Talking global warming as the climate may be turing colder


The evidence for global warming changes every day. And now a former President is trying to cash in on people's fears.
Despite ALL the things that have been said by the global warming crowd, there is not one shred of evidence that shows human action is responsible for climate changes.

Consider a few recent developments. In 2003, Canadian researchers Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick demonstrated that the "hockey-stick" analysis--a key element of global-warming dogma that purports to demonstrate that global temperatures held steady for centuries until rising sharply in the last 100 years--was riddled with "collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data," and so on. The Canadians found that the Medieval warm period had indeed occurred, suggesting that periods of warming and cooling were natural trends unrelated to the number of SUVs on the road.

In 2004, a conference of leading economists met in Copenhagen to prioritize the world's environmental needs, and they put global warming at the bottom of the list. "The benefits [of dealing with climate change] are far into the future and the substantial costs are up front and immediate," wrote Nobelist Douglass North. "Given the uncertainties associated with both the projections and the consequences, climate change cannot compete with other urgent issues we confront."

More recently, scientists have been grappling with data distortions caused by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. That eruption initially caused ocean temperatures to cool; now temperatures are rising as the "Pinatubo Effect" unwinds and distorts the long-term trend data. Scientists have also noted weakenings in Atlantic currents that move cold waters south and warm waters north, leading to predictions that Britain may experience Siberia-like temperatures in the coming decades. Whatever else that is, it isn't "warming."

I've covered it on this site here. I have four questions that I am waiting for someone to answer before I will look at the proposed solutions.

Is it unusual?

Is it entirely or mostly human caused?

Is it evil or bad?

Can human action reverse or slow it significantly?

The fact is, the planet had drastic climate changes before there were even mammals, much less humans.

Everything that has been said about global warming is based on a computer model. And no version of that computer model can predict global weather next week, much less next year.

And that brings us to this mess.

Former US president Bill Clinton took to the podium at the UN climate talks here to ram home a grim message about global warming and demand the United States move quickly away from the fossil fuels causing the problem.

In a show-stealing appearance rumoured to have ired the US delegation, Clinton defended the UN's Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases that was ditched by his successor, President George W. Bush, and said the switch to cleaner energy would create millions of jobs for the American economy.

"There's no longer any serious doubt that climate change is real, accelerating, and caused by human activities," Clinton said.

The Earth, he said, was "literally a biological miracle ... it's crazy for us to play games with our children's future."

He pointed to an array of gloomy scientific studies published in past weeks, including evidence that carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in 650,000 years, that glaciers in the Himalayas and Arctic sea ice were melting and the warm Atlantic currents that bathe northwestern Europe were slowing down.

Of course there is doubt. And what is more, Mr. Clinton knows it. His speech wasn't about global warming, it was a campaign speech because he wants to be selected Secretary General of the United Nations. This is the only issue that has a chance of throwing enough mud on President Bush to do that.

When Mr. Clinton was first running for President, he had a war room running his campaign. Early on, they hit on the single sound bite that would do more damage to the first Mr. Bush than anything else. That became their secret slogan, even though it wasn't particularly accurate. It was the single guiding message of his entire campaign.

"It's the economy, stupid!"

Granted, the senior Mr. Bush made some critical errors when it came to the domestic economy, including reneging on a pledge for no new taxes. But the economy was not nearly as bad as people thought it was in 1991 and 1992, and certainly not as bad as Mr. Clinton's campaign made it look. On the other hand, at the end of Mr. Clinton's Presidency, the economy had been in recession for 18 months and Mr. Clinton and advisors conspired to hide that fact from the American public. But that is another story.

This is a version of the same tactic.

"It's global warming, stupid."

Mr. Clinton has been trying various sound bites since President Bush was elected for his second term. So far, this is the only one that has resonated with the public, so it is the one he is focusing on.

It's politics, not concern about global warming. Mr. Clinton would blame mimes for noise pollution if he thought it would serve his purposes.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sat - December 10, 2005 at 04:42 AM  Tag


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