In The News
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...INHOFE, THE APOSTATE, BY DEBRA J. SAUNDERS, THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Monday October 16, 2006
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
DEBRA J. SAUNDERS
Sunday, October 15, 2006
GLOBAL WARMING is a religion, not science. That's why acolytes in the media attack global-warming critics, not with scientific arguments, but for their apostasy. Then they laud global-warming believers, not for reducing greenhouse gases, but simply for believing global warming is a coming catastrophe caused by man. The important thing is to have faith in those who warn: The End Is Near.
So a New York Times editorial Thursday took after Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., not for being a Doubting Thomas, but as the headline read, a "Doubting Inhofe." The brunt of the editorial was not a scientific refutation of Inhofe's arguments against the global-warming craze -- other than to cite a National Academy of Sciences report that warned that the Earth is approaching the warmest temperatures in 12,000 years -- a short blip in time to your average geologist.
The Times' focus was on Inhofe's refusal to bow to "the consensus among mainstream scientists and the governments of nearly every industrialized nation concerning manmade climate change." That is, Inhofe has had the effrontery to challenge elite orthodoxy. Or, as the editorial put it, Inhofe "has really buttressed himself with the will to disbelieve."
Get thee away, Satan.
"I see a sense of desperation that I haven't seen before," Inhofe told me by phone Thursday, "and frankly I'm enjoying it."
CNN's Miles O'Brien also challenged Inhofe in a similar vein. O'Brien cited the NAS study, then assailed Inhofe with quotes from notable Republicans -- President Bush, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut -- who recognize global warming. Note that Schwarzenegger gets into global-warming heaven just for believing, despite his four Hummers and use of a private jet.
Global warming even has a martyr, NASA scientist James Hansen, who told O'Brien in January that under the Bushies, "you're not free to speak your own mind." It's amazing that a scientist can complain the he is being muzzled -- while appearing on CNN and "60 Minutes."
Be it noted that Hansen endorsed Sen. John Kerry for president in 2004 and received a $250,000 award from a foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry in 2001. At the time, Hansen told the New York Times, the award had "no impact on my evaluation of the climate problem or on my political leanings." I believe that.
I also believe we should all be so muzzled. What does Inhofe make of the NAS finding? Inhofe recognizes that the Earth is warming, but sees this as part of the natural cycle. Inhofe mentioned the Medieval Warm Period -- 1000 to 1270 A.D. when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland. So he doesn't buy this 12,000-year high. His office referred me to a piece University of Oklahoma geology professor David Deming penned for the Normal Transcript that noted, "The fact that the thermometer wasn't invented until the year 1714 ought to give us pause when evaluating this remarkable claim."
I remain agnostic on global warming, as I've seen good arguments on both sides. I know, however, that I never will be convinced that global warming is a scientific threat as long as believers put most of their energy into establishing orthodoxy and denying that reputable global-warming skeptics exist.
The Times' "mainstream scientists" line undermines the editorial's credibility as it ignores the likes of MIT climate scientist Richard S. Lindzen, who argues that clouds and water vapor will counteract greenhouse-gas emissions. Ditto the 60 Canadian scientists who wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that there is no " 'consensus' among climate scientists."
Let me add the Copenhagen Consensus, a group of Nobel Prize-winning scientists and economists that looks at the best way to spend a hypothetical $50 billion to benefit mankind, rated fighting global warming as a "bad" use of money. That's amazing, when you consider the pressure that is put upon scientists to conform.
"Consensus" is another word for clique science. The good people are true believers, the bad people exhibit a "will to disbelieve." Editors used to salute healthy skepticism. Now some are global-warming Torquemadas.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT..."McCarthyism, Press Bias, Policy-Advice Corruption and Propaganda Everywhere"
Friday October 13, 2006
"McCarthyism, Press Bias, Policy-Advice Corruption and Propaganda Everywhere"
Professor Bob Carter is an experienced environmental scientist and a founding member of the Australian Environment Foundation. Here's a link to his website.
October 9, 2006
The debate on global warming has, to its detriment, long ceased to be a scientific one. Instead, moral fervor for this cause has become a leading religion of our time.
Maintaining the fiction that human-caused global warming is so dangerous that it requires the restructuring of the world economy has come to involve the dedicated efforts of a legion of disciples. Here’s a brief description of four main ways that they pursue their agenda.
McCarthyism
The Attorney General of California, Bill Lockyer, together with such environmental activist groups as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, has recently taken aim at the so-called “climate skeptics”.
The Association of Automobile Manufacturers and some car makers challenging the California’s greenhouse emissions laws have sued the state, claiming that the implementation of state emission rules will have no significant effect on checking global warming, which is likely true.
But Lockyer, rather than seeking to establish that the emissions’ laws will check global warming, has decided instead to attack auto makers’ potential scientific advisors. In pre-trial discovery, Lockyer has asked a federal court to force disclosure of all communications and documents between the car companies and a group of 18 high profile climate skeptics. Most of those named are American citizens, but an international flavour is conferred by the inclusion of at least one British and one Canadian citizen. The intent is clearly twofold. First, a fishing expedition for material that might be useful to the state in defending its case. And second, a warning shot across the bows of all climate skeptics that they speak on this issue, in private let alone in public, at their own peril.
It is interesting to ponder why these particular 18 skeptics made Lockyer’s A-list, for there are clearly many hundreds of well-credentialed scientists who question the conventional global warming wisdom. Other climate rationalists may feel happy at being omitted, not because they have done anything wrong but because no-one likes being intimidated.
A type of modern McCarthyism, this sort of intimidation can only serve to stifle further an informed public debate on climate change, and it is a deplorable action for an Attorney General to take. Recalling Lockyer’s earlier track record of inhibiting scientific evidence, for instance during a 2001 gun-control debate when he gagged California state experts who opposed his plans, one wonders whether his latest act might not provoke a friends-of-court backlash from the many Americans who can recognize an attack on their constitutional rights when they see one.
Then, lo and behold, hot on the heels of Lockyer’s sally in California come reports of unbalanced press treatment of the climate change discussion in New Zealand, attempts to muzzle public discussion by the Royal Societies of London and New Zealand, media manipulation by the U.S. Academy of Sciences, and the launch of a propaganda blitz for Mr. Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth”.
Bias and censorship in the media
In a small country such as New Zealand there is a high risk of press bias influencing public policy outcomes about complex science issues. With a market of only 4 million people to sell into, New Zealand media outlets are of limited diversity. The danger that journalistic sheep-like behaviour will inhibit discussion of important public issues is therefore ever present, and has indeed been manifest in the debate, or rather lack of it, on global warming.
For example, the largest circulation newspaper in South Island, The Press, recently published “Heat is on to Act”, an 800 word alarmist polemic by Landcare’s Dr. David Whitehead. The article includes gems like “When projections of continued emissions are built into complex computer models to predict future climate, the result is the so-called “hockey stick” curve showing temperature reaching alarmingly high values up to 1 deg to 3 deg above present-day values in the next 50 years”.
Leaving aside that this sentence is a highly confused and inaccurate account of the hockey stick, the very same day The Press rejected an article by experienced climate researcher Dr. Gerrit van der Lingen titled “The Broken Hockey Stick”. Dr. van der Lingen’s article explained something that the New Zealand public have not yet been fully informed about - that the hockey stick construction by Penn State paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and co-authors, which was highlighted by the United
Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2001 assessment, has been found to be flawed beyond repair by both a committee of the National Academy of Sciences and an experts' report for a U.S. House committee. Yet Dr. Whitehead and The Press continued to use the hockey-stick as proof of human-caused global warming, and will brook no correction.
Another example comes from my own experience earlier this year. Leading weekly magazines North & South and The Listener, and the New Zealand’s largest circulation daily and weekend newspapers, the NZ Herald and the Sunday Star Times, then all declined to publish an opinion piece that I wrote titled “The Global Warming Emperor Has No Clothes”.
That I should write the article was suggested to me by local scientists who were strongly concerned about the imbalance in the New Zealand climate change debate. That the article was rejected by so many editors, of course, reflects not conspiracy but group think - if indeed thought rather than reflex was involved.
Now posted on the Climate Science Coalition’s website, the article relates several important facts about contemporary climate that are unknown to most members of the general public. Such as: that global average temperature has not increased over the last seven years, despite the continuing rise in human-caused greenhouse emissions; that late 20th century temperatures were warm as part of a solar-driven recovery from the Little Ice Age; and that during natural climate cycling, changes in temperature precede their parallel changes in carbon dioxide.
Alarmist public presentation of the climate change issue in New Zealand is encouraged also by well-respected radio commentators such as Radio New Zealand’s Kim Hill and Chris Laidlaw. These talk-show hosts choose not to interview knowledgeable local rationalist climate experts, but instead, succumbing to the cultural cringe of deferring to “overseas experts,” provide the oxygen of publicity to zany climate alarmists like the U.K.’s Lord Ron Oxburgh and Sir David King.
One can but wonder why media editors wish to deny New Zealanders knowledge of basic climate facts and alternative views, especially given the endless column space, air time and viewing time that they allocate to alarmist speculations and the fact that climate change was a critical issue in New Zealand’s election last December.
New Zealand was one of the first signatories to the Kyoto Accord, with the signing justified to voters by government estimates that the country would make a profit of around NZ $350 million from the anticipated sale of carbon credits earned by its once-thriving forestry industry. Alas, a change in the carbon accounting rules, and a turndown in forestry investment, have turned that hoped for credit of up to 55 million tons into a deficit of 36 million tons, and this translates into a likely bill, depending upon the costs of tradable carbon credits, of between NZ$0.5 billion and NZ$1.5 billion.
At around 1% of New Zealand’s GDP, the financial turnaround is not small beer, reflected by New Zealand’s minority Labour party only being able to remain in government by agreeing last year to coalition partner demands that it drop its former plans for the introduction of a carbon tax.
Since the election, the government has floundered to come up with rational climate change and energy policies. In order to placate green interests, ministers have even toyed with the reintroduction of a deeply damaging “climate change” provision into the development approval process, by allowing amendments to be tabled to its own Resource Management Act.
The censorship by the media that I and other scientists have regularly experienced in New Zealand is part of a much wider problem that involves not only the print media, but also radio, television, and film coverage of the climate change issue. And that this is a worldwide problem is exemplified by the blistering indictment of the American media that was delivered last week by U.S. Senator Inhofe.
In addition to their unrelenting climate alarmism, media outlets worldwide mostly present either the simplistic view that there are “two sides to the debate”, or the brain-dead assertion that “the science of climate change is settled”. In fact, of course, there are almost as many sides to the climate change issue as there are expert scientists arguing it, and the science will never be “settled”, whatever that might mean. And, anyway, to reduce public discussion to a "he says, she says" or "there is a consensus" piety is to formularize it into meaninglessness.
The media also defer regularly to the self-interested and unaudited advice of the IPCC, whose 2001 hockey stick graph - which formed an important part of the formal advice to governments on climate change - has now been scientifically ridiculed.
Policy corruption
In addition to legal threats to free speech, and media bias, the third gorilla in the climate cage is the increasing involvement of national science academies in giving policy advice to governments. By giving false assurances that a “consensus” exists on human-caused global warming, or indeed on any other disputed science issue, and by attempting to inhibit public debate, these bodies betray the very foundations of their existence.
For example, in early September the Royal Society of London embarked on a misguided mission to prevent informed public discussion of the global warming issue. Their Policy Communication Manager, Bob Ward, wrote an intimidatory letter to oil company Esso UK in an effort to suppress Esso’s funding for organizations that in the Royal Society’s view “misrepresented the science of climate change, by outright denial of the evidence …., or by overstating the amount and significance of uncertainty in knowledge, or by conveying a misleading impression of the potential impacts of anthropogenic climate change”. Happily, and not surprisingly, there has been an immediate storm of worldwide protest, including comment that “the Royal Society is advocating censorship on a subject that calls for debate” (Marshall Institute, letter of Sept. 22).
Two recent U.S. reports on climate change provide other illustrations of science advice that has become corrupted by policy pretension. The first, by the National Academy of Sciences, discusses the evidence for surface temperature reconstructions over the last 2,000 years, including comments on the now infamous “hockey stick” curve. The second, from the new Climate Change Science Program, summarizes information about atmospheric temperature measurements over the last 25 years. Both documents contain egregious disparities between the (accurate) science detail that is provided in their main text, and free-wheeling, alarmist statements that are contained in their associated Executive Summary and Press Release. Media reports being based only on the latter sources, thus does frisbee science become public reality.
As a final example, the Royal Society of New Zealand, which publishes a Newsletter called Alert, recently presented an interchange of letters between the chairman of its own expert Committee on Climate Change and the independent New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. When the coalition provided a reasoned, referenced scientific discussion of various points that had been raised by these letters, the Alert editor, without giving reasons, declined to distribute it, thereby leaving his society members completely misinformed on the issue. And this from a national learned Society that “aims to bring together an informed and scholarly approach to scientific and technological questions.”
Up to the 1950s, the Royal Society of London used to advertise in its Philosophical Transactions that “it is an established rule of the Royal Society … never to give their opinion, as a Body, upon any subject, either of Nature or Art, that comes before them”.
Leaving such old-fashioned integrity behind them, the modern involvement of national science academies in the policy-setting process has led, quite inevitably, to their political corruption. For it is surely the sharpest of historical ironies that the Russian Academy of Science is now almost alone amongst its brethren organisations in encouraging independent viewpoints about climate change science to be voiced.
Members of science academies often play leading roles in the assessment of research proposals. This places individual alarmist scientists in a position to influence the disbursement of highly competitive research funds, whereby intimidation is brought to bear on research applications from scientists who display critical views on human-caused global warming. In one recent example, the referee of a research proposal commented:
“The applicant appears to be keen to dispute in the popular press the scientific evidence linking recent global-scale warming to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. While the freedom of the press means that he can write whatever he wants in a newspaper, it would be better if he published scientifically-correct statements in his newspaper articles. …(His) statements are incorrect. …. It is not appropriate… to fund a scientist who continues to publish scientifically erroneous statements in the popular press”. Against such a biased background, the public need to insist on a fact-based debate on issues such as whether countries like New Zealand and Canada should withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, which they are entitled to do without penalty; and whether future environmental health would best be encouraged by enlarging the membership of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6).
Censoring by not publishing moderate voices in the climate debate, as the media worldwide do; or peremptorily refusing sensible calls for a Royal Commission into the matter, as the New Zealand Minister for Climate recently did; or not funding research proposals on science merit alone, as is now commonplace; demonstrate a troubling contempt for the true public interest, similar to that displayed by the Attorney General of California.
And propaganda everywhere?
Well, Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth” can conveniently be taken as a positive answer to this question, for the reach of Hollywood truly is global. As is the daily publication of alarmist climate change stories in major newspapers in all countries, a practice delightfully described as “climate porn” by the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research.
As widely commented on in reviews and other opinion pieces, Al Gore’s film is a masterpiece of evangelism, using every artifice in the propaganda film maker’s book. Dramatic and beautiful images of imagined climate-related natural disasters segue fluidly one into another: from collapsing ice sheets to shrinking mountain glaciers, from giant storms and floods to searing deserts, and from ocean current and sea-level changes to drowning polar bears. Never explained is the minor detail that all of these events reflect mostly the fact that we humans inhabit a dynamic planet. Certainly, all of them have occurred naturally many times in the past, long before human activities could possibly have been their cause.
And when asked about his film, in an interview with Grist Magazine, “Do you scare people or give them hope?” Mr. Gore replied:
“I think the answer to that depends on where your audience’s head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble or unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual solutions on how dangerous it (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis”.
The intellectual dishonesty involved in all of this is not restricted to Mr. Gore’s film, but has become all pervasive. Thus professional sociologists at the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research urge that “the task of climate change agencies is not to persuade by rational argument. ... Instead, we need to work in a more shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement. ... The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.” And the same authors then calmly advise: “Ultimately, positive climate behaviours need to be approached in the same way as marketeers approach acts of buying and consuming. ... It amounts to treating climate-friendly activity as a brand that can be sold. This is, we believe, the route to mass behaviour change.”
“Amen to that”, Mr. Gore would presumably sing. Not chilled by such statements? Then your global warming fever is indeed incurable. Rarely has the public prostitution of an important science issue been so clearly revealed as in this inadvertent slip of the post-modernist skirt.
Nonetheless, the idea that the public must be indoctrinated further with alarm about global warming continues to gather strength. Foreshadowing a paroxysm of propaganda that can be expected to peak with publication of the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report next February, the United Kingdom government has recently created an Office of Climate Change, which is to be matched by a European Union climate publicity initiative.
It is unclear whether the Attorney General of California really does think that “climate skeptics” are a public hazard; whether media editors and journalists are obsessed with being politically correct on climate change, or are merely frightened of offending their governments; or whether politicians and leading public figures are being sincere or pragmatic about the often inane climate policies that they propose. At the same time, it is all too clear that Al Gore and his many disciples really do believe their own propaganda, which is now to be fomented by the boot-camp training in Nashville, Tenn., of “more than 1,000 individuals to give a version of his presentation on the effects of - and solutions for - global warming, to community groups throughout US.”
Australian Chief Justice, Murray Gleeson, has recently argued that the “cultural expectation that those in authority are able and willing to justify the exercise of power is one of the most important aspects of modern public life”. Public opinion now forces governments, courts, lobby groups and powerful individuals alike to respect this principle. And nowhere is justification more needed, together with accurate information and balanced discussion, than in the complex debate over human-caused global warming, now one of the great political issues of our time.
The bottom line is - irrespective of McCarthyist bludgeoning, press bias, policy-advice corruption or propaganda frenzy - that it seems highly unlikely that the public is going to agree to a costly restructuring of the world economy simply on the basis of speculative computer models of climate in 100 years time. And therein, I guess, lies the genius of democracy.
For full article go to: http://blog.nam.org/archives/2006/10/carter_mccarthy.php
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...GLOBAL WARMING: THE CHILLING EFFECT ON FREE SPEECH, Spike Online October 6, 2006
Wednesday October 11, 2006
The Demonisation Of 'Climate Change Denial' Is An Affront To Open And Rational Debate. By Brendan O’Neill
October 6, 2006 Whoever thought that serious commentators would want it made illegal to have a row about the weather? One Australian columnist has proposed outlawing ‘climate change denial’. ‘David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial’, she wrote. ‘Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all.’ (1) Others have suggested that climate change deniers should be put on trial in the future, Nuremberg-style, and made to account for their attempts to cover up the ‘global warming…Holocaust’ (2). The message is clear: climate change deniers are scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be silenced, or criminalized, or forced beyond the pale alongside those other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around. Whatever the truth about our warming planet, it is clear there is a tidal wave of intolerance in the debate about climate change which is eroding free speech and melting rational debate. There has been no decree from on high or piece of legislation outlawing climate change denial, and indeed there is no need to criminalize it, as the Australian columnist suggests… For full article go to: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1782/
NUREMBERG-STYLE TRIALS PROPOSED FOR GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTICS
Wednesday October 11, 2006
( http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/12/115734/52 ) NUREMBERG-STYLE TRIALS PROPOSED FOR GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTICS CONTACT: MARC MORANO ( marc_morano@epw.senate.gov ), MATT DEMPSEY ( matthew_dempsey@epw.senate.gov ) A U.S. based environmental magazine that both former Vice President Al Gore (http://gristmill.grist.org/print/2006/9/19/11408/1106?show_comments=no ) and PBS newsman Bill Moyers, for his October 11th global warming edition of “Moyers on America” titled “Is God Green?” (http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts/index.html ) have deemed respectable enough to grant one-on-one interviews to promote their projects, is now advocating Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming. Grist Magazine’s staff writer David Roberts called for the Nuremberg-style trials for the “bastards” who were members of what he termed the global warming “denial industry.” Roberts wrote in the online publication on September 19, 2006, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.” (http://gristmill.grist.org/print/2006/9/19/11408/1106?show_comments=no ) Gore and Moyers have not yet commented on Grist's advocacy of prosecuting skeptics of global warming with a Nuremberg-style war crimes trial. Gore has used the phrase "global warming deniers" to describe scientists and others who don't share his view of the Earth's climate. It remains to be seen what Gore and Moyers will have to say about proposals to make skepticism a crime comparable to Holocaust atrocities. The use of Holocaust terminology has drawn the ire of Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. “The phrase ‘climate change denier’ is meant to be evocative of the phrase ‘holocaust denier,’” Pielke, Jr. wrote on October 9, 2006 (http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/author_pielke_jr_r/index.html#000952). “Let's be blunt. This allusion is an affront to those who suffered and died in the Holocaust. This allusion has no place in the discourse on climate change. I say this as someone fully convinced of a significant human role in the behavior of the climate system,” Pielke, Jr. explained. The article Global Warming: The Chilling Effect On Free Speech (www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1782/ )last week in Spiked Online addresses this new found penchant by environmentalists and some media members to charge skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming with “crimes against humanity” and urge Nuremberg-style prosecution of them. See Related Items: Senator Inhofe Speeches: (http://epw.senate.gov/speeches.cfm?party=rep )
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...INHOFE CORRECT ON GLOBAL WARMING, By David Deming
Tuesday October 10, 2006
October 5, 2006
THE NORMAN TRANSCRIPTINHOFE CORRECT ON GLOBAL WARMING By David Deming
David Deming is a geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (ocpathink.org), and an associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.
Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe has been taking a lot of heat lately for his skeptical stance on global warming. He's been called a "social dinosaur" for his failure to accept the politically correct view. But in my opinion, Sen. Inhofe is absolutely correct to be skeptical. As the Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot said, "skepticism is the first step towards truth."
I'm a geophysicist who has conducted and published climate studies in top-rank scientific journals. My perspective on Sen. Inhofe and the issue of global warming is informed not only by my knowledge of climate science, but also by my studies of the history and philosophy of science.
The media hysteria on global warming has been generated by journalists who don't understand the provisional and uncertain nature of scientific knowledge. Science changes. For years we were told that drinking coffee was bad for our health and would increase our risk for heart disease. But more recent studies have shown that not only is coffee safe for our hearts, it can decrease the risk of liver cancer and is chock full of healthy antioxidants.
I read in the Edmond Sun Oct. 1 an article by an economist which indicated that temperatures are now higher than at any time in the past 12,000 years. The fact that the thermometer wasn't invented until the year 1714 ought to give us pause when evaluating this remarkable claim. Reconstructions of past temperatures are not measurements, but estimates. These estimates are based on innumerable interpretations and uncertain assumptions, all invisible to someone who only reads the headline. Better studies -- completely ignored by the major media -- have shown that late-twentieth-century temperatures are not anomalous or unusually warm.
I also read last week that in a mere 50 years mean global temperatures on Earth will be higher than they have been for the last million years. We all know that in recent years weather forecasts have become more accurate. But meteorologists can't predict what the temperature will be in 30 days. How is it that we are supposed to believe that they can reliably forecast what the temperature will be in 50 years? They can't, because Earth's climate system is complex and poorly understood.
It is not surprising that some scientists today find evidence to support global warming. True believers always find confirming evidence. In the late 18th century, a school of geologists known as Neptunists became convinced that all of the rocks of the Earth's crust had been precipitated from water. British geologist Robert Jameson characterized the supporting evidence for Neptunism as "incontrovertible." The Neptunists were completely wrong, but able to explain away any evidence that appeared to contradict their theory. A skeptic pointed out that not all rocks had their genesis in the ocean because he had observed molten lava from a volcano cool and solidify into rock. Unperturbed, the Neptunists calmly explained that the heat of the volcano had merely melted a rock that had been originally generated in water.
Around 1996, I became aware of how corrupt and ideologically driven current climate research can be. A major researcher working in the area of climate change confided in me that the factual record needed to be altered so that people would become alarmed over global warming. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."
The Medieval Warm Period was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th and 15th centuries. The warmer climate of the Medieval Warm Period was accompanied by a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art in Europe. But the existence of the Medieval Warm Period was an "inconvenient truth" for true believers in global warming. It needed to be erased from history so that people could become convinced that present day temperatures were truly anomalous. Unfortunately, the prostitution of science to environmental ideology is all too common.
Sen. James Inhofe is not only correct in his view on global warming, but courageous to insist on truth, objectivity, and sound science. Truth in science doesn't depend on human consensus or political correctness. The fact that the majority of journalists and pundits bray like sheep is meaningless. Galileo, another "social dinosaur," said "the crowd of fools who know nothing is infinite."
Click Here for the Op-Ed: www.normantranscript.com/siteSearch/apstorysection/local_story_278005204
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...OKLAHOMAN EDITORIAL: INHOFE HOLDS HIS OWN ON WARMING DEBATE
Tuesday October 10, 2006
Monday, October 9, 2006 U.S. SEN. Jim Inhofe is chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee, and few things bug him more than folks who attribute global warming to humankind as though it were established science. You know, people like Al Gore. Inhofe has made it his personal quest to do battle with those who have elevated theory to sound science. He has made a number of lengthy speeches from the Senate floor — much of his arguments detailed and highly technical fodder that may have a dual use as a cure for insomnia. Yet such is the nature of the global warming debate. Inhofe, R-Tulsa, recently took his crusade to CNN's "American Morning" program. The cable network's Miles O'Brien introduced Inhofe as the senator who had said global warming was a "hoax." Things got pretty warm from there on in. Inhofe conceded there is global warming but contested the widely held belief that human activity is to blame. He said some areas of the globe aren't warming at all and cited findings that the Antarctic is gaining ice and getting cooler. He noted the Harvard Center for Astrophysics says the world was warmer in the 15th century than it is now. O'Brien cited another study that said Antarctic ice is thinning and that huge chunks of it are breaking off into the ocean, potentially raising sea levels. Inhofe countered that sea levels are rising slightly in some places, but not others. Later the senator went on the offensive, recalling that 12 years ago O'Brien said another ice age was coming. It was good banter, mostly in good humor. Credit Inhofe for nimbly making his case. And we think he's got a point. The science on human causation of global warming is conflicted and unsettled. There's something to be said for a senator who does his homework and is willing to swim against the stream on this important issue. Click here for the full text of the editorial:
Worldwide Support For Senator Inhofe’s Global Warming & Media Critiques
Wednesday October 4, 2006
In Case You Missed It...Editorial: Cooling Down The Climate Scare,INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Friday September 29, 2006
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...Scientists Demand Media End Climate "Doomcasting," Cite Inhofe's speech
Wednesday September 27, 2006
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT....Media Now Questioning Hansen's "Ketchup Money" Grant After Inhofe Speech
Tuesday September 26, 2006
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...
Congressional Quarterly
Inhofe Complains the Media Failed to Report Climate Change ‘Ketchup Money’ Grant
September 26, 2006
By Toni Johnson, CQ Staff
Sen. James M. Inhofe took his ongoing battle with supporters of climate change legislation to the Senate floor Monday, where he accused NASA scientist James Hansen of being too close to the “left-wing” Heinz Foundation and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
In comments aimed at discrediting a recent CBS “60 Minutes” story on Hansen, Inhofe, who has called the threat of global warming a hoax, noted that Hansen had received a grant from the foundation and had endorsed Kerry’s 2004 run for president. The foundation, Inhofe pointed out, is run by Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz.
The “60 Minutes” report, he complained, failed to mention the “ketchup money” and the “subsequent” endorsement.
“Many in the media dwell on any [oil] industry support given to so-called climate skeptics. . . . The foundation’s money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media make a distinction between oil money and ketchup money,” said Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of Environment and Public Works.
Hansen could not be reached for comment, and Kerry’s office had no comment on Inhofe’s floor statement.
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Excerpt from Senator Inhofe’s Speech regarding James Hansen:
“On March 19th of this year “60 Minutes” profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration.
In this segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed aside in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen.
The ‘60 Minutes’ segment made no mention of Hansen’s partisan ties to former Democrat Vice President Al Gore or Hansen’s receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. There was also no mention of Hansen’s subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004.
Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen’s huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation.
The foundation’s money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.
“60 Minutes” also did not inform viewers that Hansen appeared to concede in a 2003 issue of Natural Science that the use of ‘extreme scenarios’ to dramatize climate change “may have been appropriate at one time” to drive the public's attention to the issue.
Why would “60 Minutes” ignore the basic tenets of journalism, which call for objectivity and balance in sourcing, and do such one-sided segments? The answer was provided by correspondent Scott Pelley. Pelley told the CBS News website that he justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of ‘Holocaust deniers.’”
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