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Newsletter (March 5, 2010)
Above the FoldYou can get an insider's view of part of the English Parliament's investigation of scientific misconduct at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) by reading this written submission of evidence to that investigation by Dr. Ross McKitrick, a professor of environmental economics at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, and contributor to the Cornwall Alliance's A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science, and Economics of Global Warming. If anybody tells you the emails and computer code released from CRU last November are a tempest in a teapot and seem significant only if taken out of context, send him to this. The case for intentional deception is overwhelming.
A few highlights:
- Right at the start, McKitrick demonstrates that two of the five members of the Parliamentary investigating committee were hopelessly biased by their own previous statements and activities to find in favor of the CRU and its erstwhile director, Phil Jones. (One of them resigned under pressure. The other remains. How probable is it that, by accident, two members with strong bias in the same direction were appointed to an investigative panel of only five members despite there having been strong safeguards written into the selection process?)
- Farther along, McKitrick explains exactly why the word "trick" in one famous email is completely irrelevant, but the phrase "hide the decline" is enormously important, exposing intentional effort to hide evidence that undermines the IPCC's entire case that late 20th century warming is historically unprecedented, and therefore the need for any reference to human activity to "explain" it.
- And later still, McKitrick demonstrates, with precise documentation, how Jones and other IPCC authors corrupted the peer review process to keep contrary evidence out of the 2007 Assessment Report.
- And don't miss Appendix B, a refutation of the IPCC's 2007 Assessment Report's claim that atmospheric "arctic oscillations" explained away the large fictitious warming signal from urban heat island effect and other land use changes.
(March 3, 2010, Washington, DC) – With unemployment hovering around 10% nationally and the economy remaining shaky, a bi-partisan group of more than forty senators is cosponsoring a joint Senate and House resolution to prevent unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency from using the Clean Air Act to enact costly regulations of carbon dioxide.
Some Green lobbyists are upset by the resolution. According to NoDirtyAirAct.com, “We must stop this attempt to turn back the clock on the Clean Air Act – a law with a nearly 40-year track record of cutting dangerous pollution to protect human health and the environment and spur innovation.”
But the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation says that the group has its facts wrong. “The forty-year alarm is pure fantasy,” says Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, National Spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance. “The resolution disapproves only the EPA’s intent to regulate carbon dioxide emissions based on an EPA ‘endangerment finding’ that stretches all way back to December 7, 2010,” he says. . . .
Read the rest.In this issue
Featured- U.N. Still Pushing for Global Environmental Control
- Three Considerations for Policy Makers Concerning Manmade Carbon Dioxide
Debate- Climategate Exposes Anthropogenic Global Warming Dominoes
- Al's Latest Global Warming Whopper
- Climate Politics: When Will the Sanctimony End?
- Arguing Global Warming with Arnold
Science- The Global Average Urban Heat Island Effect in 2000 Estimated from Station Temperatures and Population Density Data
- Video: Global Warming: Where's the Alarm?
- Most of the Observed Warming Since the Mid-20th Century Likely Not from Human GHG Emissions?
Economics- Energy Independence and the Latest Federal Land Grab
Upcoming Events
Briefly Noted
Meet the Critics: Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Ph.D.
Featuredby George Russell
Executive Editor, Fox News
February 25, 2010
Despite the debacle of the failed Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the United Nations is pressing full speed ahead with a plan for a greatly expanded system of global environmental governance and for a multitrillion-dollar economic transfer scheme to ignite the creation of a "global green economy."
In other words: Copenhagen without the authority--yet--of Copenhagen.
The world body even has chosen a time and a place for the culmination of the process: a World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, the 20th anniversary of the famed "Earth Summit" that gave focus and urgency to the world environmentalist movement.
The 2012 summit date is significant for another reason: It marks the end of the legal term of agreement for the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, which includes carbon reduction targets, and provided the legal basis for an international cap-and-trade market for carbon, centered in Europe. The U.S. first signed then backed away from the Kyoto deal without ratifying it; until its apparent collapse, the comprehensive Copenhagen deal was intended to include the U.S. and supplant Kyoto with a new, legally binding regime.
The new Rio summit will end, according to U.N. documents obtained by Fox News, with a "focused political document" presumably laying out the framework and international commitments to a new Green World Order. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Willie Soon and David R. Legates
Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Chief Science Adviser, Science & Public Policy Institute; Science Director, Tech Central Station; Senior Scientist, Marshall Institute; Co-Author, Global Warming and Maunder Minimum (Soon); Delaware State Climatologist and Director of Delaware Environmental Observing System, University of Delaware; Senior Scientist, Marshall Institute; Fellow, Independent Institute; Scholar, Competitive Enterprise Institute (Legates)
2010
In December 2009, lawmakers and representatives from around the world, along with scientists, numerous journalists, and various celebrities flew to Copenhagen, Denmark. For the most part, their goal was to promote a regulatory scheme aimed at controlling human carbon emissions by declaring the element a tradable commodity and establishing laws and regulations to govern the trade.
The proposed regulations were premised on the flawed notion, articulated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will change climate dramatically and thereby cause major ecological and economic damage.
While many scientists, including us, have observed some changes in climate, the hypothesized dangerous consequences of rising atmospheric CO2 are too speculative for responsible regulatory policy. In analyzing climate policy, decision makers should be cognizant of three key considerations regarding the impact of projected rises in atmospheric CO2: (1) policy choices likely will have no measurable effect on the occurrence of severe weather; (2) positive effects on ecosystems and biodiversity are likely and should be weighed against the negatives; and (3) carbon trading schemes (such as the one touted in Copenhagen) are unlikely to lead to a reduction in atmospheric CO2.
Given these considerations, policy makers must carefully consider their objectives and the potential impacts, both positive and negative, of carbon emission control. If climate change regulation proceeds unchecked, it will likely produce policy that is out of touch with both the real world and objective science and will likely impose large costs on society that benefit only a small cadre of “climate entrepreneurs“ and provide no meaningful effect on the Earth’s climate. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Debateby Gerald Warner
Writer, Telegraph
March 2, 2010
. . . Referring to the CRU’s collaboration with two other climate units in America and another two in Russia and Japan respectively, [Phil] Jones said: “We may be using a lot of common data, but the ways of going from the raw data to a derived product of gridded temperatures and then the average for the hemisphere and the globe is totally independent between the different groups.”
There you have the crisis in a nutshell. That is why the Climategate stakes are so high – $45 trillion, to be precise. If the CRU/East Anglia’s research is compromised (and who now seriously believes it is not?), then the dominoes all fall by cross-contamination. Jones tried to emphasise the apparent difference between these groups on whose work the whole IPCC edifice stands or falls. But this is cosmetic verbiage. It is the raw data that matters. If that is wrong, nuances of interpretation based on it are irrelevant – and how much significant difference is there in the claims of the IPCC contributing groups in any case? . . .
Read the rest.
Related items:
Scientist May Find Himself a Convenient Sacrificial Lamb
by Simon Carr
Writer, Independent
March 2, 2010
Lord Lawson Labelled Them Climate Alarmists
by Quentin Letts
Writer, Mail Online
March 2, 2010
Scientists Taking Steps to Defend Work on Climate
by John M. Broder
Writer, New York Times
March 2, 2010Back to top by Alan Reynolds
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; Author, Income and Wealth
New York Post, March 2, 2010
. . . Gore says, "The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere -- thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States."
It's an interesting theory, but where are the facts?
According to "State of the Climate" from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "Global precipitation in 2009 was near the 1961-1990 average." And there was certainly no pattern of increasing rain and snow on America's East Coast during the post-1976 years, when NOAA says the globe began to heat up.
So what was it, exactly, that Gore's nameless scientists "have long pointed out"? A 2008 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Climate Change and Water," says climate models "project precipitation increases in high latitudes and part of the tropics." In other areas, the IPCC reports only "substantial uncertainty in precipitation forecasts."
In other words, the IPCC said that its models predicted some increases in rain or snow -- not observed them. And only in high latitudes or the tropics, which hardly describes New York or Washington, DC. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
MasterResource, March 2, 2010
“Polluter-funded” is the global warming movement’s favorite pejorative to discredit anyone who questions the reality of a climate crisis or opposes their policy nostrums. Google the term and you’ll find about 18,300 sites where it appears.
“Polluter-crafted” brings up about 7,500 sites. The warming lobby uses this buzzword to trash legislation they oppose, most recently Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval, pursuant to the Congressional Review Act (CRA), to stop EPA from dealing itself into a position to make climate policy – a power Congress never approved when it enacted the Clean Air Act.
Who are these “polluters” who craft and fund? Any big company that emits carbon dioxide (CO2) because it supplies, refines, or combusts carbon-based (fossil) fuels.
This is all a rhetorical trick. Yes, CO2 is a “greenhouse” (heat-absorbing) gas. However, water vapor (H2O) is also a greenhouse gas, yet nobody calls it “air pollution.” Since 1975, EPA has required automakers to install catalytic converters to clean up automobile exhaust. The core function of these devices is to turn other substances into the aforementioned greenhouse gases, H2O and CO2. It would be nutty to say that catalytic converters pollute the air.
Carbon dioxide is an odorless, colorless trace gas that is non-toxic to humans and animals at more than 30 times ambient levels. An essential plant nutrient, CO2 is the basic building block of the planetary food chain. Plants raised in CO2-enriched environments grow larger and faster, use water more efficiently, and are more resilient to environmental stresses such as drought and air pollution. Since animals directly or indirectly depend on plants for food, CO2 emissions nourish the entire planetary biosphere. Name another “pollutant” that does that!
But okay, for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that CO2 emissions are “air pollution.” Some of the nation’s biggest CO2-emitters support the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. Waxman-Markey supporter American Electric Power (AEP) is the nation’s top CO2-emitter, according to Benchmarking US Air Emissions (2006), a joint report by Ceres, NRDC, and PSEG. Duke Energy, which merged with Cinergy, is the nation’s third-largest CO2-emitter. CEO Jim Rogers crowed about Duke’s role in crafting Waxman-Markey shortly after the House passed it last June. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Mark Landsbaum
Editorial Writer and Columnist, Orange County Register
February 26, 2010
We recently offered tips on "What to say to a warmer" for when Al Gore or a fellow global warming alarmist comes to dinner. This week, we suggest: "What to say to a warmist named Schwarzenegger," in case the Terminator drops by. . . .
Minority rules? – Only 28 percent of the public thinks dealing with global warming is a high priority, says Pew Research Center pollsters. That ranked global warming dead last among 21 public issues polled. If the rest of us don't think it's a big deal, why should the governor?
What it boils down to – Global warming alarmism never was about temperature. It's about control and money – their control and your money. California's touted Global Warming Solutions Act – also known as Assembly Bill 32 or AB32 – requires bureaucrats to write detailed rules to cap greenhouse gas emissions, mandate reporting by emitters, plan what emission reductions must be achieved and how, provide "alternative compliance mechanisms" and mandates, come up with government-determined "equity between regulated entities," ensure rules don't "disproportionately impact low-income communities," among other things. They've been writing the regulations since 2006 and still are.
Ka-ching – Government stands to profit. State Sen. Bob Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga, says Loma Linda University, in his district, "could be forced to pay nearly $4 million each year." Larger schools, more. Dutton says businesses will be forced to pay $20 to $60 per ton of greenhouse gas emitted. Government bureaucrats will decide which businesses pay. . . .
Read the rest.
Related item:
What to Say to a Global Warming Alarmist
by Mark Landsbaum
Editorial Writer and Columnist, Orange County Register
February 12, 2010Back to top Scienceby Roy W. Spencer
Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Author, DrRoySpencer.com; Author, Climate Confusion and The Great Global Warming Blunder
March 3, 2010
Abstract
Global hourly surface temperature observations and 1 km resolution population density data for the year 2000 are used together to quantify the average urban heat island (UHI) effect. While the rate of warming with population increase is the greatest at the lowest population densities, some warming continues with population increases even for densely populated cities. Statistics like those presented here could be used to correct the surface temperature record for spurious warming caused by the UHI effect, providing better estimates of temperature trends. . . .
Results & Discussion
The following graph shows the average rate of warming with population density increase (vertical axis), as a function of the average populations of the station pairs. Each data point represents a population bin average for the intersection of a higher population station with its lower-population station mate.
. . . Update #1
The above results are quite sensitive to how the stations with very low population densities are handled. I’ve recomputed the above results by adding a single data point representing 724 more station pairs where BOTH stations are within the lowest population density category: 0 to 20 people per sq. km. This increases the signal of warming at low population densities, from the previously mentioned +0.22 deg C warming from zero to 20 people per sq. km, to +0.77 deg. C of warming. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by John Christy
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville
Lecture delivered February 8, 2010
Back to top by Patrick J. Michaels
Chief Editor, WorldClimateReport.com; Research Professor, University of Virginia; Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; Visiting Scientist, Marshall Institute; Author, Climate of Extremes, Meltdown, The Satanic Gases, and Sound and Fury
March 2, 2010
The IPCC claims that it is “very likely” that “most” of the warming since then has been the result of human GHG emissions. In IPCC parlance, “very likely” means with a greater than 90% likelihood. The EPA parrots the IPCC’s claim in the Technical Support Document for their Endangerment Finding (TSD, p. 2) . . .
. . . it is easy to demonstrate, using the contents of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, that anthropogenic GHG emissions could be responsible for less than one-third of the warming in the extant global temperature records.
Let’s start from the beginning. . . .
Read the rest
Related items:
Why the EPA Is Wrong About Recent Warming
by Chip Knappenberger
Writer, MasterResource; Administrator, World Climate Report
February 11, 2010
EPA Relying On Overstated Climate Claims
by Kenneth P. Green
Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
February 11, 2010Back to top Economicsby James Tonkowich
Scholar and Former President, The Institute on Religion & Democracy; Senior Fellow, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
March 4, 2010
. . . But if “energy independence” is the big concern, then why not let Americans produce energy? Writing in the Washington Times, Sen. Jim DeMint began his March 2 op-ed:
You’d think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they’re planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West. DeMint points out that the federal government already owns 650 million acres or 29% of the United States. Now it wants more and the plan is to get more without hearings, without votes, without even consulting the governors of the states who will be ceding their land to Washington. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Upcoming EventsDennis Avery, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and co-author with S. Fred Singer of Unstoppable Global Warming--Every 1,500 Years will speak for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy at Delta Bow Valley Hotel. Now, as the scandal of leaked emails, non-peer reviewed material in the IPCC report, and shifting temperature reporting stations has spread across the world, the public is finally becoming aware of "the rest of the story" on the Greenhouse Theory. Avery will address the latest "hot topics" including the hidden reality of the earth's recent cooling. What is truth and what is politics behind the push to destroy the energy systems that have provided abundant food and economic stability to most of the world? . . .
Register online.Back to top University of Delaware Climatologist David Legates speaks on The Climate Debate: Change or Crisis? Well-known Christian philosopher Nancy Pearcey, author of Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity, will speak on Competing Worldviews in the Environmental Debate. Cornwall Alliance National Spokesman E. Calvin Beisner will speak on The Evangelical Debate on Global Warming: An Overview and Assessment.
Register online.Back to top The conference will call attention to new scientific research on the causes and consequences of climate change, and to economic analysis of the cost and effectiveness of proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. New scientific discoveries are casting doubt on how much of the warming of the twentieth century was natural and how much was man-made, and governments around the world are beginning to confront the astronomical cost of reducing emissions. Economists, meanwhile, are calculating that the cost of slowing or stopping global warming exceeds the social benefits. The purpose of ICCC-4 is the same as it was for the first three events: to build momentum and public awareness of the global warming “realism” movement, a network of scientists, economists, policymakers, and concerned citizens who believe sound science and economics, rather than exaggeration and hype, ought to determine what actions, if any, are taken to address the problem of climate change. Speakers will include over a hundred scientists, economists, and other scholars from around the world.
Register online.Back to top Briefly NotedLewis: How I Was Not Al Gored into Submission
Beisner: Foreign Policy Magazine Sticks a Thumb in the Dike of Climategate
Ball: Climate Group Plans Review
Caruba: Stop Al Gore Before He Lies Again..and Again...and Again!
Moynihan: UK Winter the Coldest Since Late 1970sBack to top Meet the CriticsHave you ever been at a loss for words when challenged by the alarmist's claim of scientific "consensus," or that dissenting scientists are unqualified? Not only does consensus prove nothing, but the very idea of "consensus" among scientists on catastrophic manmade climate change is simply unfounded. The Cornwall Alliance's Meet the Critics gives you basic information on 64 of the leading critics of dangerous manmade global warming, one of them being:
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Ph.D.
Founding director of the International Arctic Research Center and former director of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, geophysicist Syun-Ichi Akasofu is the recipient of numerous awards and honors and is considered one of the world's most cited authors. "Most reporters, who come to Alaska to try to find the greenhouse disasters, have little knowledge of the Arctic," Akasofu explains, but "It is normal for tidewater glaciers to calve large blocks of ice from the face as they reach the sea, and they will do so regardless of how warm or cold it is. Most glaciers in the world have been receding since 1800 or earlier, well before 1940, when CO2 began to increase significantly." Among numerous publications by Akasofu are Two Natural Components of the Recent Climate Change, Global Temperature Changes During the Last Millennium and the Prediction for 2100, The Big Ice Age or the Big Steamy Age?, and Why Has Global Warming Become Such a Passionate Subject? Let's Not Lose Our Cool.
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., National Spokesman
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, http://www.cornwallalliance.org/
Information in this newsletter is for scholarly and educational use only and may not be copied or reproduced for any other purposes without prior permission of the copyright holders.
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