2008 will be the year that the climate alarmists will be discredited

Media Promotes Global Warming Alarmism by Jack Kelly at RealClearPolitics via Yahoo News:

About this time last year, Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit of East Anglia University in Britain, predicted 2007 would be the warmest year on record.

It didn't turn out that way. 2007 was only the 9th warmest year since global temperature readings were first made in 1861.

2007 was also the coldest year of this century, noted Czech physicist Lubos Motl.

Both global warming alarmists like Dr. Jones and skeptics like Dr. Motl forecast that this year will be slightly cooler than last year. If so, that means it will be a decade since the high water mark in global temperature was set in 1998.

And the trend line is down. Average global temperature in 2007 was lower than for 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 and 2001. November of last year was the coldest month since January of 2000, and December was colder still. "Global warming has stopped," said David Whitehouse, former science editor for the BBC. "It's not a viewpoint or a skeptic's inaccuracy. It's an observational fact."

But observational fact matters little to global warming alarmists, particularly to those in the news media. "In 2008, your television will bring you image after image of natural havoc linked to global warming," said John Tierney, who writes a science column for the New York Times. "You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change -- and that these images are a mere preview of what's in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet."

"Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter," said Steven Guibeault of Greenpeace. There is no dispute among scientists that the planet warmed about 0.3 degrees Celsius between 1980 and 1998. What is in dispute is what caused the warming, and whether it will continue. The alarmists say the warming was caused chiefly by emissions of carbon dioxide from our automobiles and factories, and that, consequently, it will continue at an ever increasing rate unless we humans change our behavior. The skeptics say the warming trend was caused chiefly by natural cycles, and that it is at or near its end.

"The earth is at the peak of one of its passing warm spells," said Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. It'll start getting cold by 2012, and really, really cold around 2041, he predicts.

The news media promote global warming alarmism through selective reporting. Dr. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado noted that a paper published in an obscure scientific journal that argued there was a link between hurricanes and global warming generated 79 news articles, while a paper that debunked the connection published in a far more prestigious journal generated only three.

"When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign the planet was warming," Mr. Tierney wrote. "When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored."

Two studies published last year which indicated the melting of Arctic sea ice was due more to cyclical changes in ocean currents and winds than to planetary warming also attracted little attention, Mr. Tierney noted.

And though the record melting of Arctic sea ice this summer was widely reported, the record growth of Arctic sea ice this fall (58,000 square miles of ice each day for 10 straight days) was not.

More than 400 scientists -- many of them members of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- challenge the claims of the leading global warming alarmist, former Vice President and now Nobel laureate Al Gore, said a report issued by the Republicans on the U.S. Senate's Environment and Public Works committee last month. Kailee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Mr. Gore, said there criticisms should be discounted because 25 or 30 of the scientists may have received funding from the Exxon Mobil Corp.

It's Mr. Gore who is the crook, says French physicist Claude Allegre in a new book. He's made millions in an eco-business based on phony science, Dr. Allegre charges.

Mr. Gore isn't alone, says Weather Channel founder John Coleman: "Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming," Mr. Coleman wrote. "Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going...In time, in a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious."

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