Sowell: Cold Water on ‘Global Warming’

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. He outlines the importance of the "International Conference on Climate Change" Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?

It has almost become something of a joke when some "global warming" conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold weather.

But stampedes and hysteria are no joke — and creating stampedes and hysteria has become a major activity of those hyping a global warming "crisis."

They mobilize like-minded people from a variety of occupations, call them all "scientists" and then claim that "all" the experts agree on a global warming crisis.

Their biggest argument is that there is no argument.

A whole cottage industry has sprung up among people who get grants, government agencies who get appropriations, politicians who get publicity and the perpetually indignant who get something new to be indignant about. It gives teachers something to talk about in school instead of teaching.

Those who bother to check the facts often find that not all those who are called scientists are really scientists and not all of those who are scientists are specialists in climate. But who bothers to check facts these days?

A new and very different conference on global warming will be held in New York City, under the sponsorship of the Heartland Institute, on March 2nd to March 4th — weather permitting.

It is called an "International Conference on Climate Change." Its subtitle is "Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?" Among those present will be professors of climatology, along with scientists in other fields and people from other professions.

They come from universities in England, Hungary, and Australia, as well as from the United States and Canada, and include among other dignitaries the president of the Czech Republic.

There will be 98 speakers and 400 participants.

The theme of the conference is that "there is no scientific consensus on the causes or likely consequences of global warming."

Many of the participants in this conference are people who have already expressed skepticism about either the prevailing explanations of current climate change or the dire predictions about future climate change.

These include authors of such books as "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years" by Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, and "Shattered Consensus," edited by Patrick J. Michaels.

This will be one of the rare opportunities for the media to hear the other side of the story — for those old-fashioned journalists who still believe that their job is to inform the public, rather than promote an agenda.

Read the whole thing.

Global cooling

Ahhh, 2008 - the year we prove the climate alarmists wrong, wrong, wrong.


From Michael Asher's blog at Daily Tech:

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change every recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

Emphasis added.

h/t: Drudge.

Update: Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

Woof.

Global-Warming Authoritarianism

We recently heard Canada's most famous environmentalist and climate fascist David Suzuki call for the jailing of politicians who disregard his version of climate science.

Now, Dr. Keith Lockitch discusses this draconian attitude amongst global warming alarmists at American Daily.

Many people are calling for drastic political action to cope with climate change. But the authors of a new book, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, go much further, claiming that global warming can be effectively dealt with only by "an authoritarian form of government."

(...)

"Views like this reveal an ugly and ominous aspect of the political frenzy surrounding global warming," said Dr. Keith Lockitch, a resident fellow of the Ayn Rand Institute. "Though easy to dismiss as overwrought and atypical, such views expose a very real authoritarianism underlying the calls for action on climate change.

h/t: Icecap

Global cooling blonde joke

One winter morning in Pennsylvania a couple was listening to the radio while eating breakfast. They heard the announcer say, "We are going to have 8 to 10 inches of snow today. You must park your car on the even-numbered side of the street, so the snow plows can get through"

Norman's wife went out and moved her car.

A week later while they were again eating breakfast, the radio announcer said, "We are expecting 10 to 12 inches of snow today. You must park your car on the odd-numbered side of the street, so the snow plows can get through."

Norman's wife went out and moved her car again.

The next week they were again having breakfast, when the radio announcer said, "We are expecting 12 to 14 inches of snow today. You must park....." Then the electric power went off.

Norman's wife was very upset, and with a worried look on her face she said, "Honey, I don't know what to do. Which side of the street do I need to park on so the snow plows can get through?"

With the love and understanding in his voice that all men who are married to blondes exhibit, Norman said, "Why don't you just leave it in the garage this time."

Got it from this guy.

Global Warming? It's the coldest winter in decades

From England's Daily Express comes this revelation:

NEW evidence has cast doubt on claims that the world’s ice-caps are melting, it emerged last night.

(...)

A photograph of polar bears clinging on to a melting iceberg has become one of the most enduring images in the campaign against climate change.

It was used by former US Vice President Al Gore during his Inconvenient Truth lectures about mankind’s impact on the world. But scientists say the northern hemisphere has endured its coldest winter in decades.

Heavy snow brings Greece to standstill

How's that "global warming" thing working out in the Greek Isles?

A raging snow storm that blanketed most of Greece over the weekend also continued into the early morning hours on Monday, plunging the country into sub-zero temperatures. Public transport buses were at a standstill on Monday in the wider Athens area, while ships remained in ports, public services remained closed, and schools and courthouses in the more severely-stricken prefectures were also closed. Scores of villages, mainly on the island of Crete, and in the prefectures of Evia, Argolida, Arcadia, Lakonia, Viotia, and the Cyclades islands were snowed in.

(...)

Although the airport reopened at 3:00 a.m., and snow plows were working continuously to keep runways open, scores of flights were cancelled due to low visibility and hazardous conditions at other domestic destination airports. According to the AIA, 461 flights (incoming and outgoing) are scheduled for Monday, but airlines had already cancelled 64 flights as of 10:00 a.m., and passengers are advised to contact their airline.

(...)

Meanwhile, more than 100 villages were snowed-in on the island of Crete -- 54 in Chania prefecture, 26 in Iraklion prefecture, 19 in Lasithi prefecture, and 5 in Rethymno prefecture -- as wel as 25 villages in Evia, 15 in Argolida, 3 in Arcadia, 9 in Lakonia, 2 in Viotia, and 4 in the Cyclades prefecture.

Temperatures in Athens dropped to -6C before dawn, while the coldest temperatures were recorded in Kozani, Grevena, Kastoria and Florina, where they plunged to -12C.

Apocalypse? NO!

Apocalypse? NO!
Why 'global warming' is not a global crisis is the title of a new DVD released recently by SPPI.

Are Al Gore and the IPCC right about global warming being a planetary emergency? NO! ... says the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in a devastating 2007 lecture delivered at Cambridge University.

Watch Lord Monckton expose and eviscerate climate myth after climate myth. "Climate change is a non-problem. The correct policy to address a non-problem is to havethe courage to do nothing," says lord Monckton.

Filmed in High Definition, the DVD carries a 90-minute version broken into chapters, plus a 35-minute version. The DVD is available in NTSC (US & Canada) and PAL (Europe and Asia) here.

Hiatus

Chill out!



I'm on
V A C A T I O N !


But, I'll be back soon...

Just gotta get away from all this global cooling for a while...

2008: Discrediting the Climate Alarmists

Anyone who's been paying attention knows that this has been a cold winter so far. Is it due to La Niña? the new solar minima? Well, Anthony has a couple of very interesting posts at Watts Up With That?

First there's Monday's RSS Satellite data for Jan08: 2nd coldest January for the planet in 15 years:

Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa just posted the latest MSU (Microwave Sounder Unit) data.

January posted a -.08°C near global anomaly between -70S and 82.5N latitude (the viewshed of the satellite sounder). That makes it the coldest month since January 2000, and the 2nd coldest January for the planet in 15 years. Both northern and southern hemispheres posted negative anomalies of -.120°C and -.038°C respectively, happening for the first time since January 2000.

The United States posted a -.557°C anomaly for January 2008 and a -0.196°C anomaly for December 2007.

Emphasis added. He's followed up with today's post UAH Satellite data for Jan08 in agreement with RSS data

University of Alabama, Huntsville (John Christy) just published their UAH lower troposphere data for January 2008. Like the RSS data set, it shows a negative anomaly, and a steep decline in the past 12 months though the magnitude of the anomaly is slightly lower at ∆T -.588 than the RSS ∆T -.629 degrees Centigrade.

Anthony has kindly plotted the data for those of us who are graphically inclined.


But what I like best is this quote from Accuweather's Joe Bastardi:

“It is straight out of the book of climate. The pattern is so much like the 1949-1950 La Nina, which was signaling the start of the reversal of the warming of the earth’s climate in the 1930s, ‘40s and early 50s. Only someone choosing to ignore it, or not wanting to see it, would not be cognizant of it. But because such a pattern leads to warmer than normal conditions in areas where the greatest centers of human induced global warming information comes out of, western Europe and the eastern part of North America, no attention is being called to the fact that the winter this year does have outstandingly large areas of colder than normal temperatures and in areas, the vast expanses of the tropical Pacific, and the vast expanse of the air above us.”

Related: 2008: the Year the Climate Alarmists will be Discredited

Bullshit: Environmental Hysteria

As only Penn and Teller can explain it!

MacRae: CO2 not the primary cause of global warming

CARBON DIOXIDE IS NOT THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING: THE FUTURE CAN NOT CAUSE THE PAST
From a paper by Allan M.R. MacRae, Calgary Alberta Canada

...despite continuing increases in atmospheric CO2, no significant global warming occurred in the last decade, as confirmed by both Surface Temperature and satellite measurements in the Lower Troposphere.

Contrary to IPCC fears of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, Earth may now be entering another natural cooling trend.

Earth Surface Temperature warmed approximately ("~") 0.7 degrees Celsius ("C") from ~1910 to ~1945, cooled ~0.4 C from ~1945 to ~1975, warmed ~0.6 C from ~1975 to 1997, and has not warmed significantly from 1997 to 2007.

CO2 emissions due to human activity rose gradually from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, reaching ~1 billion tonnes per year (expressed as carbon) by 1945, and then accelerated to ~9 billion tonnes per year by 2007. Since ~1945 when CO2 emissions accelerated, Earth experienced ~22 years of warming, and ~40 years of either cooling or absence of warming.

The IPCC's position that increased CO2 is the primary cause of global warming is not supported by the temperature data.

In fact, strong evidence exists that disproves the IPCC's scientific position.

Via Icecap.

G&M blasts HRCs

Is the main stream media awakening to the assault on freedom of speech in Canada? Here's some welcome support in this editorial from the Globe and Mail, via PWGSC:

There are those who disagree vehemently with Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. Both men are staunch conservatives whose success is built largely upon the ability to provoke. Mr. Steyn is a brilliant writer who sometimes pushes the boundaries of mainstream opinion; Mr. Levant is an unabashed self-promoter. Yet even those Canadians who take issue with the opinions or methods of Messrs. Steyn and Levant should be more offended by the gross overreaching of this country's human-rights commissions in investigating the two men's work.

h/t: Just Right.

For more on the fight to defend free speech visit Mark Steyn or Ezra Levant or better yet, show your support...

More Ice than Ever

Via Patrick J. Michaels at the American Spectator:

Despite a warming Southern Ocean, the amount of ice surrounding Antarctica is now at the highest level ever measured for this time of the year, since satellites first began to monitor it almost thirty years ago. This represents a continuation of the record set last winter (our summer).

Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, we can also look at the departure from the average for ice mass in a given month. At present, the coverage of ice surrounding Antarctica is almost exactly two million square miles above where it is historically supposed to be at this time of year. It's farther above normal than it has ever been for any month in climatologic records. Around now, because it's summer down there and the ice is headed towards its annual low point, there should be about seven million square miles of it. That means, as data in University of Illinois' web publication Cryosphere Today shows, that there is nearly 30% more ice down in Antarctica than usual for this time of the year.

Emphasis and link added.

A new climate change champion?

Dr. Tim Ball & Tom Harris note that "among average Americans, fears of climate change Armageddon is anything but universal" and propose that Telling the truth about global warming offers Romney support from a vast constituency

With Senator John McCain so firmly entrenched in the alarmist camp, this would seem to offer a significant opportunity to McCain’s only serious rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Romney has done the best job among candidates in avoiding the use of environmental extremist language. However, his opposition to schemes such as the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act has been based only on economics, particularly the colossal trade disadvantage such legislation would impose on the U.S.

While Romney’s argument is correct as far as it goes – imposing draconian carbon dioxide restrictions on the US while 4/5th of the world’s population who live in developing countries continue to industrialize without such limits would indeed ship jobs and wealth overseas – this point is not sufficient. Most conscientious Americans want to do their part to help address serious global problems. By explaining that human-induced climate change is trivial, or at least highly speculative, Romney has the opportunity to sway many more Republicans, and eventually Americans of all political persuasions, to support his presidential bid.

via Canada Free Press

Suzuki calls to jail politicians

First they came for the editors and columnists with the assaults on free speech through Canada's very own politically correct kangaroo courts, ironically known as "Human Rights Commissions".

Now comes a rallying call to stifle all debate on climate change: Jail politicians who ignore science: Suzuki.

Suzuki, of course means those politicians who ignore his version of science, a.k.a. the computer modelled doomsday projections of the IPCC. Suzuki would probably like to silence the growing number of skeptical scientists as well as those nasty politicians.

Jailing political opponents is something we once thought only happened in third world dictatorships or Communist countries. Think again. David Suzuki and the political left in Canada would love to do the same thing here. Let's just put Suzuki and his High Priest Al Gore in charge of the world. They know what's best for us.

No need for free speech or democracy here anymore.

There's an interesting discussion about free speech at Free Dominion:

Eye Weekly, Toronto's left-wing freebie magazine, gets it. They disagree with me and the late, great Western Standard on just about everything. But they know that if a conservative publisher can be hauled before the government today, it will be a leftist publisher tomorrow. Here's an excerpt from their latest editorial:

"...there are things on which civilized people from across the political spectrum agree, basic assumptions that are necessary prerequisites to the functioning of a democracy: that only open debate and the airing of conflicting opinions produces progress, and that everyone is entitled to due process before the court system. The things that keep us safe from totalitarianism are free speech and due process. That the human rights commissions of BC, Alberta and the federal government are even hearing these complaints endangers both.

...Human Rights Commissions, who may still serve some purpose as an informal way for victims of employment and housing discrimination to find redress, need to be reined in. They should have no jurisdiction to restrict or stand in judgment of freedom of speech and of the press."

Eye Weekly knows this isn't a battle between the left and the right on the spectrum of ideas. It's a battle between everyone inthe spectrum of ideas, against those who would attack the very notion of a spectrum of ideas.

Free speech is under attack. From the political Left. Environmentalism has become the means to enact the socialist agenda. David Suzuki has just shown us the lengths the Left is willing to go in order to accomplish that.

Global Warming: Crisis or Scam?

Reclaiming the World of Real Science: Heartland Institute Vs RealClimate, written by Lubos Motl, Saturday, 02 February 2008.

The Heartland Institute organizes a climate conference in March that is, unlike the conferences that you usually hear about in the media, open to climate skeptics and experts regardless of their political opinions or overall sentiments about the relationship between Nature and human civilization.

The organizers have sent invitations to many kinds of climate experts, including some of the well-known champions of the climate alarm. These invitations have provoked a hysterical reaction from RealClimate.ORG.

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change
Sponsored by The Heartland Institute

March 2 - March 4, 2008
Marriott New York Marquis Times Square Hotel
1535 Broadway
New York City, NY U.S.A.

On human rights

I am a Canadian,
free to speak without fear,
free to worship in my own way,
free to stand for what I think right,
free to oppose what I believe wrong,
or free to choose those
who shall govern my country.
This heritage of freedom
I pledge to uphold
for myself and all mankind.

The above words are from Canada's Bill of Rights. That document was the work of Conservative Prime Minister John George Diefenbaker back in 1960 (yes, this old dog remembers). How things have changed in 48 years! A prominent Liberal blogger spoke out Saturday in an open letter to his own party about his perception of a threat to human rights:

Yours is the political party that constitutionalized human rights 1982. Yours is the political party that passed the Human Rights Act in 1977. Now, in 2008, we discover that you are permitting one of your very own Members of Parliament to dismantle the latter. Or you are saying nothing, as he attempts to do so all on his own. Either way, your leadership is lacking. It is pathetic, in fact.

This modern day, self righteous twit is actually arguing against a recently introduced private member's motion by Liberal MP Keith Martin; a motion which is a much needed and welcome first step toward the restoration of our rights of free of speech, which were so eloquently described by PM John Diefenbaker back in 1960; rights that have been recently eroded and seriously threatened by our very own Orwellian Human Rights Commissions.

Folks like this have clearly become so absorbed in their own political correctness that they have made themselves unable to comprehend the fundamental issue of free speech. And that is exactly why they and their ideas are offensive. And pathetic. But then again, this is a free country and even fools like this have the right to say words that others may find offensive. And make no mistake, these words are very offensive.

But offensive ideas and speech must be met with debate and counter point. That's the way we do things in a free and open society. When we start to silence the voices of those with whom we disagree, that's when we are in real trouble. Worse, when the state decides what we can say, and what we can think, we will be doomed to the gulag. Hard to believe it, but it's happening in Canada right now. Slowly but surely.

And that's why we must support Liberal MP Keith Martin and his motion to limit the power of the HRC's and preserve that most basic of human rights: free speech.

UN report is an unreliable tool

...for determining public policy based on climate models, according to this news release: UN Global Warming Forecast Violates Accepted Principles

DALLAS, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Predictions of melting ice caps, catastrophic sea level rise and severe floods and droughts are the result of a United Nation's report that violates nearly half of accepted forecasting principles, according to a new study published by the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA).

More from the NCPA website:

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its Fourth Assessment Report. The report included predictions of big increases in average world temperatures by 2100, resulting in an increasingly rapid loss of the world's glaciers and ice caps, a dramatic global sea level rise that would threaten low-lying coastal areas, the spread of tropical diseases, and severe drought and floods.

These dire predictions are not, however, the result of scientific forecasting; rather, they are the opinions of experts. Expert opinion on climate change has often been wrong, say Kesten C. Green, of the Business and Economic Forecasting Unit, Monash University, and J. Scott Armstrong, of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Climate scientists now use computer models, but there is no evidence that modeling improves the accuracy of predictions. For example, according to the models, the Earth should be warmer than actual measurements show it to be. Furthermore:

• The General Circulation Models (GCMs) that are used failed to predict recent global average temperatures as accurately as fitting a simple curve to the historical data and extending it into the future.
• The models forecast greater warming at higher altitudes in the tropics, whereas the data show the greatest warming has occurred at lower altitudes and at the poles.
• Furthermore, individual models have produced widely different forecasts from the same initial conditions, and minor changes in assumptions can produce forecasts of global cooling.

Thus it is not surprising that international surveys of climate scientists from 27 countries in 1996 and 2003 found growing skepticism over the accuracy of climate models. Of more than 1,060 respondents, only 35 percent agreed with the statement, "Climate models can accurately predict future climates," whereas 47 percent disagreed.

Here's the full report in PDF format.

Restoration of Free Speech begins

with a private member's motion in the House of Commons.

Private Members' Notices of Motions

M-446 — January 30, 2008 — Mr. Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca) — That, in the opinion of the House, subsection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act should be deleted from the Act.

Hats off to Liberal MP Keith Martin.

Comment by Ezra:

Congratulations to Martin for doing the right thing. But more than that: he has given the government itself a political opening to amend this awful law. The Conservatives should ensure that Motion M-446 goes to a vote, and every one of them -- as well as other MPs of good faith from every party that cares about freedom -- should join with Martin to make his amendment law.

Be sure to let your Member of Parliament know that he/she should support this motion.