More News on Global Warming Hoax

The Man Made Global Warming hoax continues to fall apart:

Scientist Who Claimed Polar Bears Were Drowning Is Investigated For 'Scientific Misconduct'

This article reports that Dr Charles Monnett, the man who originally claimed that polar bears were drowning due to melting polar ice due to Man Made Global Warming, has been placed on leave and is being investigated for 'integrity issues' apparently linked to the polar bear report.

Dr David Whitehouse, concerning the Monnett situation, said, "The dangers of climate science is that once you passionately believe in man-made global warming, you see connections everywhere when you should be scientifically cautious about drawing conclusions."

U.S. Scientists Pour Cold Water On Rapid Global Warming Theory

Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. Danny Braswell claim data from NASA’s Terra satellite shows that the Earth’s atmosphere is releasing more heat into space than forecasted by  climate change models.

"Applied to long-term climate change, the research might indicate that the climate is less sensitive to warming due to increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere than climate modellers have theorized. A major underpinning of global warming theory is that the slight warming caused by enhanced greenhouse gases should change cloud cover in ways that cause additional warming, which would be a positive feedback cycle."

"Instead, the natural ebb and flow of clouds, solar radiation, heat rising from the oceans and a myriad of other factors added to the different time lags in which they impact the atmosphere might make it impossible to isolate or accurately identify which piece of Earth’s changing climate is feedback from manmade greenhouse gases."

Healthy Skepticism

"Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily." ~ George Santayana

"The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism." ~  Paul Ricoeur


Who can you believe these days?  Everybody seems to have an angle...some agenda behind what they say.  Once upon a time...yes, it kind of seems like a fairy tale now...people held truth, honesty and unbiased reporting of facts in high regard.  This seems to be a long-lost relic of the past in today's age of marketing, sound bites, political spin and pseudo-journalism.

Today, everyone seems just to accept, and even expect, that politicians of every stripe are spinning, slanting, or just plain lying about the facts.  We know that, regardless of party, our politicians are corrupted by the influences, trips, voting blocks, and campaign donations (read bribes) of the thousands and thousands of lobbyists and special-interest groups.  We know that these politicians tell us what they want us to hear...regardless of the facts...so that they can advance their (or rather their lobbyist's) agendas.  But even though we all seem to know this, a large number of Americans seem to trust government, as a whole, to do what is best for the public.


Sadly, this propensity to bend the truth to the requirements of an agenda has expanded in our society far beyond politics, as we typically think of it.  Scientific American recently reported that, "False positives and exaggerated results in peer-reviewed scientific studies have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. The problem is rampant in economics, the social sciences and even the natural sciences, but it is particularly egregious in biomedicine." 

We have all grown up in a world where science has accomplished amazing things.  We have come to think that with enough time and funding, science could solve all of the problems of the world and provide wondrous inventions to make our lives immeasurably better...and that's where the problem begins.  As Scientific American puts it:

"The problem begins with the public’s rising expectations of science. Being human, scientists are tempted to show that they know more than they do. The number of investigators—and the number of experiments, observations and analyses they produce—has also increased exponentially in many fields, but adequate safeguards against bias are lacking. Research is fragmented, competition is fierce and emphasis is often given to single studies instead of the big picture.

Much research is conducted for reasons other than the pursuit of truth. Conflicts of interest abound, and they influence outcomes. In health care, research is often performed at the behest of companies that have a large financial stake in the results. Even for academics, success often hinges on publishing positive findings. The oligopoly of high-impact journals also has a distorting effect on funding, academic careers and market shares. Industry tailors research agendas to suit its needs, which also shapes academic priorities, journal revenue and even public funding."

 Remember, the article says this trend is "epidemic" in the disciplines of "economics, the social sciences and even the natural sciences."  While they single out the influences on biomedicine  by  "companies that have a large financial stake," the case can also easily be made that government, and their seemingly endless supply of grant money, also exerts undue influence on the scientific process.  These "conflicts of interests" with the government are most probably the exact reason for the "false positives and exaggerated results" in the science of so-called man-made global warming, known as Climategate.  Remember, Al Gore told us that "the science is settled."  That's because his preferred science stood to make him millions and millions of dollars.  In economics, government has a vested interest in promoting models that support their continued expansion, central planning and out-of-control spending.  This is why there seems to be no end to the number of economists who will say that Stimulus spending and increasing debt is a good thing...despite the historical evidence.  And similarly in social science, government wants research that shows that their Great Society programs do indeed work, regardless of what you think you see in the inner-cities.

Just as we should always maintain a healthy skepticism about the claims of miracle cures, fast weight loss products or hair restoration creams, we should be that much more skeptical of government-backed scientific findings.  While buying an ineffectual sexual enhancement supplement may be personally very disappointing, buying government's science-backed solutions can threaten the very liberty on which our country is founded.  So, look closely at what you are being told.  Check for past results.  Does the proposal square with what we have seen in the past?  As the article says:

"First, we must routinely demand robust and extensive external validation—in the form of additional studies—for any report that claims to have found something new. Many fields pay little attention to the need for replication or do it sparingly and haphazardly. Second, scientific reports should take into account the number of analyses that have been conducted, which would tend to downplay false positives."

 Skepticism is a very healthy attribute. It keeps us from falling prey to snake oil salesmen, charlatans and tyrants.  Don't blindly believe what your government, or so-called scientists tell you.  Make sure you understand the implications of their proposals.  Try to discern the hidden agendas...and dearly guard your liberties. 

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty.  Suspect every one who approaches that jewel." ~ Patrick Henry

The End of the World and Other Non-Disasters

We have recently been treated to a media circus surrounding the doomsday predictions of an 89-year-old wacko preacher, Harold Camping.  Camping predicted that the world would end on May 21, 2011 at 6:00 PM...That's six o'clock in what ever time zone you happen to live...you see it was going to start in Fiji and work its way around the globe hour by hour.  The fact that he was wrong when he predicted the end of the world in 1994, or was wrong this time, doesn't seem to deter him from claiming that his math was just a little off.  The new doomsday is now set for October..mark your calendars.

All but a few of his faithful followers knew Camping was a crackpot.  I mean, come on...everyone knows the world is not going to explode until the end of 2012.  The Mayans told us that...geez.  But while we have all had fun at the expense of  the poor, deluded old preacher Camping...well, maybe not so poor since millions of dollars in donations poured in...we continue to give credence to other doomsday crackpots.  Take for example the horrible predictions surrounding last years Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Why this was to be the mother of all disasters.  Life as we know it in the whole Gulf region would be gravely changed for decades, and decades.  This was just the proof the environmentalists needed to show once-and-for-all that big oil meant big trouble for planet earth.  Why we may never recover from the tens-of-millions of barrels of crude oil spilled into the waters of the Gulf...we will be lucky if the whole ocean doesn't die from this.

Well, just as with crazy ol' Camping, these prophets of disaster were wrong...spectacularly wrong.  As Humberto Fontova reports in the Washington Times, the would-be devastation...never was.  Just a short three months after the spill, marine scientist Ivor van Heerden said, "There’s just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster...we’re not seeing catastrophic impacts. There’s a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it.”  Take the time to read the article, its worth it.

At the beginning of the spill, I tried to tell my Facebook friends that, while this was not a good thing, the earth has a tremendous ability to "heal itself" of these sorts of impacts.  The vastness of the oceans, I said, would disperse the oil.  I pointed out that oil is a natural product of the earth's processes and that it seeps out, unaided by man, all the time.  I reminded them of similar predictions in the past and how wrong they had been: 

• The Exxon Valdez site was almost as if nothing ever happened in a year or two.
• The Alaska pipeline not only didn't kill off the wildlife, but actually helped increase the caribou population.
• The late Carl Sagan's predictions in 1990 that if Saddam Hussein set the oil wells on fire we could see a miniature nuclear winter.  The oil wells burned and...well...Sagan was wrong.
• In the early 1970s the environmentalists were predicting a coming ice age...now "the planet has a fever."

And on, and on , and on.  I predicted that within a year, we wouldn't hardly be able to see the impact.  I was wrong...it was much quicker than that.

These prognosticators of peril never seem to be correct...and yet, we continue to listen to them.  We laugh at the followers of preacher Camping and castigate them as a bunch of rubes...but we allow the enviro-vangelists to set our national energy policies and determine allowable uses of our land.  Both Camping and the enviro-wackos have long track records of being wrong, which begs the question, who are the real rubes?

When will we see these charlatans for what they are?  When will we treat them with the same humorous disdain that we reserve for the likes of Camping?  Wrong is wrong.  At least Camping only had limited ability to bilk people of their money.  The environmental lobby has almost unlimited power through their hold on government.

A Little Perspective

Two recent articles brought home the importance of keeping a little perspective through all of the current political and economic turmoil. The first one, The American 21st Century by Victor Davis Hanson makes the point that we have seen bad times before, and somehow survived...even thrived. He gives examples of times, such as the Great Depression, when Americans and others were perdicting doom on America. These were times when we began to doubt our future and standing in the world...as many do today. Hanson helps our perspective with two important points:

"Amid all this doom and gloom, two factors are constant over the decades. First, America goes through periodic bouts of neurotic self-doubt, only to wake up and snap out of it. Indeed, indebted Americans are already bracing for fiscal restraint and parsimony as an antidote to past profligacy.

Second, decline is relative and does not occur in a vacuum. As Western economic and scientific values ripple out from Europe and the United States, it is understandable that developing countries like China, India, and Brazil can catapult right into the 21st century. But that said, national strength is still measured by the underlying hardiness of the patient — its demography, culture, and institutions — rather than by occasional symptoms of ill health."

The second article, Apocalypse, a video blog by Paleofuture.tv, reminds us that people have been warning about the collapse of society and the end of the world for a long time. It discusses how old, dystopian classics like The Late Great Planet Earth, Future Shock, and The Population Bomb have become seen as "campy" today because, of course, none of the predictions came anywhere close to being true.  So Al Gore's, An Inconvenient Truth or movies like The Day After Tomorrow and the myriad of shows on the 2012 Prophecies are nothing new...and will probably be seen as campy in the not-too-distant future.

So, yes we go through bad times periodically.  There are pockets of economic downturns and regional disasters from time-to-time.  But, if we can keep a wider perspective, beyond a current catastrophe to a broader historical view, we can take comfort that things will probably get better.  This is an observation I've made many times...people seem not to be able to see the forest for the trees...cannot see more that a few months in the past or future.  This myopic view of events can cause people to seem silly and just a little schizophrenic. As Matt Novak put it so well at the end of the video:

"Every generation has it's own challenges. Climate change, hunger, homelessness...all these things are very real problems we need to address.  But, if you're going to be making predictions about how we're getting dumber because of technology, or that we need to stock up on spam and gold bars and guns for apocalypse bunkers, don't be surprised if some smarmy punk from the future pulls out your old clips and we all get a good chuckle out of them."

Both of these articles remind us that, as the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun.  We've seen it before...we've been through it before...and we survived.  But that doesn't mean that we should simply say que sera sera and ignore everything that is happening around us either. Part of the advantage of gaining a broader, historical view is that you can see trends and cycles that take years and even decades to play out.  It is not usually the short-term actions or occurrences that cause the most damage, but the long term.

One constant in the history of America, through good times and bad, is the trend toward larger, more powerful and more intrusive government.  This trend usually happens very incrementally.  Many don't even recognize it when it is happening...it's a death by a thousand cuts. Sometimes, as with the Health Care bill (and the Obama administration in general) they try to accelerate the trend. But, this usually elicits a strong response from the voters.

No one act, law or regulation by government will cause the end of our freedom or the collapse of our economy...but look back over the years and see how our freedoms have been eroded...see the usurpation of power...the corruption that has taken over government.  It is in this view that you can truly see what we have lost...not in apocalyptic, destructive occurrences, but by the constant pounding  of the waves against the foundations of our society.

This is why we, as citizens, must insist that government expansion be not only stopped, but reversed.  This goal will only come about with diligence and a long-term view and commitment.  It will not be accomplished in one or even a few victories.  But, if we are to stop the erosion of our rights, we must move back toward our founding principles and rebuild the shores of our liberty.  Don't get defeated by one loss, or bill, or issue.  Don't get too comfortable or cocky with one win.  Take the wins you can get; learn from the losses and keep your eye on the ultimate goal.

So, Chicken Little, take heart.  The sky is not falling...today.  But keep a wary eye on the shores.

Drive more...Save the Planet

Looking at a document from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) entitled National Air Quality Status and Trends Through 2007, I came across the data represented by the chart above.  After listening to the environmental doomsayers all these years, I was shocked at what the data revealed.  It is, in fact exactly opposite from what we have been told.

From 1990 to 2007 the Aggregate Emissions of six common pollutants tracked by the EPA (Particulate Matter, Sulfur Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Oxides of Nitrogen and Volatile Organic Compounds) were reduced by 41%.  This happened while the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country grew by 63%.  Population grew by 21%. Energy Consumption was up by 20% and Vehicle Miles Traveled was increased by 45%.

How can this be?  All of those things are bad for the environment...right?  I mean aren't we evil capitalist/consumer pigs who are polluting the world more and more through our thoughtless use of "fossil fuels" and technology?  That's what they tell us...but it seems that air quality in this country has actually gotten better.  So...therefore...let me think now...if we drive MORE...the air should get even cleaner, right?  If we really care about clean air, like we say we do, we need to produce more, have more babies, use more energy and...DRIVE MORE.  Yeah...that must be it.  Because, the more we drove and did all of these other things, the cleaner the air got.

I also found out that according to a 1999 report of the US Public Interest Research Group that "From 1992 to 1997, the number of SUVs and other light trucks on the road grew from 54 million to 68 million. Today there is one light truck for every 3.9 Americans. If current growth continues, there will be an estimated 133 million light trucks on the road by the year 2020. Given population growth projections, this would be one light truck for every 2.4 people."  So this must mean that SUVs are also good for the air quality...not bad.

This is very upsetting.  Everything I thought I was supposed to know is now in question.  If you can't believe liberal, tree hugging environmentalists...who can you trust?

What's that?  You say you aren't too sure of my logic?  There are other factors at play here, you say.  Driving more miles can't really improve air quality, you contend.

Well, I don't know.  It's the same kind of logic used by the proponents of so-called "Man Made Global Warming."  The global temperatures are rising...human industrial activity is increasing...so, therefore, we are going to burn up the planet.  But wait, we say...it has been warmer on earth in the past...even before the industrial age.  And, there's the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) of the oceans that causes global climate to warm and cool in cycles.  There is the fact that one decent sized volcanic eruption emits more "greenhouse gasses" than the whole industrialized world does in a year.  And, what about the fact that the global temperatures on Mars were increasing at the same time as they were on Earth...due, we believe, to solar activity.  There's no industry, or SUVs, on Mars.  Those are just a few of the many factors that we are told to ignore.  "The planet has a fever," and it's our fault, we are told.

Well, if the Climategate crowd can ignore other factors, so can I.  And until you can convince me that their factors are different than mine...I'm going to drive my SUV more.

Some of Us Knew It All Along

In the past few months many revelations have become public that show that so-called man-made Global Warming is a fraud.  The man at the center of the Climategate affair, Professor Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) has admitted that there has been no statistically significant global warming in over 15 years...that warming periods have happened in the past - but NOT because of human activities.  The famed "hockey stick" graph, and its supporting data and assumptions have been exposed as an utter sham.  Himalayan glaciers are not melting...Antarctic ice caps are not receding and the rainforests are not dying because of global warming.  It seem like every week that goes by brings news of debunked Global Warming myths.

The hysteria and industry that has grown up around the Global Warming myth was not an accident.  E-mails uncovered at the CRU showed a pattern of obfuscation and deceit aimed at covering up the true results of climate studies.  It has been revealed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was intentionally eliminating climate measuring stations in cooler locations around the world to drive up the average measured temperature.  And all the while Global Warming apologists, lead by Al Gore, spewed the lies to the public and our school children.  In effect, the whole scare seems to have been one big, orchestrated hoax aimed at gaining unprecedented control over industries, economies and people around the world.   And yes, some of us knew it all along!

Now that the curtain has been drawn back and the truth has been revealed, some still try to cling desperately to their charade.  They try to say that the colder than normal whether being experienced around the world is actually proof of Global warming...excuse me?  That if you can't understand the subtitles of "Climate Change," you're just not too intelligent.  "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

The tide has truly changed.   Where those of us who spoke out against the Global Warming story were cast as stupid, planet-hating, corporate stooges...we have been vindicated.  The truth is that those who believed in man-made Global Warming were the stooges of the statist government elites and their willing accomplices in the media and academia.  We were right.  The data was wrong...falsified. Climate Change is really just...weather.  So, at the risk of being rude...

We told you so! 

I won't wait for any apologies, though.  That would be too much to ask or expect.

The Climate Cover-up

Okay...I've waited to see how this Climategate stuff was going to play out before commenting.  Now, it seems that enough is known to make some observations.

The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has been one of the most influential organizations in the world in the man-made global warming movement.  The e-mails and data that were obtained (whether they were hacked as originally reported or available on a public server all along as was later reported is not important) shows a pattern of obfuscation and deceit by many of the scientists involved.  As Christopher Booker of the Telegraph reports, Several members of the CRU "have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws."

If the science truly supported the man made global warming claims, you would expect that the CRU would be not only willing, but insistent to share their data.  This is the way science is done...peer review.  Real scientists want to have their findings validated by the wider scientific community.  Peer review can validate theories or invalidate them...but in this way, we move closer and closer to discovering the truth.  Unless, the truth is not the goal.

The apologists have been out in strength.  Some have tried to make the method of the data release the issue...was it legal...was it fair.  Some are making all sort of excuses for the cover-up.  They say that since this is such an important issue, the CRU did not want to delay necessary immediate action because they didn't quite have all of the proof they needed.  And some I've seen just claim that it doesn't matter what the data shows because the ice caps are melting and polar bears are dieing.  I have not seen anyone, though, denying the data's authenticity.

The CRU's data has been used as a key factor in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendations to spend trillions of dollars to avert  what they predict to be catastrophic effects of climate change.  The UN and other agencies have made recommendations for international taxes, and other global governance.  Now, however, the IPCC says that it was only one of many inputs.

The CRU defends themselves by saying that their data matches up with the data of other organizations such as NASA and NOAA.  Since we know CRUs data was fudged, this does not really provide defense of their data, but does call to question the data of the other organizations.  There is much to be gained by those who would administer the climate laws...they certainly may have corrupted more than one organization.

So you may be a believer or an unbeliever.  I do not believe that human activity has significant impact on the natural climate change cycles.  But regardless of which side you fall on, are you willing to give up national sovereignty, trillions of dollars and personal freedoms on uncertain science and fudged data?  I'm not.  This needs to be stopped now and a full investigation should be done by outside organizations.