Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesauru

WASHINGTON — The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”

The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations by someone who sat in this week on a briefing intended for government officials and environmental leaders.

Asked about the summary, ecoAmerica’s president and founder, Robert M. Perkowitz, requested that it not be reported until the formal release of the firm’s full paper later this month, but acknowledged that its wide distribution now made compliance with his request unlikely.

The research directly parallels marketing studies conducted by oil companies, utilities and coal mining concerns that are trying to “green” their images with consumers and sway public policy.

Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. “We know why it’s lowest,” said Mr. Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”

The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. “Energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.” In fact, the group’s surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”

“Another key finding: remember to speak in TALKING POINTS aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology,” said the e-mail account of the group’s study.

Mr. Perkowitz and allies in the environmental movement have been briefing officials in Congress and the administration in the hope of using the findings to change the terms of the debate now under way in Washington.

Opponents of legislation to combat global warming are engaged in a similar effort. Trying to head off a cap-and-trade system, in which government would cap the amount of heat-trapping emissions allowed and let industry trade permits to emit those gases, they are coaching Republicans to refer to any such system as a giant tax that would kill jobs. Coal companies are taking out full-page advertisements promising “clean, green coal.” The natural gas industry refers to its product as “clean fuel green fuel.” Oil companies advertise their investments in alternative energy.

Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, an expert on environmental communications, said ecoAmerica’s campaign was a mirror image of what industry and political conservatives were doing. “The form is the same; the message is just flipped,” he said. “You want to sell toothpaste, we’ll sell it. You want to sell global warming, we’ll sell that. It’s the use of advertising techniques to manipulate public opinion.”

He said the approach was cynical and, worse, ineffective. “The right uses it, the left uses it, but it doesn’t engage people in a face-to-face manner,” he said, “and that’s the only way to achieve real, lasting social change.”

Frank Luntz, a Republican communications consultant, prepared a strikingly similar memorandum in 2002, telling his clients that they were losing the environmental debate and advising them to adjust their language. He suggested referring to themselves as “conservationists” rather than “environmentalists,” and emphasizing “common sense” over scientific argument.

And, Mr. Luntz and Mr. Perkowitz agree, “climate change” is an easier sell than “global warming.”

NYT and Reporter Revkin Issue 'Correction' – Admit 'Error' in Front Page Global Warming Article Touted By Gore!

Washington, DC – The New York Times has issued a “climate correction” for an “error” in its April 24, 2009 (posted online April 23) high profile front page global warming article that was touted by former Vice President Al Gore during his Congressional testimony as evidence that industry was clouding the science of climate change. [ See: Gore Mouthing-Off About Make-Believe Madoffs & NYT Corrects Article Gore Cited in Congressional Testimony]

But just little more than a week after publishing the front page article, The New York Times and reporter Andrew Revkin have now admitted the article “erred” on a key point. Revkin wrote about the now defunct Global Climate Coalition and documents that suggest the group had scientists on board in the 1990's who claimed “the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.” As Climate Depot exclusively reported, Revkin's article came under immediate fire from scientists and others who called into question the central claims and the accuracy of the story.

In a May 2, 2009 post titled “A Climate Correction”, Revkin and the New York Times wrote: “The article cited a 'backgrounder' that laid out the coalition's public stance, published in the early 1990s and distributed widely to lawmakers and journalists. However, the article failed to note a later version of the backgrounder that included language that conformed to the scientific advisory committee's conclusion. The amended version, which was brought to the attention of The Times by a reader, acknowledged the consensus that greenhouse gases could contribute to warming. What scientists disagreed about, it said, was 'the rate and magnitude of the 'enhanced greenhouse effect' (warming) that will result.'"

The New York Times also posted an “Editors' Note” on May 2 with the same correction.

In addition, the original Times article now has a May 2 “Editors' Note” and Revkin's Dot Earth Blog has a note, “describing an error in the news story.”

Australian Paleoclimate researcher Dr. Robert M. “Bob” Carter was the first to dismiss the NYT's Revkin article as “strange, silly even.”

Carter wrote to Climate Depot on April 23, 2009:

Revkin's latest article in the New York Times makes for strange reading; silly, even. For though the technical experts may have been advising (for some strange, doubtless self-interested reason) this: “even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted”, I'll eat my hat if anyone could show that was actually the case at any time since 1990. My guess is that Revkin -- like all other promulgators of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hysteria throughout the media and scientific communities -- is starting to really feel the weight of the evidence that shows all too clearly that dangerous AGW is a myth, and is simply thrashing around in any and every direction to try to find a way of continuing to obfuscate the issue until December. #

UK's Lord Christopher Monckton was even more outraged and accused the New York Times and Revkin of “deliberate misrepresentation” in climate article and of writing a “mendacious article.”

Monckton wrote the following to New York Times Public Editor and Readers' Representative Clark Hoyt, Esq., on April 28, 2009:

“The New York Times guidelines for staff writers on 'Journalistic Ethics' begin by stating the principles that all journalists should respect: impartiality and neutrality; integrity; and avoidance of conflicts of interest. Andrew Revkin's front-page article on Friday, 24 April, 2009, falsely alleging that a coalition of energy corporations had for many years acted like tobacco corporations, misrepresenting advice from its own scientists about the supposed threat of "global warming", offends grievously against all of these principles.”

Shock: Global temperatures driven by US Postal Charges

Back in 1885 it cost 2 cents to post a letter. Who would have thought that as postal charges climbed by 40 cents through the next 120 years, that global temperatures would mirror that rise in timing and slope and gain almost one full degree?

Ominously, US Post is set to raise the charges 2c to 44c on May 11, 2009. Postal Action Network (PAN) has already sprung into existence this afternoon and plans to produce a boycott campaign of the new 44c Homer Simpson stamps. Overworked postal workers are enthusiastic. Homer Simpson is reported to have said “Give me the number for 911.”
homer simpson stamp 44c

Barbara Boxer, majority Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, immediately set up an inquiry, announcing that all future changes in price for US post must be approved by the EPA. “We’ll need a full environmental impact statement. We can’t just let global damage be done willy nilly on the basis of some arbitrary postal expenses committee’s need to balance the books. No other government service has to balance their budget, why should US Post?”

President Obama immediately convened a task force at the Federal Reserve to loan $450 billion to US Post to keep prices constant until 3400 A.D..

Tuvalu promptly announced they would cut their postal charges in half ‘just in case’. They are asking for donations in order to keep their postal service running, but are considering shifting to carrier pigeons.

The mechanism is far from clear. Professor Chrichton-Boots from the Chicago Schools of Economics, cautioned that US Post prices are a good proxy for inflation, and that it may be inflation that is really behind the recent change in climate. He admitted it was puzzling that there appears to have been global temperature changes for 3-5 billion years before the advent of either US Postal services, or inflation. “You would think the planetary climate would have been stable.” But Harvard social researchers are calling for funding for archaeological digs to find postage stamps from the precambrian. “It’s under-researched”. US Post said this type of finding would be very important but, if any stamps were found, they would be unable to honor them: “Since at the time, the US didn’t exist, in government, in theory, or even as a landmass”.

A spokesman from US Post pointed out that the ‘Forever’ series of stamps (which cost 41c, but are ‘good forever, regardless of price rises’) are anti-inflationary. They were issued in 2007 which “may explain the cooler weather since then”*.

Critics pointed out that correlation is not causation, and “you can produce a link between any two monotonically rising lines on a graph”. The newly formed UN Intergovernmental Panel on Postal Changes called them deniers, while Jim Hansen from NASA pronounced that executives from The Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service should be jailed henceforth and also retrospectively.

The Russians (Pochta Rossii) announced they would lift the cost of letters from 10 roubles to 100, effective from Monday. “Siberia is too cold”.
*(As a curious aside, the Forever stamps may have been the US Government’s most successful investment tool in recent times, gaining 14% in value since 2007, while the Dow and everything else, lost over 40%. Thus proving that the US Federal Reserve could better maintain US purchasing power parity if they switched the world’s Reserve Currency from US Dollars to “Forever Stamps”. )

Spending billions on a non-existent problem

“From error to error one discovers the entire truth.” Sigmund Freud.

The Issue
The US Congress is currently discussing the Obama climate change strategy and Cap and Trade. One part of the plan says, “Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.”

The term “greenhouse gas emissions” is either deliberately misleading or indicates complete ignorance of the science, or both. What they really mean is CO2, yet it is less than 4% of greenhouse gases and the human portion a fraction of that. Why do they want it reduced? It is not a pollutant and not causing global warming or climate change. Reducing it is completely unnecessary and harmful for the plants and will cost trillions. They propose energy alternatives that are potentially more dangerous because they don’t work and can replace only a fraction of existing energy sources. This pattern of identifying the wrong agent of change, blaming humans, and proposing inadequate replacements at great cost is not new. We saw very similar events and sequences with claims that Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) was destroying the ozone layer.

The Pattern

Many cite the Montreal Protocol as a template for dealing with global warming because it supposedly resolved the ozone crisis. It didn’t! It’s a template not because it worked but because it was completely unnecessary, cost a lot of money and created other problems. It is also a template for understanding the deception that human CO2 is causing global warming. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) were blamed for atmospheric ozone destruction without evidence and natural processes were ignored.

They said CFCs would remain in the atmosphere for up to 100 years. Recovery of the ozone would take a very long time. They were wrong!

Today the failed predictions are essentially ignored although some scientists continue to seek the truth. Recently, University of Waterloo physics and astronomy professor, Qing-Bin Lu published a paper showing that cosmic rays are a major factor in the extent of the so-called ozone hole.

The issue has faded and only lingers in the massive sales of sun blockers. When I ask people what happened to the ozone issue, they invariably pause for a moment and say, “Yes, whatever happened to that?” The answer is there was no problem and the variations in ozone were perfectly natural.

A major tenet of the environmental paradigm is that almost all change is due to human activity. Once a change is determined it triggers a search for the human cause without consideration of natural change.

Measurements of ozone in Antarctica by the British Antarctic survey team in the early 1980s determined levels were lower than measures taken in 1957. I recall the press reports on this event and James Lovelock, the British scientist who proposed the Gaia hypothesis, warning against overreaction, but he was ignored.

Later they said he was wrong. In fact, he was right but it didn’t matter. It was an issue that fit environmental hysteria and was quickly deemed an unnatural change and the search for a human cause began. In 1974, Sherwood and Molina provided what they were looking for. In lab experiments they determined chlorine as the active ingredient in chlorofluorocarbon that destroys ozone. An unproven hypothesis became a fact and science was sidelined. As Richard Lindzen said about global warming and CO2, the consensus was reached before the research had even begun.
The Facts

There are no holes in the ozone, there were none when it became a political issue in the 1990s and there are none today. This is not an issue of semantics, but an important fact in the relationship between scientific accuracy and the public perception and political reaction. The amount of ozone in the ozone layer varies considerably in different regions, at different altitudes and over time. The so-called “ozone hole” is a region in the ozone layer generally located over Antarctica in which the ozone level is the lowest during the Southern Hemisphere winter. Even at this time the thickness of the ozone layer is approximately 1/3 of the global average. It is an area of thinning due to natural causes.

Ozone is produced when portions of ultraviolet light (UV) strike free atmospheric oxygen. This splits the oxygen (O2) into single oxygen (O) molecules that combine in threes to create ozone (O3). This occurs in the ozone layer from approximately 40 km down to 15 km. Height and depth of the layer varies with latitude and season. Ozone amounts vary at different altitudes, but only decreases were reported in the media particularly those over Antarctica. The system is self-correcting because as more ultraviolet penetrates deeper into the atmosphere it confronts more free oxygen. By 15 km above the surface over 95% of the UV has been expended in the creation of ozone.

A major cause of changes in the size and extent of the Antarctic ozone hole are the intense wind patterns and circulations associated with the extensive Antarctic high-pressure zone and the surrounding wind pattern known as the Circumpolar Vortex. A second factor is Polar Stratospheric Cloud (PSC) that forms when gases including water vapor sublimate directly to crystals because of the intensely low temperatures (-70°C and below) and pressures over the South Pole. But just as evidence against CO2 is ignored the environmentalists and politicians pushed ahead while deriding and demeaning those who wanted all the facts on the table.

Is the Sun a ‘Global Warming’ Denier?

The Sun isn’t playing ball with the ‘global warmers’. Indeed, I expect one of our more rabid Labour ministers to come out any day now fatuously accusing the fading star of ‘global warming’ denial on a par with denying the effects of smoking or the link between HIV and AIDS.


But one has to laugh. The sun is currently so inactive that even our ‘global warming’-obsessed media has been forced, through heavily rose-tinted sunglasses, to admit the phenomenon, rushing to add, of course, that this doesn’t mean that ‘global warming’ has halted, or that we must stop mending our evil ways.


‘Global Warming’ In Trouble


Yet, the truth is that ‘global warming’ [not, let’s be clear, climate change] is possibly in trouble. The whole point is that climate is the most complex of systems, and that it is impossible - madness even - to try to predict future climates with respect to one politically-selected variable.


So what precisely is all the fuss about this very big other variable, the Sun? Put simply, a thing called ‘Solar Cycle 24’ is long overdue; it just can’t seem to get going. Solar-cycle intensity is measured by the maximum number of sunspots. Sunspots are dark blotches on the Sun that mark areas of heightened magnetic activity. The more sunspots, the more likely it is that major solar storms will occur. The next 11-year cycle of solar storms (i.e. ‘Solar Cycle 24’) was predicted to begin in Autumn, 2006, but it appears to have been seriously delayed.


This is what Paul Stanko of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is reported as saying about this on the wonderful Watts Up With That? web site:

Claude Allegres befürchtete Rückkehr in die Politik.

A post for Silvia.

Die Gerüchte gingen bereits vorher hier in Frankreich herum und scheinen sich jetzt zu bestätigen. Claude Allegre, einst sozialistischer Forschungsminister und hard-boiled climate sceptic, ist auf den Weg zurück, diesmal in die konservative Regierung unter Francois Fillon. Allegre hat mehrere klimakritische Texte herausgegeben, die teilweise am Rande der Lächerlichkeit herschrammend ein Sammelsurium aus im Netz zusammengegoogelten Texten darstellen. Ich hatte bereits einmal einen nur so vor Fehlern überlaufenden Text von Ihm korrigieren müssen. In einer vor kurzen stattfindenden Fernsehshow bezeichnete er gar meinen Chef und offiziellen französischen IPCC Abgesandten, Jean Jouzel, gar als "tricheur" ("Betrüger").


Bild 1: Claude Allegre war unter Lionel Jospin Forschungsminister und musste nach heftigen Protesten in der Lehrerschaft.

Seine Kontakte zu Sarkozy intensivierten sich wohl in der letzten Zeit und heute ging ein Fax an alle Institute des IPSL (eine Gruppe von in Paris gelegenen Labors, die zu Klimafragen arbeiten), dass Allègre im Laufe dieser Woche als Nachfolger des französischen Umweltminister, Jean Luis Borloo, eingesetzt wird. Borloo hatte sich in der Klimadebatte immer wieder für eine weitsichtige Energiepolitik gekennzeichnet durch eine Forderung nach starken Emissionsauflagen hervorgetan. Er hatte intensiv mit uns und insbesondere Jean Jouzel zusammengearbeitet.



Bild 2: Jean Luis Borloo wird diese Woche das Ministerium für Umweltschutz dem Klimaskeptiker Claude Allegre räumen müssen.

Allègres Nominierung, so ist hier die allgemeine Meinung, bedeutet wahrscheinlich einen generellen Umschwung in der französischen Klimapolitik. Einige Kollegen hier am IPSL fürchten sogar einen Einfluss auf den Teil des Etats, der für Klimaorschung aufgewandt wird. Wie das hier so üblich ist, wird bereits von Streik und Demonstrationen gesprchen. So oder so, es wäre ein harter Schlag für das IPSL und die von uns geplanten Grossprojekte, insbesondere die geplanten Antarktis Bohrungen.
Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, dass Allegres Nominierung nicht auch die restliche französische Politik beeinflussen wird. Die Spannungen, die etwa hier zwischen der Sarkozy Regierung und den restlichen Mitgliedern des G20 erwähnt werden, könnten durchaus auch mit einem Ausscheren Frankreichs aus dem Kyoto Protokoll zu tun haben. Falls es soweit kommt, werde ich hier die Koffer packen.

PS Ich werde versuchen einige der Links noch durch deutsche Texte zu ersetzten. Wir sind hier aber alle noch ein wenig perplex und ich wollte diese sicher weitreichenden Neuigkeiten erstmal gepostet haben.

1960 JuKeBoX

1960 JuKeBoX

C02 Global Warming’s IPCC-created Hobglobin

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is responsible for providing the hobgoblin of global warming. They claim CO2 is almost the sole cause of warming while effectively ignoring the sun. Their claim that the sun is of little consequence is unbelievable and only a measure of their deception and lousy science. They only looked at one part of solar influence on weather and climate and didn’t do that accurately. Instead they used it to support their claim the temperature changes are not caused by the sun and therefore must be due to CO2. They only considered irradiance (heat and light) and concluded, incorrectly, it was of little consequence. They assume, because the variation is approximately 0.1% over approximately a 30-year period, it is of little consequence.

The number certainly seems small when expressed as a percentage of 100. However, it is estimated that only a 6% variation is sufficient to explain all known temperature variation in the history of the Earth. So 0.1% is significant in relation to 6%. To put this in context consider how much the temperature drops between night and day or even for the brief period of a total eclipse. As solar and climate scientist Willie Soon said, “We have known for 80 years that even small changes in solar radiation have a strong effect on Earth’s temperature and climate.”

The IPCC do not include changes in sun/earth relationships collectively called the Milankovitch effect, a major cause of temperature change.

They ignore the high correlation between sunspots and global temperature which has a warmer Earth with many sunspots and colder with fewer. They claimed, legitimately, you must not assume cause and effect. However, they made the illegitimate claim there was no mechanism and the research was not produced in time to meet their deadline for inclusion. Both claims are wrong. A proposed mechanism first appeared in Science in 1991 when Christensen and Lassen published “Length of the Solar Cycle: An indicator of solar activity closely associated with Climate.” Since then several articles appeared elaborating on the mechanism, most before the IPCC deadline. Why did they ignore it? Likely because it showed the sun explained temperature changes. Typical of the pattern of their manipulations they did break the deadline rule when it suited their argument.

Thomas Edison day

How I celebrated Thomas Edison day.

I kept my lights on and also turned on my Christmas lights.

Environmental whackos were urging everyone to turn off their lights
for one hour in celebration of “Earth Hour”
If you’re unfamiliar, “Earth Hour” is a feel good hour where
socialists and tree-hugging hippies unite to dismiss electricity,
fossil fuels and the modern conveniences that allow for historically
unrivaled prosperity, longevity, health and quality of life throughout
the world.
While the knuckleheads leader Al Gore were the dozen or so
floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the
driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.
We… had to witness the unpleasant TV broadcasting of a bunch of out of
touch with reality Ecochondriacs crying to save the planet while
burning candles made out of oil and releasing that much hated “carbon”
into the atmosphere.
I also wonder how many people fell in the dark or house fires were started ?
Thankfully, most of the Kool-Aid drinking human haters that
participated in “Earth Hour” undoubtedly spent the hour on their couch
or on their porch reflecting how solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short
and generally life would be without electricity.
The total impact on public policy and probably on people's
"consciousness" was about as effective as watching paint dry.
Believing that it makes one iota of difference to anyone, anywhere,anytime that turning off your lights
for an hour does anything except make the participant feel a false
sense of moral superiority in a Guilt free hour.
Maybe the one positive thing that did happen during that hour of Darkness is the
turning off of them new green "Trojan horse" mercury releasing fumes
from CFL lamps.
Personally April Fools day would be a better suited date.

Letter To the British Columbia School Boards

I admit that I am not a climatologist on the issue of global warming. However; I support the principle that young people should be educated, not propagandized -- and I know something about what that means.

One of the most important differences between education and propaganda is how they deal with great controversies.

In education, students are taught about the controversies. In propaganda, they are shielded from them.

In education, students are taught both sides of the important debates. In propaganda, they are taught only one.

In education, students are taught both the strengths and the weaknesses of the officially favored theory. In propaganda, they are taught only its strengths.

In short, education is the training of minds, while propaganda is the training of prejudices. In a democracy, the public schools should not propagandize, but educate.

As we find in the science section of these guidelines, students must learn to "analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.

The issue is that although students should be taught about both sides of a scientific theoretical controversy, your assignment, based on the description in your permission request, appears to only present one side and are shielded from the weaknesses. contained in. BC Science 10.

How can a student write a critique about assertions made on global warming without having anything to compare and contrast the assertions to? Your permission/assignment sheet gave no indication as to how, if any, the views to counter Anthropogenic Global Warming would be taught.

In addition, it is not clear what alternate assignment is available to the student/teachers should they choose to Learn from a climatologist instead from a television show hosted by a journalist with no science degrees.

If the "theory" of global warming is to be taught in your classroom, I urge that the topic should be taught like the other sciences and like other controversial theories -- with honesty about both . When classroom activities and/or textbooks are biased, you(the school board)) are the check and balance.

Statements are made in Science 10 that are assertions that mix cause and effect: "climate change is affecting our planet right now. Ice is disappearing earlier in the spring, trees are budding earlier, and extreme weather events are causing more outbreaks of disease than 20 years ago." They are not only inaccurate but also dishonest.

I urge The school board to require that the scientific data to both sides of this controversy be taught and that not one side be suppressed.

To do so would be not only be good training in science, but good education in citizenship.

W Robichaud

Williams lake BC

http://www.bcscience.com/bc10/pgs/links_u1.html

Green energy is not such a breeze

One by one, the energy giants that hoisted green flags and trumpeted their conversion to renewables are ducking and diving and hiding behind the curtains.
Iberdrola, a big investor in wind farms in Spain and the owner of ScottishPower, is slashing its spending on renewables by 40 per cent. Shell said recently it would no longer invest in wind turbines, preferring to focus its efforts on new biofuel technology, while BP has opted out of the UK renewables market, deeming it to be a poor bet.
It is tempting to see the great push for renewable energy in Europe as a fair-weather phenomenon. The performance of Britain's turbines is a case in point - for much of January they were operating at about 10 per cent of capacity.


Sailors use to wait for a breeze to come by and take them home..wind Power was not that efficient.

Lack of logic in those who claim to be logical

Global Warming: What is the motive and how has such a situation developed?

Once people realize that humans are not causing global warming and the IPCC claims are scientifically unjustified, despite strong support by environmentalists, two questions logically follow. What is the motive and how has such a situation developed? I examined the political motive in a series of articles starting here;

More...

Despite popular opinion and calls to action, the Maldives are not being overrun by sea level rise

The photographs he attached are interesting to say the least, click for larger images:

And soon others were jumping in. Tom Harris quoted a study from Nils-Axel Mörner and provided a plot from Nils-Axel Mörner’s study of sea level using C14 isotope dating.

Harris wrote:

While Andrew does not personally say that sea level rise will swamp the Maldives soon, he implies he agrees with the scenario by including nothing at all to counter the validity of the Maldivian announcement. I suggest Andrew read about Morner’s work and get an expansion of the below misleading piece published right away. You can download (for the next 7 days) one of Dr. Morner’s most recent papers on the topic at http://tinyurl.com/dhz6gk . Note the below graph from that report, especially.

The Clear and Cohesive Message of the International Conference on Climate Change

By Marc Sheppard

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.” -- from the Oregon Petition, signed by over 31,000 scientists

Statistics in modern society

Most people know about Disraeli’s comment, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics”, but few understand how the application of statistics has affected our lives or how it developed and evolved. We sense it when everything sort of fits everyone, but doesn’t precisely fit anyone.

Many years ago, I monitored development of a housing estate for low-income residents. Planners knew who qualified as residents beforehand because of the criteria so they did a survey to determine the desires and expectations for all residents. After people had lived there for a while a second survey sought their judgment. The response was “It’s alright, but…” It was a predicable outcome because the planners designed for the average. Chances of any individual requests being included were very small. In any population there is a wide range of individuals, but modern society only accommodates the majority near the middle, that is within one standard deviation of the average.

Application of statistics to all elements of our lives is an outgrowth of what is generally called logical positivism. Wikipedia defines it as, “a school of philosophy that combines ”empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions in epistemology.” In simple terms this means that if you can’t quantify something it doesn’t exist. It makes mathematics and its practical application, statistics, paramount. Ludwig Wittgenstein conceived the idea at the turn of the 20th century. Wikipedia notes, “Wittgenstein’s influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.” Interpretations may diverge but the influence dominates our world and is at the center of why we have lost our way. The dominance is in the pure logical analysis of life and society.

International Conference on Climate Change

We Know! We all Know " They are all being paid by Exxon". Whatever that it is suppose to mean.

Arctic summer ice could vanish by 2013

Vincent`s scientific team has spent the last 10 summers on Ward Hunt Island, a remote spot some 2,500 miles northwest of Ottawa.The Arctic is warming up so quickly that the region's sea ice cover in summer could vanish as early as 2013, decades earlier than some had predicted, a leading polar expert said on Thursday.

Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec, said recent data on the ice cover "appear to be tracking the most pessimistic of the models", which call for an ice free summer in 2013.

The year "2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more reasonable as a prediction. But each year we've been wrong -- each year we're finding that it's a little bit faster than expected," he told Reuters.

The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and the sea ice cover shrank to a record low in 2007 before growing slightly in 2008.

In 2004 a major international panel forecast the cover could vanish by 2100. Last December, some experts said the summer ice could go in the next 10 or 20 years.

If the ice cover disappears, it could have major consequences. Shipping companies are already musing about short cuts through the Arctic, which also contains enormous reserves of oil and natural gas.

Vincent's scientific team has spent the last 10 summers on Ward Hunt Island, a remote spot some 2,500 miles (4,000 km) northwest of Ottawa.

"I was astounded as to how fast the changes are taking place. The extent of open water is something that we haven't experienced in the 10 years that I've been working up there," he said after making a presentation in the Canadian Parliament.

"We're losing, irreversibly, major features of the Canadian ice scape and that suggests that these more pessimistic models are really much closer to reality."

In 2008 the maximum summer temperature on Ward Hunt hit 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to the usual 5 degrees. Last summer alone the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in Canada's Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, shrunk by 23 percent.

Vincent told Reuters last September that it was clear some of the damage would be permanent and that the warming in the Arctic was a sign of what the rest of the world could expect. He struck a similarly gloomy note in his presentation.

"Some of this is unstoppable. We're in a train of events at the moment where there are changes taking place that we are unable to reverse, the loss of these ice shelves, for example," he said.

"But what we can do is slow down this process and we have to slow down this process because we need to buy more time. We simply don't have the technologies as a civilization to deal with this level of instability that is ahead of us."

Did Someone forgot why it is called " SUMMER sea ice?

"In 2008 the maximum summer temperature on Ward Hunt hit 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to the usual 5 degrees. Last summer alone the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in Canada's Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, shrunk by 23 percent."

Shrunk by 23 percent ? we were told it had collapsed in 2004.

http://www.nunatsiaqnews.com/archives/40730/news/features/40730_01.html

And then we have a study in 1986 showing the Ice Shelves off Ellesmere had Collapsed in 1983

http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic39-1-15.pdf

How can they be more then 4000 years old if they were not there some 40 years ago?
..
"I was astounded as to how fast the changes are taking place. The extent of open water is something that we haven't experienced in the 10 years that I've been working up there," he said after making a presentation in the Canadian Parliament."

Sound more like a Panic Attack after noticing the possibility of a Tax payer Funded trips coming to an End.

Cap and Trade and Alternative energy: The real danger in Obama’s policies.

The stimulus package is a classic example of dishonesty staring down honesty.

It ignores and exacerbates the underlying financial problems as the stock market reaction indicates. It will create few private sector jobs, but government departments will grow greatly in numbers and power and that will require more and continuing funding. If you want to see how much government grows under such liberal policies look at the growth in United Kingdom bureaucracies under Gordon Brown when he was in charge of treasury and then as Prime Minister.

Perhaps the largest growth with Obama’s stimulus package will be in implementing and controlling the energy plans within the package. This will also be the most lasting and damaging legacy. It will increase the total cost of living and of doing business while making US businesses less competitive in world trade. It will set back the growth of new sources of energy by many years . Look at those who have tried the ‘green’ approach. The UK energy needs are in serious problems and closer to home California is suffering from green energy plans and involvements with Enron and alternative energies. The Canadian Province of Ontario energy needs were mismanaged by Maurice Strong and badly influenced by environmentalist David Suzuki.

Dishonesty is also evident because they have moved the goalposts again. First it was carbon credits, then it was carbon tax and now it is cap and trade. They are all the same idea falsely presented as methods of reducing CO2. In fact, they don’t reduce it at all but they do give government control and put more money in government hands. They are an environmental form of sin tax like those on tobacco and alcohol. The new name eliminates reference to CO2 (carbon) and taxes. A Cap, determined by the government, will limit the amount of CO2 you can produce. Details were expanded in Obama’s first budget proposal. He estimates a return of $625 billion from the cap and trade. It allows him to punish certain industries, as Obama indicated he would with the coal industry. The word Trade incorrectly implies some sort of business like approach. It is really an unnecessary transfer of wealth, just as carbon credits were in the Kyoto Protocol. As House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican said. “We’ve got real concerns about his plan on cap and trade,” “Let’s just be honest and call it a carbon tax that will increase taxes on all Americans who drive a car, who have a job, who turn on a light switch, pure and simple.”

James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic Says Hansen ‘Embarrassed NASA’ & ‘Was Never Muzzled

Subject: Climate models are useless

Marc, First, I sent several e-mails to you with an error in the address and they have been returned to me. So I'm resending them in one combined e-mail.

Yes, one could say that I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation. He was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind's effect on it). He thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.

My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit. Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.

With best wishes, John

Disappearing Arctic Ice Is Latest Climate Falsehood

In May, 2008, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) predicted that the North Pole could be ice free during last years melt season. The disappearing northern sea ice has been pointed to by global warming alarmists as visible proof that the Earth was doing a melt down. Today, however, the NSIDC announced that they have been the victims of “sensor drift” that caused them to underestimate the Arctic ice extent by as much as 500,000 square kilometers. It turns out that the demise of the arctic ice was greatly exaggerated.
As with the NASA Russian temperature debacle last year and the forced recalculation of US surface temperatures for the last century in 2007, the latest problem was discovered after NSIDC received emails from puzzled readers, asking why obviously sea-ice-covered regions were showing up as ice free open ocean. A statement on the NSIDC web site, published February 18, 2009, explains the current faux pas this way:
As some of our readers have already noticed, there was a significant problem with the daily sea ice data images on February 16. The problem arose from a malfunction of the satellite sensor we use for our daily sea ice products. Upon further investigation, we discovered that starting around early January, an error known as sensor drift caused a slowly growing underestimation of Arctic sea ice extent. The underestimation reached approximately 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) by mid-February. Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality control measures prior to archiving the data.Once again we have misleading climate change pronouncements being based on data errors, data errors detected by non-UN, non-IPCC, non-peer-reviewed external observers.