was indeed the grandfather of global warming.
His work had laid the foundation for the UN IPCC, provided the anti-fossil
fuel ammunition to the environmental movement and sent Al Gore on his road to
his books, his move, his Nobel Peace Prize and a hundred million dollars from
the carbon credits business.
What happened next is amazing. The global warming frenzy was becoming the
cause celeb of the media. After all the media is mostly liberal, loves Al
Gore, loves to warn us of impending disasters and tell us "the sky is falling,
the sky is falling". The politicians and the environmentalist loved it, too.
But the tide was turning with Roger Revelle. He was forced out at Harvard at
65 and returned to California and a semi retirement position at UCSD. There he
had time to rethink Carbon Dioxide and the greenhouse effect. The man who had
inspired Al Gore and given the UN the basic research it needed to launch its
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was having second thoughts. In 1988
he wrote two cautionary letters to members of Congress. He wrote, "My own
personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be
convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human
beings, in both positive and negative ways." He added, "…we should be careful
not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes
clearer."
And in 1991 Revelle teamed up with Chauncey Starr, founding director of the
Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the
U.S. Weather Satellite Service, to write an article for Cosmos magazine. They
urged more research and begged scientists and governments not to move too fast
to curb greenhouse CO2 emissions because the true impact of carbon dioxide was
not at all certain and curbing the use of fossil fuels could have a huge
negative impact on the economy and jobs and our standard of living. I have
discussed this collaboration with Dr. Singer. He assures me that Revelle was
considerably more certain than he was at the time that carbon dioxide was not
a problem.
Did Roger Revelle attend the Summer enclave at the Bohemian Grove in Northern
California in the Summer of 1990 while working on that article? Did he deliver
a lakeside speech there to the assembled movers and shakers from Washington
and Wall Street in which he apologized for sending the UN IPCC and Al Gore
onto this wild goose chase about global warming? Did he say that the key
scientific conjecture of his lifetime had turned out wrong? The answer to
those questions is, "I think so, but I do not know it for certain". I have not
managed to get it confirmed as of this moment. It's a little like Las Vegas;
what is said at the Bohemian Grove stays at the Bohemian Grove. There are no
transcripts or recordings and people who attend are encouraged not to talk.
Yet, the topic is so important, that some people have shared with me on an
informal basis.
Roger Revelle died of a heart attack three months after the Cosmos story was
printed. Oh, how I wish he were still alive today. He might be able to stop
this scientific silliness and end the global warming scam.
Al Gore has dismissed Roger Revelle's Mea culpa as the actions of senile old
man. And, the next year, while running for Vice President, he said the science
behind global warming is settled and there will be no more debate, From 1992
until today, he and his cohorts have refused to debate global warming and when
they are asked about we skeptics, they insult us and call us names.
So today we have the acceptance of carbon dioxide as the culprit of global
warming. It is concluded that when we burn fossil fuels we are leaving a
dastardly carbon footprint which we must pay Al Gore or the environmentalists
to offset. Our governments on all levels are considering taxing the use of
fossil fuels. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of
naming CO2 as a pollutant and strictly regulating its use to protect our
climate. The new President and the US congress are on board. Many state
governments are moving on the same course.
We are already suffering from this CO2 silliness in many ways. Our energy
policy has been strictly hobbled by no drilling and no new refineries for
decades. We pay for the shortage this has created every time we buy gas. On
top of that the whole thing about corn based ethanol costs us millions of tax
dollars in subsidies. That also has driven up food prices. And, all of this is
a long way from over.
And, I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it.
Global Warming. It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a high jacking of
public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history.
John Coleman
1-28-2009
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.
felonio...@aol.com
The brilliance of the global warming liars is that everything, either
warming or cooling, is evidence that it exists, and that the evil
United States (and Bush in particular) is entirely responsible for it.
Just point and laugh like the rest of us.
Rich
news:-vmdnQaW48whaR_U...@giganews.com:
> Although America in 2000 passed up an opportunity to elect the man who
> invented global warming, eight years later we handed a decisive
> presidential victory to an avowed global warmist. And while the
> message of Barack Obama's candidacy on this subject was a bit
> muddled--he was for "change," while global warmists say they want to
> stop "climate" change--there is a widespread belief that the voters
> handed President Obama a mandate to "do something" about global
> warming.
Al Gore continues to fly everywhere on his private jet too!
The global warming world socialist conspiracy will continue.
