Global Warming Consensus Watch
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Global Warming Consensus Watch

In this edition of GWCW: Brian Williams gets all syrupy sweet; so what are you going to do to stop AGW?; yet another bought-and-paid-for shill for big oil; Al Gore vs. the IPCC; and Anak Krakatoa vs. the Climate.

  • It looks like we have a clear frontrunner for this year’s award for the most mawkish over-sentimentalization of environmental issues – NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams:

    I made my annual pilgrimage to the Time magazine luncheon designed to narrow down the nominees for “_____ of the Year; on the cover of Time. Forgive the blank, but over the years it’s been a noun, a pronoun, a proper noun — it’s been a lot of things. My nominee was a woman — a victim of abuse. A strong, resilient woman who is a constant topic of discussion these days: Mother Earth.

    Seriously, I’ve read that paragraph multiple times and still can’t figure out how it was not written by Kent Brockman. And for those of you keeping score, that means that individuals who maintain a sense of skepticism about the current state of climate change alarmism are now by implication as bad as this fine essay at The American Thinker, wherein the multiple logical fallacies engaged in by climate change alarmists to promote their cause are laid bare:

    So what are we (or you) going to do to save the planet from manmade global warming?

    The problem is posed ad nauseum in varying forms to politicians, talk show guests and audiences, students and climate change summit attendees. And most eagerly respond, despite having been asked something equally prejudicial to the classic law school conundrum “so, when did you stop beating your wife?”

    Compelling anyone to address AGW remedies is likewise dishonest, as it implies concurrence with the unproven premise that mankind stands as guilty as the accused wife-beater.

    This devious ploy of flawed reasoning is known as a Complex Question, as it deceitfully rests on an arguable assumption; any available answer would appear to endorse that assumption.

    The complex question is actually a subtle form of False Dilemma, which is an alarmist staple, created by coercing someone to choose between 2 options when others are readily available. For instance, we either act now to reduce global warming or face untold cataclysm later. How often have you heard that nonsense?

    And no wonder.

    Before they might accept outlandish solutions, it is imperative that the public at large be terrified by AGW’s primary false dilemma of action versus planetary calamity.

    And once again, logical fallacies prove to be the stuff that green dreams are made of.

    Be sure not to miss the now classic graph that shows a link between rising temperatures and falling numbers of pirates on the high seas. It turns out Somalia, instead of being a political and societal mess, might just be on the cutting edge of climate science!

  • Exxon must be spreading around some cash again: That dirty, dirty oil money that Exxon funnels to guys like me to lie about this issue just keeps snagging more and more people in its filthy, petroleum-soaked tentacles. For instance, we now have John Coleman – the founder of the Weather Channel – publicly breaking with the Unbreakable Scientific Consensustm on Global Warmingtm:

    This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

    I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

    In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway.

    I think we can be pretty sure that Coleman won’t be finding work at the channel he founded any time soon.

  • Gore vs. the IPCC: Bjorn Lomborg contrasts the views of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore with the conclusions of the Nobel Prize Winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and finds some interesting differences. His suggestion? We’d all be better off ignoring Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore.
  • Boom goes the dynamite: Here’s some interesting news from the Sunda Strait in Indonesia:

    Sending a boom across the bay, the offspring of the fabled Krakatoa volcano unleashes another mighty eruption, blasting smoke and red-hot rocks hundreds of feet into the sky.

    Even on its quiet side, the black sand on the now-forbidden island is so hot that a visitor can only briefly set foot on it.

    This week’s display by Anak Krakatau — or “Child of Krakatoa” — is impressive, yet it is a mere sneeze when compared to the blast in August 1883 that obliterated its “father” in the most powerful explosion in recorded history.

    That blast was heard as far away as 2,500 miles and choked the atmosphere with ash and dust, altering weather patterns for years. Some 36,000 people were killed in the eruptions and ensuing tsunamis.

    I’ve been fascinated with Krakatoa ever since I read Simon Winchester’s engrossing book on the massive 1883 eruption in which the volcano essentially blew itself out of existence. It’s also interesting to consider the consequences of massive eruptions – such as those that occurred at Krakatoa, Tambora, or more recently at Mt. Pinatubo – on the Earth’s climate; Read about 1816, the year without a summer that resulted from Tambora’s massive eruption the previous year. (Not realy AGW related, I know, but interesting nonetheless.)