2008: The Year the Global Warming Myth Died

The media promoted alarmism, and discredited skeptics as being in the pay of big oil – while giving a free pass to Al Gore (a/k/a The Goracle), who made a movie based on an obvious lie then made millions selling carbon offsets.

Brit journalist Christopher Booker makes the claim that 2008 is the year “man-made global warming was disproved”. His three reasons are:

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare.
[…]
Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed.
[…]
Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world.

While a good read Christopher Booker only hits around the edges of the AGW death sentence.

Australian scientist, and consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office, David Evans makes a better more complete case:

From 1975 to 2001 the global temperature trended up. How do you empirically determine the cause of this global warming? It turns out we can learn a lot simply by observing where the warming occurred: each possible cause of global warming heats the atmosphere differently, heating some parts before others. The pattern of warming is the cause’s “signature”.

The signature of an increased greenhouse effect consists of two features: a hotspot about 10 km up in the atmosphere over the tropics, and a combination of broad stratospheric cooling and broad tropospheric warming. The signature of ozone depletion consists just of the second feature. These signatures are theoretically derived by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and are integral to our understanding of how the atmosphere works. [1]

We have been observing temperatures in the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes – weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. The radiosonde measurements for 1979-1999 show broad stratospheric cooling and broad tropospheric warming, but they show no tropical hotspot. Not even a small one. [2]

Empirically, we therefore know that an increased greenhouse effect was not a significant cause of the recent global warming. (Either that or the signatures from the IPCC are wrong, so its climate models and predictions are rubbish anyway.)

Human carbon emissions were occurring at the time but the greenhouse effect did not increase. Therefore human carbon emissions did not increase the greenhouse effect, and did not cause global warming. So AGW is wrong, and carbon is innocent. Suspect exonerated – wrong signature.

Even the most simple-minded should comprehend that picture.

If the signature for the greenhouse effect includes X,Y and Z and only X and Z are present, whatever is going on isn’t the greenhouse effect.

Evans documents the machinations the warmists go through to ignore this fact, but there it is.

Evens, to my great amusement, takes The Goracle to task as well claiming he knew the new data (produced by new technology) about ice core samples and released in 2003 didn’t support his theory. So he used the old data instead.

To everyone but the enviro-whackos, that’s called a bald-faced lie.

Evans provides a timeline to demonstrate how the AGW myth gained favor with the media and general public:

Governments have spent over $50 billion on climate research since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence for AGW. [5]

So if there is no evidence to support AGW, and the missing hotspot shows that AGW is wrong, why does most of the world still believe in AGW?

Part of the answer is that science changed direction after a large constituency of vested interests had invested in AGW. The old ice core data provided support from 1985, the IPCC was established by the UN in 1988 to look into human changes to climate, and the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997 to limit carbon emissions. By 1999 the western political class were doing something, the western media were rallying behind “saving the planet”, and scientists were being paid by governments to research the effects of human-caused global warming.

But then the evidence took science off in a different direction: the new ice core data in 2003, the missing hotspot in 2007, and the global temperature has stopped trending up since 2001 [6]. Governments, the media, and many scientists did not notice.

The remainder of the answer for the current belief in AGW is darker and more political. An offbeat theory in the 1970s, AGW was adopted by a group of about 45 atmospheric modelers and physicists. That group dominated climate science journals, peer reviewed each others papers, and hindered competing ideas by underhand methods [7]. AGW gained political support from proponents of nuclear power, and vice-president Gore appointed AGW supporters to science positions in the USA.

Damning charges to be sure, but believable to the sane among us.

The problem was exacerbated by a second one, government funding of research:

AGW grabbed control of climate funding in key western countries. Lack of diversity in science funding has been a major problem since government took over funding science in WWII. Science is like a courtroom – protagonists put forward their best cases, and out of the argument some truth emerges. But if only one side is funded and heard, then truth tends not to emerge. This happened in climate science, which is almost completely government funded and has been dominated by AGW for two decades. Skeptics are mainly scientists who are retired or who have moved on to other areas – their funding no longer depends on allegiance to AGW. The alarmists are full time, well funded, and hog the megaphone.

Evans then delves into the evidence presented as “proof” by AGW supporters and why it fails the test. However, near the end, he talks about the real problem we face.

Politics:

Among non-scientists, AGW appeals strongly to two groups. Those who support big government love the idea of carbon regulations – if you control carbon emissions then you control most human activity. And those who like to feel morally superior to the bulk of their fellow citizens by virtue of a belief (the “warm inner glow” and moral vanity of the politically correct) are firmly attached to AGW. These groups are politically adept, are planning to spend your money and tell you how to eat, travel and how to live, and they are strenuously avoiding the evidence.

Too bad science has become all about the money on both sides. I guess the belief I used to have in the scientific debate was based on a myth.

It appears that science is just a tool and where it isn’t, you can’t distinguish it from the balderdash.

Al Gore, a leader of the scientific method? How low have we stooped?

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JibJab – 2008 in Review

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Top Ten Things Global Warming Caused in 2008

Global warming was blamed for everything from beasts gone wild to anorexic whales to the complete breakdown of human society this year — showing that no matter what it is and where it happens, scientists, explorers, politicians and those who track the Loch Ness Monster are comfortable scapegoating the weather.

FOXNews.com takes a look back at 10 things that global warming allegedly caused — or will no doubt soon be responsible for — as reported in the news around the world in 2008.

1. Cannibalism
In April, media mogul Ted Turner told PBS’s Charlie Rose that global warming would make the world 8 degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years. “Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state, like Somalia or Sudan, and living conditions will be intolerable,” he said. Turner blamed global warming on overpopulation, saying “too many people are using too much stuff.” Crops won’t grow and “most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals,” Turner said.

2. The Death of the Loch Ness Monster
In February, Scotland’s Daily Mirror reported that 85-year-old American Robert Rines would be giving up his quest for Scotland’s most famous underwater denizen. A World War II veteran, Rines has spent 37 years hunting for Nessie with sonar equipment. In 2008, “despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming.”

3. Beer Gets More Expensive
In April, the Associated Press reported that global warming was going to hit beer drinkers in the wallet because the cost of barley would increase, driving up the price of a pint. Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said Australia would be particularly hard hit as droughts caused a decline in malting barley production in parts of New Zealand and Australia. “It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up,” Salinger said at a beer brewer’s convention, the AP reported.

4. Pythons Take Over America
Giant Burmese pythons – big enough to eat alligators and deer in a single mouthful – will be capable of living in one-third of continental U.S. as global warming makes more of the country hospitable to the cold-blooded predators, according to an April report from USAToday.com. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the spread of “invasive snakes,” like the pythons, brought to the U.S. as pets. The Burmese pythons’ potential American habitat would expand by 2100, according to global warming models, the paper reported. “We were surprised by the map. It was bigger than we thought it was going to be,” says Gordon Rodda, zoologist and lead project researcher, told USAToday.com. “They are moving northward, there’s no question.”

5. Kidney Stones
A University of Texas study said global warming will cause an increase in kidney stones over the next 30 years, the Globe and Mail reported in July. Scientists predict that higher temperatures will lead to more dehydration and therefore to more kidney stones. “This will come and get you in your home,” said Dr. Tom Brikowski, lead researcher and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. “It will make life just uncomfortable enough that maybe people will slow down and think what they’re doing to the climate.”

6. Skinny Whales
Japanese scientists, who have claimed that the country’s controversial whaling program is all in the name of science, said in August that if they hadn’t been going around killing whales, they never would have discovered that the creatures were significantly skinnier than whales killed in the late 1980s, the Guardian reported in August. The researchers said the study was the first evidence that global warming was harming whales by restricting their food supplies. As water warmed around the Antarctic Peninsula, the krill population shrank by 80 percent as sea ice declined, eliminating much of the preferred food of the minke whale. The whales studied had lost the same amount of blubber as they would have by starving for 36 days, but the global warming connection couldn’t be proven because no krill measurements are taken in different regions.

7. Shark Attacks
A surge in fatal shark attacks was the handiwork of global warming, according to a report in the Guardian in May. George Burgess of Florida University, a shark expert that maintains an attack database, told the Guardian that shark attacks were caused by human activity. “As the population continues to rise, so does the number of people in the water for recreation. And as long as we have an increase in human hours in the water, we will have an increase in shark bites,” he said. Shark attacks could also be the result of global warming and rising sea temperatures, the Guardian said. “You’ll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn’t in the past with some regularity,” Burgess said.

8. Black Hawk Down
Although it happened in 1993, the crash of a U.S. military helicopter in Mogadishu that became the film “Black Hawk Down” was blamed on global warming by a Massachusetts congressman in 2008. “In Somalia back in 1993, climate change, according to 11 three- and four-star generals, resulted in a drought which led to famine,” Rep. Edward Markey told a group of students who had come to the Capitol to discuss global warming, according to CNSNews.com. “That famine translated to international aid we sent in to Somalia, which then led to the U.S. having to send in forces to separate all the groups that were fighting over the aid, which led to Black Hawk Down.”

9. Frozen Penguin Babies
Penguin babies, whose water-repellant feathers had not grown in yet, froze to death after torrential rains, National Geographic reported in July. “Many, many, many of them—thousands of them—were dying,” explorer Jon Bowermaster told National Geographic. Witnessing the mass penguin death “painted a clear and grim picture” of global warming. “It’s not just melting ice,” Bowermaster said. “It’s actually killing these cute little birds that are so popular in the movies.”

10. Killer Stingray Invasion
Global warming is going to drive killer stingrays, like the one that killed Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, to the shores of Britain after a 5-foot -long marbled stingray was captured by fishermen, the Daily Mail reported in June. A single touch can zap a man with enough electricity to kill, the Mail said, and global warming is bringing the Mediterranean killers north. “Rising sea temperatures may well have brought an influx of warm water visitors,” sea life curator Alex Gerrard told the Mail. “Where there’s one electric ray, it’s quite likely that there are more.”

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Hell Rides in a Handbasket in Amsterdam

Sure signs the world is headed for Hell while riding in a handbasket:

The AP reports: “A Dutch gay group has organized a ‘Pink Christmas’ festival for the first time in Amsterdam, featuring a manger stall with two Josephs and two Marys.”

ProGay group chairman Frank Van Dalen said the Pink Christmas initiative was also intended to help promote Amsterdam as a gay capital after a decline in its reputation in recent years.

A decline in reputation?

Gee, I can’t imagine why! Well except for this I can’t imagine why.

Amsterdam’s libertine policies hasn’t exactly worked as planned.

What a shocka!!!

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American Jobs? Then Get to Drilling, NOW

ICF International just completed a study for the American Petroleum Institute which has some rather interesting findings that is all liklihood will be ignored by the enviro-winnies – not to mention our new co-called Commander-in-Chief:

Development of resources in moratoria areas and other places currently off limits could lift U.S. crude oil production by as much as 2 million barrels per day in 2030, offsetting nearly a fifth of the nation’s imports.
Natural gas production could increase by 5.34 billion cubic feet per day, or the equivalent of 61 percent of the expected natural gas imports in 2030.
Development of these resources could generate more than $1.7 trillion in government revenue in the form of royalties and taxes.

The study also estimates that 160,000 jobs for Americans would be created.

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Andrew Sullivan is Out of his Friggin’ Skull!

Andrew Sullivan at one time was a fairly respectable, widely read and regarded as one of the leaders in the “revolution” known as blogging.

That was then.

Now, after being infected with an acute case of Bush Derangement Syndrome he’s nothing more than a delusional, misguided, disingenuous (at best) lying, pole-smoking douche nozzle!

Case on point: The loonbat is STILL pushing the “Trig is Sarah Palin’s baby crapola!”

Asshole hardly covers it.

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