Forwarded to me, by Jeff Huggins, this email, that was sent to him by a relative, who got it from someone else:
Global Warming and the Courts
Last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pushed itself into the debate on climate change, ruling that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration must take into account the “risks of global warming” when it sets mileage standards for trucks, minivans and SUVs. In doing so, however, “Justice Betty Fletcher and her colleagues on the bench demonstrated they have little expertise in climate science,” writes atmospheric physicist and Independent Institute Research Fellow S. Fred Singer.
According to Singer, drawing upon research documented in the forthcoming report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, the computer models used to determine the human impact on climate change are deeply flawed, and have been wholly inaccurate and unreliable in predicting such phenomena as the cooling of the tropical troposphere. Furthermore, “greenhouse warming has been significantly overestimated” and “might amount to no more than one-half of 1 degree Celsius by 2100, well within the climate’s normal range of ups and downs.” Singer argues that the “variability of solar emissions and solar magnetic fields” provides a more plausible explanation for climate changes than human carbon emissions. Finally, it is doubtful that even a massively invasive and costly government program will have much of a measurable impact on global temperature. Singer concludes that “the Justice Department should appeal the 9th Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court. . . . This time around, the White House should be better prepared to argue its case. Science is on its side.”
“Courts Confront Climate Change“ by S. Fred Singer. (Washington Times, 1/24/08.)
Also see the transcript and DVD from An Evening with Michael Crichton “States of Fear: Science or Politics?”
Buy Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate by S. Fred Singer.
How is that for Not So Green Exposure? For a second, I considered providing the links for the sources in the email. For a second only.
If you like considering sources, then you’ll enjoy SourceWatch.
SourceWatch on the Independent Institute
TII has previously worked for the tobacco industry providing “expert” opinions that smoking is harmless.
“TII has been a vocal opponent of the “war on drugs”, immigration restrictions, corporate welfare, censorship, the neoconservative (“Bush Doctrine”) of pre-emptive war, restrictions on reproductive rights, and the death penalty. Some of their analysts oppose the dominant view of scientists of the need for urgent action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.”
SourceWatch on S Fred Singer
“Singer was born September 27, 1924, in Vienna, Austria. Singer received a B.E.E. [Bachelor of Electrical Engineering] from Ohio State University in 1943 and a Ph.D. [in electrical engineering] from Princeton University in 1948.”
Singer’s also one who worked for tobacco.
It’s just how many scientists who used to comment in favour of tobacco companies are now global warming deniers, and were acid rain-deniers and pro-nuclear reactor guys in the past. I guess some people are just for sale, or just like the attention they get from being wined and dined by big companies, while going against the stream of science in general.
Thanks, Kyle, for sharing this great resource.
All I need to see is “Washington Times” and I know the score. That is a notoriously “conservative media” paper, with some truly whacked-out columnists. I don’t take anything that any of them says seriously.
Maybe journalism’s objectivity is a fallacy?
Stumbled upon this site while actually trying to become more knowledgeable re: global warming, suggest you do the same instead of immediately pigeonholing people into categories. I notice that the green sites never seem to criticize Al Gore for his indiscriminate connections to carbon offset companies, or James Hansen for accepting huge donations to the carbon cause. Old Al was worth 1 million in 2000, yet he now has 100 million. What happened? Duh. Could it be profiting off AGW? Why not discuss the actual proof instead of going immediately for name-calling? Did you know that, statistically, the “Greenies” are bigger carbon polluters than non-greenies? If you really want to learn the facts about global warming, try reading articles on feedback loops, climate sensitivity, albedo, lapse rates, GCM models, AGW theory, cosmic rays/solar output, the iris effect, ocean circulation, etc.
Concern over “global warming” is overstated and in some cases, actually most, misdirected. What follows are eight reasons why we really need need to think about what is real before it destroys billions of dollars of wealth and millions of jobs.
1. Most scientists do not believe human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth’s climate. More than 17,000 scientists have signed a petition circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine saying, in part, “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” (Go to http://www.oism.org for the complete petition and names of signers.) Surveys of climatologists show similar skepticism.
2. Our most reliable sources of temperature data show no global warming trend. Satellite readings of temperatures in the lower troposphere (an area scientist predict would immediately reflect any global warming) show no warming since readings began 23 years ago. These readings are accurate to within 0.01ºC, and are consistent with data from weather balloons. Only land-based temperature stations show a warming trend, and these stations do not cover the entire globe, are often contaminated by heat generated by nearby urban development, and are subject to human error.
3. Global climate computer models are too crude to predict future climate changes. All predictions of global warming are based on computer models, not historical data. In order to get their models to produce predictions that are close to their designers’ expectations, modelers resort to “flux adjustments” that can be 25 times larger than the effect of doubling carbon dioxide concentrations, the supposed trigger for global warming. Richard A. Kerr, a writer for Science, says “climate modelers have been ‘cheating’ for so long it’s almost become respectable.”
4. The IPCC did not prove that human activities are causing global warming. Alarmists frequently quote the executive summaries of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations organization, to support their predictions. But here is what the IPCC’s latest report, Climate Change 2001, actually says about predicting the future climate: “The Earth’s atmosphere-ocean dynamics is chaotic: its evolution is sensitive to small perturbations in initial conditions. This sensitivity limits our ability to predict the detailed evolution of weather; inevitable errors and uncertainties in the starting conditions of a weather forecast amplify through the forecast. As well as uncertainty in initial conditions, such predictions are also degraded by errors and uncertainties in our ability to represent accurately the significant climate processes.”
5. A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization. Temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 800 to 1200 AD), which allowed the Vikings to settle presently inhospitable Greenland, were higher than even the worst-case scenario reported by the IPCC. The period from about 5000-3000 BC, known as the “climatic optimum,” was even warmer and marked “a time when mankind began to build its first civilizations,” observe James Plummer and Frances B. Smith in a study for Consumer Alert. “There is good reason to believe that a warmer climate would have a similar effect on the health and welfare of our own far more advanced and adaptable civilization today.”
6. Efforts to quickly reduce human greenhouse gas emissions would be costly and would not stop Earth’s climate from changing. Reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 7 percent below 1990’s levels by the year 2012–the target set by the Kyoto Protocol–would require higher energy taxes and regulations causing the nation to lose 2.4 million jobs and $300 billion in annual economic output. Average household income nationwide would fall by $2,700, and state tax revenues would decline by $93.1 billion due to less taxable earned income and sales, and lower property values. Full implementation of the Kyoto Protocol by all participating nations would reduce global temperature in the year 2100 by a mere 0.14 degrees Celsius.
7. Efforts by state governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are even more expensive and threaten to bust state budgets. After raising their spending with reckless abandon during the 1990s, states now face a cumulative projected deficit of more than $90 billion. Incredibly, most states nevertheless persist in backing unnecessary and expensive greenhouse gas reduction programs. New Jersey, for example, collects $358 million a year in utility taxes to fund greenhouse gas reduction programs. Such programs will have no impact on global greenhouse gas emissions. All they do is destroy jobs and waste money.
8. The best strategy is to determine what is a pragmatice approach to the situation? The alternative to demands for immediate action to “stop global warming” is not to do nothing. The best strategy is to look to energy efficiency and renewable energy sources were cost effective and programs and help to find a meaniful substitute for polluting energy and resources.
The global warming scare has enabled environmental advocacy groups to raise billions of dollars in contributions and government grants. It has given politicians (from Al Gore down) opportunities to pose as prophets of doom and slayers of evil corporations. And it has given bureaucrats at all levels of government, from the United Nations to city councils, powers that threaten our jobs and individual liberty.
Al Gore as stated, has made $millions, and stands to make more if a cap and trade system is adopted. He has a vested financial interest in many company’s that will step in a save the day. He will be worth mega-millions, and and of course has a Nobel Peace Prize to boot. While all the time living in his energy hog home, 10,000 square feet, but he buys green power, so his is a so called “greenie” Do as I say and not as I do?
It is time for common sense to return to the debate over protecting the environment. An excellent first step would be to end the “global warming” siren, and raise the level of common sense.
It makes sense to conserve, look to cost effective cleaner energy technology, and find alternatives to oil.
But to retard the enconomy so self seeking alarmists can get rich, is wrong.
A reply to post 6 by Jason Benson
True science and scientists are objective, but that doesn’t stop the fossil-fuel industry funding think-tanks and numerous paid liars and those with a political axe to grind to label any science they don’t like ‘politically motivated’. That is what has happened to climate science, it was politicized by the fossil-fuel industry’s stooges.
For those who want to learn more about the actual science see the links below.
Here are a number of websites that debunk common fallacious and spurious arguments used by deniers. These will show that Jason Benson is not speaking the truth but quoting misleading pseudo-scientific garbage.
The question is why Jason Benson has deliberately ignored the overwhelming body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence that is available that completely refutes his arguments?
Is it deliberate or is it a genuine mistake? Is he a stooge? I’ll let you decide!
I recommend that if one wishes to learn about the science, you must first read and understand the science. Reading the ‘Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’ (OISM) garbage is a waste of time. It has never been published in an ISI-peer-reviewed journal and never will be. The motives and funding of the authors are deeply suspect and its identically named predecessor [publ. 1998] was funded indirectly by ExxonMobil, as have been three of its four authors.
How strange that this seemingly scientific paper which purports to deal with climate has not one author in either its original 1998 or 2007 (undated) versions who has any qualifications in a discipline relevant to climate science!
The OISM’s first original paper or ‘review’ was accompanied by a letter from Frederick Seitz – a former President of the National Academy of Sciences. Also note that the above ‘review’ circulated with the ‘petition’ was carefully and deliberately formatted to imitate that of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and there is no doubt that many of the recipients were deceived in to believing that it had originated from the NAS. The flood of enquiries about whether the NAS had changed their stance on climate change caused the NAS to issue an unprecedented press release:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=s04201998
Spencer Weart’s “Discovery of Global Warming” – http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
Common Arguments from The Fossil-Fuel Industry – Used To Deceive The Public About Climate Change – Debunked.
RealClimate’s introduction
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/
Coby Beck’s How to talk to Global Warming Skeptic
http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics
New Scientist: Climate Change: A guide for the perplexed
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462
RealClimate: Response to common contrarian arguments
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/#Responses
NERC (UK): Climate change debate summary
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/climatechange/summary.asp
UK Meteorological Office: Climate Change Myths
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html
Brian Angliss A Thorough Debunking
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/07/23/anti-global-heating-claims-a-reasonably-thorough-debunking/
John Cross Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
For the truth about climate science, the background to the founding of the IPCC and the denialists see:
Naomi Oreskes – The American Denial of Global Warming – Free to watch online
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=13459
This video lasts about an hour.
The rest of the arguments presented by Jason Benson are mendacious in the extreme, fallacious, scientifically misleading or incorrect. Or less useful than that!
E.g. Argument 2 Wholly untrue.
Land based stations show a warming trend as do satellite measurements, bore-hole measurements, ocean temperatures.
The Urban Heat Island effect has been known since around 1922 – Jason Benson seems to think this in new! Meteorologists who collect this data take great care to compensate for this.
An “Executive Summary” by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, co-authored by John Christy of UAH concludes:
“Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. While these data are consistent with the results from climate models at the global scale, discrepancies in the tropics remain to be resolved.
For those who want to learn more see the links below.
Spencer Weart’s “Discovery of Global Warming” – http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
Common Arguments from The Fossil-Fuel Industry – Used To Deceive The Public About Climate Change – Debunked.
RealClimate’s introduction
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/
Coby Beck’s How to talk to Global Warming Skeptic
http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics
New Scientist: Climate Change: A guide for the perplexed
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462
RealClimate: Response to common contrarian arguments
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/#Responses
NERC (UK): Climate change debate summary
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/climatechange/summary.asp
UK Meteorological Office: Climate Change Myths
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html
Brian Angliss A Thorough Debunking
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/07/23/anti-global-heating-claims-a-reasonably-thorough-debunking/
John Cross Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
For the truth about climate science, the background to the founding of the IPCC and the denialists see:
Naomi Oreskes – The American Denial of Global Warming
This video lasts about an hour.
Thanks for contributing such a wealth of info!
Thanks Science for using big words but failing to present any scientific counterpoints.
As for this statement, “The rest of the arguments presented by Jason Benson are mendacious in the extreme, fallacious, scientifically misleading or incorrect. Or less useful than that!” Let’s here you counter points, your views are ham-fisted!
To prove you are uniformed, if energy efficiency and Renewable energy are not answers, then you have taken misinformation and incompetence to a whole new level.
I would imagine you follow the prescriptive scenario of moving back into caves, walking everywhere, and using torches for light. They had better be carbon friendly torches too.
And for the sake of alarmists that use predictive models I work with these models and have watched self seekers manipulate them to say what they want.
And Science I am not talking about model planes.
The contention of folks like Science would lead you to believe that it is easy to determine whether CO2 emissions are positive or negative. $100M says differently. What this article proves is that CO2 emission and the contribution to global warming are not finite as Science’s articles lead you to believe.
.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22993043/wid=18298287
I could not find the link for this but it is very interesting and takes a scientific point of view.
A team of NASA and university scientists have detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.
The team of scientists found a 10-millibar decrease in water pressure at the bottom of the ocean at the North Pole between 2002 and 2006, equal to removing the weight of 10 centimeters (four inches) of water from the ocean. The distribution and size of the decrease suggest that Arctic Ocean circulation changed from the counterclockwise pattern it exhibited in the 1990s to the clockwise pattern that was dominant prior to 1990.
Reporting in Geophysical Research Letters, the authors attribute the reversal to a weakened Arctic Oscillation, a major atmospheric circulation pattern in the northern hemisphere. The weakening reduced the salinity of the upper ocean near the North Pole, decreasing its weight and changing its circulation.
“Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming,” said [James Morison of the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center Applied Physics Laboratory].
Somehow I imagine Morison won’t be interviewed by any of the major television networks any time soon, especially as the study concluded that this circulation pattern may already be reversing possibly leading to increased ice levels in this area in coming years:
The Arctic Oscillation was fairly stable until about 1970, but then varied on more or less decadal time scales, with signs of an underlying upward trend, until the late 1990s, when it again stabilized. During its strong counterclockwise phase in the 1990s, the Arctic environment changed markedly, with the upper Arctic Ocean undergoing major changes that persisted into this century. Many scientists viewed the changes as evidence of an ongoing climate shift, raising concerns about the effects of global warming on the Arctic.
Morison said data gathered by Grace and the bottom pressure gauges since publication of the paper earlier this year highlight how short-lived the ocean circulation changes can be. The newer data indicate the bottom pressure has increased back toward its 2002 level. “The winter of 2006-2007 was another high Arctic Oscillation year and summer sea ice extent reached a new minimum,” he said. “It is too early to say, but it looks as though the Arctic Ocean is ready to start swinging back to the counterclockwise circulation pattern of the 1990s again.”
Once again, another in a seeming litany of reports emerging offering scientific alternatives for climate change beyond it being all man’s fault.
I would love to go point by point and blow for blow with Science, but frankly it would be a waste of time. Hearing words like “mendacious in the extreme, fallacious” are buzz words of the incompetent leading the inept.
Ooops sorry again, but it seems those scientists are getting in the way of politicians again…
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Widescale+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm
Darn those scientist when will they learn that if you are not in the circle singing the poltical song you are labeled a heretic..
I’ve got a pretty good essay about AGW propaganda. Check it out at my blog here:
http://lovethecoops.blogspot.com/2008/03/anthropogenic-global-warming-propaganda.html
Twitter drives MOST traffic to my sites
These are students from colleges, high schools and universities throughout the world.
It is predicted that “global warming” will increase water shortages
in the near future. Therefore, these lights are the best option for saving energy and
the global environment from global warming.