Monday, July 13, 2009

Whither climate change? What is the real agenda?

It is noted that the new term adopted by the environmental "sky is falling" group is "climate change" to replace the old term "global warming."

But its perhaps not so unexpected when you consider that the globe mysteriously stopped warming in 1998. That occurred even though manmade CO2 emissions have continued to rise.

Unfortunately, that has not stopped the "Chicken Littles" out there from demanding that we take great and painful steps to limit the use of fossil fuels in the U. S. even if few others do.

One must question why we should do this to cure a problem that doesn't even exist.

There are two articles out lately that explain what is happening. Unfortunately, our media in the United States is ignoring the fact that there are reputable scientists that disagree with the "consensus" view that we are having a catastrophic warming event. The two I mention are from the United Kingdom.

Ian Plimer, in an interview in the Spectator, has another view:

‘The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology."

In his book, Heaven and Earth, he pointed out that:

".... polar ice has been present on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate changes are cyclical and random; that the CO2 in the atmosphere — to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction — is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface rocks, air, soils and life; that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food; that the earth’s warmer periods — such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian’s Wall — were times of wealth and plenty."

During the period of growing gapes and citrus in southern Scotland, the world was far warmer than now, and warmer than predicted in the next hundred years.

His view of the various computer models used to forecast future climate change is correct:

"...I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase."

So there you have it. There is more from him, but let's consider the article by Christopher Booker in the Telegraph.

He speaks of the G-8 summit last week which committed to fight "global warming", or "climate change", if you will:

"Last week in Italy, the various branches of our emerging world government, G8 and G20, agreed in principle that the world must by 2050 cut its CO2 emissions in half. Britain and the US are already committed to cutting their use of fossil fuels by more than 80 per cent. Short of an unimaginable technological revolution, this could only be achieved by closing down virtually all our economic activity: no electricity, no transport, no industry. All this is being egged on by a gigantic publicity machine, by the UN, by serried ranks of government-funded scientists, by cheerleaders such as Al Gore, last week comparing the fight against global warming to that against Hitler's Nazis, and by politicians who have no idea what they are setting in train."

He goes on:

"What makes this even odder is that the runaway warming predicted by their computer models simply isn't happening. Last week one of the four official sources of temperature measurement, compiled from satellite data by the University of Huntsville, Alabama, showed that temperatures have now fallen to their average level since satellite data began 30 years ago."

He then talks of the paper by George Carlin at the EPA, which the EPA attempted to suppress:

"In March, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has a key role in President Obama's plans to curb CO2 emissions, asked one of its senior policy analysts, Alan Carlin, to report on the science used to justify its policy. His 90-page paper recommended that the EPA carry out an independent review of the science, because the CO2 theory was looking indefensible, while the "counter consensus'' view – solar radiation and ocean currents – seemed to fit the data much better. Provoking a considerable stir, Carlin's report was stopped dead, on the grounds that it was too late to raise objections to what was now the EPA's official policy."

Why the rush to judgment on a ruinous "cap and trade" bill in the United States? Now that the global warming "consensus" is beginning to collapse, and the globe is cooling again, would it not be better to stop and study the issue more thoroughly?

In a deep recession it just does not make sense to usher in radical rules that will greatly increase everyone's energy bills. Particularly when the worls biggest CO2 emitter is not going to join in. So if Obama and the Democrats have their way, we are going to ruin our economy while giving China, India and other developing nations a giant competitive edge over Americans.

That makes so little sense that I have to wonder if their agenda is not to solve the imagined global warming, but to "transform" our economy into something the left can be proud of, but at the cost of millions of jobs.

Sheer madness.

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