Monday, February 22, 2010

Evidence that Al Gore does not believe in the sea-level rise he preaches

Below are two real-estate advertisements. Would Gore invest in a seaside property if he thought the sea was going to rise and swamp him?

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND REAL ESTATE

This private, peaceful ocean side haven offers bright blue waters and long stretches of beach, and is home to notables like Al Gore, John Edwards, and others who relish seclusion and natural surroundings. This 1,300 acre 5 mile island does not offer hotels, shopping centers, and tourism. However if bird watching, quiet walks and sunbathing is your strong suit you may find life here appealing. There are only 441 homes, no condos, but it does offer proximity to activity rich Wilmington, NC. Enjoy the myriad architectural styles of neatly cared for properties if you can get onto the island. If this is your style, Figure 8 Island may be your place.

SOURCE

Figure Eight Island is one of the places in North Carolina that is home to many celebrity houses. Celebrities like John Edwards and former Vice President Al Gore own houses on this island. The island has beautiful views as it is located between the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean. The entire island only has about 440 houses making it an ideal place for couples and individuals to relax. It is also home to many beautiful exotic animal species. If you are looking for a vacation house, check out the Figure Eight island real estate. Wrightsville beach real estate also offers many bargains and great houses.

SOURCE





Barack Obama's climate change policy in crisis

President Barack Obama's climate change policy is in crisis amid a barrage of US lawsuits challenging goverment directives and the defection of major corporate backers for his ambitious green programmes. Oil-rich Texas, the Lone Star home state of Mr Obama's predecessor George W Bush, is mounting one of the most prominent challenges to the EPA

The legal challenges and splits in the US climate consensus follow revelations of major flaws in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which declared that global warming was no longer scientifically contestable.

Critics of America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are now mounting a series of legal challenges to its so-called "endangerment finding" that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health. That ruling, based in part on the IPCC's work, gave the agency sweeping powers to force business to curb emissions under the Clean Air Act. An initial showdown is expected over rules on vehicle emissions.

Oil-rich Texas, the Lone Star home state of Mr Obama's predecessor George W Bush, is mounting one of the most prominent challenges to the EPA, claiming new regulations will impose a crippling financial toll on agriculture and energy producers. "With billions of dollars at stake, EPA outsourced the scientific basis for its greenhouse gas regulation to a scandal-plagued international organization that cannot be considered objective or trustworthy," said Greg Abbott, Texas's attorney general. "Prominent climate scientists associated with the IPCC were engaged in an ongoing, orchestrated effort to violate freedom of information laws, exclude scientific research, and manipulate temperature data. "In light of the parade of controversies and improper conduct that has been uncovered, we know that the IPCC cannot be relied upon for objective, unbiased science - so EPA should not rely upon it to reach a decision that will hurt small businesses, farmers, ranchers, and the larger Texas economy."

Mr Abbott’s comments follow the controversy over the work of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, whose research was at the heart of IPCC findings. Leaked emails indicated that the freedom of information act was breached and that data was manipulated and suppressed to strengthen the case for man-made climate change.

A series of exaggerated claims, factual mistakes and unscientific sourcing have subsequently been uncovered in the 2007 IPCC report - such as the alarming but unjustified warning that Himalayan glaciers might disappear by 2035. Scientists insistent that humans are causing climate change have said the mistakes do not overturn an overwhelming burden of proof backing their case.

The case brought by Texas is one of 16 challenging the IPA over its data or procedures. They have been lodged variously by states, Republican congressmen, trade associations and advocacy groups before last week's cut-off to file court actions.

The pro-market Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and US Chamber of Commerce are also mounting high-profile battles to overturn the EPA decisions through petitions filed with the US Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington. "The Clean Air Act is an incredibly flawed way to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and the findings on which it is based are full of very shoddy science," said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the CEI. "Many policies and proposals that would raise energy prices through the roof for American consumers and destroy millions of jobs in energy-intensive industries still pose a huge threat."

Among those he listed were the EPA's decision to regulate greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act, efforts to use the Endangered Species Act to stop energy production and new power plants, the higher fuel economy standards for new passenger vehicles enacted in 2007, and bills in Congress that require buildings to use more renewable electricity and introduce higher energy efficiency standards.

The EPA, a federal agency which is increasingly key to Mr Obama's green agenda as his legislative policies become bogged down in Congress, refuted the charges. "The evidence of and threats posed by a changing climate are right before our eyes," said Catherine Milbourn, EPA spokeswoman. "That science came from an array of highly respected, peer-reviewed sources from both within the United States and across the globe."

The Environmental Defence Fund is leading the defence of the EPA's findings, arguing that critics are deliberately ignoring science to set back efforts to tackle climate change. "The EPA's decision is based on a 200-page synthesis of major scientific assessments," said the Fund, denying the work was simply attributable to the IPCC.

Also last week, the United States Climate Action Partnership, a grouping of businesses backing national legislation on reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, suffered a major blow when oil firms BP America and Conoco Phillips and construction giant Caterpillar left the group. The two oil firms, the most significant departures, walked out on the industry-green alliance protesting that "cap and trade" legislation would have awarded them far fewer free emission allowances than their rivals in the coal and electricity industries.

Last week also saw the United Nation's top climate official, Yvo de Boer, announce his resignation after the failure of the recent Copenhagen climate conference to agree to more than vague promises to limit carbon dioxide emissions.

SOURCE





Virginia Attorney General fights the EPA

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took a gutsy and intelligent step Feb. 17 when he petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its ill-advised "finding" that carbon dioxide creates an endangerment for human health. The endangerment finding would let the EPA battle alleged global warming by regulating emissions of CO2, which of course is the gas that every animal and person exhales with every breath. The finding was ludicrous from the start, and now Mr. Cuccinelli makes a reasonable case that it also was unlawful.

"Attorney General Cuccinelli believes that the EPA acted in an arbitrary and capricious fashion and failed to properly exercise its judgment by relying almost exclusively on reports from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an arm of the United Nations] in attributing climate change to [human-caused] greenhouse gas emissions," the AG's office explains. "The IPCC is an international body that is not subject to U.S. data quality and transparency standards and the IPCC prepared their reports in total disregard to U.S. Standards."

Since the EPA finding was issued, the IPPC's reports have become subject to scandal on multiple fronts. Those scandals reached a crescendo when a British newspaper, the Daily Mail, reported Feb. 14 that "The academic at the centre of the 'Climategate' affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble 'keeping track' of the information. ... And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no 'statistically significant' warming."

Obviously, if the EPA were relying on bad data like all of the other climate-change fanatics, it ought to reconsider its plans to further strangle our struggling economy with more unnecessary red tape.

Mr. Cuccinelli argues that the EPA failed to meet its responsibility to conduct appropriate cost-benefit analysis, and that the economic harm to American citizens - including Virginians - would outweigh any purported benefits of the new regulations. As the AG put it, "We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats with political agendas to use falsified data to regulate American industry and drive our economy into the ground." Of course, he's spot on.

SOURCE






Where's Al?

“I’m like Punxsutawney Phil, but do you know what it means when I see my shadow? It means the earth is dying. Have you been outside today? It’s 60 degrees in late November. I mean there’s a Christmas tree in front of this building and guys are wearing flip-flops. You can’t say this isn’t real.” -Al Gore on Saturday Night Live, November 2009

It was all laughs for Al Gore last November when he hit the media circuit to promote his new book and educate the ignorant masses about the imminent threat of catastrophic climate change. He had the rapt attention of the politicians and the pundits and the celebrities. He’d won an Academy Award! The former Vice-President and presidential hopeful had built a new career as the voice of the Green Movement, and business was booming. What a difference three months makes.

In the face of the embarrassing Climategate scandal and an unprecedented winter season that has for the first time ever delivered measurable snowfall to all 50 states, Al Gore’s absence from the public stage has been conspicuous. Perhaps he’s taken a page from Punxsutawney Phil’s playbook and is hibernating in hopes of a sunnier forecast come April.

All kidding – and snowstorms – aside, recent events have caused many to doubt the veracity of Al Gore’s award-winning claims about man-made global warming and the “settled science” behind climate change. In the aftermath of “Climategate” – in which several e-mails revealing manipulative and unethical behavior by some of the main scientists responsible for gathering and analyzing global temperature data were exposed – the scientist at the center of the controversy has admitted that his method of handling the raw temperature data used to compile climate reports is “not as good as it should be,” and furthermore has conceded that there has been no “statistically significant” warming of the earth in the last 15 years. This is a fascinating revelation, considering that global warming alarmists have been prophesying the imminent ruin of Planet Earth for over three decades.

The bottom line is that intelligent, responsible people are getting tired of being made to feel guilty for every carbon credit consumed and every mile-per-gallon burned, especially when it’s becoming more and more clear that the current climate change hysteria is being fueled less by solid scientific evidence than by an extreme Green ideology that – much like Agent Smith in the Matrix movies – views humanity as a virus, a plague upon the earth that must be contained and ultimately eradicated. For the extreme enviro-ideologues, mankind’s devastating impact on the earth is a foregone conclusion; the appeal to “science” is simply a clever public relations tactic.

There aren’t many fields of scientific inquiry where the level of negligence, irresponsibility, and carelessness that characterizes the study of global climate trends would be allowed to prevail. Scientists take pride, above all, in their dedication to The Method. In order for a hypothesis to gain any traction, it much be researched, tested, replicated, and analyzed. Any 8th-grader will tell you that sloppy work in setting up your experiment, failure to account for relevant variables, or insufficient presentation of data will get you an F on your end-of-semester project. Yet somehow the entire globe has been taken captive by an ideology driven by shoddy science.

Meanwhile, the number of people who would claim that mankind has made zero impact on the environment in the last century is understandably small. Most reasonable, sensible individuals – regardless of their party affiliation or their penchant for Birkenstocks and IMF protests – will agree that there are many ways in which we can do better.

SOURCE







Blinded by Science

Science, many scientists say, has been restored to her rightful throne because progressives have regained power. Progressives, say progressives, emulate the cool detachment of scientific discourse. So hear now the calm, collected voice of a scientist lavishly honored by progressives, Rajendra Pachauri. He is chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 version of the increasingly weird Nobel Peace Prize. Denouncing persons skeptical about the shrill certitudes of those who say global warming poses an imminent threat to the planet, he says: "They are the same people who deny the link between smoking and cancer. They are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder -- and I hope they put it on their faces every day."

Do not judge him as harshly as he speaks of others. Nothing prepared him for the unnerving horror of encountering disagreement. Global warming alarmists, long cosseted by echoing media, manifest an interesting incongruity -- hysteria and name calling accompanying serene assertions about the "settled science" of climate change. Were it settled, we would be spared the hyperbole that amounts to Ring Lardner's "Shut up, he explained."

The global warming industry, like Alexander in the famous children's story, is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Actually, a bad three months, which began Nov. 19 with the publication of e-mails indicating attempts by scientists to massage data and suppress dissent in order to strengthen "evidence" of global warming.

But there already supposedly was a broad, deep and unassailable consensus. Strange.

Next came the failure of The World's Last -- We Really, Really Mean It -- Chance, aka the Copenhagen climate change summit. It was a nullity, and since then things have been getting worse for those trying to stampede the world into a spasm of prophylactic statism.

In 2007, before the economic downturn began enforcing seriousness and discouraging grandstanding, seven Western U.S. states (and four Canadian provinces) decided to fix the planet on their own. California's Arnold Schwarzenegger intoned, "We cannot wait for the United States government to get its act together on the environment." The 11 jurisdictions formed what is now called the Western Climate Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, starting in 2012.

Or not. Arizona's Gov. Jan Brewer recently suspended her state's participation in what has not yet begun, and some Utah legislators are reportedly considering a similar action. She worries, sensibly, that it would impose costs on businesses and consumers. She also ordered reconsideration of Arizona's strict vehicle emission rules, modeled on incorrigible California's, lest they raise the cost of new cars.

Last week, BP America, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar, three early members of the 31-member U.S. Climate Action Partnership, said: Oh, never mind. They withdrew from USCAP. It is a coalition of corporations and global warming alarm groups that was formed in 2007 when carbon rationing legislation seemed inevitable and collaboration with the rationers seemed prudent. A spokesman for Conoco said: "We need to spend time addressing the issues that impact our shareholders and consumers." What a concept.

Global warming skeptics, too, have erred. They have said there has been no statistically significant warming for 10 years. Phil Jones, former director of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, source of the leaked documents, admits it has been 15 years. Small wonder that support for radical remedial action, sacrificing wealth and freedom to combat warming, is melting faster than the Himalayan glaciers that an IPCC report asserted, without serious scientific support, could disappear by 2035.

Jones also says that if during what is called the Medieval Warm Period (circa 800-1300) global temperatures may have been warmer than today's, that would change the debate. Indeed it would. It would complicate the task of indicting contemporary civilization for today's supposedly unprecedented temperatures.

Last week, Todd Stern, America's Special Envoy for Climate Change -- yes, there is one; and people wonder where to begin cutting government -- warned that those interested in "undermining action on climate change" will seize on "whatever tidbit they can find." Tidbits like specious science, and the absence of warming?

It is tempting to say, only half in jest, that Stern's portfolio violates the First Amendment, which forbids government from undertaking the establishment of religion. A religion is what the faith in catastrophic man-made global warming has become. It is now a tissue of assertions impervious to evidence, assertions which everything, including a historic blizzard, supposedly confirms and nothing, not even the absence of warming, can falsify.

SOURCE





Global warming lunatics

What a difference a few years can make

Phil Jones, the man who more than anyone else (besides Al Gore) was responsible for perpetuating the Man-Made Global Warming hysteria, has now conceded that, ahem, there's a tiny problem with his data. Namely, it doesn't exist.

Now mind you, Phil Jones isn't saying that it never existed. It did, really, at one time, honest, believe him. It's just that, like that missing earring your wife misplaced, or the proof of purchase receipt you swear you have as the cops nab you for shoplifting that brand new watch in your pocket, you can't, er, find it. So, you're just gonna have to take Dr. Jones' word for it that his famous "hockey stick graph" is 100% real, no question about it. It's just that he can't actually prove it because, well, his "organizational skills" are a tad bit deficient.

But it gets even better. For the data that hasn't been misplaced, erased, shredded, or eaten by the family dog, it shows that for the past 15 years there has been no "statistically significant" global warming — which is a nice sounding way of saying "actual reality shows the exact opposite of what our politically-motivated theories predicted." And to cap off the dismantling of the Climate Change Hat Trick, recent news accounts have noted that, "Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now — suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon."

Now I realize that some Climate Change Advocates are still knee deep in their "investigation phase" of looking really, really, hard at all the evidence of malfeasance and deception that's come to light since the Climategate scandal first broke. Far be it from me to continue to point out the same things that I and other Anthropogenic Global Warming Deniers have consistently pointed out for years, if not decades — namely, that this is all a croc — but in the interest of moving this discussion along, I thought it might be interesting to take a slightly different approach to this subject.

Rather than focus on the things we know today, thanks to the Climategate scandal, let's have a look back at the positions taken by AGW supporters over the last few years. How exactly did they react to the questions we raised about the whole notion of Man-Made Global Warming? What exactly was the "settled" part of the "settled science" they used to produce their "scientific consensus" that the world was getting hotter, and that man was responsible for it?

Fortunately, the comment section to The Intellectual Conservative contains the musings, protestations, and analyses of a number of folks who drank the Global Warming/Climate Change Kool-Aid. Neither they, nor we, are climate scientists. But we all have a brain, and it's interesting to see how each of us used it to address one of the most important issues of our time; an issue with far-reaching social, economic and political implications.

So here it goes. I'll begin with a restatement of my main thesis, as stated in my 2006 essay "An Even More Inconvenient Truth: The Myth of Man-Made Global Warming," which launched my own foray into this debate.

1. We can't actually measure the temperature of the Earth precisely enough to measure a .5-1 degree "change" in world temperatures over the last 100 years, let alone use this as a basis to project future climate changes of 2-6 degrees over the next 100 years.

2. 100 years, even 200-300 years, is hardly enough time to discern a "trend," even if such data was to exist.

3. Even if we had the precise data, and had it over a long enough time frame, science still has not shown us how to actually separate man's supposed influence on climate from natural factors influencing climate. Only his hubris allows man to think that his actions are determinate in shaping the natural process of the planet – with the Earth itself, and the sun that heats it, only incidental factors in this explanation.

4. Legitimate scientific inquiry always begins with a simple question that few people today – even rational thinkers – bother to ask when presented with a statement of "fact": "How do you know that?" The people who propose a theory have the burden of proof to demonstrate its validity. It's not my responsibility to prove your theory wrong. It's your responsibility to prove it right.

And what, you may ask, was the response of the Warmers to my heresy of issues raised? We'll begin with a gentleman by the name of Bill Provost, who had a number of problems with the points above as he discussed at length in 2006. According to Mr. Provost:

* Research from NASA related to the rapid global warming seen over the past three decades [1980s-2000s] shows that this "warming today is primarily driven by man-made greenhouse gases, not solar changes . . . Rather than assume that hundreds of professional climate scientists around the globe had NEVER even THOUGHT to ask about solar irradiance changes, you should have done a little more research."

Note: Just for giggles, Google "NASA Global Warming Errors," "James Hansen fraud," etc., to get a 2010 update on the quality of this, ahem, unbiased "research."

Why did Mr. Provost believe so strongly that man, not nature, was the cause of Global Warming? (Again, note that this discussion took place before "Global Warming" trans-mutated into Global "Climate Change.")

* "Global warming isn't a question of agreeing or disagreeing. This isn't a philosophy debate. In science, there are right answers and wrong answers, there are things that can be supported by evidence and things that cannot." Any "weaknesses" pointed out by critics of the Man-Made Global Warming hypothesis "are more often 'weaknesses' of conservative understanding than 'weaknesses' of the science."

One commentator, reacting to Mr. Provost, mentioned that, "The author [Jackson] does make a good point about the suspect quality of temperature measurements in terms of accuracy, consistency, and location," to which Mr. Provost replied:

* "Not really. All of these issues have been hashed out in the literature and appropriate error bars assigned . . . Global warming deniers are behaving like religious fundamentalists. No matter how compelling the evidence, they will never admit that man-made global warming is real. They engage in all kinds of shameless sophistry and sloppy thinking to avoid the undeniable conclusion. Confronting reality and embracing empiricism would mean risking government regulation and, even worse, admitting that those environmentalists they despise so much are right and they are wrong. As time goes on and the evidence builds, this just makes them look ever more ridiculous-like the creationists." In case you didn't get the point, Mr. Provost went on to state, "this article . . . only extends and confirms the position that conservatives fundamentally don't understand the science."

As for the caliber of scientific inquiry demonstrating Man-Made Global Warming, Mr. Provost had a few additional thoughts on the subject. Once again, please note that this is from the pre-Climategate scandal days when little things like statistical "tricks" and "artificial adjustments" had not yet come to light.

* "Why do you assume . . . that [downplaying the role of natural forces contributing to CO2 emissions] is evidence of 'alarmists' pushing 'an outside, hidden agenda?' Basically, you present me with two options: 1) Climate scientists are incompetent hacks; or 2) You need to hit the books a little harder. Of the two, the latter seems more likely."

Alas, this was the last we heard of Mr. Provost, who having smited the ignorant conservative fundamentalist creationists who dared to ask "how do we know that?", went on to spread his wisdom in other forums.

A later article on "How to Increase Your Carbon Footprint" brought out a few more comments on the need to put our full faith and trust in the scientific community to tackle the most important issues of our time. Someone by the name of "Dave Patriot" put it tactfully, and succinctly:

* "Why do you brainless [deleted by moderator] recognize that the science is there but your ego won't let the information in. But I'm sure you same idiots go telling everyone that evolution is a myth. Fill that empty space between your ears and get out and see the world for yourself, not from that rotting trailer."

If that wasn't convincing enough to accept the Truth About Man-Made Global Warming, Mr. Patriot had even more cogent arguments to offer. Those who disputed Anthropogenic Global Warming were just listening to scientists "on the payroll of Exxon-Mobil or Shell or BP." The "fact" was that "greenhouse gasses and mean global temp have a positive relationship, they go up together."

Note: This, again, was written before the recent "corrections" from the scientific community that showed while industrial output and human-generated CO2 emissions have steadily increased, global temperatures have, er, not. But even had this been known in 2007, it wouldn't have been enough to dissuade Dave the Patriot, who insisted that "computer models postulate many scenarios, NONE of which can be dealt with in a 'wait and see' attitude. We can disagree on opinions of results of global warming, but there aren't many intelligent folks who truly deny the existence of a warming planet aided by human activity."

And just in case you didn't get it the first time, if you questioned any of the things back then which today have been shown to be worthy of questioning, your arguments would make you "sound like the tobacco companies lies about the harmfulness of cigarettes. Just keep it real man, we live on the same planet and must preserve it the best we can."

Another individual by the name of gnarlyerik tried a different tact to convince us ignorant skeptics. Notice the string of "conservative" assumptions that went into his final piece of logic:

* Since 'scientists' per se are characteristically a conservative lot, and since 95% of scientific opinion is that Global Warming is a seriously dangerous issue, and that mankind is a strong contributing factor – why is it that dogmatics such as are found on this [conservative] site so insistent that it's a myth? The real myth is the one they serve up themselves that there's nothing to it. Wake up! Open the windows! Look outside!"

Note: I woke up, looked outside, and saw record snowfalls in Dallas, Texas this year (both in the number of snowfalls, and depth of accumulation). Live by the anecdote, die by the anecdote.

Gnarlyerik conceded that, like most of us, he was not a scientist. But as a man of reason he knew that scientists had only the purest of motives and the most objective research available upon which to base their conclusions. So, if "scientific opinion" said it was so, well "the only rational choice for any layman like me is to go with the VAST MAJORITY of prevailing scientific opinions. To do otherwise is to stick one's head in the sand."

And why is this so? "'Majority' opinions have many times been wrong in the past – but that does not make any particular minority theory correct today. In fact, statistically the odds are heavily against that being the case. For a minority to go around insisting they are right is downright silly."

I put this passage in here not so much to add to the arguments presented by the Man-Made Global Warming Hysterics, but in the hope that someone, some day, might be able to tell me what this thought process actually means.

Fast forward now to 2009. In an essay entitled "The Day Science Died," I railed against the kind of "consensus science" which gave us non-existent Man-Made Global Warming by saying "'consensus science' and 'settled science' . . . is shorthand for ‘would you shut up and stop asking these kinds of embarrassing questions because we already have the conclusions we want.' It's the day real science was replaced with the notion that the consensus of non-scientists and scientists, who gather together in quasi-political organizations, was all that was needed to shut down debate. It is, in effect, the day science died."

Well, just when you thought it was okay to go to church, Raymond Ingles followed the well-trodden tradition of condemning legitimate inquiries into agenda-driven science with a familiar broad brush: "That sounds so much like the language young-Earth creationists use that it triggers automatic suspicion with me. The spheroid Earth is 'settled science' too, but that doesn't make the Flat Earther's questions ‘embarrassing,' merely annoying. Thankfully, the political clout of the flat-Earthers has ebbed. I can only hope the young-Earth types don't take centuries to fade to that level."

Fear not, though. Despite the obvious religious overtones to any and all objections to the theory of Anthropogenic Global warming, Mr. Ingles wanted to hedge his bets a bit, unlike those in whose anti-creationist path he had followed. To this end, he assured us that:

* "I'm still looking into global warming, but I haven't seen the distortions and unethical behavior the scientists are accused of, certainly not on a widespread level. That things are getting warmer over at least the past century and a half is pretty clear. Things like how much humans have contributed this is less clear in my mind – but again, I'm not finding debased motives among those proposing it and mustering their evidence. They may be wrong, but I don't see them as any more evil and deceptive than any other humans. And I certainly do see troubling signs – like the rhetoric I noted above – in their debate opponents."

This investigation continues into 2010, but still nothing has risen to the level of concern for Mr. Ingles. The earth is still getting warmer, even if it isn't actually getting warmer these last 15 years. Consensus-driven Global Warming/Climate Change scientists are still operating with the highest level of ethics, even as they hide, destroy, or just "can't find" the data to support their agenda-driven conclusions. And if one day they are shown to be venal self-serving shills, well, they're not so much different from you or me, so what's the real harm?

This is science, as seen from a man who views himself as a kindred spirit (I would have said "soul", but that opens up an entirely different subject with Mr. Ingles). Meanwhile, my knuckles are getting raw from dragging through the snow as I head for church to worship at the altar of Creationism because I dare to ask "how do we know that?" instead of blindly accepting universal truths which, it has come to light, aren't nearly all that universal, nor true.

Which leads to the last great defender of AGW to grace the comment section of The Intellectual Conservative: Chasm. Commenting on an article about "The Lies About Green Jobs" when all else fails in a debate on Man-Made Global Warming, Chasm knew enough to invoke the IPCC, NISDC, NASA, and other governmental bodies to show that temperatures are rising, and the ice caps are melting, and that man is responsible for it. This would certainly be enough to convince any sane, rational, objective person — which definitely isn't me and other AGW-Deniers, because even if the evidence was presented, according to Chasm "you wouldn't listen and you'd figure out another reason they [the scientists] could be wrong. Just like the anti-science creationists."

Note: Are we noticing a consistent theme among the learned folks who endorse the scientific consensus of Anthropogenic Global Warming?

Anyway, let me just offer a couple of things to close out this discussion of the so-called scientific consensus of Man-Made Global Warming. Keep in mind the arguments of those who insisted that there was nothing to debate, nothing to dispute, and nothing to challenge the motives or credibility of anyone disagreeing with "settled, scientific consensus."

The Poles are not Melting

Associated Press 2002: "New measurements show the ice in West Antarctica is thickening, reversing some earlier estimates that the sheet was melting."

"Nature" May 2005: "Increased snowfall over a large area of Antarctica is thickening the ice sheet and slowing the rise in sea level caused by melting ice"

"Science" 2005: "Oslo – Greenland's ice-cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw triggered by global warming"

Journal of Glaciology, July 2008: "Devon Ice Cap, Nunavut, Canada, has been losing mass since at least 1960. Laser-altimetry surveys, however, suggest that the high-elevation region (>1200 m) of the ice cap thickened between 1995 and 2000"

International Arctic Research Center (IARC/JAXA): "During October and November 2008 the extent of Arctic ice was 28.7 percent greater than during the same period in 2007."

The Himalayan Ice Caps are not Melting

"A warning that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

"Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

"In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

"It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

"Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was'"speculation' and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change." See here

NASA has an agenda

"James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whose records were also cited as evidence, second only to the CRU data, of incontrovertible man-made global warming. McIntyre also caught Hansen engaging in the same sort of statistical manipulation in which past temperatures were lowered and recent ones ‘adjusted' to convey the false impression that the nonexistent warming trend was accelerating. After trying to block McIntyre's IP address, NASA was forced to back down from its claim that 1998 was the hottest year in U.S. history." See here

The IPCC has an agenda

"IPCC Researchers Admit Global Warming Fraud. Among the IPCC elite embarrassingly, if not criminally, compromised is Phillip D. Jones …" See here

The NSIDC has an agenda

In 2007, Mark Serreze, of the NSIDC said North Pole ice could be gone in the summer of 2008." See here

Er. It's still there. And getting thicker.

And doncha know, I'm just a "creationist" for raising these issues … along a bunch of scientists who still have some professional integrity. See here

SOURCE

***************************************

For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

*****************************************

No comments: