Heartland Conference Establishes Post-Climategate Consensus

From the American Thinker

New scientific discoveries are casting doubt on how much of the warming of the twentieth century was natural and how much was man-made, and governments around the world are beginning to confront the astronomical cost of reducing emissions. Economists, meanwhile, are calculating that the cost of slowing or stopping global warming exceeds the social benefits.”

So spoke Senator James Inhofe on the Senate floor on May 17th, reading into the record the mission statement of the climate conference he was scheduled to be speaking at that very moment. Rather than addressing the Monday lunch session of Heartland’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works remained in Washington, responding to the prior week’s Kerry-Lieberman “climate bill” proposal.

Had the mainstream media acted responsibly, then every word spoken at the first major post-Climategate climate colloquium would have indeed built public awareness of the implausibility of manmade global warming and, consequently, any job-killing legislation, treaties or regulations designed to “control” it.  But ours is an agenda-driven MSM – brazenly toting water for a president and Hill Democrats shamelessly rolling out the Gulf-coast disaster crash-cart to reanimate their flat-lined “climate” bill.

Mine is the task of summarizing – to the best of my ability — the current state of climate reality, as espoused before me one month ago by no less than the greatest minds analyzing the subject today.  And yours is the opportunity to quickly absorb the collective wisdom of over 75 experts speaking at 5 plenary and 20 breakout sessions, and countless marvelous conversations, all spread over 3 days.  And to discover or affirm the myriad inconvenient truths behind the “global warming” hype.

Read the rest here

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Ken Hall
June 21, 2010 6:03 am

A Senator speaking sense? How did that happen?

James Sexton
June 21, 2010 6:16 am

Ken Hall says:
June 21, 2010 at 6:03 am
“A Senator speaking sense? How did that happen?”
Put 100 monkeys senators on 100 typewriters…………
Seriously though, Inhofe is a nut, but I wish he was our nut.(I’m from KS, he’s from OK, just to the south of me.) He’s been leading the fight in the senate for years now. I’m glad he decided to stay and fight instead of attending the conference.

Bill in Vigo
June 21, 2010 6:24 am

Isn’t it amazing how our government’s leader can go on vacation, play golf, throw White House galas for aging rock n roll stars, go on another family vacation and all in the 60 days since the gulf disaster while the CEO of BP whom I have no sympathy for takes one day to attend a yacht race and our leader gets a pass and the foot is held to the throat of the CEO by the MSM. While the spill is the fault of the oil company the clean up of and protection of our coast is the responsibility of the federal government. Then asses the costs and have the responsible party pay. Oh and by the way Mr. President the leak wasn’t caused by climate change. It was caused due to lack of due diligence on the part of the federal government and BP. There is dual responsibility here. So far even though BP is behaving poorly our federal government is performing even worse.
Old military saying ” 7 P’s”
1. Proper
2. Prior
3. Planing
4. Prevents
5. Piss
6. Poor
7. Performance
This always worked for us. It seems that both parties involved BP and the federal government must have missed one of the P’s in this case.
Bill Derryberry

kim
June 21, 2010 6:40 am

Marc Sheppard’s been writing good sense about climate for awhile now. It seems like at least a couple of years.
====================================

sdcougar
June 21, 2010 7:48 am

The shameless MSM are disgusting. And so is our PBS. Don’t give them a pass on this. Speak up, send them articles like this and ask the ombudsman, “why the censorship of scientists and advocacy for AGW?”
http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/feedback.html

Al Gore's Holy Hologram
June 21, 2010 7:48 am

BP let the spill happen because the subsidies they’d get for ethanol and money they intend to earn from cap n’ trade means they will be well rewarded and small competitors will be squeezed out of the market. So they screw the Gulf’s environment and ultimately the working man and taxpayer too.

tmtisfree
June 21, 2010 8:07 am

Put 100 monkeys senators on 100 typewriters…………
The actual calculation shows it is not going to happen (in this Universe at least).

Patrick Davis
June 21, 2010 8:10 am

“Bill in Vigo says:
Old military saying ” 7 P’s”
1. Proper
2. Prior
3. Planing
4. Prevents
5. Piss
6. Poor
7. Performance
This always worked for us. It seems that both parties involved BP and the federal government must have missed one of the P’s in this case.
Bill Derryberry”
Excluding the BP issue, these, military “P’s”, didn’t seem to work on many occasions as history records.

Wren
June 21, 2010 8:11 am

New consensus? Granted, not yet the collective position of the vocal scientific majority, but Monckton hit it right on the head:
“In the end the truth is the center of every lasting consensus.”
——–
Anyone want to explain that one?

Enneagram
June 21, 2010 8:37 am

You can not oppose or contest matters of faith and beliefs. After HE spake with words of truth and uttered HIS holy commandments about carbon, the only behaviour left to you is to obey or be punished with endless suffering.
However, many make mock at HIM because he has not yet offered himself in sacrifice to his beliefs and so he, most probably, will be soon forgotten and HIS teachings taken as jokes.

CodeTech
June 21, 2010 8:39 am

Bill in Vigo, Proper Planing Prevents Doors from Sticking 😉
Senator Inhofe has been diligently documenting the whole AGW/CC debacle for a while. For his efforts he has been branded, well, as anyone who goes against the orthodoxy is branded.
In the future, when another generation is looking back on this era, his legacy will be like that of Churchill… the lone voice in the political wilderness attempting to alert people to an unpopular reality. I hope he, and the others fighting this political trainwreck, are successful… our futures all depend on it. (sorry, waxing poetic again)

T. Kull
June 21, 2010 8:41 am

There’s a problem with your “consensus” — some of it, like your so-called “Amazongate” is based on proven distortions. See the important news, “Sunday Times retracts and apologizes for shameful and bogus Amazon story smearing IPCC”:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/20/amazon-ipcc-climategate-sunday-times-jonathan-leake-simon-lewis-apology-retraction/

June 21, 2010 8:42 am

Off topic a bit but on the subject of “CLIMATE REALITY”, a good deal of southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan are flooded at the moment. As discussed on this forum – on the prairies, it is usually RAIN that causes problems and flooding out here. We have had a series of lows come through in the last few weeks that just keep dumping more and more rain, the soils are saturated now even after several years of drought, and the water is running off and overflowing the river banks.
It’s the weather. It’s where the jet stream is sitting. It happens. Another 30 mm or so predicted for tonight .. but not so bad as the rain causes flooding in China where over 3/4 of a million people have been displaced and several hundred killed. Weather. But some one will say “Climate”.
http://www.leaderpost.com/Maple+Creek+Trans+Canada+highway+devastated+flooding/3181211/story.html
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Trans+Canada+Highway+closed+from+Medicine+Saskatchewan+border/3172050/story.html?cid=megadrop_story
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/06/20/14455176.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/21/floods-southern-china

June 21, 2010 8:50 am

Here’s a good summary by Dr. Jay Lehr, Sci Director , Heartland Inst.:
Significant Evidence that Mankind Has an Insignificant Impact on the Climate of Planet Earth
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
By Jay Lehr, Ph.D. – Science Director of The Heartland Institute – http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE
1- Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant. On the contrary it makes crops and forests grow faster. Mapping by satellite shows that the earth has become about 6% greener overall in the past two decades, with forests expanding into arid regions. The Amazon rain forest was the biggest gainer, with two tons of additional biomass per acre per year. Certainly climate change does not help every region equally, but careful studies predict overall benefit, fewer storms, more rain, better crop yields, longer growing seasons, milder winters and decreasing heating costs in colder climates. The news is certainly not bad and on balance may be rather good.
2- Climate Alarmism is a Terrible Joke. Someday the world will wake up and laugh when they finally understand that the entire pursuit of economic ruin in the name of saving the planet from increasing carbon dioxide is in fact a terrible joke. You see it is an unarguable fact that the portion of the Earth’s greenhouse gas envelope contributed by man is barely one tenth of one per cent of the total. Do the numbers yourself. CO2 is no more than 4% of the total (with water vapor being over 90% followed by methane, sulpher and nitrous oxides). Of that 4% man contributes only a little over 3%. Elementary school arithmetic says that 3% of 4% is .12% and for that we are sentencing the planet to a wealth of damaging economic impacts.
3- The effect of additional CO2 is limited. The effect of additional CO2 in the atmosphere is limited because it only absorbs certain wave lengths of radiant energy. As the radiation in the particular wave length band is used up, the amount left for absorption by more of the gas is reduced. A simple analogy is to consider drawing a curtain across a window – a large part of the light will be shut out but some will still get through. Add a second curtain to the first and most of the remaining light will be excluded. A point will quickly be reached where adding more curtains has a negligible effect, because there is no light left to stop. This is the case with the absorption of energy as more carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere.
4- Higher vrs. Lower Level of the Atmosphere. If greenhouse gases were responsible for increases in global temperature of recent decades then atmospheric physics shows that higher levels of our atmosphere would show greater warming than lower levels. This was not found to be true during the 1978 to 1998 period of .3 degrees centigrade warming.
5- Increases in CO2 Levels Follow Temperature Increases. 900,000 years of ice core temperature records and carbon dioxide content records show that CO2 increases follow rather than lead increases in Earth temperature. This is logical because the oceans are the primary source of CO2 and they hold more CO2 when cool than when warm, so warming causes the oceans to release more CO2.
6- Today’s Temperature Below Average. While temperatures have fluctuated over the past 5000 years, today’s earth temperature is below average for the past 5000 years.
7- Warming is Beneficial. A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world. The warmest period in recorded history was the Medieval Warm Period, roughly 800 to 1200 AD, when temperatures were 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today, allowing great prosperity for mankind. During that time Greenland was actually green.
8- Solar Activity Influences Temperature. Temperature fluctuations during the current 300 year recovery from the Little Ice Age, which ended around 1700AD, following the Medieval Warming Period, correlate almost perfectly with fluctuations in solar activity. This correlation long predates human use of significant amounts of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.
9- Other Planets Warming Also. The National Aeronautic and Space Agency (NASA) has determined that during the time the Earth has been warming so also was Mars, Pluto, Jupiter and the largest moon of Neptune .
10- CO2 Levels Much Higher in the Past. We know that 200 million years ago, when the dinosaurs walked the Earth, the average Carbon Dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was 1800 ppm, five times higher than today.
11- Global Cooling Also. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley UK , NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, University of Alabama Huntsville , and Remote Sensing Systems Santa Rosa) have released updated information showing that in 2007, global cooling ranged from 0.65C to .75C. a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years; all in one year’s time.
12- 2008 Coldest Year Since 2000. NASA satellites measuring the Earth’s atmospheric temperature found 2008 to be the coldest year since 2000 and the 14th coldest of the past 30 years. US climate Monitoring Stations on the surface show greater warmth, but pictures of most of the 1,221 US temperature stations show 90% to be located near human sources of heat (exhaust fans, air conditioning units, hot roof tops, asphalt parking lots and so forth). The conclusion is inescapable: The US land-based temperature record is unreliable.
13- Glaciers Show No Global Trend. While we hear much about one or another melting glacier, a recent study of 246 glaciers around the world between 1946 and 1995 indicated a balance between those that are losing ice, gaining ice and remaining in equilibrium. There is no global trend in any direction.
14- Mt Kilimanjaro Lacks Precipitation. Some have claimed that snows on Mt. Kilimanjaro were melting due to global warming, but on May 1, 2007 National Geographic Magazine reported that the snows on Mt. Kilimanjaro were shrinking as a result of lower precipitation rather than a warming trend. Development of land around the mountain has also influenced precipitation.
15- Polar Bear Populations Are Increasing. Never mind that the overall polar bear population has increased from about 5000 (Variously Estimated at between 5,000 and 12,000) in the 1960s to 25,000 today, and that the only two populations in decline come from areas where it has actually been getting colder rather than warmer over the past 50 years. Also ignore the fact that polar bears were around 100,000 years ago, long before at least one important interglacial period when it was much warmer than the present. Clearly they survived long periods of time when the climate of the Arctic was much warmer than today. Yet they are not expected to survive this present warming without help from government regulators.
16- Computer Models Are Not Accurate. No computer model ever used to compute climate change has been able to calculate our recent past earth temperature, even though all measured data inputs were known and available.
17- A Huge Computer Needed. The inability of current computer hardware to cope with a realistic climate model projection was put in perspective by Dr. Willie Soon, of the Harvard Smithsonian Institute, who calculated that to run a 40 year projection using all variables across all spatial scales would require 10 to the power 34 years of supercomputer time. This is 10 to the power 24 times longer than the age of the Universe.
ECONOMICS
1- Wind, Solar and Biofuels No Substitute For Existing Energy. The Nature conservancy predicts that by 2030 “eco-friendly” wind, solar, and biofuel projects will require extra land equivalent to Minnesota, to produce the energy we now get from oil, gas and coal. Interior Secretary Salazar’s proposal to have offshore wind turbines replace gas, coal, and nuclear electricity generators would mean 336,000, 3.25 MegaWatt behemoths off our coasts – if they operate 24/7/365. It would require far more if they don’t. Where exactly will we site those turbinesf? And where will we get the billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper and fiberglass it will take to build and install the expensive, unreliable, subsidized monsters?
2- Country Can’t Run on Renewables. The idea that you can run America on “solar, wind, and biodiesel” is laughable. Since 70% of the electricity generated in the US involves the burning of coal, natural gas or oil and another 20% from nuclear, a real viable alternative energy is decades away. A single 555 Mega-Watt gas fired power plant in California generates more electricity per year than do all 13,000 of the state’s wind turbines. The gas-fired plant occupies just 15 acres. The 300 foot tall wind turbines impact 106,000 acres, destroy scenic vistas and kill tens of thousands of birds and bats every year – to provide expensive, tax-subsidized, intermittent, insufficient electricity.
3- Federal Research Dollars Poorly Spent. The federal government has been investing in renewable power research and technology for decades, with virtually nothing to show for it. Billions of federal dollars are diverted to the renewable power industry every year, yet the industry still cannot come close to producing power anywhere near as economically as conventional fuel sources such as coal and gasoline.
4- Energy Will Become Very Expensive. The automotive, coal and oil industries will be hit the hardest by expensive new penalties and mandates regarding carbon dioxide production, increasing the cost of transportation and electrical power to the consumer.
5- Carbon Sequestration Will Be Very Expensive. A typical 1000 Mega Watt power station could burn about 3 million tons of coal per year requiring 300 trains per year to supply the coal. If Carbon, Capture and Burial is required, the extra power needed will call for another 150 trains of coal. And if trains were used to haul the captured CO2, the mass of material moved would require another 1150 trains per year, each train carrying 10,000 tons.
6- Carbon Dioxide Reductions are Counterproductive. According to the United States Energy Information Administration’s economic models, last year’s proposed Lieberman-Warner bill to reduce CO2 emissions, if passed, would have cost the average US household between $4000 and $7000 per year, would have increased unemployment by at least 2.5 percent, and would have reduced our Gross Domestic Product by 2.6 percent each and every year.
7- Cap-and-Trade Would Eliminate Many Jobs. One side effect of President Obama’s cap-and-trade plan is the elimination of about 83,000 mining related jobs, 60,000 coal-energy power plant jobs, 31,000 coal transportation jobs and the tens of thousands of indirect jobs that produce products used by the coal sector.
8- Climate Legislation Will Move Jobs Offshore. California and Spain have proved that the war on carbon dioxide will kill real jobs faster than fake green jobs can be created. At the time, the silly claims that alternate energy can provide continuous, economical and reliable power will encourage neglect of a key U.S. reliable low cost electricity source–coal power. When the lights go out industry will migrate to Asia and our power bills will soar and it will be too late to prevent great harm to our national economy, our jobs and our lifestyle.
9- Who Will Foot The Bill? The potential federal revenue stream from cap and trade boggles the mind. White House sources estimate at least $72 billion per year in new funding for government coffers. They concede it could be much more, depending on auction prices. Who will foot the bill? Energy consumers of course, but those living in coal dependent regions will pay the most.
10- Just a Couple of Examples. In the 15 mid-west states stretching from the Appalachians to the Rockies residential power bills will increase between $20 and $26 per month if the CO2 permit auction price is as low as $20 per metric ton, but the price will likely be higher. Ohio will be hit the 6th hardest as a result of its energy sources.
POLITICAL POSITIONS
1- The Folly of Consensus and Settled Science. Historically Michael Crichton said the claim of consensus in science has been the first refuge of scoundrels. It has been a way to avoid debate by claiming a matter to be settled. Whenever you hear that a consensus of scientists agree on something or other reach for your wallet because you are being scammed.
2- The United Nations Gains Power. Since credible scientific evidence established that CO2 from mankind has little impact on temperature and none on public health, the net result of CO2 limitations will be a transfer of wealth and the ceding of more authority to the United Nations as a global government.
3- Expanded Bureaucratic Meddling. Once we accept the principle that carbon should be monitored, controlled and taxed, we open the door to the most invasive kind of bureaucratic meddling, and to all the carbon cops who want to stick their noses into every aspect of the way we live, whether it is the home in which we live, the kind of car we drive, our holiday destination, our pleasure boat or even the food-miles accrued in our choice of food.
4- Models Did Not Predict Present Temperatures. Computer models of climate are now predicting that there will be no change in global temperature over the next ten years. In some cases, these predictions say no significant warming will take place until 2030. Take your pick. If these models are so great, how did they miss the time-out we are presently experiencing from global warming?
5- The Real Hottest Years? Surely you have heard that nine of the ten warmest years recorded in the US lower 48 states since 1880 have occurred since 1995, with the hottest being 1998. Well, that also has been shown to be wrong. Less than a decade ago, the US government changed the way it recorded temperatures. No one thought to correlate the new temperatures with the old ones, until Canadian researcher Steve McIntyre did so, correcting the record to show that 1934 was in fact the hottest year, with 1998 second and 1921 third. Four of the 10 hottest years were in the 1930s and only 3 in the past decade. Eight of the 15 hottest years in the past century occurred before carbon dioxide began its recent rise.
6- Unilateral Reductions in CO2 Are Useless. The world’s largest coal supplies are situated in the U.S., China, and Russia, which are all increasing their production. Electricity generated from coal in 2008 was a record, with China increasing production by 200 million tons. Unilateral efforts to cut CO2 emissions in the face of this fact are therefore useless.
7- Waxman-Markey Too Complex To Understand. Representative Waxman and Markey’s 648 page discussion draft of the climate bill, with its descriptions of permitted light bulbs, is so complex, confusing and impossible to understand, let alone implement without breaking some regulation, that it will make the old central planning of the Soviet Union seem like a back of the envelope outline by comparison.
8- The Precautionary Principle Cuts Both Ways. The Precautionary Principle (Cut emissions just as a precaution.) often claimed as reason to curtail CO2 emissions cuts both ways. If we make it harder or more expensive for people in Africa to use their coal it means they will keep inhaling smoke from wood fires, more babies will get lung disease, and more forests will be razed for fuel. Meanwhile electric trucks will cost more to run and that will make fresh food more expensive, refrigerated meat may not be available, malnutrition will increase and money for medical research will shrink.
PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
1- There is No Consensus. There is no consensus of scientists in favor of human caused global warming. While opinion polls do not determine truth in science, more than 31,000 American Scientists signed a petition drafted by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine which stated:
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s Atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
2- Warming is Generally Beneficial. While global warming is not currently happening perhaps we should wish it were. Far more premature deaths result from cold than from heat. Respiratory and cardiovascular diseases also increase in cold weather. On the other hand longer growing seasons yield larger crops, and increased precipitation in warm weather adds to water supplies in water scarce areas. U.S. heating bills would decline substantially with a warming climate.
3- World Environment Damaged By Misguided Agenda. Paradoxically, the world environment is likely to be damaged far more by misguided attempts to reduce carbon emissions than would be caused by man-made global warming, even if it were real and continued unchecked. If third world countries were prevented from exploiting their natural resources to provide a better standard of living for their citizens, not only would their peoples continue to suffer poverty, disease, and low life expectancy, but they would not have the ability to protect their natural environments — only wealthy countries can afford to do so.
4- Weather Predictions Are Often Wrong. Nobody believes a weather prediction 7 days ahead but now we are asked to reorder our economy based on climate predictions 100 years hence; climate predictions which are no longer supported by current evidence.
5- Carbon Trading Good Business. Carbon offsetting and trading schemes have the potential to make large profits for those who run them. You can not actually offset carbon emissions by planting trees, as they merely store some of it for a while before releasing it once they rot or burn, and the storage will not even offset the emission for many, many years after planting. Plus, the earth would have to be covered entirely by trees to even theoretically counter the stated impact of man-made emissions.
6- We Will Make Green Producers Wealthy. Subsidies given to develop renewable energy sources, such as wind power, are a license to print money for their operators at the expense of the rest of us. Companies promote green products that may be little more than gimmicks, but can be very profitable.
7- The Public is Not Convinced. Although the court of public opinion already weighs climate change as a very low economic priority, the media continues to uncritically accept and vigorously promote shrill global warming alarmism.
8- Billions For Climate Research. The United States government budgets $6 billion a year for climate research, supporting a growing industry of scientists and university labs that specialize in the subject. It all adds up to a significant institutionalization of the impulse to treat carbon as a problem.
9- Wind Farms Can Harm Whooping Cranes. More than six decades of painstaking conservation efforts that have brought the majestic whooping crane back from the brink of extinction may come undone because of the proliferation of wind farms in the United States.
10- Are Polar Bears Really Threatened? Pick up almost any magazine on the environment, almost any book, or film and you will see a picture of a poor polar bear swimming for his life, or standing on an ice sheet with a very forlorn look, or even on a dying iceberg with his friends, isolated from any hope of survival. The polar bear has become the cause célèbre of the environmental movement. Children are taught that in just a short time, if something radical is not done to stop man-caused global warming, the polar bear will be gone (along with a lot of other species). IN FACT POLAR BEARS ARE THE BEST SWIMMERS OF ALL LAND MAMMALS, they are insulated from the cold so well that they do not even have a thermal image, and they have been found to swim large distances; distances up to 200 miles. Only two polar bears have ever been found actually drowned, and those were believed to have drowned in a storm.
IN reality polar bear numbers, which only fifty years ago were around 5,000, NOW, AFTER very expensive longitudinal studies, ARE SHOWN TO BE between 20,000 and 25,000. Even knowing this fact the Secretary of the Interior has listed the polar bear as threatened.
The following comments were culled from a paper by H. Sterling Burnett with the National Center For Policy Analysis.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a strong supporter of environmental issues, has studied endangered species for 50 years and they believe that Polar Bear populations are threatened. However their own research indicates that there are approximately 22,000 living polar bears worldwide, that while some distinct populations appear to be decreasing, total numbers are either holding steady or are increasing.
Sterling went on to note:
Moreover, when the WWF report is compared with the Arctic air temperature trend studies discussed earlier, there is a strong positive (instead of negative) correlation between air temperature and polar bear populations. Polar bear populations are declining in regions (like Baffin Bay) that have experienced a decrease in air temperature, while areas where polar bear populations are increasing (near the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea) are associated with increasing air temperatures. Thus it is difficult to argue that rising air temperatures will necessarily and directly lead to a decrease in polar bear populations.
Conclusion. Are human activities causing a warming in the Arctic, affecting the sea ice extent, longevity and thickness? Contradictory data exists. What seems clear is that polar bears have survived for thousands of years, including both colder and warmer periods. There may be threats to the future survival of the polar bear, but global warming is not primary among them.
11- Climate Change Simply a Political Agenda For Control. Climate change is not a scientific problem that found political support; this is about eco-activists and politicians who found a scientific issue they feel can leverage them into power and control. The environment is a great way to advance a political agenda that favors central planning and an intrusive government. What better way to control someone’s property than to subordinate one’s private property rights to environmental concerns.
CONCLUSIONS
1- Environmental Zealots Convince the Gullible. While the most extreme environmental zealots may be relatively few in number, they have managed to gain undue influence by exploiting the gullibility of many ordinary and scientifically illiterate people, who are only too willing to believe that the planet needs saving from man’s excesses. Perhaps it is a psychological throwback to those earlier civilizations that offered human sacrifices to the gods, to assuage their sins and spare them from punishment in the form of drought, flood, famine or disease. There are certainly many parallels between modern environmentalism and religion.
2- Our Priorities: Clean Water, Good Food, and Sanitation. By focusing our priorities on future generations we focus less on improving the lives of people who are alive today. These future generations bear no closer relationship to us than those now living in developing countries whose lives we disdain to save. Why are we not feeding people in the world who are hungry? Why are we not giving clean water to the almost one billion people who don’t have clean water? The greatest source of environmental degradation is poverty. Why aren’t we helping eliminate poverty? One answer is that perhaps it is a lot easier worrying about future generations than trying to fix present day problems.
3- Global Warming is a Major Industry Today. Between 1992 and 2008 the US Government spent $30 billion on climate change research and now contributes $6 billion a year. This finances jobs, grants, conferences, international travel and academic journals. It not only keeps a huge army of people in comfortable employment, but also fills them with self righteousness and moral superiority, regardless of the fact that real science did not support it.
It is clear that with the deep roots of the global warming scare it is not about to go away. It has the added advantage of not being able to be proven false in our life time. In the mean time the sanest course for us would be to gain what limited perspective we can (remembering the global cooling alarm of a generation ago) and proceed cautiously. We are going through a scare with many causes, and we need to step back from it, take a long second look at the scientific evidence, and not do anything rash.

Philip T. Downman
June 21, 2010 8:53 am

And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Or so we hope at least
Don’t we?

Jim G
June 21, 2010 8:56 am

Bill in Vigo:
Not only did the fed gov’t not do its part in preventing the oil from reaching the coast but the bureaucrats prevented the state governments, BP and others from preventing the oil from reaching the coast in the name of other “environmental” concerns over what unknown “environmental harm” the various preventative techniques might cause!! These people are all about control and giving money to their supporters to buy votes. Plus BP and the Obama people have had their hands in each others’ pockets to begin with. If there is not a house cleaning in Nov. this country will continue on a seriously downbound train.

James Sexton
June 21, 2010 9:29 am

hmm, monkeys senators for the above.

Duncan
June 21, 2010 9:44 am

Why is the type for this article so much smaller than the rest of the site?
Different font, or different font size?

fred houpt
June 21, 2010 10:08 am
rbateman
June 21, 2010 10:18 am

Not everyone in government is charmed by the asp of AGW.
There are those who recognize the poisonous viper wearing Green Lipstick camouflage hiding in the grass.

rbateman
June 21, 2010 10:23 am

Wayne Delbeke says:
June 21, 2010 at 8:42 am
Weather as an instance of climate: When weather consistently turns against that which supports civilization, that would be your first warning of a climate not so favorable.

June 21, 2010 11:38 am

One aspect I rarely see mentioned, and it isn’t discussed too much either in the article, anything I’ve seen from Se. Inhofe’s comments, or the extensive comment citing the specifics of the argument in progress – it’s generally glossed over as a description of the ‘tax’ about to be imposed.
And that, ladies in gents, is quite likely THE siren song drawing many of the political class into chimera roles as ‘guardians of the planet’. It’s the prospect of gaining direct access to one of the largest funding streams present in the global economy – the transactions about energy.
While it may be dressed up in the costume of various ‘concerns’ – the ‘concern’ over the environment, the ‘concern’ over national security due to ‘oil dependence’, the ‘concern’ over the impacts to the third world. Window dressing. The ultimate concern is, for the politicians, the revenue stream, and for the bureaucrats, control and expanded authority.
This may sound like fringe conspiracy theorizing, but it’s actually the very, very simple underlying motivation – in the US, in Europe, and at the UN.
Everything else is window dressing – which is why refutations appear to fall on deaf ears, embarrassing revelations seem meaningless, and in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary, this train just keeps rolling. The only thing that will stop is a crystal clear realization by the governed that this is the case, and the politicians pushing it realize that their jobs are at stake for attempting it, because they’ve been found out. Which will still be a close run thing, for, as Lincoln said, ‘you can fool some of the people all of the time’. They’re counting on that, and the other part, ‘fooling most of the people some of the time’, at least long enough to have this passed into law.
The only hope is for the ‘most of the people’ to catch on by this November, in the case of the United States, and include this topic on their list of considerations when they go to the ballot box.

James Sexton
June 21, 2010 12:09 pm

@ T. Kull and fred houpt
Guys, get a grip. There are plenty of things to get in a discussion about, but you trying to defend the indefensible seems a bit of wasted effort. So, one newspaper wrote a story that mischaracterized a scientist’s view about that silly study. It doesn’t mean the papers conclusions were valid nor the IPCC’s interpretation of the study. Regardless of how you feel about the WWF, it is an advocacy group and any “study”spewed from it should be taken with a grain of salt.
About the study itself: Guys, just give it a little bit of thought. Jungles are warm, moist places. Jungles do quit well in that climate, it is why they exist. If the earth was to warm a few degrees, we’d have more melted ice, which means more water for the water cycle. So, the earth would be(if all the fantasies regarding the AGW scheme were true.) warmer and wetter. Now, remember all the way back to the second sentence of this paragraph. The Amazon jungle isn’t going anywhere unless we fire up the chainsaws. It is sad the newspaper mischaracterized a scientist view and I hope they punish the reporter. That being said, the study is still pure conjecture that doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny. They can peer-review all they want, it doesn’t make the study any more credible.

Gail Combs
June 21, 2010 12:13 pm

Al Gore’s Holy Hologram says:
June 21, 2010 at 7:48 am
BP let the spill happen because the subsidies they’d get for ethanol and money they intend to earn from cap n’ trade means they will be well rewarded and small competitors will be squeezed out of the market. So they screw the Gulf’s environment and ultimately the working man and taxpayer too.
____________________________________________________________
Yes I understand from a comment I read (here??) that the correct drilling procedures were not followed. One of the top brass at BP insisted that the drilling fluid be removed and saved before they closed the well off as a cost savings measure. The engineers et al argued against the change in protocol but the big shot insisted. The removal of the drilling fluid allowed material from the well to travel up the pipe and explode.
If this is true one wonders if it was stupidity or deliberate sabotage by BP to push through Cap and Trade.
AAaah, I found a reference to the removal of the drilling fluid.
“….Meanwhile, according to testimony before Congress by the rig’s chief mechanic, managers on the drilling platform had a bitter dispute with company executives that ended with a BP official declaring, “This is how it’s going to be.” That ultimatum led to heavy drilling fluid being removed from the well and replaced with lighter weight seawater–the last fail-safe mechanism against an explosion other than the suspect blowout preventer…”
Pity the poor global oil corporation
“..BP, for instance, cut short a procedure involving drilling fluid that is designed to detect gas in the well and remove it before it becomes a problem, according to documents belonging to BP and to the drilling rig’s owner and operator, Transocean Ltd.
BP also skipped a quality test of the cement around the pipe—another buffer against gas—despite what BP now says were signs of problems with the cement job and despite a warning from cement contractor Halliburton Co….”
The Wall Street Journal: BP Decisions Set Stage for Disaster

frederik wisse
June 21, 2010 12:40 pm

The US administration must be in terrible shape ! After spending 30 billion dollars in the recent years , 5 billion per year right now , after having turned around MSM , putting UN in the front seats through IPCC , the news is right now that AGW is no longer accepted by the general public after noticing so many signs that the whole AGW deal is rigged on purpose by big Oil and big Al . How much money did BP spend on US government the recent years to get a piece of the new cake and to be able to their dirty work without being overseen in the way they executed their exploration efforts ? Why was the executive branch that oversaw this stripped by Al Gores buddy Bill Clinton ? Why all this crazy news in msm right now , that the earth is warmer than ever , when any reasonable person can identify that the climate is getting cooler , that the ice melt is at record level , when a child can identify from the maps that the icemelt is in line with recent years , that a record amount of hurricanes will hit the us this year , when the midatlantic is rapidly cooling that we shall be hit by unseen solar flares when the sunspots , a sign for the magnetic activity are about to fade totally ?
Let us be democrats and let the public decide about the future of our civilisation which is now threatened by a club of zealots , ultimately prepared todestroy not only our civilisation , but to kill the mayor part of the population of this world in order to pacify their new elected gods . Where did this happen before ? With the Mayas , the Aztecs , the Nazis , The Red Khmers ? What did Nostradamus foresee ? Mabuse or was it a wrongly spelled Obama ? His lack of democratic thought is illustrated by hsi devious ways to organise government as you may find written down in articles of the American Thinker . The founding fathers must have had something totally different in mind when they wrote the American Constitution which has been a shining light for the whole planet

George E. Smith
June 21, 2010 1:31 pm

“”” Patrick Davis says:
June 21, 2010 at 8:10 am
“Bill in Vigo says:
Old military saying ” 7 P’s”
1. Proper
2. Prior
3. Planing
4. Prevents
5. Piss
6. Poor
7. Performance
This always worked for us. It seems that both parties involved BP and the federal government must have missed one of the P’s in this case.
Bill Derryberry”
Excluding the BP issue, these, military “P’s”, didn’t seem to work on many occasions as history records. “””
History records that Military Plans remain operational up until the time one first encounters the enemy.
The saddest part about Military History, is that it never records; what WOULD HAVE HAPPENED if that planning had never been done.
Bill, if you are quite happy to see your son or daughter go off to battle with no planning beforehand; well I suppose that is a choice you and they could have.
As I recall, the most elaborate, expensive, and thoroughly designed automatic pre-programmed piece of machinery in history to that date; when push came to shove; it was too stupid to see that it was going to Put Neil Armstrong down on a pile of rocks from which it would surely have toppled over to remain there forever.
So a properly trained and skilled human had to take over from the planning, and steer the craft safely to a suitable landing site.
You see in the planning stages, skilled and dedicated people learn to deal with the unexpected when it arises; and that is the way things are planned.

George E. Smith
June 21, 2010 1:39 pm

Well the above is addressed to Patrick Davis; my apologies Bill.

JP
June 21, 2010 2:57 pm

Funny thing now that the globe continues on its merry way to incineration. CO2 the last few years has actually leveled off thanks in large part to recessions in the US and Europe. But more importantly, none of the effects of the so-called positive feedbacks seem to be occuring. While the Artic shows positive temp anomalies (thanks mainly to a negative AO brought about by volcanoes), much of the northern Hemisphere shows neutral to negative anomalies temp wise. Here in the US, powerful storms continue to advect cooler Candadian continental polar air masses equatorward. And with these storms come copious amount of rain -so much so that large portions of the bread basket haven’t got thier bean crops planted. This isn’t suppose to happen -niether early spring invasions of polar air masses nor large attendent rainfall patterns are suppose to occur. The amplification of the Hadley Cell because of higher than normal CO2 concentrations are supposed to lead to the desertification of much of the mid-latitudes. This obviously hasn’t occured. Go on over to Europe, and one doesn’t see any large regional drough patterns. As a matter of fact long range models indicate that Eastern Europe will see a rathe large drop in temps this coming winter.
I see in the medium range (2-3 years out), a drop in global temps due to continued cooling of the equatorial Pacific, North Pacific and Central Atlantic.

Bill in Vigo
June 21, 2010 4:22 pm

Thanks, George E. Smith. part of that proper prior planning is most definitely training training and more training.
Patrick for the most part military planning is very careful because the life you lose might be your own. The biggest problem is that the first three P’s are usually replaced by,
1. Previous
2. Political
3. Purpose
Which in a society like ours where the politicians control the actions of the military trumps the other first three. That leads to a change in the last 4 to
Promotes
Piss
Poor
Performance
Bill Derryberry

June 21, 2010 4:22 pm

bob paglee says: June 21, 2010 at 8:50 am
Here’s a good summary by Dr. Jay Lehr, Sci Director , Heartland Inst.:
Significant Evidence that Mankind Has an Insignificant Impact on the Climate of Planet Earth

What’s missing in the summary is mention of the evidence of widespread degradation of Science, and the evidence that when the science is done properly, the proxy temperature records, as well as the thermometer records, show no evidence for AGW.

val majkus
June 21, 2010 5:06 pm

there is a lay explanation of the physics underlying climate alarmism. KE Research, a German public policy consultancy firm, prepared the report based on interviews and editing assistance from noted German theoretical physicists Ralf D. Tscheuschner & Gerhard Gerlich, authors of the peer-reviewed paper Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects within the Frame of Physics, and numerous other climatologists, physicists, and scientists at
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/rescue-from-climate-saviors.html
Conclusions of the report include:
The terms “greenhouse effect” and “greenhouse gas” are misnomers and obstruct understanding of the real world.
Earth has a natural “cooling system”. If the planet warms, it will automatically raise its cooling power.
An increase of earth temperatures is only achievable if the heating power is stepped up: first to “load” matter with more energy (i.e. to raise temperatures) and then to compensate for the increasing cooling, which results from the increase of IR radiation into space.
CO2 and other IR-active gases cannot supply any additional heating power to the earth. Therefore, they cannot be a cause of “global warming”. This fact alone disproves the greenhouse doctrine.
The “natural greenhouse effect” (increase of earth temperatures by 33°C) is a myth.
IR-active gases do not act “like a blanket” but rather “like a sunshade”. They keep a part of the solar energy away from the earth’s surface.
IR-active gases cool the earth: 70% of the entire cooling power originates from these molecules. Without these gases in the air, the surface and the air immediately above the ground would heat up more.
The notion that a concentration increase of IR-active gases would impede earth’s cooling is impossible given the true mechanisms explained above.
As a consequence the very foundation of the “Green Tower of Climate Dogma” crumbles. Computer models alleging to forecast warming based on “greenhouse effects” are worthless, and any speculation about the “impact of climate change” accordingly dispensable.
Since the greenhouse hypothesis has been disproven by the laws of physics, it is only a matter of time until the truth becomes public opinion.
Does anyone with expertise have any comments on the contents of that report?

Curious mind
June 21, 2010 5:23 pm

Why in that article in PDO graph there has been made copy paste of cool PDO from 1945-1977 to end of graph, is there some science behind that or is it just illustration of how it perhaps should be cool?
I think that AGW views are rather impossible to agree on many points, but also I have found that climate realists are sometimes pushing things bit too much, I’m now worried a bit if such graph is something someone created just by copy paste and without any scientific evidence backing it up, then there are dangers of being as ridiculous as some AGW articles have been.
I do know that PDO indeed shifts, but I doubt there will ever be two identical cold PDO’s like in that graph.
Just something that did catch my eye.
In whole climate issue, it would be best to take step back, examine what really is the truth and after that decide what is best course of action, when looking big picture there has been times before man when there has no been ice at poles, that it is silly to think that current climate would be anything normal or standard for this planet, there has been times when has been ice ages, like last 2 million years, when cold and ice has been dominant, but always temperatures will eventually rise and almost all ice disappears unless some event interrupts the process. In this light it is bit silly that some are claiming catastrophy will come based on last 150 years, it is like taking one frame from high speed camera and trying to figure out which direction ball is running.
Some people jumped the gun and those we are calling alarmists, now realists should be careful not jumping the gun too, it is always danger when running at front edge of information. Good scientist is always skeptical about everything, by questioning his views he is able to find evidence of what is reality, so always it is good to sit into another corner of room and take another look, try to make theory fail, if it still holds it might be good one.
That is also something I have seen falling down in climate science during the years. It is good that we have Anthony and other that try to wake up this lost scientific touch, hopefully it is again some day a standard also in climate science.

June 22, 2010 4:32 am

A post-climategate consensus sounds like a post-EU Constitution consensus. I’m not sure it can be done, until the money spigot is turned off.

June 22, 2010 8:07 am

Lucy Skywalker says:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
bob paglee says: June 21, 2010 at 8:50 am
Here’s a good summary by Dr. Jay Lehr, Sci Director , Heartland Inst.:
Significant Evidence that Mankind Has an Insignificant Impact on the Climate of Planet Earth
What’s missing in the summary is mention of the evidence of widespread degradation of Science, and the evidence that when the science is done properly, the proxy temperature records, as well as the thermometer records, show no evidence for AGW.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Lucy, you have a very good point, but the best things about Dr. Lehr’s summary are that it is very thorough, is based simply on scientific principles and does not cast aspersions, even some that are very well deserved. It presents just the unvarnished facts, and should be required reading for all those school children who were exposed to Al Gore’s convenient falsification, except perhaps in England, where a sensible judge required a warning notice to accompany it.
Bob

John A. Jauregui
June 22, 2010 10:34 pm

Question: What are the chances an infinitesimal (.04%) trace gas (CO2), essential to photosynthesis and therefore life on this planet, is responsible for runaway Global Warming?
Answer: Infinitesimal
The IPCC now agrees. See the IPCC Technical Report section entitled Global Warming Potential (GWP). And the GWP for CO2? Just 1, (one), unity, the lowest of all green house gases (GHG). What’s more, trace gases which include GHG constitute less than 1% of the atmosphere. Of that 1%, water vapor, the most powerful GHG, makes ups 40% of the total. Carbon dioxide is 1/10th of that amount, an insignificant .04%. If carbon dioxide levels were cut in half to 200PPM, all plant growth would stop according to agricultural scientists. It’s no accident that commercial green house owner/operators invest heavily in CO2 generators to increase production, revenues and profits. Prof. Michael Mann’s Bristle cone tree proxy data (Hockey stick) proves nothing has done more to GREEN (verb) the planet over the past few decades than moderate sun-driven warming (see solar inertial motion) together with elevated levels of CO2, regardless of the source. None of these facts have been reported in the national media. Why?

June 27, 2010 5:59 pm

What do you make of this?
Very large holes in the ozone layer over the Antarctic continent predicted by NASA during the years 2007-2017. “Our current predictions right now [are] that . . . [f]or about the next ten years or so [2007 – 2017], we’ll see very large ozone holes. Then after about 2017 or 2018 in there, [the ozone holes will] start getting smaller and smaller and smaller. By 2070 [the ozone layer] should be back to a 1980 level.” (Dr. Paul Newman, senior atmospheric physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, quoted in Maria Frostic, “Exploring Ozone,” Ozone Resource Page, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC, October 19, 2007, Track 1:57)
Frank