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The High Cost of Climate Change Lies An energy-rationing bill has been introduced to address "global warming." The "Climate Security Act" would impose caps on how much "greenhouse gas" emissions can be allowed and would institute an elaborate program to "trade" allowances among the industries and business affected. Americans better hope that some members of Congress will ask if there truly is a threat of global warming and why a similar program in Europe has proven to be a resounding failure. If you really wanted to undermine the nation’s economy, you could not devise a better way. It is the Kyoto Climate Change Protocol on steroids.
A lot of these expert reviewers are among the 2,000 scientists that the IPCC and Al Gore are always citing as being part of the "consensus" on global warming. The problem for both is that many really, really, really disagree that any planet-threatening global warming is occurring. One of them is Dr. Vincent Gray, a New Zealand-based climate scientist who has been a part of the reviewing process since the IPCC came into being. He is one of those scientists who will not and cannot be shut up despite the din of the IPCC propaganda. Briefly, Dr. Gray has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Cambridge University, England, and his long career has included stints in France, Canada, China, and New Zealand. He has published more than a hundred scientific papers on energy and materials, plus a dozen in climate science. So, following the announcement of the Nobel, Dr. Gray wrote to Professor David Henderson who has called for a "review" of the IPCC and its procedures. This is a nice way of saying that the Panel is so widely viewed as just one more corrupt United Nations instrumentality, a lot of scientists think it should be tossed in a garbage can behind the UN building. Permit me to share some of Dr. Gray’s thoughts with you. Commenting on his initial belief that the IPCC would proceed on the basis of "scientific ethics" and that its conclusions would result from "facts, logic and established scientific and mathematical principles", Dr. Gray’s experience revealed that, "Penetrating questions often ended without any answer. Comments on the IPCC drafts were rejected without explanation, and attempts to pursue the matter were frustrated indefinitely." "I have been forced to the conclusion that, for significant parts of the work of the IPCC, the data collection and scientific methods employed are unsound…normal scientific procedures are not only rejected by the IPCC, but that this practice is endemic, and was part of the organization from the very beginning." "I therefore consider that the IPCC is fundamentally corrupt." Dr. Gray concluded that the only reform "I could envisage, would be its abolition." Okay, okay, I hear all the environmentalists saying, "but he’s just one crazy, old New Zealand climate scientist. Boo! Hiss!" Character assassination is just one form of the corruption that is endemic to the entire environmental movement. Undaunted, Dr. Gray continued, "The two main ‘scientific’ claims of the IPCC are the claim that ‘the globe is warming’ and ‘increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible.’ Evidence for both of this claims is fatally flawed." Aw, gee, I’m not a scientist you’re saying. What do I know? Well, if you know enough to be reading this, you know enough to wrap your brain around Dr. Gray’s assertion that "No average temperature of any part of the earth’s surface, over any period, has ever been made." If the earth’s "average temperature" cannot be determined, how can you know that it’s dramatically heating? How can you predict anything about an unknown? As for the IPCC claims about CO2, Dr. Gray points out that "they have suppressed no less than 90,000 measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide made in the last 150 years. Some of these were made by Nobel Prize-winners and all were published in the best scientific journals." The IPCC has depended on computer climate models for its claims and there is now a volume of papers demonstrating how they have repeatedly proven to be inaccurate. As Dr. Gray points out, if you cannot validate these models as actually capable of making predictions, "no self-respecting computer engineer would dare to make use of a model for prediction." Anyway, "No computer climate model has ever been tested in this way, so none should be used to prediction." "The most elaborate of all their ‘evaluation’ techniques is far more dubious," said Dr. Gray. "Since they have failed to show that any models are actually capable of prediction, they have decided to ‘evaluate’ them by asking the opinions of those who originate them, people with a financial interest in their success." (Emphasis added.)
"Sooner or later all of us will come to realize," Dr. Gray concluded, "that this organization, and the thinking behind it, is phony. Unfortunately severe economic damage is likely to be done by its influence before that happens." But that’s the point of the IPCC! If you can require that ethanol be substituted or just added to gasoline, you drive up the cost of corn to where the cost of everything else—like food—dependent on it costs more. Moreover, requiring the addition of ethanol increases refinery costs that are, in turn, passed on to consumers. If you mandate that wind and solar energy be substituted to provide electricity for that provided by coal (over 50% in the USA) and other sources, then you assure that these two totally inadequate energy producers will drive up the cost to consumers. If every kind of industry contributes to CO2, then you can create an elaborate "cap-and-trade" scam to sell "credits" for the permission to continue in business. The consumers will pick up the costs involved. On the chance that Dr. Gray is not some crazy, old New Zealander, maybe we should all be in the streets calling for the abolition of the IPCC? And, while we’re out there, let’s get rid of the United Nations too. Editor’s Note: The full text of the letter is available at http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_ As always, the Center depends on your donation to maintain this website and our communications programs. If you can send us the price of a tank of gas or some favorite thing of yours that you would give up or match to help, that will make a very big difference around here. Thanks.
"Global warming—through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding—is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 inches," wrote Seth Borenstein, an AP science writer. Run for your lives! Sell your beachfront home! Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. If I had to denounce each and every article of this kind, I would be doing it fulltime every day with time out to eat, do the household chores, and pick up my laundry. The "journalists" who write this stuff are rarely, if ever, taken to task for such deliberate misrepresentation of facts, such sloppy referencing of unidentified "leading scientists say" or just for propagating fears. This latest article conveniently occurred just about the time the United Nations was set to spew the usual babble about global warming. Gentle reader, the earth has been warming, ever so slightly ever since the end of the last mini-ice age ended in the 1800s. That’s what the earth has done after every previous ice age. The article also occurred at the same time an international treaty to protect the ozone layer turns twenty. It is the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer. It came about the same way that global warming is constantly shoved in our faces. Preceding the Protocol there was an avalanche of scare-mongering articles that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other compounds were rising into the stratosphere and destroying ozone molecules. These articles ignored the fact that solar radiation creates and destroys billions of ozone molecules all the time. The culprit was a "chemical" and we all know that chemicals are bad, bad, bad. The particular chemical was Freon, one of the greatest discoveries of modern science because it was primarily used for refrigeration, thus permitting us to protect food in a way that did not involve a metal-lined box in which a block of ice was placed every few days. The term "ice box" meant exactly that and into the 1940s, was what most people used. The play, "The Iceman Always Rings Twice" reflects that early form of refrigeration. My family had one. Freon changed all that. It also was a terrific fire retardant and was widely used in fire extinguishers. In countless other ways it served our needs cheaply and effectively until the Montreal Protocol banned its use. That Protocol, just like the other United Nations invention, the Kyoto Protocol, should not be renewed. Wise to the way lies about the environment are used to foment bad laws, a phalanx of climatologists and meteorologists weighed in on the Associated Press article. By the time they were through, their comments filled eight-pages. Here are just a few comments. Dr. Richard S. Courtney, a climate and atmospheric science consultant and one of the UN reviewers of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said, "Rarely have I read such a collection of unsubstantiated and scare-mongering twaddle." "Global sea level has been rising for the 10,000 years since that last ice age and no significant change to the rate of sea level rise has been observed recently," said Dr. Courtney. Dr. John Christy, a University of Alabama climatologist who was quoted in the AP article objected that his "discussion (with the AP reporter) was primarily about the storm surges which come from hurricanes—that’s the real vulnerability. The sea level is rising one inch per decade, but sea level is like any other climate parameter—it’s either rising or falling all the time." If Florida, as asserted in the article, will be under water the State Climatologist, Dr. Jim O’Brien of Florida State University, disputes that saying, "Everyone agrees that there is no acceleration" in the rise of water levels, adding that "If you increase the rate of rise by four times, it will take 146 years to rise to five feet. Sea level rise is the ‘scare tactic’ for these guys." A retired Senior Research Scientist and Coordinator for national and international marine geological research at the Geological Survey of Finland, Dr. Boris Winterhalter, said, "Even the worst case scenario is half of that quoted by Associated Press. This is hype of the worst order." As to the computer models cited in the AP article, Geophysicist Dr. David Deming of the University of Oklahoma, said that, "These models cannot even be tested. Their validity is completely unknown. In short, predictions of future sea-level rise are nothing but sheer speculation." A newswire that enjoys the reputation of the Associated Press needs to reexamine its obligation—particularly as regards any purported science reporting—to uphold the best journalism standards and strive to avoid publishing speculation and B-movie theatrics masquerading as science. Twisting the facts to create "a good story" just cheapens journalism and, worse, it ends up telling something that is not the truth. The truth is that the seas are not rising rapidly and are not going to rise dramatically in the decades and centuries to come. Have you visited my daily blog? Warning Signs is the blog where you can enjoy some commentary on the issues, events and personalities in the news every day.
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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Little noted during all the headlines concerning Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize was the fact that it was shared with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among skeptical scientists I know, the emails were flying. Several had served as part of the vast array of scientists whose opinions on the various IPCC draft reports were requested and then ignored.
On September 22, 2007, the Associated Press ran an article, "Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History." Essentially it asserted that the oceans were rising at such an astonishing rate that you could kiss Florida goodbye and every other city with a view of the ocean. My first reaction was to dismiss it as just another scare-mongering piece of twaddle, but for many scientists it was so idiotic they joined together to denounce it.