Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up
The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, June 21, 2007:
1. Southern Baptist resolution says humans not entirely to blame for global warming
Associated Press, June 14, 2007
San Antonio - Southern Baptists approved a resolution on global warming that questions the prevailing scientific belief that humans are largely to blame for the phenomenon and also warns that increased regulation of greenhouse gases will hurt the poor.The global warming debate has split evangelicals, with some not only pressing the issue but arguing humans bear most of the responsibility for the problem because of greenhouse gas emissions. Other evangelicals say talking about the issue at all diminishes their influence over more traditional culture war issues such as abortion, gay marriage and judicial appointments.
The SBC resolution, approved near the end of the denomination’s annual meeting Wednesday, acknowledges a rise in global temperatures. But it rejects government-mandated limits on carbon-dioxide and other emissions as “very dangerous” because they might not make much difference and could lead to “major economic hardships” worldwide.
Originally, the measure also backed more government-funded research into global warming’s causes and alternative energies to oil. But the resolution was amended to drop that language, in part over concerns that it would endorse strong government engagement in the issue.
The two-day annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which boasts 16.3 million members, ended Wednesday night. . . .
The global warming resolution acknowledges humans bear some responsibility for rising temperatures while urging caution, said Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy and research with the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
“It does not deny there has been a recent warming trend in average global temperatures,” said Duke, who helped write the measure. “What it does do is call for more objective analysis in the data that would explain causes of the warming we’re experiencing.”
The resolution stands in contrast to a statement last year signed by 86 evangelical leaders that said human-induced climate change is real, and that the consequences of warming temperatures will cause millions of people to die, most of them “our poorest global neighbors.”
[Comment: Notice how the media frequently refer to the Evangelical Climate Initiative as signed by 86 evangelical leaders but ignore the facts that its signers lacked relevant expertise and that the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance’s (now Cornwall Alliance’s) “Call to Truth” (PDF) was signed by far more leaders (PDF), including scores with relevant expertise in science and economics? This is how the media spin the news.--ECB]
The SBC statement frames the global warming debate as a moral issue with profound implications for the poor - but does so through a different lens.
“Our concern is for the vulnerable communities as well,” Duke said. “But we think if the data is being misinterpreted, and policies are being implemented to reduce the human contributions, those policies are bound to drive up the costs of goods and services for poor and underdeveloped parts of the world.”
Related item:
2. Southern Baptists doubt human cause, government solution to global warming
by Marv Knox, Associated Baptist Press News, June 15, 2007
SAN ANTONIO (ABP) -- The Southern Baptist Convention rejected scientific claims that humans are to blame for global warming and dismissed the governmental efforts to reverse it. . . .
Messengers did not object to the basic claims contained in the global-warming resolution: that global temperatures have risen for decades as Earth emerges from the Little Ice Age, “scientific evidence does not support computer models of catastrophic human-induced global warming,” and major steps to reduce greenhouse gass would unfairly impact the world’s poorest people. . . .
Read the whole article here.
Related item:
Al Mohler interviews Cornwall Alliance advisory board member Dr. Russell Moore on global warming after Moore testifies to Senate Environment and Public Works committee.
3. Ending Malaria in Africa: Malaria control is Africa’s right--and responsibility
by Dr. Sam Zaramba, Director General of Health Services, Republic of Uganda, Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2007
Kampala, Uganda – Africa’s sad experience with colonialism finally ended in the 1960s. Yet, a lethal vestige remains: restrictions on our malaria control efforts. This disease is the biggest killer of Ugandan and all African children. . . .
The United States and Europe eradicated malaria by 1960, largely with the use of DDT. At the time, Uganda tested the pesticide in the Kanungu district and reduced malaria by 98 percent. Despite this success, we lacked the resources to sustain or expand the program. Rather than partner with us to improve our public health infrastructure, however, foreign donors blanched. They used Africa’s lack of infrastructure to justify not investing in it.
Today, half a century after the West rid itself of malaria, every . . . year, over 10 million of our people are infected, and 100,000 of our mothers and children die from the disease. . . . Yet many still say Africa’s poor infrastructure makes indoor spraying too costly and complex a method to fight malaria.
Uganda is one of a growing number of African countries proving these people wrong. In 2006, Uganda worked with President George Bush’s Malaria Initiative to train 350 spray operators, supervisors and health officials. In August 2006 and again in February 2007, they sprayed the walls of 100,000 households in the southern Kabale district with the insecticide Icon, as part of a comprehensive program that also includes bednets, sanitation, education, ACT drugs, larvacides and other insecticides, and rapidly improving patient care.
Nearly everyone welcomed this protection, and the prevalence of malaria parasites plummeted. Today, just 3% of the local population is infected, down from 30 percent.
The exercise pays for itself. With 90% fewer people requiring anti-malarial medication and other public health resources, more healthy adults are working and more children are attending school. . . . With each passing year, it will be easier and less expensive to run the programs.
We can make it even more cost-effective by switching from the current insecticide to DDT. It lasts longer, costs less and has more modes of action against malaria-carrying mosquitoes than Icon. DDT functions as spatial repellent to keep mosquitoes out of homes, as an irritant to prevent them from biting, and as a toxic agent to kill those that land. Because the spatial repellency effect works without physical contact, and because the chemical is not used in agriculture, DDT also makes mosquitoes less likely to develop resistance. Thus DDT is both more effective and more cost-effective. . . .
That is why the World Health Organization has once again recommended using DDT wherever possible against malaria, along with other interventions. . . .
Although Uganda’s National Environmental Management Authority has approved DDT for malaria control, Western environmentalists continue to undermine these efforts and discourage G8 governments from supporting us. The EU has acknowledged our right to use DDT, but some consumer and agricultural groups repeat myths and lies about the chemical. They should instead help us use it carefully and effectively for malaria control.
Environmental leaders must join the 21st century, acknowledge the mistakes Carson made, and balance the hypothetical risks of DDT with the real and devastating consequences of malaria. Uganda has demonstrated that, with the proper support, we can conduct model indoor spraying programs and ensure that money is spent wisely, chemicals are handled properly, our program responds promptly to changing conditions, and malaria is brought under control. . . .
Read the whole article (subscription) here.
Dr. Sam Zaramba is Director General of Health Services for the Republic of Uganda. He is joined in this statement by Minister of Health Dr. Stephen Mallinga, Minister of State for Health Dr. Richard Nduhura, Minister of State for Primary Health Care Dr. Emmanuel Otaala, National Malaria Control Program Manager Dr. J.B. Rwakimali, Health Ministry Commissioner for Health Planning Dr. Francis Runumi, and the entire Ministry of Health for the Republic of Uganda.
4. Air confusion index
Smog is down, but smog advisories are up. That creates pressure for costly rules that may do nothing to cut the remaining pollution
by Ross McKitrick, Financial Post, June 21, 2007
I recently heard a famous Canadian journalist, whom I know to be astute and well-informed, with above-average income and education, give a speech about the environment. He grew up in Muskoka, he said, where they never used to get smog, but now things are so bad that even up there they have started getting smog warnings. And here in Southern Ontario there are now -- for the first time -- smog warnings in the fall and winter, which never used to happen. The gist was that it’s high time Ottawa did something.
Leaving aside the fact that air pollution is already governed by provincial regulation, the data certainly back up the claim that smog warnings are getting more common. The chart at top right shows a clear increase in the number of days covered by air-quality alerts in Ontario since 1995.
The recently released report Air Quality in Ontario 2005 by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, apparently confirms this perception. Page i reads, in part: “There were 15 smog advisories covering 53 days (due to ozone and/or fine particulate matter) in 2005. This is a record number of smog-advisory days.” “For the first time? Ontario issued a winter smog advisory.” “A record-breaking number of smog-advisory days were issued in June, 2005 ? ” --and so forth.
So you might be surprised to learn, as was the journalist when I told him afterwards, that Ontario air quality has actually been improving, for decades, even in Toronto. Indeed the same Ontario report begins by saying: “Overall, air quality in Ontario has improved significantly over the past 35 years for nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide. However, ozone and fine particulate matter, the major components of smog, continue to exceed the ambient air-quality criteria and set reference levels, and thus remain the pollutants of most concern.”
You read that correctly. Most major categories of air pollution have fallen, in some cases dramatically, since the 1970s. . . .
Read the whole article here.
[Dr. Ross McKitrick is a co-author of the Cornwall Alliance’s “A Call to Truth” (PDF).--ECB]
5. Read the sunspots
The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling.
by R.Timothy Patterson, Financial Post, June 20, 2007
. . . . Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.
. . . . Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years’ worth of mud . . . . [W]e have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year “Schwabe” sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.
In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun’s 75-90-year “Gleissberg Cycle,” the 200-500-year “Suess Cycle” and the 1,100-1,500-year “Bond Cycle.” The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun’s brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.
Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called “proxies”) is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia’s Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.
However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century’s modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star’s protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun’s energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these “high sun” periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.
. . . . Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.
Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of “stopping climate change.”
Read the whole article here.
R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University.
Related item:
“Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability, and water resource development” by Will Alexander et al. [J. South African Institution Civil Eng., vol. 49 (June 2007) pp. 32-44] is a statistical analysis of hydro-meteorological data with sunspot activity and the wobble of the Earth and the Sun as they move through galactic space. The abstract of the second paper states that, “Despite a diligent search, no evidence could be found of trends in the data that could be attributed to human activities.”--Oliver K. Manuel in CCNet
6. High price for a load of hot air
by Bob Carter, Courier Mail, June 18, 2007
With understandable reluctance, Prime Minister John Howard recently donned the political hair-shirt of a carbon trading system.
On the same day, NASA chief Michael Griffin commented in a US radio interview that “I am not sure that it is fair to say that (global warming) is a problem that we must wrestle with”.
NASA is an agency that knows a thing or two about climate change. As Griffin added: "We study global climate change, that is in our authorisation, we think we do it rather well.
“I’m proud of that, but NASA is not an agency chartered to, quote, battle climate change.”
Such a clear statement that science accomplishment should carry primacy over policy advice is both welcome and overdue.
Nonetheless, there is something worrying about one of Griffin’s other statements, which said that “I have no doubt . . . that a trend of global warming exists”.
Griffin seems to be referring to human-caused global warming, but irrespective of that his opinion is unsupported by the evidence.
The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.
Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).
Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades. . . .
In fact, there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming. . . .
As leading economist David Henderson has pointed out, it is extremely dangerous for an unelected and unaccountable body like the IPCC to have a monopoly on climate policy advice to governments. And even more so because, at heart, the IPCC is a political and not a scientific agency.
Australia does not ask the World Bank to set its annual budget and neither should it allow the notoriously alarmist IPCC to set its climate policy. . . .
Read the whole article here.
Professor Bob Carter is an environmental scientist at James Cook University who studies ancient climate change. He has endorsed the Cornwall Alliance’s “Call to Truth.”
7. Call their tax
Why not tie carbon taxes to actual levels of warming? Both skeptics and alarmists should expect their wishes to be answered
Ross McKitrick, Financial Post, June 12, 2007
[Editor’s note: Dr. Ross McKitrick is a co-author of the Cornwall Alliance’s “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming” (PDF). He is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, University of Guelph, and author of the Donner Prize-winning Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2002; first edition sold out, but copies available here; revised and updated second edition due October, 2007), and an IPCC expert reviewer (Working Group 1).--ECB]
After much effort, G8 leaders last week agreed to “stabilize greenhouse-gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” This is the same wording as in Article Two of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed in 1992. In other words, after months of negotiations, world leaders agreed on a text they had already ratified 15 years earlier.
Global-warming policy is stuck in a permanent stalemate for very basic reasons. Important divisions of opinion still exist on the extent of humanity’s influence on climate, whether or not the situation is a crisis, whether and how much greenhouse-gas emissions should be cut, if so how to do it, and what is the most we should be prepared to pay in the process.
With this stalemate in mind, I would like to propose a thought experiment about a climate policy that could, in principle, get equal support from all sides.
The approach is based on two points of expert consensus. First, most economists who have written on carbon-dioxide emissions have concluded that an emissions tax is preferable to a cap-and-trade system. The reason is that, while emission-abatement costs vary a lot, based on the target, the social damages from a tonne of carbon-dioxide emissions are roughly constant. The first ton of carbon dioxide imposes the same social cost as the last ton.
In this case, it is better for policy-makers to guess the right price for emissions rather than the right cap. Most studies that have looked at that the global cost per tonne of carbon dioxide have found it is likely to be rather low, less than US$10 per tonne. We don’t know what the right emissions cap is, but, if we put a low charge on each unit of emissions, the market will find the (roughly) correct emissions cap.
Second, climate models predict that, if greenhouse gases are driving climate change, there will be a unique fingerprint in the form of a strong warming trend in the tropical troposphere, the region of the atmosphere up to 15 kilometres in altitude, over the tropics, from 20 degrees North to 20 degrees South. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that this will be an early and strong signal of anthropogenic warming. Climate changes due to solar variability or other natural factors will not yield this pattern: only sustained greenhouse warming will do it.
Temperatures in the tropical troposphere are measured every day using weather satellites. The data are analyzed by several teams, including one at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH) and one at Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) in California. According to the UAH team, the mean tropical tropospheric temperature anomaly (its departure from the 1979-98 average) over the past three years is 0.18C. The corresponding RSS estimate is 0.29C.
Now put those two ideas together. Suppose each country implements something called the T3 tax, whose U.S. dollar rate is set equal to 20 times the three-year moving average of the RSS and UAH estimates of the mean tropical tropospheric temperature anomaly, assessed per tonne of carbon dioxide, updated annually. Based on current data, the tax would be US$4.70 per ton, which is about the median mainstream carbon-dioxide-damage estimate from a major survey published in 2005 by economist Richard Tol. The tax would be implemented on all domestic carbon-dioxide emissions, all the revenues would be recycled into domestic income tax cuts to maintain fiscal neutrality, and there would be no cap on total emissions.
FULL TAX PROPOSAL here.
8. Freedom, not climate, is at risk
by Vaclav Klaus, The Financial Times, June 13, 2007
We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.
In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.
The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda”. I feel the same way, because global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established” truth, although a lot of people – including top-class scientists – see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.
As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.
The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.
The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.
Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).
Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.
I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.
The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.
As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures.
Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided.
Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants.
Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority.
Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour.
Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction.
Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.
Vaclav Klaus is President of the Czech Republic, has done postgraduate work in economics, and is a professor of economics.
9. Vice chair of IPCC breaks global warming consensus
[Comment: As if there were a consensus to break. See further comment below.--ECB]
Salon.com, April 19, 2007
The much-vaunted consensus over global warming shattered like ice yesterday, when the Russian vice chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) penned an op-ed for Ria Novosti news agency questioning the “panic over global warming.”
“I think the panic over global warming is totally unjustified. There is no serious threat to the climate,” wrote Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Izrael in a commentary published by RIA Novosti April 18. Academician Izrael is the head of the Institute of Global Climate and Ecology in Russia, and one of three vice-chairmen of the IPCC, the international body whose reports have claimed that human-induced global warming is a scientific certainty.
“There is no need to dramatize the anthropogenic impact, because the climate has always been subject to change under Nature’s influence, even when humanity did not even exist,” Izrael wrote. He does not dismiss that there are changes in climate going on, but writes that “we are more threatened by the cold than by global warming.”
If it becomes necessary to deal with warming, Izrael argues, controlling human use of CO2 is not an effective means. “Instead, it makes sense to decrease solar radiation by 0.3%-0.5%.” This can be most effectively done using stratosphere-based aerosols, and Russian scientists are now studying how to do this, Izrael says.
Reducing CO2 emissions will both take much too long, and be extremely expensive-- about $18 trillion this century. “The method of aerosol impact on the stratosphere is much cheaper, hundreds of times faster, and, if need be, can be easily stopped,” Izrael argues.
“Way back in 1974 Russian scientist Mikhail Budyko came up with an idea that may resolve the global warming problem in several years,” Izrael wrote. In 2005 Izrael proposed an article with concrete proposals along the same lines. Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen ignored his article, but made the same proposal a year later, Izrael wrote.
The idea is to change the “’meteorological sun constant’” by introducing into the lower stratosphere (at an altitude of 12km-16km) fine dispersed aerosols of sulfuric acid, for instance. This will decrease solar radiation on the Earth’s surface and reduce the temperature in the troposphere by the required number of degrees. This is an instrument of climate change. “It goes without saying that this method should be approved by the world community. For the time being, Russian scientists are working at home - making detailed calculations for further tests,” concludes Academician Izrael.
Related article:
10. The G8 weather report
(RIA Novosti commentator Tatyana Sinitsina) - Russian scientists offered a surprise for the Scotland G8 summit, which among other things will discuss climate change.
After returning from Antarctica, an expedition reported data to the Russian Academy of Sciences showing that the top of the mainland is getting colder.
Academician Yury Izrael, the director of the Institute of Global Climate and Ecology, said the following: “This shows once again that much uncertainty remains in climate changes forecasts. Climate change is obvious, but science has not yet been able to identify the causes of it.” . . .
[Comment: The absurdity of the “consensus” claim becomes clearer every week, partly thanks to Lawrence Solomon’s series “Deniers” series in Canada’s National Post. One that I failed to link earlier in this newsletter is a perfect illustration. It tells of Solomon’s interview with Carl Wunsch, a climatologist interviewed in the controversial film The Great Global Warming Swindle. Wunsch complained that he was misrepresented. Solomon reports that his interview showed that the misrepresentation was only in that the film made it appear that Wunsch was among the outspoken critics of global warming dogma. He is not. But his factual beliefs are nonetheless strongly at odds with those of GW dogmatists; indeed, they are quite in line with those of the “deniers.” For Solomon’s report of his interview with Wunsch, see here. For an up-to-date list of all the “Deniers” series with links, see below.--ECB]
11. GW dogmaticians who deny existence of contrary scientific literature undermine their own credibility
Times Literary Supplement, Times Online, June 13, 2007
Sir, – As a non-scientist I cannot have read one-hundredth of the number of scientific articles read by Robert May, yet I am familiar with at least a score (each citing a score more) questioning key parts of the theory that there is a threat of catastrophic man-made global warming. So when Lord May claims (April 6) that “not one” respected scientist is unconvinced, far from persuading me he only makes me doubtful of his other claims.
Moreover, by applying the term “denial” (with all its loaded undertones) to sceptical scientists; by referring to them inaccurately as “well funded” by the oil industry; and by likening those who stress the uncertainties of climate science to unprincipled lobbyists for tobacco companies, Lord May enters on the field of personal vilification – not a suitable place for a distinguished former President of the Royal Society.
There is a great deal more money and acceptability available to consensus scientists than to dissenters. This suggests that the work of the doubters should be taken very seriously, since it brings with it problems both of funding and of exclusion from the friendly embrace of the Establishment. I admire such people, much as I have admired other dissidents like Solzhenitsyn, Pastor Bonhoeffer – oh, and Galileo and Darwin.
Leach of Fairford
[Comment: While attending a conference on global warming sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the Vatican in late April, I had the dubious pleasure of conversing at length with Mary Evelyn Tucker, professor of religion at Bucknell University and coordinator of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. When she expressed her dismay at my doubts about the dogma of manmade catastrophic global warming, I asked her what serious scientific books or articles she had read that criticized the dogma. “There aren’t any!” she replied. I named half a dozen, but she still insisted, “There aren’t any!” Ah. Yes. She is living in a fantasy world.
Since the time for me to deliver my paper for the conference had not yet come, I added a paragraph to it addressing the sad state of public discourse on global warming, with some of it designed to speak directly to her: “I could discuss the need for charity and mutual respect, or the misuse of arguments from prudence by resting them on a petitio principii of the reality, magnitude, and negative impacts of manmade warming, or the sad tendency for people to reach conclusions before carefully examining counter-arguments–and then to ignore the counter-arguments or even to declare flatly that they don’t exist (which makes me wonder who slipped me the drugs that caused all my hallucinations when thought I was reading such counter-arguments).”
It takes only one example to disprove a universal negative.
Now, just in case someone tells you there is no scientific literature contrary to GW dogma, here’s a list of just a few of the more significant books that challenge it:
Christopher Essex (mathematician/physicist specializing in climate physics) and Ross McKitrick (environmental economist), Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2002; second edition forthcoming, Autumn 2007). This is the best book I know for understanding the science of the global warming debate–thrilling reading.
Patrick J. Michaels, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (Washington: Cato Institute, 2005). Clear and understandable.
Patrick J. Michaels, ed., Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). Chapters by specialists show that the best science destroys the vaunted “consensus” on catastrophic human-induced global warming.
S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). An amazing, kaleidoscopic review of vast arrays of evidence for superimposing cycles of warming and cooling throughout geologic and human history the implication of which is that current and foreseeable warming is well within bounds of natural variability.
Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder, The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change (UK: Icon Books, 2007). Presents evidence and explanation for the theory that variations in solar magnetic wind are the principal driver of climate change.
And in this PDF you’ll find an extensive, annotated bibliography, prepared by Canadian climatologist Madhav Khandekar (an IPCC expert reviewer who has endorsed the Cornwall Alliance’s “Call to Truth”), of only peer-reviewed articles that challenge GW dogma.
And just in case somebody tells you no bona fide scientists, particularly no climate scientists, reject the dogma, you’ll find an incomplete, annotated list of some here. --ECB]
And just to add insult to injury to those who deny the existence of contrary science and scientists, here are links to the increasingly famous “Deniers” series in Canada’s National Post:
Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I
Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X
End the chill -- The Deniers Part XI
Clouded research -- The Deniers Part XII
Allegre’s second thoughts -- The Deniers XIII
The heat’s in the sun -- The Deniers XIV
Unsettled Science -- The Deniers XV
Bitten by the IPCC -- The Deniers XVI
Little ice age is still within us -- The Deniers XVII
Fighting climate ‘fluff’ -- The Deniers XVIII
Science, not politics -- The Deniers XIX
Gore’s guru disagreed -- The Deniers XX
The ice-core man -- The Deniers XXI
Some restraint in Rome -- The Deniers XXII
Discounting logic -- The Deniers XXIII
Dire forecasts aren’t new -- The Deniers XXIV
They call this a consensus? - Part XXV
NASA chief Michael Griffin silenced - Part XXVI
Forget warming - beware the new ice age - Part
XXVII
12. “Father of scientific climatology” calls global warming theory “hooey”
by Samara Kalk Derby, The Capital Times, June 18, 2007
Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.
The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.
There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the “Little Ice Age,” he said in an interview this week.
“However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We’ve been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It’s been warming up for a long time,” Bryson said. . . .
Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.
“It’s like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It’s just a total misplacement of emphasis,” he said. “It really isn’t science because there’s no really good scientific evidence.”
Just because almost all of the scientific community believes in man-made global warming proves absolutely nothing, Bryson said. “Consensus doesn’t prove anything, in science or anywhere else, except in democracy, maybe.” . . .
So, if global warming isn’t such a burning issue, why are thousands of scientists so concerned about it?
“Why are so many thousands not concerned about it?” Bryson shot back.
“There is a lot of money to be made in this,” he added. “If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can’t get grants unless you say, ‘Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.’”
Speaking out against global warming is like being a heretic, Bryson noted.
And it’s not something that he does regularly.
“I can’t waste my time on that, I have too many other things to do,” he said.
But if somebody asks him for his opinion on global warming, he’ll give it. “And I think I know about as much about it as anybody does.” . . .
“There is very little truth to what is being said and an awful lot of religion. It’s almost a religion. Where you have to believe in anthropogenic (or man-made) global warming or else you are nuts.”
While Bryson doesn’t think that global warming is man-made, he said there is some evidence of an effect from mankind, but not an effect of carbon dioxide.
For example, in Wisconsin in the last 100 years the biggest heating has been around Madison, Milwaukee and in the Southeast, where the cities are. There was a slight change in the Green Bay area, he said. The rest of the state shows no warming at all.
“The growth of cities makes it hotter, but that was true back in the 1930s, too,” Bryson said. “Big cities were hotter than the surrounding countryside because you concentrate the traffic and you concentrate the home heating. And you modify the surface, you pave a lot of it.”
Bryson didn’t see Al Gore’s movie about global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“Don’t make me throw up,” he said. “It is not science. It is not true.” . . .
Read the whole article here.
13. If only greens saw the forest for the trees
by Roy Innis, Investors Business Daily, May 31, 2007
“People here have no jobs,” Mark Fenn admitted, after taking documentary producers on a tour of his $35,000 catamaran and the site of his new coastal home. “But if you could count how many times they smile in a day, if you could measure stress” and compare that with “well-off people” in London or New York, “then tell me, who is rich and who is poor?”
Fenn is coordinator of the World Wildlife Fund’s campaign against a proposed mining project near Fort Dauphin, Madagascar. The locals strongly support the project and want the jobs, development, improved living standards and environmental quality the state-of-the-art operation will bring.
People there live in abject poverty, along dirt roads, in dirt-floor shacks, and are hardly able to afford food on their $1,000-a-year average incomes. There is little power, no indoor plumbing. The local rain forest has been destroyed for firewood and slash-and-burn farming. People barely eke out a living.
But Fenn claims the mine will change the “quaint” village and harm the environment. He says he feels “like a resident,” his children “were born and raised” there, and the locals “don’t consider education to be important” and would just spend their money on parties, jeans and stereos.
Actually, Fenn lives 300 miles away and sends his children to school in South Africa. And the locals hardly conform to his insulting stereotypes. “If I had money, I would open a grocery store,” said one. “Send my children to school,” start a business, become a midwife, build a new house, said others.
You have to see the film, “Mine Your Own Business,” to fully grasp the callous disdain these radicals have for the world’s poor. Don Imus’ intemperate remarks were insensitive. But Fenn’s demeaning, even racist, statements perpetuate misery. . . .
Read the full article here.
14. Growing carbon divide in the USA
McClatchy-Tribune News Service, June 11, 2007
Anyone who thinks that climate change is purely a partisan issue isn’t paying attention.
Increasingly, the national debate on global warming is breaking down between carbon states - those that produce coal, oil and automobiles - and those that see a future beyond fossil fuels. Republicans and Democrats are all over the map. . . .
Read the whole article here.
15. IPCC process is unscientific and flawed, say some scientists
The Hill Times, May 28, 2007
Letters
Re: “Ball and Harris opinion piece: what a diatribe,” (Letters to the editor, The Hill Times, May 21, p. 9). I find it ironic and intellectually weak that the IPCC’s Dr. John Stone would label the opinion piece by Dr. Tim Ball and myself (“Open climate science hearings now essential,” May 14, The Hill Times) as merely a “diatribe” and then claim that “it would be tedious and unproductive to respond to all of the errors in the article....”
If Stone had responded to any of our points, his attack might have some meaning. Instead he merely describes what he sees as the process the group he heads up follows, ignoring our criticisms of the bias inherent in any process where the executive summary is released months before the report it is supposedly summarizing.
University of Ottawa Professor Konrad Gajewski, while addressing a relatively minor point of our piece–the flaws in the Mann hockey stick are well substantiated in the scientific literature (which is presumably why the IPCC dropped it from their 2007 report)–simply dismissed, without even having read the related paper, the literally earth-shaking Professor Ernst Beck finding we focused on in our article. Beck’s discovery that carbon dioxide levels have been higher than at present several times in the past 200 years should be fascinating reading for anyone who works in this field.
However, Gajewski belittled the significance of Beck’s research even while admitting he had only seen web “extracts” and blog discussions of it.
Gajewski could have easily asked Beck for the paper. I did and was sent it immediately. I hope Gajewski demands a far higher standard from his students before they publicly state their positions on such important issues.
In sum, neither of the attacks against our piece are significant–the first did not address even a single point we made and the second had not even bothered to read the scientific paper we reported on.
Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng.
Executive Director, Natural Resources Stewardship Project, Ottawa, Ont.
-------
Dr. John Stone while criticizing the opinion piece seems to naively believe that the climate change documents prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the last word in the complex science of climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. The IPCC uses a flawed peer-review process which is unacceptable in the scientific community.
As an invited expert reviewer for the IPCC 2007 Documents, I provided comprehensive review for the first order draft (FOD) and the second order draft (SOD) of one chapter, November 2005 and July 2006, respectively. In my review, I pointed out several recent peer-reviewed studies which were completely ignored by the IPCC authors. To my dismay, IPCC authors ignored all my comments and suggestions for major changes in the FOD and sent me the SOD with essentially the same text as the FOD. None of the authors of the chapter bothered to directly communicate with me (or with other expert reviewers with whom I communicate on a regular basis) on many issues that were raised in my review. This is not an acceptable scientific review process.
I have been an editorial board member for two international journals (Climate Research-Germany and Natural Hazards-Netherlands) and have reviewed more than 100 manuscripts submitted to these journals in the last 10 years. In no case was the manuscript accepted without full exchange of communication with the authors through the editorial offices in Germany and Netherlands, respectively. This is the essence of peer-reviewed process and is the standard procedure for any scientific journal. Unfortunately IPCC bypasses this process by claiming United Nations immunity. This is unacceptable.
Dr. Stone and other adherents of the IPCC science like to insist that the debate over climate change science is over and it is now time for action. I urge Dr. Stone to browse through recent issues of major international journals in climate and related science. Hardly a week goes by without a significant paper being published questioning the science.
The science of climate change is continuously evolving. The IPCC and its authors have closed their minds and eyes to this evolving science which points to solar variability as the prime driver of earth’s climate and not the human-added greenhouse gases.
Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar, Unionville, Ont.
[Dr. Khandekar is a climatologist retired from Environment Canada scientist and an expert IPCC reviewer in 2007. He has also endorsed the Cornwall Alliance’s “Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming” (PDF).--ECB]
-------
IPCC Vice-Chair Dr. John Stone cannot deny that the “summary for policymakers” is approved line-by-line by the government representatives because the press has recently mentioned that particular conclusions have involved clashes between the Russians, Chinese and Americans. The “drafting authors” job is to write down what they are told to do.
On the other hand, the government representatives can only agree on what they are told by the scientists, so in the end they have the whip hand. Again, what Stone does not say, is that the “lead authors” of the report are all chosen (and usually financed) by government representatives, so they can be relied upon to produce results which the governments like. They do not want another fiasco like the one in the 1995 report when they had to alter the “final draft” to comply with the “summary for policymakers.” They have a set of instructions for “lead authors” which ensures that they toe the line. This year’s report is more extreme than before and there is continuous publicity for its extravagant claims. The “lead authors” are certainly behind this, but an increasing proportion of all the other scientists involved with the report are becoming irritated by the propaganda.
It is interesting that this year we have had a succession of “summaries for policymakers” without a single copy of any of the reports upon which they are supposed to be based.
Vincent Gray, PhD, Expert Reviewer for IPCC
Wellington, New Zealand
[Dr. Gray is also an endorser of Cornwall’s “Call to Truth.”--ECB]
Related article:
16. On the fundamental defect in the IPCC’s approach to global warming research
by Syun-Ichi Akasofu, International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks
The purpose of this note is to point out that the method of study adopted by the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is fundamentally flawed, resulting in a baseless conclusion:
Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
Contrary to this statement on page 10 of the IPCC “Summary for Policy Makers” (2007), there is so far no definitive evidence that “most” of the present warming is due to the greenhouse effect. I believe that this baseless conclusion results from the scientific composition of the IPCC study group. . . .
Read the whole article here.
A comment from the blog:
A good summary of some of the genuine concerns about the IPCC. Of course, the ‘greenhouse effect’ is well established, but it is the climate sensitivity to the ‘enhanced greenhouse effect’ that we are concerned with now, which is most likey a maximmum 1C to 1.5C for the iconic doubling (all things being equal, which they aren’t).
There are better correlations/explanations for the recovery from the LIA, termed ‘global warming,’ then rebranded as ‘climate change,’including the 1940’s to 1970’s cooling: http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar
http://www.sciencebits.com/IceCoreTruth
Nir Shaviv isn’t impressed with the IPCC ’science’
http://www.sciencebits.com/IPCCbias
http://www.sciencebits.com/FittingElephants
Comment by Paul Biggs — June 15, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
Related article:
17. “Bitten by the IPCC”
[Read how the IPCC passes over true experts and chooses non-experts as lead authors on, e.g., the impact of global warming on tropical disease. This is one of the clearest demonstrations of the corrupted scientific process of the IPCC I have seen.--ECB]
18. IPCC and sea level rise--how high can we expect?
by E. Calvin Beisner
Cornwall Alliance National Spokesman
In the late summer and early autumn of 2006 I read that the IPCC’s draft 2007 scientific assessment report projected likely maximum sea level rise for this century of about 17 inches. But starting early this year I began seeing 23 inches instead. I wondered what had happened.
I just found out. The different numbers are both projected, and they depend on different population scenarios. The 23-inch projection depends on projecting population of 15 billion by the year 2100; the 17-inch projection depends on projecting population of 9 billion.
However, all serious demographers, including those of the U.N. Population Division, now predict that population will peak at somewhere around 9 billion (possibly quite a lot lower) around 2050 (possibly as early as 2035) and then begin to decline rapidly, because fertility rates fall as economies grow (See, e.g., Ben Wattenberg, Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future).
What that means is that the 23-inch sea level rise is predicated on an absurd population prediction, and the 17-inch sea level rise is predicated on a much more credible population prediction. In either case, however, these figures are projected maximum rise, not the most likely. Additionally, the International Union for Quaternary Research’s Sea Level Commission, which has far greater expertise on sea level than those who worked on the issue for the IPCC, projects 0 to 7.88 inches for the century.
This is just one of many examples of how, even though the IPCC has much reliable information in its reports, what actually reaches the public tends to come from the extreme ends.
19. Coal use rises, EU climate goals go under; China to surpass US emissions this year
by Gerard Wynn and Jane Merriman, Reuters, June 12, 2007
LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) - Ambitious goals to fight climate change look less achievable as coal use continued to soar last year in China and India, data compiled by BP Plc showed on Tuesday.
The data confirmed that China was on track to overtake the United States as the world’s number one carbon emitter this year, one analyst said.
“I would still say 2007, this is the year,” said Gregg Marland, senior scientist at Austria’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and the U.S. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC).
China’s CO2 emissions in 2006 were over 5.7 billion tonnes versus nearly 5.9 billion tonnes in the United States, with China up 8.5 percent and the United States falling slightly, Marland estimated on Tuesday, using the new BP data. . . .
Read the whole article here.
Related item:
20. China surpasses United States in emissions
UPI, 19 June 2007
BILTHOVEN, Netherlands. China’s 2006 carbon dioxide emissions were 8 percent higher than those of the United States, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency announced Tuesday.
For the first time China is the No. 1 carbon dioxide emitting country, largely due to cement clinker production. The NEAA produced its preliminary numbers from British Petroleum energy data and cement production data. . . .
Read the whole story here.
Related item:
Iain Murray: “So the US is officially relegated to second place in the League of Evil. I look forward to complaints that China has only a sixth of the world’s population but emits a quarter of its CO2, that Chinese auto emissions standards aren’t good enough (Mr Gore?) and that China hasn’t signed Kyoto, as evidenced by its refusal to accept limitations on its emissions harmful to its economy.”
21. The good in global warming
by Michael Hill, Associated Press
Ghent, N.Y.—It’s not in Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation, but there are some upsides to global warming.
Northern homes could save on heating fuel. Rust Belt cities might stop losing snowbirds to the South. Canadian farmers could harvest bumper crops. Greenland may become awash in cod and oil riches. Shippers could count on an Arctic shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific. Forests may expand. Mongolia could see a go-go economy.
This is all speculative, even a little facetious, and any gains are not likely to make up for predicted frightening upheavals elsewhere. But still ... might there be a silver lining for the frigid regions of Canada and Russia? ...
Read the whole article here.
Read related commentary here.
[Comment: Go ahead, read the whole story. (It got published in at least 81 different places, according to Google News.) Notice that the reporter qualifies all the predictions of good as speculative, balanced by offsetting harms, etc. But as you read, ask yourself why similar stories about the harm in global warming aren’t written the same way--as they ought to be.--ECB]
22. Supporters defend Gore climate concerts
by Kevin McCandless, CNSNews.com Correspondent, June 15, 2007
London (CNSNews.com) - British environmental groups ranging from Friends of the Earth to Surfers Against Sewage are coming out full force behind a series of concerts being sponsored by Al Gore next month.
On July 7, the “Live Earth” charity concerts will be held simultaneously over a 24 hour period on seven continents. Profits are going to a new foundation set up by the former vice president, aimed at combating “global warming.”
The more than 100 participating acts include multimillionaire stars such as Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, musicians who are not particularly known for what green activists call “carbon neutral” lifestyles.
Critics have labeled the concerts “private jets for climate change,” and Bob Geldof, the musician who organized the trendsetting original Live Aid famine relief concerts in 1985, has criticized the Gore event as lacking purpose, calling it “just an enormous pop concert.” . . .
Read the whole article here.
[Comment: The concerts are part of Gore’s consistent tactic from the beginning. In addition to claiming nonexistent and irrelevant consensus on the science and brushing off all criticisms of his poor use of data, Gore turns to populist propaganda techniques to promote his message. Unfortunately, the Evangelical Climate Initiative has followed Gore’s example, e.g., in orchestrating a petition late last year by Christian college students, who were almost entirely lacking in the relevant scientific and economic expertise to reach the conclusions they did. Public discourse on this issue should be elevated--not dragged into the gutter.--ECB]
[Newsletter is continued in the following post.]
1. Southern Baptist resolution says humans not entirely to blame for global warming
Associated Press, June 14, 2007
San Antonio - Southern Baptists approved a resolution on global warming that questions the prevailing scientific belief that humans are largely to blame for the phenomenon and also warns that increased regulation of greenhouse gases will hurt the poor.The global warming debate has split evangelicals, with some not only pressing the issue but arguing humans bear most of the responsibility for the problem because of greenhouse gas emissions. Other evangelicals say talking about the issue at all diminishes their influence over more traditional culture war issues such as abortion, gay marriage and judicial appointments.
The SBC resolution, approved near the end of the denomination’s annual meeting Wednesday, acknowledges a rise in global temperatures. But it rejects government-mandated limits on carbon-dioxide and other emissions as “very dangerous” because they might not make much difference and could lead to “major economic hardships” worldwide.
Originally, the measure also backed more government-funded research into global warming’s causes and alternative energies to oil. But the resolution was amended to drop that language, in part over concerns that it would endorse strong government engagement in the issue.
The two-day annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which boasts 16.3 million members, ended Wednesday night. . . .
The global warming resolution acknowledges humans bear some responsibility for rising temperatures while urging caution, said Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy and research with the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
“It does not deny there has been a recent warming trend in average global temperatures,” said Duke, who helped write the measure. “What it does do is call for more objective analysis in the data that would explain causes of the warming we’re experiencing.”
The resolution stands in contrast to a statement last year signed by 86 evangelical leaders that said human-induced climate change is real, and that the consequences of warming temperatures will cause millions of people to die, most of them “our poorest global neighbors.”
[Comment: Notice how the media frequently refer to the Evangelical Climate Initiative as signed by 86 evangelical leaders but ignore the facts that its signers lacked relevant expertise and that the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance’s (now Cornwall Alliance’s) “Call to Truth” (PDF) was signed by far more leaders (PDF), including scores with relevant expertise in science and economics? This is how the media spin the news.--ECB]
The SBC statement frames the global warming debate as a moral issue with profound implications for the poor - but does so through a different lens.
“Our concern is for the vulnerable communities as well,” Duke said. “But we think if the data is being misinterpreted, and policies are being implemented to reduce the human contributions, those policies are bound to drive up the costs of goods and services for poor and underdeveloped parts of the world.”
Related item:
2. Southern Baptists doubt human cause, government solution to global warming
by Marv Knox, Associated Baptist Press News, June 15, 2007
SAN ANTONIO (ABP) -- The Southern Baptist Convention rejected scientific claims that humans are to blame for global warming and dismissed the governmental efforts to reverse it. . . .
Messengers did not object to the basic claims contained in the global-warming resolution: that global temperatures have risen for decades as Earth emerges from the Little Ice Age, “scientific evidence does not support computer models of catastrophic human-induced global warming,” and major steps to reduce greenhouse gass would unfairly impact the world’s poorest people. . . .
Read the whole article here.
Related item:
Al Mohler interviews Cornwall Alliance advisory board member Dr. Russell Moore on global warming after Moore testifies to Senate Environment and Public Works committee.
3. Ending Malaria in Africa: Malaria control is Africa’s right--and responsibility
by Dr. Sam Zaramba, Director General of Health Services, Republic of Uganda, Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2007
Kampala, Uganda – Africa’s sad experience with colonialism finally ended in the 1960s. Yet, a lethal vestige remains: restrictions on our malaria control efforts. This disease is the biggest killer of Ugandan and all African children. . . .
The United States and Europe eradicated malaria by 1960, largely with the use of DDT. At the time, Uganda tested the pesticide in the Kanungu district and reduced malaria by 98 percent. Despite this success, we lacked the resources to sustain or expand the program. Rather than partner with us to improve our public health infrastructure, however, foreign donors blanched. They used Africa’s lack of infrastructure to justify not investing in it.
Today, half a century after the West rid itself of malaria, every . . . year, over 10 million of our people are infected, and 100,000 of our mothers and children die from the disease. . . . Yet many still say Africa’s poor infrastructure makes indoor spraying too costly and complex a method to fight malaria.
Uganda is one of a growing number of African countries proving these people wrong. In 2006, Uganda worked with President George Bush’s Malaria Initiative to train 350 spray operators, supervisors and health officials. In August 2006 and again in February 2007, they sprayed the walls of 100,000 households in the southern Kabale district with the insecticide Icon, as part of a comprehensive program that also includes bednets, sanitation, education, ACT drugs, larvacides and other insecticides, and rapidly improving patient care.
Nearly everyone welcomed this protection, and the prevalence of malaria parasites plummeted. Today, just 3% of the local population is infected, down from 30 percent.
The exercise pays for itself. With 90% fewer people requiring anti-malarial medication and other public health resources, more healthy adults are working and more children are attending school. . . . With each passing year, it will be easier and less expensive to run the programs.
We can make it even more cost-effective by switching from the current insecticide to DDT. It lasts longer, costs less and has more modes of action against malaria-carrying mosquitoes than Icon. DDT functions as spatial repellent to keep mosquitoes out of homes, as an irritant to prevent them from biting, and as a toxic agent to kill those that land. Because the spatial repellency effect works without physical contact, and because the chemical is not used in agriculture, DDT also makes mosquitoes less likely to develop resistance. Thus DDT is both more effective and more cost-effective. . . .
That is why the World Health Organization has once again recommended using DDT wherever possible against malaria, along with other interventions. . . .
Although Uganda’s National Environmental Management Authority has approved DDT for malaria control, Western environmentalists continue to undermine these efforts and discourage G8 governments from supporting us. The EU has acknowledged our right to use DDT, but some consumer and agricultural groups repeat myths and lies about the chemical. They should instead help us use it carefully and effectively for malaria control.
Environmental leaders must join the 21st century, acknowledge the mistakes Carson made, and balance the hypothetical risks of DDT with the real and devastating consequences of malaria. Uganda has demonstrated that, with the proper support, we can conduct model indoor spraying programs and ensure that money is spent wisely, chemicals are handled properly, our program responds promptly to changing conditions, and malaria is brought under control. . . .
Read the whole article (subscription) here.
Dr. Sam Zaramba is Director General of Health Services for the Republic of Uganda. He is joined in this statement by Minister of Health Dr. Stephen Mallinga, Minister of State for Health Dr. Richard Nduhura, Minister of State for Primary Health Care Dr. Emmanuel Otaala, National Malaria Control Program Manager Dr. J.B. Rwakimali, Health Ministry Commissioner for Health Planning Dr. Francis Runumi, and the entire Ministry of Health for the Republic of Uganda.
4. Air confusion index
Smog is down, but smog advisories are up. That creates pressure for costly rules that may do nothing to cut the remaining pollution
by Ross McKitrick, Financial Post, June 21, 2007
I recently heard a famous Canadian journalist, whom I know to be astute and well-informed, with above-average income and education, give a speech about the environment. He grew up in Muskoka, he said, where they never used to get smog, but now things are so bad that even up there they have started getting smog warnings. And here in Southern Ontario there are now -- for the first time -- smog warnings in the fall and winter, which never used to happen. The gist was that it’s high time Ottawa did something.
Leaving aside the fact that air pollution is already governed by provincial regulation, the data certainly back up the claim that smog warnings are getting more common. The chart at top right shows a clear increase in the number of days covered by air-quality alerts in Ontario since 1995.
The recently released report Air Quality in Ontario 2005 by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, apparently confirms this perception. Page i reads, in part: “There were 15 smog advisories covering 53 days (due to ozone and/or fine particulate matter) in 2005. This is a record number of smog-advisory days.” “For the first time? Ontario issued a winter smog advisory.” “A record-breaking number of smog-advisory days were issued in June, 2005 ? ” --and so forth.
So you might be surprised to learn, as was the journalist when I told him afterwards, that Ontario air quality has actually been improving, for decades, even in Toronto. Indeed the same Ontario report begins by saying: “Overall, air quality in Ontario has improved significantly over the past 35 years for nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide. However, ozone and fine particulate matter, the major components of smog, continue to exceed the ambient air-quality criteria and set reference levels, and thus remain the pollutants of most concern.”
You read that correctly. Most major categories of air pollution have fallen, in some cases dramatically, since the 1970s. . . .
Read the whole article here.
[Dr. Ross McKitrick is a co-author of the Cornwall Alliance’s “A Call to Truth” (PDF).--ECB]
5. Read the sunspots
The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling.
by R.Timothy Patterson, Financial Post, June 20, 2007
. . . . Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.
. . . . Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years’ worth of mud . . . . [W]e have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year “Schwabe” sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.
In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun’s 75-90-year “Gleissberg Cycle,” the 200-500-year “Suess Cycle” and the 1,100-1,500-year “Bond Cycle.” The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun’s brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.
Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called “proxies”) is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia’s Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.
However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century’s modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star’s protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun’s energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these “high sun” periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.
. . . . Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.
Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of “stopping climate change.”
Read the whole article here.
R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University.
Related item:
“Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability, and water resource development” by Will Alexander et al. [J. South African Institution Civil Eng., vol. 49 (June 2007) pp. 32-44] is a statistical analysis of hydro-meteorological data with sunspot activity and the wobble of the Earth and the Sun as they move through galactic space. The abstract of the second paper states that, “Despite a diligent search, no evidence could be found of trends in the data that could be attributed to human activities.”--Oliver K. Manuel in CCNet
6. High price for a load of hot air
by Bob Carter, Courier Mail, June 18, 2007
With understandable reluctance, Prime Minister John Howard recently donned the political hair-shirt of a carbon trading system.
On the same day, NASA chief Michael Griffin commented in a US radio interview that “I am not sure that it is fair to say that (global warming) is a problem that we must wrestle with”.
NASA is an agency that knows a thing or two about climate change. As Griffin added: "We study global climate change, that is in our authorisation, we think we do it rather well.
“I’m proud of that, but NASA is not an agency chartered to, quote, battle climate change.”
Such a clear statement that science accomplishment should carry primacy over policy advice is both welcome and overdue.
Nonetheless, there is something worrying about one of Griffin’s other statements, which said that “I have no doubt . . . that a trend of global warming exists”.
Griffin seems to be referring to human-caused global warming, but irrespective of that his opinion is unsupported by the evidence.
The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.
Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).
Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades. . . .
In fact, there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming. . . .
As leading economist David Henderson has pointed out, it is extremely dangerous for an unelected and unaccountable body like the IPCC to have a monopoly on climate policy advice to governments. And even more so because, at heart, the IPCC is a political and not a scientific agency.
Australia does not ask the World Bank to set its annual budget and neither should it allow the notoriously alarmist IPCC to set its climate policy. . . .
Read the whole article here.
Professor Bob Carter is an environmental scientist at James Cook University who studies ancient climate change. He has endorsed the Cornwall Alliance’s “Call to Truth.”
7. Call their tax
Why not tie carbon taxes to actual levels of warming? Both skeptics and alarmists should expect their wishes to be answered
Ross McKitrick, Financial Post, June 12, 2007
[Editor’s note: Dr. Ross McKitrick is a co-author of the Cornwall Alliance’s “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming” (PDF). He is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, University of Guelph, and author of the Donner Prize-winning Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2002; first edition sold out, but copies available here; revised and updated second edition due October, 2007), and an IPCC expert reviewer (Working Group 1).--ECB]
After much effort, G8 leaders last week agreed to “stabilize greenhouse-gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” This is the same wording as in Article Two of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed in 1992. In other words, after months of negotiations, world leaders agreed on a text they had already ratified 15 years earlier.
Global-warming policy is stuck in a permanent stalemate for very basic reasons. Important divisions of opinion still exist on the extent of humanity’s influence on climate, whether or not the situation is a crisis, whether and how much greenhouse-gas emissions should be cut, if so how to do it, and what is the most we should be prepared to pay in the process.
With this stalemate in mind, I would like to propose a thought experiment about a climate policy that could, in principle, get equal support from all sides.
The approach is based on two points of expert consensus. First, most economists who have written on carbon-dioxide emissions have concluded that an emissions tax is preferable to a cap-and-trade system. The reason is that, while emission-abatement costs vary a lot, based on the target, the social damages from a tonne of carbon-dioxide emissions are roughly constant. The first ton of carbon dioxide imposes the same social cost as the last ton.
In this case, it is better for policy-makers to guess the right price for emissions rather than the right cap. Most studies that have looked at that the global cost per tonne of carbon dioxide have found it is likely to be rather low, less than US$10 per tonne. We don’t know what the right emissions cap is, but, if we put a low charge on each unit of emissions, the market will find the (roughly) correct emissions cap.
Second, climate models predict that, if greenhouse gases are driving climate change, there will be a unique fingerprint in the form of a strong warming trend in the tropical troposphere, the region of the atmosphere up to 15 kilometres in altitude, over the tropics, from 20 degrees North to 20 degrees South. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that this will be an early and strong signal of anthropogenic warming. Climate changes due to solar variability or other natural factors will not yield this pattern: only sustained greenhouse warming will do it.
Temperatures in the tropical troposphere are measured every day using weather satellites. The data are analyzed by several teams, including one at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH) and one at Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) in California. According to the UAH team, the mean tropical tropospheric temperature anomaly (its departure from the 1979-98 average) over the past three years is 0.18C. The corresponding RSS estimate is 0.29C.
Now put those two ideas together. Suppose each country implements something called the T3 tax, whose U.S. dollar rate is set equal to 20 times the three-year moving average of the RSS and UAH estimates of the mean tropical tropospheric temperature anomaly, assessed per tonne of carbon dioxide, updated annually. Based on current data, the tax would be US$4.70 per ton, which is about the median mainstream carbon-dioxide-damage estimate from a major survey published in 2005 by economist Richard Tol. The tax would be implemented on all domestic carbon-dioxide emissions, all the revenues would be recycled into domestic income tax cuts to maintain fiscal neutrality, and there would be no cap on total emissions.
FULL TAX PROPOSAL here.
8. Freedom, not climate, is at risk
by Vaclav Klaus, The Financial Times, June 13, 2007
We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.
In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.
The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda”. I feel the same way, because global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established” truth, although a lot of people – including top-class scientists – see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.
As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.
The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.
The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.
Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).
Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.
I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.
The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.
As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures.
Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided.
Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants.
Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority.
Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour.
Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction.
Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.
Vaclav Klaus is President of the Czech Republic, has done postgraduate work in economics, and is a professor of economics.
9. Vice chair of IPCC breaks global warming consensus
[Comment: As if there were a consensus to break. See further comment below.--ECB]
Salon.com, April 19, 2007
The much-vaunted consensus over global warming shattered like ice yesterday, when the Russian vice chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) penned an op-ed for Ria Novosti news agency questioning the “panic over global warming.”
“I think the panic over global warming is totally unjustified. There is no serious threat to the climate,” wrote Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Izrael in a commentary published by RIA Novosti April 18. Academician Izrael is the head of the Institute of Global Climate and Ecology in Russia, and one of three vice-chairmen of the IPCC, the international body whose reports have claimed that human-induced global warming is a scientific certainty.
“There is no need to dramatize the anthropogenic impact, because the climate has always been subject to change under Nature’s influence, even when humanity did not even exist,” Izrael wrote. He does not dismiss that there are changes in climate going on, but writes that “we are more threatened by the cold than by global warming.”
If it becomes necessary to deal with warming, Izrael argues, controlling human use of CO2 is not an effective means. “Instead, it makes sense to decrease solar radiation by 0.3%-0.5%.” This can be most effectively done using stratosphere-based aerosols, and Russian scientists are now studying how to do this, Izrael says.
Reducing CO2 emissions will both take much too long, and be extremely expensive-- about $18 trillion this century. “The method of aerosol impact on the stratosphere is much cheaper, hundreds of times faster, and, if need be, can be easily stopped,” Izrael argues.
“Way back in 1974 Russian scientist Mikhail Budyko came up with an idea that may resolve the global warming problem in several years,” Izrael wrote. In 2005 Izrael proposed an article with concrete proposals along the same lines. Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen ignored his article, but made the same proposal a year later, Izrael wrote.
The idea is to change the “’meteorological sun constant’” by introducing into the lower stratosphere (at an altitude of 12km-16km) fine dispersed aerosols of sulfuric acid, for instance. This will decrease solar radiation on the Earth’s surface and reduce the temperature in the troposphere by the required number of degrees. This is an instrument of climate change. “It goes without saying that this method should be approved by the world community. For the time being, Russian scientists are working at home - making detailed calculations for further tests,” concludes Academician Izrael.
Related article:
10. The G8 weather report
(RIA Novosti commentator Tatyana Sinitsina) - Russian scientists offered a surprise for the Scotland G8 summit, which among other things will discuss climate change.
After returning from Antarctica, an expedition reported data to the Russian Academy of Sciences showing that the top of the mainland is getting colder.
Academician Yury Izrael, the director of the Institute of Global Climate and Ecology, said the following: “This shows once again that much uncertainty remains in climate changes forecasts. Climate change is obvious, but science has not yet been able to identify the causes of it.” . . .
[Comment: The absurdity of the “consensus” claim becomes clearer every week, partly thanks to Lawrence Solomon’s series “Deniers” series in Canada’s National Post. One that I failed to link earlier in this newsletter is a perfect illustration. It tells of Solomon’s interview with Carl Wunsch, a climatologist interviewed in the controversial film The Great Global Warming Swindle. Wunsch complained that he was misrepresented. Solomon reports that his interview showed that the misrepresentation was only in that the film made it appear that Wunsch was among the outspoken critics of global warming dogma. He is not. But his factual beliefs are nonetheless strongly at odds with those of GW dogmatists; indeed, they are quite in line with those of the “deniers.” For Solomon’s report of his interview with Wunsch, see here. For an up-to-date list of all the “Deniers” series with links, see below.--ECB]
11. GW dogmaticians who deny existence of contrary scientific literature undermine their own credibility
Times Literary Supplement, Times Online, June 13, 2007
Sir, – As a non-scientist I cannot have read one-hundredth of the number of scientific articles read by Robert May, yet I am familiar with at least a score (each citing a score more) questioning key parts of the theory that there is a threat of catastrophic man-made global warming. So when Lord May claims (April 6) that “not one” respected scientist is unconvinced, far from persuading me he only makes me doubtful of his other claims.
Moreover, by applying the term “denial” (with all its loaded undertones) to sceptical scientists; by referring to them inaccurately as “well funded” by the oil industry; and by likening those who stress the uncertainties of climate science to unprincipled lobbyists for tobacco companies, Lord May enters on the field of personal vilification – not a suitable place for a distinguished former President of the Royal Society.
There is a great deal more money and acceptability available to consensus scientists than to dissenters. This suggests that the work of the doubters should be taken very seriously, since it brings with it problems both of funding and of exclusion from the friendly embrace of the Establishment. I admire such people, much as I have admired other dissidents like Solzhenitsyn, Pastor Bonhoeffer – oh, and Galileo and Darwin.
Leach of Fairford
[Comment: While attending a conference on global warming sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the Vatican in late April, I had the dubious pleasure of conversing at length with Mary Evelyn Tucker, professor of religion at Bucknell University and coordinator of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. When she expressed her dismay at my doubts about the dogma of manmade catastrophic global warming, I asked her what serious scientific books or articles she had read that criticized the dogma. “There aren’t any!” she replied. I named half a dozen, but she still insisted, “There aren’t any!” Ah. Yes. She is living in a fantasy world.
Since the time for me to deliver my paper for the conference had not yet come, I added a paragraph to it addressing the sad state of public discourse on global warming, with some of it designed to speak directly to her: “I could discuss the need for charity and mutual respect, or the misuse of arguments from prudence by resting them on a petitio principii of the reality, magnitude, and negative impacts of manmade warming, or the sad tendency for people to reach conclusions before carefully examining counter-arguments–and then to ignore the counter-arguments or even to declare flatly that they don’t exist (which makes me wonder who slipped me the drugs that caused all my hallucinations when thought I was reading such counter-arguments).”
It takes only one example to disprove a universal negative.
Now, just in case someone tells you there is no scientific literature contrary to GW dogma, here’s a list of just a few of the more significant books that challenge it:
Christopher Essex (mathematician/physicist specializing in climate physics) and Ross McKitrick (environmental economist), Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2002; second edition forthcoming, Autumn 2007). This is the best book I know for understanding the science of the global warming debate–thrilling reading.
Patrick J. Michaels, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (Washington: Cato Institute, 2005). Clear and understandable.
Patrick J. Michaels, ed., Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). Chapters by specialists show that the best science destroys the vaunted “consensus” on catastrophic human-induced global warming.
S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). An amazing, kaleidoscopic review of vast arrays of evidence for superimposing cycles of warming and cooling throughout geologic and human history the implication of which is that current and foreseeable warming is well within bounds of natural variability.
Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder, The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change (UK: Icon Books, 2007). Presents evidence and explanation for the theory that variations in solar magnetic wind are the principal driver of climate change.
And in this PDF you’ll find an extensive, annotated bibliography, prepared by Canadian climatologist Madhav Khandekar (an IPCC expert reviewer who has endorsed the Cornwall Alliance’s “Call to Truth”), of only peer-reviewed articles that challenge GW dogma.
And just in case somebody tells you no bona fide scientists, particularly no climate scientists, reject the dogma, you’ll find an incomplete, annotated list of some here. --ECB]
And just to add insult to injury to those who deny the existence of contrary science and scientists, here are links to the increasingly famous “Deniers” series in Canada’s National Post:
Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I
Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X
End the chill -- The Deniers Part XI
Clouded research -- The Deniers Part XII
Allegre’s second thoughts -- The Deniers XIII
The heat’s in the sun -- The Deniers XIV
Unsettled Science -- The Deniers XV
Bitten by the IPCC -- The Deniers XVI
Little ice age is still within us -- The Deniers XVII
Fighting climate ‘fluff’ -- The Deniers XVIII
Science, not politics -- The Deniers XIX
Gore’s guru disagreed -- The Deniers XX
The ice-core man -- The Deniers XXI
Some restraint in Rome -- The Deniers XXII
Discounting logic -- The Deniers XXIII
Dire forecasts aren’t new -- The Deniers XXIV
They call this a consensus? - Part XXV
NASA chief Michael Griffin silenced - Part XXVI
Forget warming - beware the new ice age - Part
XXVII
12. “Father of scientific climatology” calls global warming theory “hooey”
by Samara Kalk Derby, The Capital Times, June 18, 2007
Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.
The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.
There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the “Little Ice Age,” he said in an interview this week.
“However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We’ve been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It’s been warming up for a long time,” Bryson said. . . .
Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.
“It’s like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It’s just a total misplacement of emphasis,” he said. “It really isn’t science because there’s no really good scientific evidence.”
Just because almost all of the scientific community believes in man-made global warming proves absolutely nothing, Bryson said. “Consensus doesn’t prove anything, in science or anywhere else, except in democracy, maybe.” . . .
So, if global warming isn’t such a burning issue, why are thousands of scientists so concerned about it?
“Why are so many thousands not concerned about it?” Bryson shot back.
“There is a lot of money to be made in this,” he added. “If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can’t get grants unless you say, ‘Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.’”
Speaking out against global warming is like being a heretic, Bryson noted.
And it’s not something that he does regularly.
“I can’t waste my time on that, I have too many other things to do,” he said.
But if somebody asks him for his opinion on global warming, he’ll give it. “And I think I know about as much about it as anybody does.” . . .
“There is very little truth to what is being said and an awful lot of religion. It’s almost a religion. Where you have to believe in anthropogenic (or man-made) global warming or else you are nuts.”
While Bryson doesn’t think that global warming is man-made, he said there is some evidence of an effect from mankind, but not an effect of carbon dioxide.
For example, in Wisconsin in the last 100 years the biggest heating has been around Madison, Milwaukee and in the Southeast, where the cities are. There was a slight change in the Green Bay area, he said. The rest of the state shows no warming at all.
“The growth of cities makes it hotter, but that was true back in the 1930s, too,” Bryson said. “Big cities were hotter than the surrounding countryside because you concentrate the traffic and you concentrate the home heating. And you modify the surface, you pave a lot of it.”
Bryson didn’t see Al Gore’s movie about global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“Don’t make me throw up,” he said. “It is not science. It is not true.” . . .
Read the whole article here.
13. If only greens saw the forest for the trees
by Roy Innis, Investors Business Daily, May 31, 2007
“People here have no jobs,” Mark Fenn admitted, after taking documentary producers on a tour of his $35,000 catamaran and the site of his new coastal home. “But if you could count how many times they smile in a day, if you could measure stress” and compare that with “well-off people” in London or New York, “then tell me, who is rich and who is poor?”
Fenn is coordinator of the World Wildlife Fund’s campaign against a proposed mining project near Fort Dauphin, Madagascar. The locals strongly support the project and want the jobs, development, improved living standards and environmental quality the state-of-the-art operation will bring.
People there live in abject poverty, along dirt roads, in dirt-floor shacks, and are hardly able to afford food on their $1,000-a-year average incomes. There is little power, no indoor plumbing. The local rain forest has been destroyed for firewood and slash-and-burn farming. People barely eke out a living.
But Fenn claims the mine will change the “quaint” village and harm the environment. He says he feels “like a resident,” his children “were born and raised” there, and the locals “don’t consider education to be important” and would just spend their money on parties, jeans and stereos.
Actually, Fenn lives 300 miles away and sends his children to school in South Africa. And the locals hardly conform to his insulting stereotypes. “If I had money, I would open a grocery store,” said one. “Send my children to school,” start a business, become a midwife, build a new house, said others.
You have to see the film, “Mine Your Own Business,” to fully grasp the callous disdain these radicals have for the world’s poor. Don Imus’ intemperate remarks were insensitive. But Fenn’s demeaning, even racist, statements perpetuate misery. . . .
Read the full article here.
14. Growing carbon divide in the USA
McClatchy-Tribune News Service, June 11, 2007
Anyone who thinks that climate change is purely a partisan issue isn’t paying attention.
Increasingly, the national debate on global warming is breaking down between carbon states - those that produce coal, oil and automobiles - and those that see a future beyond fossil fuels. Republicans and Democrats are all over the map. . . .
Read the whole article here.
15. IPCC process is unscientific and flawed, say some scientists
The Hill Times, May 28, 2007
Letters
Re: “Ball and Harris opinion piece: what a diatribe,” (Letters to the editor, The Hill Times, May 21, p. 9). I find it ironic and intellectually weak that the IPCC’s Dr. John Stone would label the opinion piece by Dr. Tim Ball and myself (“Open climate science hearings now essential,” May 14, The Hill Times) as merely a “diatribe” and then claim that “it would be tedious and unproductive to respond to all of the errors in the article....”
If Stone had responded to any of our points, his attack might have some meaning. Instead he merely describes what he sees as the process the group he heads up follows, ignoring our criticisms of the bias inherent in any process where the executive summary is released months before the report it is supposedly summarizing.
University of Ottawa Professor Konrad Gajewski, while addressing a relatively minor point of our piece–the flaws in the Mann hockey stick are well substantiated in the scientific literature (which is presumably why the IPCC dropped it from their 2007 report)–simply dismissed, without even having read the related paper, the literally earth-shaking Professor Ernst Beck finding we focused on in our article. Beck’s discovery that carbon dioxide levels have been higher than at present several times in the past 200 years should be fascinating reading for anyone who works in this field.
However, Gajewski belittled the significance of Beck’s research even while admitting he had only seen web “extracts” and blog discussions of it.
Gajewski could have easily asked Beck for the paper. I did and was sent it immediately. I hope Gajewski demands a far higher standard from his students before they publicly state their positions on such important issues.
In sum, neither of the attacks against our piece are significant–the first did not address even a single point we made and the second had not even bothered to read the scientific paper we reported on.
Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng.
Executive Director, Natural Resources Stewardship Project, Ottawa, Ont.
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Dr. John Stone while criticizing the opinion piece seems to naively believe that the climate change documents prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the last word in the complex science of climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. The IPCC uses a flawed peer-review process which is unacceptable in the scientific community.
As an invited expert reviewer for the IPCC 2007 Documents, I provided comprehensive review for the first order draft (FOD) and the second order draft (SOD) of one chapter, November 2005 and July 2006, respectively. In my review, I pointed out several recent peer-reviewed studies which were completely ignored by the IPCC authors. To my dismay, IPCC authors ignored all my comments and suggestions for major changes in the FOD and sent me the SOD with essentially the same text as the FOD. None of the authors of the chapter bothered to directly communicate with me (or with other expert reviewers with whom I communicate on a regular basis) on many issues that were raised in my review. This is not an acceptable scientific review process.
I have been an editorial board member for two international journals (Climate Research-Germany and Natural Hazards-Netherlands) and have reviewed more than 100 manuscripts submitted to these journals in the last 10 years. In no case was the manuscript accepted without full exchange of communication with the authors through the editorial offices in Germany and Netherlands, respectively. This is the essence of peer-reviewed process and is the standard procedure for any scientific journal. Unfortunately IPCC bypasses this process by claiming United Nations immunity. This is unacceptable.
Dr. Stone and other adherents of the IPCC science like to insist that the debate over climate change science is over and it is now time for action. I urge Dr. Stone to browse through recent issues of major international journals in climate and related science. Hardly a week goes by without a significant paper being published questioning the science.
The science of climate change is continuously evolving. The IPCC and its authors have closed their minds and eyes to this evolving science which points to solar variability as the prime driver of earth’s climate and not the human-added greenhouse gases.
Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar, Unionville, Ont.
[Dr. Khandekar is a climatologist retired from Environment Canada scientist and an expert IPCC reviewer in 2007. He has also endorsed the Cornwall Alliance’s “Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming” (PDF).--ECB]
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IPCC Vice-Chair Dr. John Stone cannot deny that the “summary for policymakers” is approved line-by-line by the government representatives because the press has recently mentioned that particular conclusions have involved clashes between the Russians, Chinese and Americans. The “drafting authors” job is to write down what they are told to do.
On the other hand, the government representatives can only agree on what they are told by the scientists, so in the end they have the whip hand. Again, what Stone does not say, is that the “lead authors” of the report are all chosen (and usually financed) by government representatives, so they can be relied upon to produce results which the governments like. They do not want another fiasco like the one in the 1995 report when they had to alter the “final draft” to comply with the “summary for policymakers.” They have a set of instructions for “lead authors” which ensures that they toe the line. This year’s report is more extreme than before and there is continuous publicity for its extravagant claims. The “lead authors” are certainly behind this, but an increasing proportion of all the other scientists involved with the report are becoming irritated by the propaganda.
It is interesting that this year we have had a succession of “summaries for policymakers” without a single copy of any of the reports upon which they are supposed to be based.
Vincent Gray, PhD, Expert Reviewer for IPCC
Wellington, New Zealand
[Dr. Gray is also an endorser of Cornwall’s “Call to Truth.”--ECB]
Related article:
16. On the fundamental defect in the IPCC’s approach to global warming research
by Syun-Ichi Akasofu, International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks
The purpose of this note is to point out that the method of study adopted by the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is fundamentally flawed, resulting in a baseless conclusion:
Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
Contrary to this statement on page 10 of the IPCC “Summary for Policy Makers” (2007), there is so far no definitive evidence that “most” of the present warming is due to the greenhouse effect. I believe that this baseless conclusion results from the scientific composition of the IPCC study group. . . .
Read the whole article here.
A comment from the blog:
A good summary of some of the genuine concerns about the IPCC. Of course, the ‘greenhouse effect’ is well established, but it is the climate sensitivity to the ‘enhanced greenhouse effect’ that we are concerned with now, which is most likey a maximmum 1C to 1.5C for the iconic doubling (all things being equal, which they aren’t).
There are better correlations/explanations for the recovery from the LIA, termed ‘global warming,’ then rebranded as ‘climate change,’including the 1940’s to 1970’s cooling: http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar
http://www.sciencebits.com/IceCoreTruth
Nir Shaviv isn’t impressed with the IPCC ’science’
http://www.sciencebits.com/IPCCbias
http://www.sciencebits.com/FittingElephants
Comment by Paul Biggs — June 15, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
Related article:
17. “Bitten by the IPCC”
[Read how the IPCC passes over true experts and chooses non-experts as lead authors on, e.g., the impact of global warming on tropical disease. This is one of the clearest demonstrations of the corrupted scientific process of the IPCC I have seen.--ECB]
18. IPCC and sea level rise--how high can we expect?
by E. Calvin Beisner
Cornwall Alliance National Spokesman
In the late summer and early autumn of 2006 I read that the IPCC’s draft 2007 scientific assessment report projected likely maximum sea level rise for this century of about 17 inches. But starting early this year I began seeing 23 inches instead. I wondered what had happened.
I just found out. The different numbers are both projected, and they depend on different population scenarios. The 23-inch projection depends on projecting population of 15 billion by the year 2100; the 17-inch projection depends on projecting population of 9 billion.
However, all serious demographers, including those of the U.N. Population Division, now predict that population will peak at somewhere around 9 billion (possibly quite a lot lower) around 2050 (possibly as early as 2035) and then begin to decline rapidly, because fertility rates fall as economies grow (See, e.g., Ben Wattenberg, Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future).
What that means is that the 23-inch sea level rise is predicated on an absurd population prediction, and the 17-inch sea level rise is predicated on a much more credible population prediction. In either case, however, these figures are projected maximum rise, not the most likely. Additionally, the International Union for Quaternary Research’s Sea Level Commission, which has far greater expertise on sea level than those who worked on the issue for the IPCC, projects 0 to 7.88 inches for the century.
This is just one of many examples of how, even though the IPCC has much reliable information in its reports, what actually reaches the public tends to come from the extreme ends.
19. Coal use rises, EU climate goals go under; China to surpass US emissions this year
by Gerard Wynn and Jane Merriman, Reuters, June 12, 2007
LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) - Ambitious goals to fight climate change look less achievable as coal use continued to soar last year in China and India, data compiled by BP Plc
The data confirmed that China was on track to overtake the United States as the world’s number one carbon emitter this year, one analyst said.
“I would still say 2007, this is the year,” said Gregg Marland, senior scientist at Austria’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and the U.S. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC).
China’s CO2 emissions in 2006 were over 5.7 billion tonnes versus nearly 5.9 billion tonnes in the United States, with China up 8.5 percent and the United States falling slightly, Marland estimated on Tuesday, using the new BP data. . . .
Read the whole article here.
Related item:
20. China surpasses United States in emissions
UPI, 19 June 2007
BILTHOVEN, Netherlands. China’s 2006 carbon dioxide emissions were 8 percent higher than those of the United States, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency announced Tuesday.
For the first time China is the No. 1 carbon dioxide emitting country, largely due to cement clinker production. The NEAA produced its preliminary numbers from British Petroleum energy data and cement production data. . . .
Read the whole story here.
Related item:
Iain Murray: “So the US is officially relegated to second place in the League of Evil. I look forward to complaints that China has only a sixth of the world’s population but emits a quarter of its CO2, that Chinese auto emissions standards aren’t good enough (Mr Gore?) and that China hasn’t signed Kyoto, as evidenced by its refusal to accept limitations on its emissions harmful to its economy.”
21. The good in global warming
by Michael Hill, Associated Press
Ghent, N.Y.—It’s not in Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation, but there are some upsides to global warming.
Northern homes could save on heating fuel. Rust Belt cities might stop losing snowbirds to the South. Canadian farmers could harvest bumper crops. Greenland may become awash in cod and oil riches. Shippers could count on an Arctic shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific. Forests may expand. Mongolia could see a go-go economy.
This is all speculative, even a little facetious, and any gains are not likely to make up for predicted frightening upheavals elsewhere. But still ... might there be a silver lining for the frigid regions of Canada and Russia? ...
Read the whole article here.
Read related commentary here.
[Comment: Go ahead, read the whole story. (It got published in at least 81 different places, according to Google News.) Notice that the reporter qualifies all the predictions of good as speculative, balanced by offsetting harms, etc. But as you read, ask yourself why similar stories about the harm in global warming aren’t written the same way--as they ought to be.--ECB]
22. Supporters defend Gore climate concerts
by Kevin McCandless, CNSNews.com Correspondent, June 15, 2007
London (CNSNews.com) - British environmental groups ranging from Friends of the Earth to Surfers Against Sewage are coming out full force behind a series of concerts being sponsored by Al Gore next month.
On July 7, the “Live Earth” charity concerts will be held simultaneously over a 24 hour period on seven continents. Profits are going to a new foundation set up by the former vice president, aimed at combating “global warming.”
The more than 100 participating acts include multimillionaire stars such as Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, musicians who are not particularly known for what green activists call “carbon neutral” lifestyles.
Critics have labeled the concerts “private jets for climate change,” and Bob Geldof, the musician who organized the trendsetting original Live Aid famine relief concerts in 1985, has criticized the Gore event as lacking purpose, calling it “just an enormous pop concert.” . . .
Read the whole article here.
[Comment: The concerts are part of Gore’s consistent tactic from the beginning. In addition to claiming nonexistent and irrelevant consensus on the science and brushing off all criticisms of his poor use of data, Gore turns to populist propaganda techniques to promote his message. Unfortunately, the Evangelical Climate Initiative has followed Gore’s example, e.g., in orchestrating a petition late last year by Christian college students, who were almost entirely lacking in the relevant scientific and economic expertise to reach the conclusions they did. Public discourse on this issue should be elevated--not dragged into the gutter.--ECB]
[Newsletter is continued in the following post.]
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