Not all global warmers: American Physical Society Some Members Skeptics Too

American Physical Society

Not all agree global warming caused by manmade emissions CO2...

Fox News spot reported Friday.

Special Report w/ Brit Hume

Political Grapevine
The idea that there is a scientific consensus about global warming takes another big hit

Following up...

Here's the Fox News report clip

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Change of Heart

An organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists has reversed its stance on climate change. The American Physical Society now says that many of its members no longer believe global warming is caused by humans.

The Society previously declared: "The evidence is incontrovertible. Global warming is occurring." But the Society now says there is no scientific consensus to support that statement: "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the intergovernmental panel on climate change conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are likely to be primarily responsible for global warming."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,386481,00.html

It's not like skeptics haven't been of a professional background before this. Check our site archives for listing of scientists, skeptics among them, Ronald Bailey's writings until his trip to a UN Climate Change Conference in 2005 where upon return he sang: "We're All Global Warmers, Now," Bill Gray, and the Great Global Warming Scandal video...

But unfortunately, the Fox News clip report is entitled incorrectly. And its first sentence is wholly misleading.

The American Physical Association did not as a whole change its position. Some of the members have written a paper which continues the debate...

Read the update response after the initial report made the mainstream news rounds...

Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate
Michael Asher (Blog) - July 16, 2008 9:35 PM

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."...

Updated 7/17/2008

After publication of this story, the APS responded with a statement that its Physics and Society Forum is merely one unit within the APS, and its views do not reflect those of the Society at large.

http://www.dailytech.com/Myth+of+Consensus+Explodes+APS+Opens+Global+Warming+Debate/article12403.htm

The follow-up we try to get the situation down to as clear as clear can be, but sometimes it all remains smoggy, cloudy, hazy...

Net the Truth Online

Saturday, November 10, 2007
NO 'Consensus' on "Man-Made" Global Warming

http://www.populartechnology.net/2007/10/no-consensus-on-global-warming.html

Many a noted scientist are actually acknowledging a plateau in the earth's warming trend and that the earth is actually cooling...

Read interview with Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs.

Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html

Scientist: Earth Cooling, Not Warming

Thursday, April 24, 2008 10:53 AM

By: Philip V. Brennan Article Font Size

A San Francisco-based scientist says that current solar activity strongly indicates that the earth is on the verge of a new ice age.

"Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh," warns Phil Chapman writing in The Australian. Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

"The scariest photo I have seen . . . is at www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory [SOHO], located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity," Chapman wrote, adding ominously that "what is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot."

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/global_warming_ice_age/2008/04/24/90591.html

Here's a link about the American Physical Association some of the membership disagreeing that there is a concensus, posted by scout.com and we'll include the last line.

Note, in light of this recent development, CNN apparently reran a portion of its series globe in Peril last night. this was after Larry King interviewed supporters of UFO aliens are out there along with debunkers... we'll post about that, too.

Like scientists who disagree with the Global Warming Theory "concensus" aren't scientists... geesh...

Whew a slew of links happy reading

http://www.blogrunner.com/snapshot/t/news/science/topics/globalwarming/

And more discussion and info from Hot Air

Consensus collapses: APS re-opens debate on global warming; Update:

APS “reaffirms” stanceposted at 8:34 am on July 18, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
The American Physical Society had been a proponent of the “consensus” on anthropogenic global warming/climate change — until now. While the main organization has not addressed its position — yet — a major unit within APS has declared global warming unproven and that the IPCC’s conclusions unsupportable. The APS will re-open the debate on global warming with a new paper accusing the IPCC of deliberate obfuscation (via Memeorandum):

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/18/consensus-collapses-aps-re-opens-debate-on-global-warming/

Also see

http://news.yahoo.com/topics/climate-change-and-global-warming

Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate
Michael Asher (Blog) - July 16, 2008 9:35 PM

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."

According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, "in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low."...

Updated 7/17/2008

After publication of this story, the APS responded with a statement that its Physics and Society Forum is merely one unit within the APS, and its views do not reflect those of the Society at large.

http://www.dailytech.com/Myth+of+Consensus+Explodes+APS+Opens+Global+Warming+Debate/article12403.htm

Global Warming Link Wildfires Begin

Who didn't know such a connection would be attempted between wildfires and global warming? Anderson Cooper's Planet in Peril series made the connection the day of the report of the California fires, before it became known it was arson-related, when the tagline for the program segment was entitled California in Peril. Why wasn't it California in Crisis? or California Crying or anything that didn't suggest a connection between warming of the planet and wildfires?

A Spark Neglected: Wildfires and Global Warming
Select Committee to Examine Link Between Changing Climate, Frequency and Intensity of Wildfires

“A spark neglected makes a mighty fire.”
--Robert Herrick

Following the devastating fires in Southern California, the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will hold a hearing examining the scientific link between a changing climate and the frequency and intensity of wildfires.

Witnesses will discuss the present effects of climate change on wildfires and contributing factors such as increased drought, changes in snowmelt patterns, changes in precipitation, and higher temperatures. In addition, mitigation and adaptation strategies will be discussed.

The frequency and intensity of wildfires have increased in recent decades throughout the Western United States. Last year, the Forest Service spent a record $2.5 billion fighting wildfires that burned a record 9.9 million acres (4 million hectares), compared to the ten-year average of 6 million acres. This year 8.7 million acres have burned thus far. The current fires burning in California are expected to cause over $1 billion in property damage alone and have already burned an area the size of Rhode Island. Mounting scientific evidence indicates that the growth in wildfires is linked to global warming and that this trend is likely to intensify in the coming decades.

WHAT: Select Committee Hearing, "Wildfires and the Climate Crisis"

WHEN: Thursday, November 1st, 2007, 10 AM

WHERE: 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC
Or on the web at globalwarming.house.gov

http://globalwarming.house.gov/mediacenter/pressreleases?id=0112

Global warming, economy, world what's next

After listening to Hakim's interview, need we warn yet again to what all this is leading? Global world order and global governance.

Peter Hakim, Inter-American Dialogue, president, interviewed on C-Span's Washington Journal

...there's global warming, the global economy, we're part of the global world... supports integration hemisphere-wide, says Hakim

http://www.google.com/search?q=peter+hakim&hl=en&sourceid=gd&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-40,GGLD:en

Peter Hakim North American "integration" "union" pro

http://www.google.com/search?q=peter+hakim+north+american+union&btnG=Search&hl=en&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2006-40%2CGGLD%3Aen

Worldnet daily North American Union con

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2006-40%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=worldnet+daily+north+american+union&btnG=Search

New World Order Drive Behind Global Warming March 12, 2007

http://netthetruthonline.blogspot.com/2007/03/new-world-order-drive-behind-global.html

Global Warming Skeptics Rising

Another critic of global warming. Hannity and Colmes featured two days worth of listings of skeptics of global warming. they interviewed Don Easterbrook one day and ... Timothy Ball the following day...

NewsTrack - Science Published: March 15, 2007 at 1:59 PM
Danish scientist: Global warming is a myth
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March 15 (UPI) -- A Danish scientist said the idea of a "global temperature" and global warming is more political than scientific.

University of Copenhagen Professor Bjarne Andresen has analyzed the topic in collaboration with Canadian Professors Christopher Essex from the University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/danish_scientist_global_warming_is_a_myth/20070315-012154-7403r/

More finds

Death Threats for man-made-global-warming-doesn't-exist scientist

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/cover031207.htm

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/mar/07031310.html

‘Hannity’ Gives More Than 70 Reasons to Chill Warming Hype
Posted by Dan Gainor on March 6, 2007 - 19:12.

http://newsbusters.org/node/11232

Sean Hannity Exposes Al Gore’s Inconvenient Global Warming Hypocrisy
Posted by Noel Sheppard on February 20, 2007 - 19:42.

http://newsbusters.org/node/10951

Will New York Times get Pulitzer for Global Warming debunker?

Right. If any other body of scientists ahm got it a little bit wrong, they'd be laughed out of the gang. Not global warmers. Gore relied on their little bit of wrongness, and doesn't admit the specific errors and false claims. He just keeps on being wrong. This is like saying two plus two is five - some people just don't care to learn the true facts.

New York Times comes out with quoting the dissenters on global warming in March 13, 2007 piece From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype by William J. Broad

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/13gore.html?ex=1331438400&en=2df9d6e7a5aa6ed6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

The real horror however is children are being shown An Inconvenient Truth in school, in elementary school, and in high school and colleges, but are not being shown the rebuttal: The Great Global Warming Swindle. The Great Global Warming Swindle was available on Google videos Monday night, but is no longer available.

http://www.google.com/search?q=GREAT+GLOBAL+WARMING+SWINDLE&hl=en&sourceid=gd&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-40,GGLD:en

still available here

http://www.passionateamerica.com/global-warming-is-a-lie-the-great-global-warming-swindle-video/

Glenn Beck interviews Easterbrook and Patrick Michaels Cato Institute

glenn asks how come this has been so widely spun? Michaels agrees finally the New York Times comes out and says this isn't happening as stated... it's about the money some six billion dollars grants and so forth...

Beck says this is a milestone, the New York Times article... there's been a state of fear, its being taught in schools...

Easterbrook those who don't sign on to it are said to be stupid or said to have some financeial interest...

Easterbrook explains details! Get the transcript

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/gb.html

http://www.glennbeck.com/home/index.shtml

From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype
New York Times
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: March 13, 2007Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change.

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made “the most important and salient points” about climate change, if not “some nuances and distinctions” scientists might want. “The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger,” he said, adding, “I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand.”

Although Mr. Gore is not a scientist, he does rely heavily on the authority of science in “An Inconvenient Truth,” which is why scientists are sensitive to its details and claims.

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

more excerpts

But Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”

Biologists, too, have gotten into the act. In January, Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming’s effects and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, faulted Mr. Gore for his portrayal of global warming as spreading malaria.

“For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against the unsubstantiated claims,” Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald Tribune. “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they continue to ignore the facts.”

excerpt

Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton who advised Mr. Gore on the book and movie, said that reasonable scientists disagreed on the malaria issue and other points that the critics had raised. In general, he said, Mr. Gore had distinguished himself for integrity.

“On balance, he did quite well — a credible and entertaining job on a difficult subject,” Dr. Oppenheimer said. “For that, he deserves a lot of credit. If you rake him over the coals, you’re going to find people who disagree. But in terms of the big picture, he got it right.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/13gore.html?ex=1331438400&en=2df9d6e7a5aa6ed6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Check our site for more on this issue. We mentioned Easterbrook's work and criticism a while back.

http://netthetruthonline.blogspot.com/search?q=global+warming

New World Order Drive Behind Global Warming

That the likes of Gordon Brown want a new world order to combat global warming isn't news, not really. The United Nations issues its tilted climate report every so often, and has been desirous of a global tax, too. But the people don't notice, nor do they care. What is new is the Council on Foreign Relations actually uttering the words, "new world order..." what's up with that?

Brown wants 'new world order' to fight global warming Mon Mar 12, 4:20 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - Gordon Brown, likely to be the next prime minister, will deliver a speech calling for a "new world order" to combat global warming on Monday.

According to excerpts released by the finance ministry, Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown will also say the United Nations should make the fight against global warming a core "pillar" of its international mission.

Brown will praise the European Union's progress in combatting climate change after EU leaders on Friday agreed to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.

He is set to announce domestic policy proposals that are targetted at helping Britons save energy, thereby cutting their individual carbon emissions, ahead of the government's publication of its Climate Change Bill on Tuesday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070312/wl_uk_afp/britainpolitics_070312082025

The New New World Order
Daniel W. Drezner
From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007

RISING AND FALLING

Throughout the twentieth century, the list of the world's great powers was predictably short: the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and northwestern Europe. The twenty-first century will be different. China and India are emerging as economic and political heavyweights: China holds over a trillion dollars in hard currency reserves, India's high-tech sector is growing by leaps and bounds, and both countries, already recognized nuclear powers, are developing blue-water navies. The National Intelligence Council, a U.S. government think tank, projects that by 2025, China and India will have the world's second- and fourth-largest economies, respectively. Such growth is opening the way for a multipolar era in world politics.

This tectonic shift will pose a challenge to the U.S.-dominated global institutions that have been in place since the 1940s. At the behest of Washington, these multilateral regimes have promoted trade liberalization, open capital markets, and nuclear nonproliferation, ensuring relative peace and prosperity for six decades -- and untold benefits for the United States. But unless rising powers such as China and India are incorporated into this framework, the future of these international regimes will be uncomfortably uncertain.

Given its performance over the last six years, one would not expect the Bush administration to handle this challenge terribly well. After all, its unilateralist impulses, on vivid display in the Iraq war, have become a lightning rod for criticism of U.S. foreign policy. But the Iraq controversy has overshadowed a more pragmatic and multilateral component of the Bush administration's grand strategy: Washington's attempt to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy and international institutions in order to account for shifts in the global distribution of power. The Bush administration has been reallocating the resources of the executive branch to focus on emerging powers. In an attempt to ensure that these countries buy into the core tenets of the U.S.-created world order, Washington has tried to bolster their profiles in forums ranging from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the World Health Organization, on issues as diverse as nuclear proliferation, monetary relations, and the environment. Because these efforts have focused more on so-called low politics than on the global war on terrorism, they have flown under the radar of many observers. But in fact, George W. Bush has revived George H. W. Bush's call for a "new world order" -- by creating, in effect, a new new world order.

This unheralded effort is well intentioned and well advised...

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070301faessay86203/daniel-w-drezner/the-new-new-world-order.html

Transcript of Interview
"The New New World Order"
Speaker: Daniel W. Drezner, Associate Professor of International Politics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
Presider: Gideon Rose, Managing Editor, Foreign Affairs
February 26, 2007
Council on Foreign Relations

http://www.cfr.org/publication/12719/the_new_new_world_order.html

Global Tax UN agenda Bill Clinton

THE BIG PICTURE EMERGES
The agenda of the UN under the guise of the various environmental agencies and groups is not recognized for what it actually is, and when the puzzle pieces are assembled, the big picture emerges. It reveals itself to be the benevolent (despotic) controller of not only the land and its resources, but of the people and their activities as well. Under the Wildlands Project, at least 50 percent of the land area in the United States would be returned to "core wilderness areas" where human activity is barred. These areas would be connected by corridors several miles in width. The core areas and corridors would be surrounded by "buffer zones" in which "controlled" human activity would be allowed. The words of Reed Noss clarify the real agenda, "the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans."

"The Reorganization of Society, " as presented in their documents, is the five step plan of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to implement their agenda within the United States and the world."...

http://www.apfn.org/thewinds/1997/08/global_warming.html

The Great Global Warming Swindle

The google video was available - not any longer

this one still works

http://www.passionateamerica.com/global-warming-is-a-lie-the-great-global-warming-swindle-video/

The Great Global Warming Swindle

1 hr 15 min 56 sec - Mar 9, 2007

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=the+great+swindle

search for transcript

http://www.google.com/search?q=great+global+warming+swindle+transcript&hl=en&sourceid=gd&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-40,GGLD:en

'The Great Global Warming Swindle'
Channel 4 Thursday 8 March at 9pm

In a polemical and thought-provoking documentary, film-maker Martin Durkin argues that the theory of man-made global warming has become such a powerful political force that other explanations for climate change are not being properly aired.

The film brings together the arguments of leading scientists who disagree with the prevailing consensus that a 'greenhouse effect' of carbon dioxide released by human activity is the cause of rising global temperatures.

Instead the documentary highlights recent research that the effect of the sun's radiation on the atmosphere may be a better explanation for the regular swings of climate from ice ages to warm interglacial periods and back again.

The film argues that the earth's climate is always changing, and that rapid warmings and coolings took place long before the burning of fossil fuels. It argues that the present single-minded focus on reducing carbon emissions not only may have little impact on climate change, it may also have the unintended consequence of stifling development in the third world, prolonging endemic poverty and disease.

The film features an impressive roll-call of experts, including nine professors – experts in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, environmental science, biogeography and paleoclimatology – from such reputable institutions as MIT, NASA, the International Arctic Research Centre, the Institut Pasteur, the Danish National Space Center and the Universities of London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Winnipeg, Alabama and Virginia.

The film hears from scientists who dispute the link between carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures.

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.html

http://www.channel4.com/search/results.jsp

LP Commentary

http://libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=179803

Media too balanced on global warming? What planet Gore residing?

Update

'Global Warming Is Lies' Claims Documentary
Sunday, 4th March 2007, 11:04
Accepted theories about man causing global warming are "lies" claims a controversial new TV documentary.

‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans.

The programme, to be screened on Channel 4 on Thursday March 8, will see a series of respected scientists attack the "propaganda" that they claim is killing the world’s poor.

Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2.

Nobody in the documentary defends the greenhouse effect theory, as it claims that climate change is natural, has been occurring for years, and ice falling from glaciers is just the spring break-up and as normal as leaves falling in autumn.

A source at Channel 4 said: "It is essentially a polemic and we are expecting it to cause trouble, but this is the controversial programming that Channel 4 is renowned for."

Controversial director Martin Durkin said: "You can see the problems with the science of global warming, but people just don’t believe you – it’s taken ten years to get this commissioned.

"I think it will go down in history as the first chapter in a new era of the relationship between scientists and society. Legitimate scientists – people with qualifications – are the bad guys.

"It is a big story that is going to cause controversy.

"It’s very rare that a film changes history, but I think this is a turning point and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bollocks.

"Al Gore might have won an Oscar for ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, but the film is very misleading and he has got the relationship between CO2 and climate change the wrong way round."

One major piece of evidence of CO2 causing global warming are ice core samples from Antarctica, which show that for hundreds of years, global warming has been accompanied by higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

In ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ Al Gore is shown claiming this proves the theory, but palaeontologist Professor Ian Clark claims in the documentary that it actually shows the opposite.

He has evidence showing that warmer spells in the Earth’s history actually came an average of 800 years before the rise in CO2 levels.

Prof Clark believes increased levels of CO2 are because the Earth is heating up and not the cause. He says most CO2 in the atmosphere comes from the oceans, which dissolve the gas.

When the temperature increases, more gas is released into the atmosphere and when global temperatures cool, more CO2 is taken in. Because of the immense size of the oceans, he said they take time to catch up with climate trends, and this ‘memory effect’ is responsible for the lag.

Scientists in the programme also raise another discrepancy with the official line, showing that most of the recent global warming occurred before 1940, when global temperatures then fell for four decades.

It was only in the late 1970s that the current trend of rising temperatures began.

This, claim the sceptics, is a flaw in the CO2 theory, because the post-war economic boom produced more CO2 and should, according to the consensus, have meant a rise in global temperatures.

http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=CZ434669U&news_headline=global_warming_is_lies_claims_documentary

Wednesday, 02/28/07
Gore says media miss climate message
Journalists have leaned toward balance at expense of consensus data, he says
By BEVERLY KEEL
Staff Writer
Back in Tennessee on Tuesday, Gore told a crowd of about 50 people at the U.S. Media Ethics Summit II that the presentation's single most provocative slide was one that contrasts results of two long-term studies. A 10-year University of California study found that essentially zero percent of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles disagreed that global warming exists, whereas, another study found that 53 percent of mainstream newspaper articles disagreed the global warming premise.

He noted that recently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fourth unanimous report calling on world leaders to take action on global warming...

They have failed to report that it is the consensus and instead have chosen … balance as bias...

http://www.dicksonherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070228/NEWS01/702280434/1297/MTCN02

Al Gore's Convenient Lie:
The Global Warming Spin
NewsMax Magazine's special report "Al Gore Spins Global Warming" debunks many widely promulgated notions about the global warming threat and finds that truth is the first casualty in Gore's apocalyptic film.

The compelling report by Lowell Ponte - author of the best-selling book about changing climate, "The Cooling" - and Marc Morano details the propaganda blitz about global warming … and the facts it obscures.

http://www.newsmax.com/adv/jul06/?PROMO_CODE=2E6E-1

Titled "HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind today's obsession with global warming," Whistleblower tells the rest of the story the "mainstream press" will never reveal.
Posted: March 1, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

The U.N. recently announced global warming is leading inexorably to global catastrophe. Al Gore won the "best documentary" Oscar for his disaster film "An Inconvenient Truth." The news media beat the drum of "climate catastrophe" daily, all but ignoring scientists who say the threat is overblown or nonexistent. And across America, school children are frightened to death with tales of rising oceans, monster tornadoes, droughts and millions dying – all because of man-made global warming.

However, hidden just beneath the surface of the world's latest environmental craze is a stunningly different reality, as the March edition of WND's acclaimed Whistleblower magazine documents.

Titled "HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind today's obsession with global warming," Whistleblower tells the rest of the story the "mainstream press" will never reveal.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54483

Developing nations hit back on climate change
27 Feb 2007 18:43:44 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Robin Pomeroy

ROME, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Developing countries, including emerging economic giants China and India, are not prepared to take the blame for climate change, the head of the G77 group of developing nations said on Tuesday. Some countries in Europe and North America want developing countries to accept limits on their emissions of greenhouse gases when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol runs out in 2012, but the G77 looks likely to oppose that.

"Most environmental degradation that's happened has been historically caused by the industrial world," said Munir Akram, Pakistan's permanent representative to the United Nations and chairman of the G77 group in New York.

"China, India and others are at the stage where they are now taking off and it's quite natural that their emissions of carbon are increasing," he told a news conference after a two-day meeting of G77 diplomats in Rome.

"There's a sort of propaganda effort to try to shift the blame for environmental degradation on to these fast-growing economies, and the motives are not very well disguised."

One of the main reasons U.S. President George W. Bush pulled his country out of Kyoto was that the 1997 U.N. treaty only imposed emissions limits on developed countries.

The European Union remained in the pact but wants developing countries included in a second phase treaty which will be discussed at a U.N. climate change meeting in Bali, Indonesia in December.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) latest report, released earlier this month, predicted global temperatures would rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 Celsius (3.2 and 7.8 Fahrenheit) this century due to the greenhouse effect.

Emissions from industry and transport, especially carbon dioxide (CO2), a by-product of burning fossil fuels like oil and coal, are blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere in a process set to increase disasters like floods and droughts.

"The developing countries contribute the least to environmental degradation but are affected the most," read a statement issued by the G77 after the Rome meeting, which covered everything from aid to U.N. reform...

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L27392364.htm

Vegetarianism Most Effective Tool Against Climate Change

A New Global Warming Strategy: How Environmentalists are Overlooking Vegetarianism as the Most Effective Tool Against Climate Change in Our Lifetimes
by Noam Mohr

clip

Methane and Vegetarianism

By far the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane worldwide is animal agriculture.17

Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO2 greenhouse gases put together.18 Methane is 23 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2.19 While atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen by about 31% since pre-industrial times, methane concentrations have more than doubled.20 Whereas human sources of CO2 amount to just 3% of natural emissions, human sources produce one and a half times as much methane as all natural sources.21 In fact, the effect of our methane emissions may be compounded as methane-induced warming in turn stimulates microbial decay of organic matter in wetlands—the primary natural source of methane.22

With methane emissions causing nearly half of the planet’s human-induced warming, methane reduction must be a priority. Methane is produced by a number of sources, including coal mining and landfills—but the number one source worldwide is animal agriculture.23 Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year.24 And this source is on the rise: global meat consumption has increased fivefold in the past fifty years, and shows little sign of abating.25 About 85% of this methane is produced in the digestive processes of livestock,26 and while a single cow releases a relatively small amount of methane,27 the collective effect on the environment of the hundreds of millions of livestock animals worldwide is enormous. An additional 15% of animal agricultural methane emissions are released from the massive “lagoons” used to store untreated farm animal waste,28 and already a target of environmentalists’ for their role as a primary source of water pollution in the U.S.29

The conclusion is simple: arguably the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products. Simply by going vegetarian (or, strictly speaking, vegan), 30,31,32 we can eliminate one of the major sources of emissions of methane, the greenhouse gas responsible for almost half of the global warming impacting the planet today.

Advantages of Vegetarianism over CO2 Reduction...


http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/dec/globalwarming.htm

Humans' beef with livestock: a warmer planet
from the February 20, 2007 edition
American meat eaters are responsible for 1.5 more tons of carbon dioxide per person than vegetarians every year.
By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

As Congress begins to tackle the causes and cures of global warming, the action focuses on gas-guzzling vehicles and coal-fired power plants, not on lowly bovines.

Yet livestock are a major emitter of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. And as meat becomes a growing mainstay of human diet around the world, changing what we eat may prove as hard as changing what we drive.

It's not just the well-known and frequently joked-about flatulence and manure of grass-chewing cattle that's the problem, according to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Land-use changes, especially deforestation to expand pastures and to create arable land for feed crops, is a big part. So is the use of energy to produce fertilizers, to run the slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and to pump water.

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems," Henning Steinfeld, senior author of the report, said when the FAO findings were released in November.

Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that's more than the emissions caused by transportation.

The latter two gases are particularly troubling – even though they represent far smaller concentrations in atmosphere than CO2, which remains the main global warming culprit. But methane has 23 times the global warming potential (GWP) of CO2 and nitrous oxide has 296 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide.

Methane could become a greater problem if the permafrost in northern latitudes thaws with increasing temperatures, releasing the gas now trapped below decaying vegetation. What's more certain is that emissions of these gases can spike as humans consume more livestock products...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0220/p03s01-ussc.html

Keeping a cool head amid warming hysteria

Since the following are op/ed pieces, the posting can contain the full article.

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL: Keeping a cool head amid warming hysteria (Op/ed, Sunday Telegraph (Australia)2/18/07)
Opinion / Op Ed; Pg. 81

February 18, 2007

Global-warming doomsayers were out and about in a big way recently, but the rain came in central Queensland, then here in Sydney.

January also was unusually cool.

We have been subjected to a lot of nonsense about climate disasters, as some zealots have been presenting extreme scenarios to frighten us.

They claim ocean levels are about to rise spectacularly, there could be the occasional tsunami as high as an eight-storey building, and the Amazon Basin could be destroyed as the ice cap in the Arctic and Greenland melts.

An overseas magazine called for Nuremberg-style trials for global-warming sceptics, and a US television correspondent compared sceptics to ''Holocaust deniers''.

A local newspaper editorial's complaint about the doomsayers' religious enthusiasm is unfair to mainstream Christianity.

Christians don't go against reason, although we sometimes go beyond it in faith to embrace the probabilities.

What we were seeing from the doomsayers was an induced dose of mild hysteria -- semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition.

I'm deeply sceptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence.

I would be surprised if industrial pollution and carbon emissions had no ill-effects at all.

But enough is enough.

A few fixed points may provide light on the subject.

We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history -- for example, the ice ages and Noah's flood, when human causation could only have been negligible.

Nor should it be too surprising to learn that during the past 100 years, the media has alternated between promoting fear of anew ice age and fear of global warming.

Terrible droughts are not infrequent in Australian history, sometimes lasting seven or eight years.

We all know that a cool January doesn't mean much in the long run.

But neither does evidence based on only a few years.

Scaremongers have used temperature fluctuations over limited periods and in a few places to misrepresent longer patterns.

Warming evidence is mixed and often exaggerated but can be reassuring.

Global warming has been increasing constantly since 1975 at the rate of less than one-fifth of a degree Celsius per decade.

The concentration of carbon dioxide increased surface temperatures more in winter than in summer, especially in mid and high latitudes over land, while there was a global cooling of the stratosphere.

Britain's University of East Anglia climate research unit found global temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2005, and a NASA satellite recently found the southern hemisphere had not warmed in the past 25 years.
Is mild global warming a northern phenomenon?

We may have been alarmed by the sighting of an iceberg as large as an aircraft carrier off Dunedin, but we should be consoled by the news that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing there.

The science is certainly more complicated than the propaganda.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=d5d6b9e4-802a-23ad-4bba-38996d72c888

Check the facts we're all global warmers now crowd...

More

Shikha Dalmia Reason.org
June 22, 2006
Much-Heralded Plan to Stop Global Warming Fails
Europe's carbon trading scheme flops, now what?
By Shikha Dalmia


The most "inconvenient truth" about global warming is not -- as Al Gore tells us in his new movie -- that global warming will devastate our planet unless there is a major counter-offensive. It is that with the collapse of the European carbon-trading scheme last spring, there is no workable counter-offensive left.

Gore and other green activists have declared victory on the science of global warming, pointing out that recent developments have settled any doubt that global warming is real and that humans are the cause of it. While the case is far from closed, it is certainly true that one of the major gaps in the evidence for global warming has been filled -- with revised data showing that the earth's surface temperature is not flat as previously thought. Rather, it is rising at a rate that is consistent with the warming observed in the troposphere.

But if the scientific consensus about global warming has grown, the proper response to it remains more elusive today than ever before.

Amidst much fanfare last year, European and other signatories to the Kyoto treaty adopted emission trading as their method of choice to tackle global warming – instead of economy-busting carbon taxes or draconian command-and-control regulations. Under this scheme, each participating country is given a carbon allowance, which it then divvies among its domestic industry in the form of pollution rights or credits.

Companies are allowed to trade these credits with each other on the theory that those able to cut emissions cheaply would have an incentive to do so --and sell their spare credits to others for whom cuts are more expensive, keeping overall program costs as low as possible.

But this so-called market-based scheme collapsed in May when prematurely released data revealed that there was a glut of credits. The per ton prices for these credits dropped from 31 Euros to 12 Euros in just three weeks, finally settling near 9 Euros.

If the credit glut – and subsequent market crash – had stemmed from dramatic emission reductions as some initially thought, it would be cause for celebration. In fact, it was the result of an overly generous allocation of credits.

Nor can the problem be fixed simply by tightening each country's allowances in the program's second -- 2008-2012 -- phase...

http://www.reason.org/commentaries/dalmia_20060622.shtml

Glaciers Reports Gathering Dust

Via World Net Daily link

Science Magazine:glaciers not on simple upward melting trend
http://newsbusters.org/node/10804

Published Online February 8, 2007
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1138478

Submitted on December 6, 2006
Accepted on January 24, 2007
Rapid Changes in Ice Discharge from Greenland Outlet Glaciers
Ian M. Howat 1*, Ian R. Joughin 2, Ted A. Scambos 3
1 Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Lab, University of Washington, 1013 NE 40th Street, Seattle, WA 98105-6698, USA; National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, 1540 30th Street, Boulder, CO, 80309-0449, USA.
2 Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Lab, University of Washington, 1013 NE 40th Street, Seattle, WA 98105-6698, USA.
3 National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, 1540 30th Street, Boulder, CO, 80309-0449, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Ian M. Howat , E-mail: ihowat@apl.washington.edu

Using satellite-derived surface elevation and velocity data, we find major short-term variations in recent ice discharge and mass-loss at two of Greenland's largest outlet glaciers. Their combined rate of mass-loss doubled in less than a year in 2004 and then decreased in 2006 to near the previous rates, likely due to fast re-equilibration of calving front geometry following retreat. Total mass-loss is a fraction of concurrent gravity-derived estimates, pointing to an alternative source of loss and the need for high-resolution observations of outlet dynamics and glacier geometry for sea-level rise predictions.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1138478v1

By: University of Washington
Published: Feb 13, 2007 at 06:42

Two of Greenland's largest glaciers shrank dramatically and dumped twice as much ice into the sea during a period of less than a year between 2004 and 2005. And then, less than two years later, they returned to near their previous rates of discharge.

The variability over such a short time, reported online Feb. 9 on Science magazine's Science Express, underlines the problem in assuming that glacial melting and sea level rise will necessarily occur at a steady upward trajectory, according to lead author Ian Howat, a post-doctoral researcher with the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory and the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center. The paper comes a year after a study in the journal Science revealed that discharge from Greenland's glaciers had doubled between 2000 and 2005, leading some scientists to speculate such changes were on a steady, upward climb.

"While the rates of shrinking of these two glaciers have stabilized, we don't know whether they will remain stable, grow or continue to collapse in the near future," Howat says. That's because the glaciers' shape changed greatly, becoming stretched and thinned.

"Our main point is that the behavior of these glaciers can change a lot from year to year, so we can't assume to know the future behavior from short records of recent changes," he says. "Future warming may lead to rapid pulses of retreat and increased discharge rather than a long, steady drawdown."

The findings come on the heels of the widely publicized Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's report issued Feb. 2. Some scientists criticized the report for disregarding the surprisingly high discharges of ice from Greenland's glaciers since 2000 when the panel estimated the amount of future sea level rise that will be caused by melting glaciers.

In the summary for policy makers (http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change explained its position saying, "Dynamical processes related to ice flow and not included in current models but suggested by recent observations could increase the vulnerability of the ice sheets to warming, increasing sea level rise. Understanding of these processes is limited and there is no consensus on their magnitude."

"I think the IPCC authors made a responsible decision in producing their estimates while noting the recent discharges are a real concern that we do not yet understand well enough to make accurate predictions," says Ian Joughin, a glaciologist with the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory and co-author on the Science Express article...

http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_51099.shtml

Snowstorm Busts Showing of Gore Film

SAVE IT FOR A SUNNY DAY: Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area cancelling screening of Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' because of a snowstorm...

http://www.drudgereport.com/

HOUSE HEARING ON 'WARMING OF THE PLANET' CANCELED AFTER ICE STORM
HEARING NOTICE
Tue Feb 13 2007 19:31:25 ET

The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to inclement weather. The hearing is entitled “Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?”

The hearing will be rescheduled to a date and time to be announced later...

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash8.htm

Poll on Global Warming

Congressional Poll on global warming mankind's contribution revealing

Do You think it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the earth is warming because of man-made problems?

Democrats = 95 % yes
Republicans = 13 % yes

SEE SITE FOR MORE DETAILS

http://syndication.nationaljournal.com/images/203Insiderspoll_NJlogo.pdf

Gore Charge Slanderous Says Global Warming Skeptic

Christopher Horner visits with John Gibson to discuss global warming and Al Gore. Gore is charging skeptics are being paid off, such as American Enterprise Institute offering remuneration for those who could debunk global warming.

Horner says Gore is slandering people... he's appealing to his European constituency... can't imagine this is a sane approach to the White House... hopes not...

Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Gore sharply criticizes global warming critics
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Former Vice President Al Gore sharply condemned critics of global warming, in an interview Tuesday with Cuatro, a television channel in Spain and a CNN affiliate.

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2007/02/gore-says-bush-administration-paying.html


Follow along carefully now...

Cut & paste: UN report contradicts exaggerations by Al Gore and co
February 08, 2007

Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, in Project Syndicate, on the panic mongering over global warming

LOST among the hype [that greeted the report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last week] is the unexciting fact that this report is actually no more dire than the IPCC's last report, issued in 2001. In two important ways, this year's effort was actually less dire...
First, the world's scientists have rejigged their estimates about how much sea levels will rise. In the 1980s, America's Environmental Protection Agency expected oceans to rise by several metres by 2100. By the 1990s, the IPCC was expecting a 67cm rise. Six years ago, it anticipated ocean levels would be 48.5cm higher than they are currently. In this year's report, the estimated rise is 38.5cm on average.
This is especially interesting since it fundamentally rejects one of the most harrowing scenes from Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. In graphic detail, Gore demonstrated how a 20-foot (6m) rise in the sea level would inundate much of Florida, Shanghai and Holland. The IPCC report makes it clear that exaggerations of this magnitude have no basis in science, though clearly they frightened people and perhaps will win Gore an Academy Award.

The report also revealed the improbability of another Gore scenario: that global warming could make the Gulf Stream shut down, turning Europe into a new Siberia. The IPCC simply and tersely tells us that this scenario - also vividly depicted in the Hollywood movie The Day After Tomorrow - is considered "very unlikely". Moreover, even if the Gulf Stream were to weaken over the century, this would be good, as there would be less net warming over land areas...

Climate change is a real and serious problem. But the problem with the recent media frenzy is that some seem to believe no new report or development is enough if it doesn't reveal more serious consequences and more terrifying calamities than humanity has considered before.

Indeed, this media frenzy has little or no scientific backing. A 38.5cm rise in the ocean's levels is a problem, but by no means will it bring down civilisation. Last century sea levels rose by half that amount without most of us even noticing.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21188104-7583,00.html

More

Global warming debate spurs Ore. title tiff
06:51 AM PST on Wednesday, February 7, 2007
By VINCE PATTON, KGW Staff

In the face of evidence agreed upon by hundreds of climate scientists, George Taylor holds firm. He does not believe human activities are the main cause of global climate change.

Taylor also holds a unique title: State Climatologist

Hundreds of scientists last Friday issued the strongest warning yet on global warming saying humans are "very likely" the cause.


“Most of the climate changes we have seen up until now have been a result of natural variations,” Taylor asserts.

Taylor has held the title of "state climatologist" since 1991 when the legislature created a state climate office at OSU The university created the job title, not the state.

His opinions conflict not only with many other scientists, but with the state of Oregon's policies.

So the governor wants to take that title from Taylor and make it a position that he would appoint.

In an exclusive interview with KGW-TV, Governor Ted Kulongoski confirmed he wants to take that title from Taylor. The governor said Taylor's contradictions interfere with the state's stated goals to reduce greenhouse gases, the accepted cause of global warming in the eyes of a vast majority of scientists.

“He is Oregon State University's climatologist. He is not the state of Oregon's climatologist,” Kulongoski said.

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_020607_news_taylor_title.59f5d04a.html

Del. scientist's view on climate change criticized
Ties to big oil, industry-funded lobbies draw fire
By Jeff Montgomery
The News Journal

WILMINGTON, Del. — David Legates is skeptical of global warming data.

A Delaware scientist's contrarian stand on global warming and climate change has earned him national attention in a series of critical reports -- including some that lump his views in with industry-backed disinformation campaigns.

The controversy surrounding Delaware State Climatologist David R. Legates and other climate change skeptics peaked last week with the publication of an updated summary report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Paris.

http://www.delmarvanow.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070206/NEWS01/70206001/1002

Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?

Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide
Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?
By Timothy Ball

Monday, February 5, 2007

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why...

...Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.

In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?.

Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn't occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, "State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.

I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As Lindzen said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.

Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.

Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.

I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky's book "Yes, but is it true?" The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky's findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky's students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction.

Dr. Tim Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (www.nrsp.com), is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com..

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm

Steyn on Global Warming

Mark Steyn article about global warming hype discussed on John Gibson with author

http://www.marksteyn.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=21

What's so hot about fickle science?

February 4, 2007
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
From the "Environmental News Network": "Science Is Solid on Climate Change, Congress Told." "The science is solid," says Louise Frechette, deputy secretary-general of the United Nations.
"The science is solid," says Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

"The science is really solid," says TV meteorologist Heidi Cullen. "The science is very solid."

And at that point, on "Larry King Live" last week, Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at MIT, remarked: "Heidi says the science is solid and I can't criticize her because she never says what science she's talking about."

Indeed. If the science is so solid, maybe they could drag it out to the Arctic for the poor polar bears to live on now that the ice is melting faster than a coed's heart at an Al Gore lecture.

Alas, the science isn't so solid


http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/241518,CST-EDT-STEYN04.article

Brrrr, The Coldest February in 30 Years

Yep, had these headlines appeared Friday Feb. 2, 2007 coinciding with the realease of the UN report on global warming instead of Tornado tears through Florida the report would have been laughed at amid sneezing from developing colds.

Below-zero temps hit Plains, Northeast
A bone-chilling Arctic cold wave with temperatures as low as 38 below zero shut down schools for thousands of youngsters Monday, halted some Amtrak service and put car batteries on the disabled list from the northern Plains across the Great Lakes.

Brrrr, The Coldest February in 30 Years
February kicks off with bone-chilling weather across much of the country.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070205/ap_on_re_us/arctic_blast

Chirac calls for beefed-up UN Environment Agency
Sat Feb 3, 7:13 AM ET
PARIS (AFP) - A day after United Nations scientists delivered their bluntest warning yet over global warming, French President Jacques Chirac has called for a powerful UN environmental agency to reinforce international control over the planet.

Closing a two-day conference in Paris, Chirac said the proposal to replace the existing UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has the support of some 40 countries.

"We call for the transformation of the UNEP into a genuine international organisation to which all countries belong, along the lines of the World Health Organisation," Chirac said Saturday.

"This UN agency for the environment will be a strong and recognised voice in the world," he said.

"It will be an instrument for evaluating ecological damage and how to remedy it ... for promoting those technologies and behaviour patterns most respectful of eco-systems ... and for supporting the implementation of environmental decisions across the planet," he said.

The Nairobi-based UNEP was set up in 1972 to promote environmental protection. But Chirac shares the belief of many experts that its capacities are insufficient to cope with the growing problems linked to global warming and habitat destruction.

However his call for a fully-fledged UN agency has not received unanimous backing. The US, Brazil, China and Russia are all opposed and many non-governmental organisations question whether another expensive supranational body is the answer to the world's problems.

Chirac's "Citizens of the Earth" summit took place just three months before he is expected to leave office after 12 years as president. It was widely interpreted as a bid to leave an environmental legacy by which he will be remembered...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070203/sc_afp/environmentfrancechiracun_070203121307

Global warming: Nations call for new environmental body
Paris, Feb. 4 (AP): Forty-five nations joined France in calling for a new environmental body to slow global warming and protect the planet, a body that potentially could have policing powers to punish violators.

Absent were the world's heavyweight polluter, the United States, and booming nations on the same path as the U.S., China and India.

Saturday's effort, led by French President Jacques Chirac, came a day after the release of an authoritative, and disturbingly grim, scientific report saying that global warming is ``very likely'' caused by mankind, and that climate change will continue for centuries even if heat-trapping gases are reduced. It the strongest language ever used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose last report was issued in 2001.

The document, a collaboration of hundreds of scientists and government officials, was approved by 113 nations, including the United States...

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200702041123.htm



http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=france+chirac+environmental+global+commission&btnG=Search

Arctic Cold

Not a favorite topic among the we're all global warmers, now crowd...

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/uschill.gif

Harsh Cold Expected to Linger in Midwest
Feb 4, 9:01 AM (ET)
By PATRICK CONDON

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070204/D8N2UEU80.html

Former global warmer no longer

The real deal?
Against the grain: Some scientists deny global warming exists
Lawrence Solomon, National Post
Published: Friday, February 02, 2007
Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel's top young scientists, describes the logic that led him -- and most everyone else -- to conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming...


The series

Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I

Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II

The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III

Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV

The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V

The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI

Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII

The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII

Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX

Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X


Dr. Shariv, a prolific researcher who has made a name for himself assessing the movements of two-billion-year-old meteorites, no longer accepts this logic, or subscribes to these views. He has recanted: "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.

"In fact, there is much more than meets the eye."




Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth. Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal what man's effect has been in the past, let alone predict how much warming or cooling we might cause in the future.

All we have on which to pin the blame on greenhouse gases, says Dr. Shaviv, is "incriminating circumstantial evidence," which explains why climate scientists speak in terms of finding "evidence of fingerprints." Circumstantial evidence might be a fine basis on which to justify reducing greenhouse gases, he adds, "without other 'suspects.' " However, Dr. Shaviv not only believes there are credible "other suspects," he believes that at least one provides a superior explanation for the 20th century's warming.

"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," he states, particularly because of the evidence that has been accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that cosmic- ray flux has on our atmosphere. So much evidence has by now been amassed, in fact, that "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist."

The sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of an influence on the climate -- that C02 et al. don't dominate through some kind of leveraging effect that makes them especially potent drivers of climate change. The upshot of the Earth not being unduly sensitive to greenhouse gases is that neither increases nor cutbacks in future C02 emissions will matter much in terms of the climate.

Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, for example, "will not dramatically increase the global temperature," Dr. Shaviv states. Put another way: "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant."

The evidence from astrophysicists and cosmologists in laboratories around the world, on the other hand, could well be significant. In his study of meteorites, published in the prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters, Dr. Shaviv found that the meteorites that Earth collected during its passage through the arms of the Milky Way sustained up to 10% more cosmic ray damage than others. That kind of cosmic ray variation, Dr. Shaviv believes, could alter global temperatures by as much as 15% --sufficient to turn the ice ages on or off and evidence of the extent to which cosmic forces influence Earth's climate.

In another study, directly relevant to today's climate controversy, Dr. Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth over the past 550 million years to find that cosmic ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds of Earth's temperature variance, making it the most dominant climate driver over geological time scales. The study also found that an upper limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global warming witnessed over the past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the increased solar activity.

CO2 does play a role in climate, Dr. Shaviv believes, but a secondary role, one too small to preoccupy policymakers. Yet Dr. Shaviv also believes fossil fuels should be controlled, not because of their adverse affects on climate but to curb pollution...

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106fef8763c6&k=0