Climate Change Hypocrisy

There seems to be some really bad news for those uneducated and over educated alarmists who jumped on Al Gore’s self serving Climate Change Bandwagon. It is amusing watching the political sponsors backpedal and distance themselves from this “important” issue that they were so recently extolling. Both Barrack Obama and John McCain drank the Al Gore Kool-aide on Global Warming but now are suffering from the effects of unintended consequences as their support for ethanol as a fossil fuel replacement is causing alarming rises in food prices and creating worldwide food shortages. Apparently the politicians along with many of the trendy fashion setters on the East and West Coasts fail to understand that corn is not just eaten, it is used in a wide variety of ways – like corn syrup. John McCain has joined other GOP politicians in proposing that the Environmental Protection Age (aka We know what’s best for you agency) in loosening federal mandates on ethanol in the fuel supply. Barrack Obama in his usual breathtaking grasp of problems and solutions stated that “this is just something we are going to have to deal with”. Very decisive and I’m sure he HOPES that someone somewhere will come up with a solution while he is focused on CHANGE.

It is understandable that Al Gore has led the charge to de-industrialize the Western Powers, the US in particular, because after all he has admitted at a March 1st conference that he has a financial stake in various “green” companies that are pushing alternative energy sources. But this must be placed in context with his alarmist warnings “that what is at stake here is our ability to live on planet Earth, to have a future as a civilization.” But it seems that in light of recent developments both McCain and Obama are moving away from Gore and his “inconvenient truth” which was never the whole truth and certainly self-serving. What are these “recent developments?” Well it seems amidst the dire warnings from the Goreacle that the Earth was in imminent danger of becoming the “scorched Earth “ due to global warming, we are now faced with a cooling planet.

What science has learned from that old fashioned scientific standby – observation – and not easily manipulated computer models – is that temperatures on Earth have been cooling since 1998. Arctic sea ice is growing and the Antarctic summer thaw began later because of colder temperatures. Furthermore a report in Nature projects that cooler ocean currents are going to cause at least a decade of colder weather. This projection follows two straight mild hurricane seasons. This last winter was the worst that has been experienced in the US and Canada in some time and the snowfall in Michigan was the worst they have experienced in the last 50 years. And all of this happened in spite of a rise in carbon dioxide emissions.

These are facts which the Goreacle and other alarmists would rather not consider even though reputable climatologists have been sounding the warning that the Earth’s climate is a great deal more complex than a self-serving oracle like Gore realizes and that these dire warnings are very pre-mature. Nevertheless this debate is far from over but the spike in food prices and growing food shortages worldwide show the folly of premature action and a failure to understand the ever changing Earth and the scientists who study the Earth and its climate. Recently there was a great deal of media attention over a large calving glacier but what was not given the same amount of media attention was the explanation offered by a University of Alabama scientist (Roy Spencer) who dismissed all of the concerns by pointing out that this “happens every 150 years”. This is very indicative of the way the whole climate change hysteria has been handled by the media. In the early 19th Century Charles Lyell postulated the “Theory of Uniformitarianism” which essentially says that the geological processes that we see today are the same processes that have always existed. This means that it is very rare – if it occurs at all – for something to happen that has never happened before.

There has been concern over the Great Lakes and their falling water levels. This has been viewed as another example of global warming and environmental destruction brought on by irresponsible human activity. However, the Army Corps of Engineers who monitors these things has reported that Lakes Ontario and Erie are closer to record high water marks than they are to their low water marks and this is after just ONE snowy winter. Perhaps it is time for the environmental alarmists to re-examine their position now that it seems that so many of their concerns seem to be unfounded or at least not demonstrable based on empirical data. Computer models can be manipulated and must be verified based on actual observations. Instead of supporting his “Inconvenient Truth” self-serving hype and the de-industrialization of America based on the Kyoto Protocol, maybe it is time for Al Gore to listen to scientists specializing in the climate rather than psychology, sociology, or other unrelated disciplines.

Obama

It seems the party of white guilt has caught Obama Fever – apparently in the vain hope this is a remedy for the Bush Disorder Syndrome, which is characterized by irrational thinking and sometimes by hallucinations regarding facts. Dan Rather succumbed to BDS, so clearly the remainder of the Democratic Party is attempting to recover their sanity by pushing Obama – the fact that he has virtually no qualifications other than his race, seems to be lost in the rush for a cure to BDS.

From the time of his announcement that he was a candidate for President the media has showered him with fulsome praise to the point that one would think he was the second coming of Jesus, but then the radical left doesn’t believe in God much less Jesus, so Obama must be viewed as simply the hero of the hour. Of course hero here is a relative term because the Presidential wannabe has no military experience and is calling for a complete surrender to Al Qaeda, so his heroism seems to be restricted to waving the white flag. So what precisely makes Obama so popular with the left – other than his color and Muslim roots?

Well the media fawn over Obama because of his eloquence, but eloquence really only describes the quality of the delivery not the content, and Obama is certainly slick in his delivery. In his announcement speech Obama stated without hesitation that he firmly believes in “the basic decency of the American People”. Very heady and controversial stuff which certainly sets him apart from most of the Liberals who are rushing to prove how tolerant they are by supporting a black (semi) Muslim.. Unfortunately, while this controversial stand regarding the decency of the American people may distinguish him from the other Democratic candidates, it sort of places him right in the middle of the Republicans, who generally – and I’m not making this up—believe America and Americans are good and decent people.
But Senator Obama went on to condemn the “smallness” in our politics, but precisely what he meant by that isn’t clear. Perhaps this was his eloquent way of saying those people who believe in “small government” shouldn’t vote for me because I am firmly convinced that government should be big and the bigger the better. Of course, he may have meant that there is a certain “pettiness” in contemporary politics, which is certainly true but since most of his Liberal constituency is directly responsible for all of the sniping and mud slinging, he prudently left this a little vague. Courage requires honesty, nevertheless Obama forthrightly decried "a smallness of our politics" -- deftly slipping a sword into the sides of the smallness-in-politics advocates. (To his credit, he somehow avoided saying, "My fellow Americans, size does matter.")
Continuing in his forthright and controversial vein, he took a strong stand against the anti-hope crowd, saying: "There are those who don't believe in talking about hope." Take that, Hillary! But he didn’t stop there, no-siree bob – he underscored his courageous stand by continuing with "I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness in this -- a certain audacity -- to this announcement." Naturally this was a stunning statement that truly impressed the media who are hungry for any controversial morsel, but those of us who are harder to impress were also stunned by Obama’s courageous stand in favor of hope. What stunned the less gullible was what is so audacious about announcing that you're running for president? Any idiot can run for president and many do. Dennis Kucinich is perpetually running for president as is Ralph Nader. Even John Kerry ran for president and Al Gore aka the Goreacle actually got elected Vice President, proving that anyone can be elected. Today, all you have to do is suggest a date by which U.S. forces in Iraq should surrender, and you're officially a Democratic candidate for president.
Obama made his announcement surrounded by hundreds of adoring Democratic voters, who were mostly the reporters. However, to be fair one or two of these reporters actually attended Mitt Romney’s announcement, but they were more interested in seeing a live Mormon and interviewing his wives, who unfortunately turned out be just one wife. But Mormonism lacks the cachet that the controversial Barrack Hussein Obama brings with his Muslim roots, his blackness, and his penchant for saying penetrating and moving statements as he endorses the American People and takes a firm stand in favor of decency. He electrifies the crowd of adoring reporters and other Democratic loyalists by telling us he's brave for announcing that he's running for president and if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. However, to prove that he is really a serious candidate and in an effort to turn his inexperience into an asset, he went on to say: "I know that I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change." The reporters all swooned at this so they missed the great tagline delivered by Jesse Jackson “What did he say?”

Chicken Little and Global Warming

We are being bombarded today by such eminent intellects as Al Gore, the Media, and a gaggle of “Scientists” who maintain that Global Warming is not only a fact, but that if we don’t do something to reverse this trend we are doomed because the planet is doomed. The underlying premise is that the industrialization of society has changed the planetary climate dynamics forever and that as a result Earth will become uninhabitable. Of course this is precisely the position taken by Chicken Little who was convinced the Sky was falling because something fell on his head. Critical analysis was never part of Chicken Little’s world just as it isn’t part of the current gaggle of alarmists who are convinced that civilized nations are essentially evil and are greedily destroying the planet at the expense of those poor people in Africa and other places not under the sway of industrialization.

The reality is that there is absolutely no proof whatsoever that supports the current positions regarding global warming. While it is generally acknowledged that the Earth is warming there is virtually no evidence that mankind is responsible or even that any actions by man can even affect the climate. Most recently it has been determined that the Martian polar caps are melting and the surface temperature of other planets e.g. Pluto is also increasing. How industrialization has had this impact in our solar system is unexplained but I’m confident these gifted scientists and intellects will ultimately find a connection to American Industry. In fact, these anti-industrialists have been sounding the global warming – or is that cooling -- alarm for some time Beginning in the 1970”s and into the early 1980’s the media supported by a group of “scientists” with no specified credentials in Climatology became concerned almost to the point of panic that the climate of the Earth was changing and we needed to do something drastic and immediate. The public was aroused to near panic and the congress was pushed to take action, to sign the Kyoto Treaty, to demand that the Auto Industry (Ford, GM, and Chrysler – never a foreign manufacturer) take immediate action to reduce carbon emissions before we entered a new Ice Age. That’s right – those same scientists supported by the same media were citing examples of glacier advances, lowering temperatures, and the imminent disaster facing us as arable land was lost to frost and snow. The world was about to starve because of carbon emissions and it was all due to Western Democracies (read America) polluting the atmosphere with capitalist driven industrial carbon pollutants coming from our factories and automobiles.

Today nothing has changed except the failure of the Ice Age to appear as predicted. In fact the same evidence is presented by the same people using the same media to predict the Earth is warming, the ice caps are melting, and we (America) is destroying the planet through greed and rampant industrialization. Proof of this is warming trend is cited as the habitat of the Polar Bear shrinks the bears are immediate danger of becoming extinct. The census conducted by rhe Canadian government notes that the actual population of Polar Bears has increased is glossed over -- apparently because the factual data does not support the faith based science regarding man's destruction of the planet. Unfortunately the geologic record shows that the Earth has gone through climatic cycles since the beginning of time. At one time Antarctica was tropical and at one time Europe and large portions of North America were covered in Ice and all of this occurred before Man was even a gleam in God’s (or is it Darwin’s) eye. In fact there is solid geologic evidence that there have been mass extinctions of life throughout geologic history brought on by a variety of causes but none (sadly) tied to Mankind or America. The scientific reality – supported by empirical evidence – is that a single volcanic eruption can do more to affect the climate of the Earth than everything ever done by Mankind since God (or some enterprising ape) created man.

Scientists do not totally support the alarmists about global cooling or global warming because they fully realize that Earth’s climate is cyclical and has always been so. The Earth’s temperature demonstrated a cooling trend from 1940 to about 1965, why this happened is unknown but then that trend began to reverse and today it is acknowledged that the temperature of the Earth is increasing but why is not known. Of course at the height of the global cooling scare Fortune Magazine stated:

[F]or nearly half of the current century mankind was apparently blessed with the most benign climate pf any period in at least a thousand years. During this kindly era the human population more than doubled....[It]began with a pronounced warming trend after about 1880. Mean temperatures peaked in 1945 and have been dropping ever since.

This statement is fascinating for a number of reasons, first because the thousand years indicates that climate change cycles are far longer than the alarmists are using to justify their attack on the industrialized nations. The second interesting point is that virtually none of the things which the global warming / cooling alarmists point to as the cause even existed for much of this thousand year period. The industrial revolution didn’t even start until the 19th Century and the automobile, which is cited as the primary cause of climate change didn’t come into widespread use until well into the 20th Century. During this period around 1970 virtually all of the media and “scientists” agreed that “we have been living in warmer than normal times – and we may have to face an increasingly cold future (Popular Science). Then we have Newsweek which stated

“The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions (which is to say global warming) the Earth’s climate seems to be cooling down."

At this point it seems clear that no one knows why the Earth goes through climate change and any data – even data going back a hundred years is of no value. To use data collected only in the last hundred years to predict catastrophic climate change is laughable and certainly not scientific. In fact the “scientists” who are in the forefront of the global warming /cooling school of thought generally do not have any credentials in Climatology and are attempting to use these scare tactics to get approval of the Kyoto Treaty which would dramatically impact American Industry, which appears to be their hidden agenda.

Political Science

As incredible as it may sound, the reality is that Global Warming is in fact a hoax, not the warming part because it is commonly agreed that the Earth is growing warmer, but in the cause. Those outstanding scientists, Al Gore and Bill Moyers have declared that it is humanity in the industrialized world (read America) who are destroying the planet and should be stopped. In fact, these champions of the Constitution and supporters of every left wing cause are calling for Nuremberg style trials for anyone who has the temerity to challenge the fact that global warming is the direct result of human activity. The fact that these left wing politicians have no credentials whatsoever seems to be lost in the rhetoric just as their support for this gross abridgement of free speech is ignored. Where is the hue and cry from the ACLU or the media as these icons of the left attempt to equate skeptics of global warming to the perpetrators of the holocaust? In fact Mr. Gore refers to these skeptics as “global warming deniers” in a veiled attempt to equate this term to “holocaust deniers”. Of course no one is denying that the planet is growing warmer but it is the cause that is in dispute. But this is the “inconvenient fact” that is ignored by this group of left wing non-scientists who cannot separate the fact of global warming from the cause. It is the CAUSE that is disputed not the warming.

Roger Pielke a Climatologist at Colorado State University points out there has never been an actual debate regarding the causes of global warming and that they hysteria surrounding the issue of Global Warming is being generated by people such as Al Gore who have no credentials and no real knowledge of the science. But Professor Pielke isn’t the only reputable scientist who harbors doubts about the source of the warming. The Alfred P. Sloan Professor at MIT, Richard Lindzen does as well. Professor Lindzen acknowledges that global warming is real and even accepts that carbon emissions might be causing global warming but then – he inserts his heretical caveat – they also might not be responsible. He compounds this heresy with this comment ``We do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change". If this wasn’t enough to convince Moyers and Gore that Lindzen should be burned at the stake he adds to his crime of announcing other inconvenient facts such as ``the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940," and ``the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average," and finally and ``Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why."

Based on these statements Professor Lindzen has been demonized by the left – not on the basis of his science – but on the basis of his temerity in speaking our against a politically correct if not scientifically sound – position. Professor Lindzen maintains he has been subjected to a Congressional Star Chamber proceeding conducted by (then) Senator Al Gore. The left has accused Professor Lindzen of being on the payroll of the auto companies ( he accepted a $10,000 fee as an expert witness years ago) in an effort to discredit him. However, no one has yet challenged his science or the facts he has offered to support his statements.

But there are other skeptics like Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Professor Reiter’s name appeared as one of the scientists endorsing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Reiter called the report a sham and said that it included the names of scientists whom he knew did not agree with the exaggerated claims made in this report. He had to threaten a law suit to have his name removed. Professor Reiter is an expert in malaria and this report attempted to tie the increase in malaria to global warming, which Professor Reiter denies. In fact Malaria has been on the increase since Rachel Carson’s book “A Silent Spring” was used by the left wing non-scientists to ban DDT. Carson’s work and book were later unmasked as a hoax but the damage was done and DDT remains banned and Malaria, which was nearly wiped out by DDT is now on the rise again, especially in Africa. But this is simply an earlier example of how these left wing pseudo-scientists like Gore and Moyers seize on some politically correct position and use their celebrity to do great damage.

Chris Landsea, one of the world's foremost experts on hurricanes, resigned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in January 2005, in protest over their bias. It seems that IPCC Fourth Assessment Report claimed that the 2004 hurricane season was caused by greenhouse gases and this was announced in a press conference. Landsea in an open letter, stated: "To my knowledge none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin."

There are many other examples of scientists being intimidated, threatened, and demonized by the politically correct left wing non-scientists. As it turns out there is little dispute among scientists that the Earth is growing warmer but is the cause that is in question. However, those who attribute this Global Warming to the Industrialized West (read America) quote these scientists who acknowledge that the Earth is warming as agreeing with them, which is patently false. The hoax is that global warming is being caused by greenhouse gases, which has not been proven and has little support among reputable scientists. This is a vivid example of how science has become politicized and corrupted by individuals with an agenda and a public persona.