It has become
commonplace knowledge, and is unchallenged, that global
average temperature has not increased since 1998. This
corresponds to a 9-year period during which the level of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, in contrast, did increase, and
that by almost 5%.
The greenhouse hypothesis - which
asserts that carbon dioxide increases of human origin will
cause dangerous global warming - is clearly invalidated by
these data.
As if that were not enough, a leading computer
modelling team has recently published a paper in Nature
which acknowledges what climate rationalists (the so-called
“sceptics”) have always asserted. Which is that,
contrary to IPCC assessments, any human influence on global
temperature is so small that it cannot yet be differentiated
from natural cycles of climate change. The same modellers
have even predicted (after the start of the event, of
course) that cooling will now occur for at least the next
few years. Mortal strike two against dangerous, human-caused
warming.
State officials say they’re launching a groundbreaking program in
which they will assist communities perched on the Massachusetts coast
in coping with global warming hazards like rising sea level and
stronger and more frequent storms.
The program, StormSmart Coasts, was announced today by the Executive
Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, which billed it as a
"nation-leading initiative."
The program will begin with four workshops this month, in Norwell,
New Bedford, Barnstable, and Danvers, that will offer information on
how communities can protect property and people from coastal storms.
Written by Nathan Burchfiel, Business & Media Institute
Wednesday, 07 May 2008
Global warming alarmists, news media portray arctic beasts as victims and spokesbears, but protecting their thriving population means greatly increased federal power to control our lives.
He’s
on the cover of magazines like Time and Vanity Fair and appears on TV
regularly as the image of the environmental movement. Now the polar
bear could be pounding a path to your door.
Under
pressure from environmentalists, the U.S. Department of the Interior
must decide by May 15 whether to protect polar bears under the
Endangered Species Act. But such protections could mean increased
government control over energy and “widespread social and economic
impacts” for ordinary Americans.
“The
consequences of listing the polar bear will have widespread social and
economic impacts without providing any more protection for the bears,”
said Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) in an April 2007 news release.
The
term jumping the shark alludes to a specific scene in a 1977 episode of
the TV series Happy Days when the popular character Arthur "Fonzie"
Fonzarelli literally jumps over a shark while water skiing. The scene
was so preposterous that many believed it to be an ill-conceived
attempt at reviving the declining ratings of the flagging show.
The expression is used to refer to tired TV shows which have similarly passed their peak.
Once
a show has "jumped the shark" fans sense a noticeable decline in
quality or feel the show has undergone too many changes to retain its
original appeal.
TIME magazine warned that scientists had observed “bizarre and
unpredictable weather patterns” which led them to believe the world was headed
for “a global climatic upheaval.” Fluctuations in temperature, rainfall
and sea ice were all described as signs of impending doom.
But the scientists interviewed by TIME weren’t talking about global warming, and the
magazine wasn’t issued in the 21st century. The June 1974 report in TIME
warned of a new ice age, touching off other
articles in respected publications about expanding glaciers, crop failures and
killer tornados.
Newsweek, for example,
published its own story within a year, claiming that the evidence in support of
the dire predictions “has now begun to accumulate so massively that
meteorologists are hard pressed to keep up with it.” The New York
Times followed in 1975, noting that “a
major cooling is widely considered to be inevitable.”
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
Despite
a state budget up to $20 billion in the hole, despite Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger urging 10 percent cuts for state departments, and
despite revenue lagging behind expectations, the governor plans to add
211 more state employees at a cost of $55.4 million, San Francisco
Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross reported Monday.
Actually, they reported “no fewer than” 211 of these
greenhouse-gas busters will be added at taxpayer expense, drawing up to
$102,000 a year, the annual salary for the attorneys among them.
Most of these new jobs are slated for the Air Resources Board, an
imperious bureaucracy that intends to enforce the far-reaching,
potentially economically devastating and piously named Global Warming
Solutions Act of 2006, also known as Assembly Bill 32.
Thirty days after Steve McIntyre caught NASA cooking climate historyagain -
this time in a feeble attempt to somehow conceal the
alarmist-embarrassing downward trend since 1998 -- Al Gore shamelessly
portrayed Saturday's Myanmar cyclone catastrophe as a ‘consequence' of
global warming.
A mere 16 days after NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed
that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation's cool phase shift would likely
bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years, Gore told NPR
that the "trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to
be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global
warming on higher ocean temperatures." This just 6 days after a German
study also predicted cooler ocean temperatures due to the Meridional
Overturning Circulation entering a weak cycle, and in spite of there
being absolutely no empirical evidence of a global warming / storm
strength link.
Left-wing Web site founder blasts media for considering skeptical perspective on 'climate crisis.'
Arianna Huffington, a pioneer of and cheerleader for the new media has abandoned traditional media standards.
Huffington, editor-in-chief and co-founder of The HuffingtonPost Web site,
said that listening to both sides for a story isn’t the way to report
the news. According to Huffington, it should be the role of the media
to be the arbiter of truth, even if there is a dissenting view.
When heralded Canadian environmentalist Lawrence Solomon first set
out two years ago — on a bet, no less — to find credible dissenters to
the well-entrenched climate change dogma, he thought he might perhaps
unearth enough material for a few National Post columns. Instead, like
Alice passing through the looking glass, Mr. Solomon entered a world
wherein it soon became clear the much-ballyhooed idea of a "scientific
consensus" was as nonsensical as "Jabberwocky."
"I had picked
several of the most essential and/or most widely publicized 'building
blocks' of the case for catastrophic global warming," Mr. Solomon
writes. "In each case, not only was I able to find a truly eminent,
world-renowned leader in the field who disputed the point in question,
but in each case the denier had more authority, sometimes far more
authority, than those who put forward the building block in the first
place."
The effects of a
massive volcanic eruption in Peru more than 400 years ago might have
significantly impacted societies and agriculture world-wide, according
to a new study of historic records.
Huaynaputina
erupted in southern Peru on Feb. 19, 1600, driving volcanic mudflows
that destroyed villages for many miles around and spewing a huge column
of smoke and ash into the atmosphere.
The eruption of Huaynaputina represents the largest known eruption in South America in the past 500 years, said study leader Ken Verosub of the University of California, Davis.