Richmond Tea Party » climate change

Scientists Condemn Climate Alarmists

Longshoreman — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:52:13 +0000

Sixteen leaders of the scientific and technical communities have signed a statement in the Wall Street Journal condemning the man-made climate-change movement as nothing but an enterprise to increase the wealth and power of its leaders. Their statement is timely in view of the fact that most voters still believe in man-caused global warming despite the accumulating evidence that it’s a hoax. As pollster Scott Rasmussen reported earlier this month: “Belief that global warming is a serious problem is at its highest level in two-and-half-years…. (A) survey of likely voters finds that 64% say global warming is at least a somewhat serious problem, including 30% who say it’s very serious.” The signers of the statement refuting the hoax wrote in part:

Why is there so much passion about global warming?…. There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question ‘cui bono?’ Or the modern update, ‘Follow the money.’ Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet…. (T)he oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed…. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts. Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now…. Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse…. Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy… Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of ‘incontrovertible’ evidence.

Church of Man-Made Global Warming

Longshoreman — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:54:29 +0000

People deeply committed to belief in man-made global warming form a cult that has “all the trappings of religion,” according to an Oct. 24 column on Realclearpolitics.com by Michael Barone. He is a leading political scientist, Fox news commentator, and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He sees these similarities:

Concept of original sin: Mankind is responsible for global warming and the disasters it will cause.
Need for atonement and repentance in the form of carbon taxes or cap-and-trade system.
Ritual such as the annual Earth Day and weekly recycling.
Indulgences, where people can buy carbon offsets to avoid punishment for carbon-emission sins.

(Barone didn’t mention other parallels, such as priests and saints in the persons of Democratic politicians, journalists, and activists, or the intolerance that many warmers display toward nonbelievers. The religious nature of many liberal causes struck me 40 years ago, when I was a speechwriter in the electric power industry. I researched a talk then—never given—on the “religion” of environmentalism. A case can be made that doctrinaire liberalism as whole is a kind of religion.) Barone wrote:

Corporate elitists, like General Electric’s Jeff Immelt, profess to share this faith, just as cynical Venetian merchants and prim Victorian bankers gave lip service to the religious enthusiasms of their days. Bad for business not to. And if you’re clever, you can figure out how to make money off it…. (T)he global warming clergy has preached apocalyptic doom—and is now facing an increasingly skeptical public. The idea that we can be so completely certain of climate change 70 to 90 years hence that we must inflict serious economic damage on ourselves in the meantime seems increasingly absurd…. “Skepticism has been increased by the actions of believers….Disclosure of the Climategate emails in November 2009 showed how the clerisy was willing to distort evidence and suppress dissenting views in the interest of propagation of the faith…. “In recent years, we have seen how negative to 2 percent growth hurts many, many people, as compared to what happens with 3 to 7 percent growth. So we’re much less willing to adopt policies that will slow down growth not just for a few years but for the indefinite future.”

The crushing economic burden that the warming faith would impose on the world is elaborated in an unsigned Oct. 25 Wall Street Journal article online titled “The Post Global Warming World: Moving on from Climate Virtue” (available only to subscribers). The article says “the cost of meeting (the European Union’s) current carbon emissions targets—a cut of at least 20% of 1990 emissions levels by 2020—comes to at least €48 billion ($67 billion) per year.” The Wall Street Journal article concludes:

The science on climate change and man’s influence on it is far from settled. The question today is whether it makes sense to combat a potential climate threat by imposing economically destructive regulations and sinking billions into failure-prone technologies that have their own environmental costs. The earnest people going to (the United Nations annual climate-change conference next month in Durban, South Africa) may think so. The rest of the world is wearier and wiser.

Misfortune Tellers

Longshoreman — Tue, 31 May 2011 01:54:00 +0000

When true believers in man-made global warming look into their crystal balls, they tell us that nothing but misfortune awaits. In an op-ed for the May 25 Forbes.com blog, James M. Taylor, senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News, wrote about several gloomy predictions that these misfortune tellers have made and compared them with what actually happened: Prediction (1979)–The west Antarctic ice sheet will melt before the year 2000 and inundate American coastlines with up to 25 feet of sea level rise.

Result—The ice sheet is little changed and many of us still vacation at the sea shore, also little changed.

Prediction (2000)—After just a few years, snow will never again fall in England.

Result—The past two years were some of the snowiest on record.

Prediction (2007)—The glaciers in the Himalayas will melt by 2035.

Result—The prediction was withdrawn when it was analyzed and found to lack any scientific evidence, while a good deal of evidence runs counter to the claim.

Prediction (June 2008)—There’s a 50-50 chance the North Pole will be ice-free in a year. “The media reported the prediction with a frenzy rarely equaled even among media-created global warming scares. Adding fuel to the fire, global warming alarmists lined up in droves to add their John Hancock to the claim,” Taylor said. One believer claimed it was quite likely the north pole would be exposed in just a few months.

Result—Nothing happened.

“(S)pectacularly wrong global warming predictions, about polar ice and many other global warming-related issues, (are) par for the course for global warming alarmists,” Taylor said.

Is Global Warming Hysteria Fading?

Longshoreman — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:21:33 +0000

As I write this, I’m inspired by an unusual rock that sits on the desk beside my computer. It’s unusual in two ways. One, it looks like a chunk of wood, with clear layers formed by tree rings, and in fact it’s from a petrified tropical tree. Two, the tree grew near the south pole millions of years ago, when the whole world, including the polar regions, was tropical. I got it when I was with the U.S. antarctic expedition. I once showed it to a liberal friend, a true believer in the doctrine that the earth is warming now only because of society’s—particularly America’s—profligacy and that we have to adopt the entire left-wing agenda in order to set things right. He was astounded—he hadn’t known that the earth naturally undergoes continuous cycles of warming and cooling. It’s ignorance like this that allowed the man-made global warming hoax to catch on with so many people over the last several years, a hoax perpetrated by scientists seeking grant funds for research on the subject; corporations seeking profits from technological “solutions” to the problem; media outlets and freelancers like Al gore seeking to attract and influence readers, viewers, and listeners with sensational stories; politicians seeking the votes of alarmed citizens; and left-wing ideologues seeking to impose their vision on the world. The latest big conclave of warmers, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, with 194 countries represented, took place in the resort town of Cancun, Mexico, from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10. Ever since, I’ve been looking for a major article by a conservative author summing up the meeting in hopes of discussing it here. But I’ve seen nothing like that—the conference generated little news and few articles. A column by Christoper Booker described the preaching at the rally as “stale.” I wonder if it’s too much to hope that the air has gone out of the warming movement. Maybe the public wised up after this year’s explosive climate-gate revelations, when leaked e-mails showed key scientists in the movement scheming to make the case for climate change seem stronger than it is and punishing dissenters from the warming faith. This was the most damning of a mounting body of evidence—perhaps it reached a critical mass this year—that warmers are perverting science to advance their agenda. Previous posts here this year have highlighted some of this evidence. One concerned the charge by an eminent physicist that a prestigious scientific organization supports global warming “fraud” in order to make money at the expense of scientific truth. Another reported the admission by a leader of the UN climate change group that “We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy….The climate summit in Cancun…is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War.” Indeed, the conference concluded with an agreement by participants that prosperous countries such as the U.S. should give $100 billion a year for the next 10 years to less prosperous countries so they can fight global warming. According to one speaker, the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the only way to achieve sufficient reductions in global emissions while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next 20 years. He proposed a rationing system similar to the one imposed during World War II. In a nice bit of irony, the conference took place during a period of record-setting cold in Cancun, and many attendees flew there from countries experiencing extremely low temperatures in what is already a bad winter in the northern hemisphere. More significantly, warmers have had to admit grudgingly that world temperatures have been essentially flat for the last 15 years (except for one El Nino year)—no global warming (see this report). This may not disprove global warming, but it does at least indicate that the cries for urgency—“Give us heaps of money and radically change your politics right now!”—are misplaced. Two reports on the Cancun confab pithily characterized the global warming crusade: Christopher Booker’s column said it’s “One of the greatest collective flights from reality in the history of the human race,” and a column by Christopher Monckton called it “The strangest intellectual aberration of our age.” But, as Shakespeare said, “The truth will out,” and maybe that’s happening now. What a nice Christmas present for we the people if the ho-hum that greeted the Cancun conference really does signify the beginning of the end of this incredible hysteria.

UN Official Admits Climate Policy Redistributes Wealth

Longshoreman — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 01:42:57 +0000

In an astonishing interview published in German last week but little noticed outside the conservative blogosphere, a leader of the UN climate change group admitted “[W]e redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy….One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore….” The official, Ottmar Edenhoffer, also confessed, “The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War.” Edenhoffer’s interview was reported by the Newsbusters blog. Blogger Noel Sheppard concluded, “(Edenhoffer) has now made it quite clear—as folks on the realist side of this debate have been saying for years—that (the man-made climate change movement) is actually an international economic scheme designed to redistribute wealth.”

Climate Change and U.S. Sovereignty

richteaparty — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:16:45 +0000