Lorne Gunter on 'Climate' Science

Lorne Gunter does us a service by describing the propaganda war been unethically waged on behalf of the global warming theory. I have commented a bit on this, but the amount of guff I must wade through for the occasional gem has become annoying. Some of it has fallen to the level of verbal fisticuffs.

It has been my interpretation that the climate in the Northern Hemisphere has been warmer over the past three decades, but not unusually so. It is as if we have shifted a half degree or so and have held it there while the sea ice melts away. This behavior is completely in accordance with the history of the Holocene and may represent a restoration of past climatic conditions.

In fact it is plausible to me that human activity has improved many parts of the Northern microclimate sufficient to have plausibly given us a slight edge. I would mostly though, assign those effects to our heat production throughout the winter. It may not seem significant, but it can prevent rivers from freezing over and perhaps do more. Of course agriculture allows the land to heat up much faster and for a lot of incoming energy to avoid absorption. The trees are gone. Add it all up and we may well be on the way to having a permanently warmer north until another volcano lets go.

In any event, it is clear that the Arctic sea ice is continuing to melt away and now on the edge of final collapse.

One other thought. There is a discrepancy between the north and the south. The south has appeared to be stable at least while the north has been warmer. Human heat production and cover modification is a plausible starting point in terms of explanation.

Lorne Gunter: 'Real' scientists flee from evidence that challenges climate claims

Posted: July 08, 2009, 9:15 AM by NP Editor

If you visit drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures-- the site of a scientist who, for 30 years, has used satellites to monitor global temperature -- you will see that as of the end of June, the Earth is no warmer than it was in 1979. Over the past three decades, the Earth's temperature has been above average some of the time and below average some of the time. Now it is right on the 30-year average.

Indeed, while 1998 was the warmest or second-warmest year on record, no year since has been as warm. And while there have been more warm years than cool ones in the past decade-and-a-half, the trend, since at least 2003, has been downward.

And -- this is the one I really like -- according to climatedepot.com,since Al Gore released his movie An Inconvenient Truth in October 2006, the Earth's temperature has lost 0.74F, almost exactly the amount the UN's climate panel claims was gained in the entire 20th century. The latter stat is apropos of nothing. As a correlation of Al Gore's bombast vs. worldwide temperature averages, it is pure fluke. But you can bet that if there had been a similar rise in the past 33 months, the headlines would be blaring that the end of the world was near. Yet such a precipitous drop-off elicits nothing more than a little blog chatter.

If there is a cause for the decline in temperatures over the past nearly three years, it is the inactivity of the sun, not the hyperactivity of the former U. S. vice-president and his apocalyptic theories. Our solar system has been at the end of one 11-year cycle of sun spots and solar flares and waiting for the long overdue commencement of another.

The current inter-cyclical period has seen an especially inactive sun. Last August was the first month in nearly a century in which there were no sun spots at all. Only just now do solar scientists think they are observing the beginning of the next round.

Still, if anything, the rhetoric of global warming and climate change has become even more frenzied since 2006, not less, even to the point where scientists skeptical of the warming theory are being gagged by the Obama administration and the UN.

At a time when lawmakers in the United States and Canada are considering new regulations on energy use, new taxes on its consumption and new controls on carbon dioxide emissions -- all of which could compound our economic woes -- they are hearing mostly just from one side of the debate.

Recall that during the Bush years, scientists and environmentalist often claimed that U. S. government research into climate change was being stifled by the Republican administration. Never mind that during the Bush years the United States spent nearly $2-billion a year on climate research, almost all of it on the environmentalists' side, or that the government scientist who most frequently claimed to be censored -- NASA's James Hansen -- gave media interviews and speeches, published academic papers or wrote newspaper articles more than 1,400 times during the Bush administration. There were always journalists ready to regurgitate the insistence of activist scientists that their vital warnings on warming we being squelched, whether they were or not.

In 2003, when a U. S. Environmental Protection Agency study claiming recent climate change was "likely mostly due to human activities," was edited by Bush administration officials to tone done such definitive language, activists, networks and newspapers screamed of a conspiracy by the White House and oil companies to suppress the truth.

But when evidence arose last week that the EPA had killed an internal report claiming that much had changed in the past year and that a reassessment of climate predictions was needed, there was barely a media peep. Instead, EPA climate analyst Alan Carlin was told his conclusions would have "a very negative impact on our office."

Similarly, UN scientists gathering in Copenhagen this week to discuss what must be done to save polar bears, have excluded Canadian researcher Mitch Taylor, perhaps the world's foremost polar bear expert, because (according to a memo to Dr. Taylor obtained by London's Daily Telegraph) of "the position you've taken on global warming." According the hosts of the conference, Dr. Taylor's views doubting man-made warming "are extremely unhelpful."

To quote a vocal critic of the Bush administration, "real scientists aren't afraid of opposing views."

National Post

lgunter@shaw.ca

Rasmussen Poll on Global Warming

Public Opinion polls are a curious beastie that mean little as far as the science itself is concerned. What is remarkable here is that the public is moving firmly out of any support for the global warming theory and is certain to punish political types that hang unto the program. This has occurred in the face of almost blind levels of media support for the theory and no end of pro theory propaganda. The anti theory crowd has been fighting a battle to get their side out and in fact has almost been feeble.

Yet the public is in complete revolt if these numbers hold up. Of course, the cause of public skepticism is the unrelenting lack of cooperation from the weather. Two clod winters in a row and a complete reversal of the warming trend line is impossible to cover over and explanations are shallow and not been strongly promoted since the proponents are also now covering their backside.

I always thought that linking the weather to CO2 pollution was a bad move in a strategic sense. If the linkage failed to visibly hold up as has abruptly happened, then the linkage damages the linked theory that still needs support.

The arguments for managing CO2 production are excellent and well received. Yet we are all starting back at square one in building support.

There is a lesson here on the power of the media and its real limitations that is unclear.

Energy Update

Only 34% Now Blame Humans for Global Warming

Friday, April 17, 2009

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/environment/energy_update

Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent (7%) blame some other reason. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.

These numbers reflect a reversal from a year ago when 47% blamed human activity while 34% said long-term planetary trends.

Most Democrats (51%) still say humans are to blame for global warming, the position taken by former Vice President Al Gore and other climate change activists. But 66% of Republicans and 47% of adults not affiliated with either party disagree.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of all Americans believe global warming is at least a somewhat serious problem, with 33% who say it’s Very Serious. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s a not a serious problem. The overall numbers have remained largely the same for several months, but the number who say Very Serious has gone down.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of Democrats say global warming is a Very Serious problem, compared to 19% of Republicans and 25% of unaffiliateds.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? Sign up now. If it's in the news, it's in our polls.) Rasmussen Reports updates also available on Twitter.

President Obama has made global warming a priority for his administration. Half (49%) of Americans think the president believes climate change is caused primarily by human activity. This is the first time that belief has fallen below 50% since the president took office. Just 19% say Obama attributes global warming to long-term planetary trends.

Forty-eight percent (48%) rate the president good or excellent on energy issues. Thirty-two percent (32%) give him poor grades in this area.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of adults now say finding new sources of energy is more important that reducing the amount of energy Americans currently consume. However, 29% say energy conservation is the priority.

A growing number of Americans (58%) say the United States needs to build more nuclear plants. This is up five points from last month and the highest finding so far this year. Twenty-five percent (25%) oppose the building of nuclear plants.

While the economy remains the top issue for most Americans, 40% believe there is a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. Thirty-one percent 31% see no such conflict, while 29% are not sure.

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Morano Opens ClimateDepot.com

Marc Morano is moving his efforts to propagate reports and news that challenges the global warming lobby to a private website titled ClimateDepot.com. He has been a thorn in the side of the GW lobby while operating out of Senator’s Inhofe’s office and promises to continue the assault.

The GW lobby has been very good a suppressing dissention to their theory and has certainly dissuaded many scientists from entering the fray while promoting ample budget support from those prepared to publish the party line. Good science becomes very difficult in the face of a powerful lobby. Remember the tobacco industry?

Morano has made their game difficult to sustain, particularly as good science is emerging that totally challenges the lobby. Time is vindicating him.

Time may have proved him wrong, but he still helped create an environment in which proper science could be conducted. Imagine a world in which the only reports on tobacco had to be vetted by the tobacco industry.

That is why I am offended when efforts are made by proponents to suppress the opposition. Every good theory needs in its early days a vigorous opposition to encourage real work to prove the opposition’s case.
A good example of this is my conjecture on crustal shift recently reposted upon. I have argued the resolution of the principle objections to the conjecture and am satisfied that I am on the right track. That does not mean that I have covered every possible issue. That is impossible. But right now, the conjecture is best advanced by an open debate in which objectors try to flaw the arguments. If this leads to a full debate by all likely participants, we are likely to arrive at a new consensus or a previously unidentified objection that needs to be resolved. This is great science in the making.

None of this is possible without a heated debate that draws everyone to the flame of truth.

This article appeared in print on April 10, 2009, on page A13 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/us/politics/10morano.html?_r=1&ref=us

April 10, 2009

Dissenter on Warming Expands His Campaign

By LESLIE KAUFMAN
WASHINGTON — Marc Morano does not think global warming is anything to worry about, and he brags about his confrontations with those who do.

For example, Mr. Morano said he once spotted former Vice President Al Gore on an airplane returning from a climate conference in Bali. Mr. Gore was posing for photos with well-wishers, and Mr. Morano said he had asked if he, too, could have his picture taken with Mr. Gore.

He refused, Mr. Morano said.

“You attack me all the time,” Mr. Gore said, according to Mr. Morano.

“Yes, we do,” Mr. Morano said he had replied.

Mr. Gore’s office said Mr. Gore had no memory of the encounter. Mr. Morano does not care. He tells the story anyway.

As a spokesman for Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Mr. Morano was for years a ceaseless purveyor of the dissenting view on climate change, sending out a blizzard of e-mail to journalists covering the issue. Now, with Congress debating legislation to curb carbon dioxide emissions, Mr. Morano is hoping to have an even greater impact. He has left his job with Mr. Inhofe to start his own Web site, ClimateDepot.com.

The site, scheduled to debut this week, will be a “one-stop shop” for anyone following climate change, Mr. Morano says. He will post research he thinks the public should see, as well as reported video segments and ratings of environmental journalists.

Supporters see Mr. Morano as a crucial organizing force who has taken diffuse pieces of scientific research and fused them into a political battering ram.

“Before Marc, efforts to debunk global warming were scattered and disorganized,” said John Coleman, a weather broadcaster who helped found the Weather Channel and who has called global warming “a scam.”

And environmentalists and mainstream climate scientists, however much they disagree with Mr. Morano’s views, still pay attention to what he does.
Kert Davies, the research director of Greenpeace, said he would like to dismiss Mr. Morano as irrelevant, but could not.

“He is relentless pushing out misinformation,” Mr. Davies said. “In denying the urgency of the problem, he definitely slows things down on the regulatory front. Eventually, he will be held accountable, but it may be too late.”

In his work with Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Morano, whose thick build fills out his suit like a bulldog in a restraining jacket, did not hesitate to go after journalists he saw as biased. He promoted any study or statement that could be construed as cutting against the prevailing view that heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide contribute to global warming. Peter Dykstra, a former executive producer for CNN’s science, environment and technology unit, recently called him the “drum major of the denial parade.”

Mr. Morano may be best known for compiling a report listing hundreds of scientists whose work he says undermines the consensus on global warming.

But environmental advocates and bloggers say that many of those listed as scientists have no scientific credentials and that their work persuaded no one not already ideologically committed.

Mr. Morano’s new Web site is being financed by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit in Washington that advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issues.

Craig Rucker, a co-founder of the organization, said the committee got about a third of its money from other foundations. But Mr. Rucker would not identify them or say how much his foundation would pay Mr. Morano. (Mr. Morano says it will be more than the $134,000 he earned annually in the Senate.)

Public tax filings for 2003-7 — the last five years for which documents are available — show that the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ExxonMobil Foundation and from foundations associated with the billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, a longtime financer of conservative causes best known for its efforts to have President Bill Clinton impeached. Mr. Rucker said Exxon had not contributed anything last year.
Mr. Morano grew up in a conservative household in Northern Virginia with an affinity for nature and animals — his basement was home to a menagerie of reptiles, including a boa constrictor.
“I used to tell people I was Republican except on the environment,” he said.
After college, Mr. Morano worked as a reporter for Rush Limbaugh, where he said he had learned the satisfactions of poking at the “liberal establishment.” He made a documentary on the Amazon rain forest, he said, because it annoyed him that celebrities like Sting could dictate what people think about the issue. They vastly exaggerated the problem of deforestation, he concluded.
He then jumped to Cyber News Service, where he was the first to publish accusations from Vietnam Swift-boat veterans that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, then the Democratic presidential nominee, had glorified his war record. Many of the accusations later proved unfounded.
Mr. Morano is proud of his work, which he says is not advocacy but truth seeking.
“Even in the Senate, I’d put up any of the stories we did against any pablum Time or Newsweek has put out on global warming,” he said. “We’d link to the other side; we’d present their arguments. They do one-sided screeds.”
In 2007, he points out, the Republican Web site of Mr. Inhofe’s committee won an award from the independent Congressional Management Foundation.
But some scientists and environmental advocates who have made it their business to monitor Mr. Morano see his reports — the most recent was titled “More than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims” — as far from balanced.
Kevin Grandia, who manages Desmogblog.com, which describes itself as dedicated to combating misinformation on climate change, says the report is filled with so-called experts who are really weather broadcasters and others without advanced degrees.
Chris Allen, for example, the weather director for WBKO-TV in Kentucky, is listed as a meteorologist on the report, even though he has no degree in meteorology. On his Web site, Mr. Allen has written that his major objection to the idea of human-influenced climate change is that “it completely takes God out of the picture.” Mr. Allen did not respond to phone calls.
Mr. Grandia also said Mr. Morano’s report misrepresented the work of legitimate scientists. Mr. Grandia pointed to Steve Rayner, a professor at Oxford, who was mentioned for articles criticizing the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international treaty on curbing carbon dioxide emissions.
Dr. Rayner, however, in no way disputes the existence of global warming or that human activity contributes to it, as the report implies. In e-mail messages, he said that he had asked to be removed from the Morano report and that a staff member in Mr. Inhofe’s office had promised that he would be. He called his inclusion on the list “quite outrageous.”
Asked about Dr. Rayner, Mr. Morano was unmoved. He said that he had no record of Dr. Rayner’s asking to be removed from the list and that the doctor must be “not to be remembering this clearly.”
Many scientists, Mr. Morano said, are afraid that appearing on the list will have political fallout.
And political fallout, for him, is the point.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 10, 2009, on page A13 of the New York edition.

EPA Demonstrates Common Sense

It is good to see the EPA demonstrating common sense, hard as that is to believe. Particularly after watching Al Gore push tortured analogies decrying the opponents of the global warming ideology. I am getting disturbed that some of this bone headed thinking will work itself into the global economic system.

The worst idea that I heard recently was that the developed world, after shipping our polluting industries offshore, should turn around and slap on a carbon tax on all imports. We really need to turn the current financial panic into a true depression.

I have rarely seen such a lack of economic leadership in the political world. Both Democratic candidates sound hopeless on the issue, although perhaps you can trust Hillary to actually do nothing as her husband had the good sense to do in a different time and place. Of course, if you live in Pennsylvania, you may think she means it about NAFTA, and if you live anywhere else, you sure as hell hope she doesn’t. Obama however, seems to be a follower of ideas that may betray him and he has not come out with a strong convincing economic position. Unfortunately, we can say the same thing about John McCain. He however, appears most likely to recognize and follow good advice. I am personally impressed by his support of the Iraqi surge and he is certainly the best option for wriggling out of there.

We have been blessed for the past forty years, to have had strong voices who have positively influenced economic policy and have benefited with a full twenty five years of solid economic expansion that reinvigorated both Europe and Japan and ignited the emergence of both China and India as viable economic powers.

Yet we always hear the voices of the economically ignorant who desperately want to promote state power in the naïve belief that this can work. How many Katrinas do we need? Human greed will trump good intentions every time.

That is the elephant at the party in China today. And it is starting to rumble. The only escape hatch for the Chinese political leadership with their loot is in fact to start a program of free elections, starting at the local level and quickly moving to the higher stages in two year steps. It could have been done slower, but I do not think that they have that much time left. Heaven no longer needs them.

The truth is that global warming was likely never tied to CO2 production as we have investigated this past year. But CO2 production without paying attention to CO2 offsets is just bad husbandry unless you think throwing night soil out the window is a sustainable practice. CO2 management is not about not burning fossil fuels – they will all one day be burned – it is about using good husbandry to maximize CO2 sequestration in the soils every way we can.

It struck me today that terra preta soil culture will permit the maximization of soil nutrient content. This means that no food crop should be ever nutrient deficient which is the holy grail of organic farmers. At this point, this is only my hypothesis, supported by a scattering of evidence. I suspect that it is both possible and sustainable.

Recall that in 10,000 years, that agricultural man has never had a way to create fertile soil easily if in fact at all in many circumstances. Corn culture terra preta does just that in just a few years. The resultant soil is a nutrient sponge.

EPA Signals Caution on Global Warming

By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 3 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government made clear on Thursday it will not be rushed into deciding whether to regulate emissions linked to global warming, as the Supreme Court directed nearly a year ago.

Such action "could affect many (emission) sources beyond just cars and trucks" and needs to be examined broadly as to other impacts, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency wrote lawmakers.

Stephen Johnson said he has decided to begin the process by seeking public comment on the implications of regulating carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, on other agency rules that cover everything from power plants and factories to schools and small businesses.

That process could take months and led some of his critics to suggest he was shunting the sensitive issue to the next administration.

"This is the latest quack from a lame-duck EPA intent on running out the clock ... without doing a thing to combat global warming," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. He is chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

The Supreme Court said in April 2007 that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is a pollutant subject to the Clean Air Act. The court directed the EPA to determine if CO2 emissions, linked to global warming, endanger public health and welfare.

If that is the case, the court said, the EPA must regulate the emissions.

The ruling, in a lawsuit by Massachusetts against the EPA, dealt only with pollution from cars and trucks.

Johnson said Thursday that if CO2 is found to endangered public health and welfare, the agency probably would have to curtail such emissions from other sources as well. That could affect a range of air pollution, from cement factories, refineries and power plants to cars, aircraft, schools and off-road vehicles.

"Rather than rushing to judgment on a single issue, this approach allows us to examine all the potential effects of a decision with the benefit of the public insight," Johnson wrote the leaders of the House and Senate environment committees.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, noted that Johnson has had nearly a year to respond to the court but "now, instead of action, we get more foot-dragging."

"Time is not on our side when it comes to avoiding dangerous climate change. This letter makes it clear that Mr. Johnson and the Bush administration are not on our side, either," Boxer, D-Calif., said in a statement.

Senior EPA employees have told congressional investigators in the House about a tentative finding from early December that CO2 posed a danger because of its climate impact. They said a draft regulation was distributed to the Transportation Department and the White House.

The EPA officials, in interviews with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said those findings were put on hold abruptly. Johnson has said that enacting tougher automobile mileage requirements in December meant that the issue had to be re-examined.

Johnson said a requirement for greater use of renewable fuels such as ethanol changed the landscape when it comes to CO2 regulation.

"It does not change EPA's obligation to provide a response to the Supreme Court decision," Johnson wrote Congress.

Environmentalists said Johnson's approach seemed to signal no meaningful action on climate change.

"EPA has offered a laundry list of reasons not to regulate," said Vickie Patton, a lawyer for Environmental Defense.

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an advocacy group, added, "This means any real action is going to come in the next administration."

But lawyer Chet Thompson, a former EPA deputy general counsel, said Johnson's approach was "very responsible given the numerous issues raised" and ramifications of regulating carbon dioxide.