The Global Warming Swindle

Fraud? Distortion? Incompetence? Global Warming "science"

2009-10-02T22:55:00.001-07:00

"I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. The surface temperature data is a contaminated mess with a significant warm bias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence in its 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in gross disagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with each passing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion."

Read the rest here.

This piece explores in particular the distorted tree ring analysis allegedly showing that temperatures were stable until the 20th century, when they started rocketing upward, in the shape of a hockey stick. Researchers just threw out the data from a large number of tree rings that did not show exceptional global warming in the 20th century, relying on a few unusual tree rings that did seem to show unusual growth (hence unusual warming).

If the data does not fit the theory, just throw it out!

Cap and Trade's creators think it's a poor way to regulate CO2

2009-08-13T07:39:00.000-07:00

From the Wall Street Journal:

"In the 1960s, a University of Wisconsin graduate student named Thomas Crocker came up with a novel solution for environmental problems: cap emissions of pollutants and then let firms trade permits that allow them to pollute within those limits.

"Now legislation using cap-and-trade to limit greenhouse gases is working its way through Congress and could become the law of the land. But Mr. Crocker and other pioneers of the concept are doubtful about its chances of success. They aren't abandoning efforts to curb emissions. But they are tiptoeing away from an idea they devised decades ago, doubting it can work on the grand scale now envisioned..."

Cap-and-trade bill's effects: one twentieth of a degree

2009-06-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

Someone ran the numbers through a government-funded computer climate model (known as MAGICC -- the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change) to determine how much warming we could offset by implementing the new cap-and-trade climate bill soon to be voted on in the US House of Representatives. You can run this model from your own computer, by the way.

"By the year 2050, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would result in a global temperature 'savings' of about 0.05ºC regardless of the IPCC scenario used—this is equivalent to about 2 years’ worth of warming. By the year 2100, the emissions pathways become clearly distinguishable, and so to do the impacts of Waxman-Markey. Assuming the IPCC mid-range scenario (A1B) Waxman-Markey would result in a projected temperature rise of 2.847ºC, instead of 2.959ºC rise— a mere 0.112ºC temperature “savings.” Under the IPCC’s high-emissions scenario, instead of a projected rise of 4.414ºC, Waxman-Markey limits the rise to 4.219ºC—a 'savings' of 0.195ºC. In either case, this works out to about 5 years’ worth of warming. In other words, a full implementation and adherence to the emissions restrictions provisions described by the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would result only in setting back the projected rise in global temperatures by a few years—a scientifically meaningless prospect.

"...The bottom line is that a reduction of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions of greater than 80%, as envisioned in the Waxman-Markey climate bill will only produce a global temperature 'savings' during the next 50 years of about 0.05ºC. Calculating this isn’t all that difficult or costly. All it takes is a little MAGICC."

At 1200 pages, the bill is turning into a monstrosity of regulation, special favors to special interests, and the end result is higher cost for consumers of any kind of energy, with almost undetectable effects on global temperature.

Global Warming 101: Essential Reads

2009-05-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

I've seen Dr. Roy Spencer, a climatologist from the University of Alabama, on TV and read some of his comments, but until today I had not visited his website.

Spencer has a brief article, Global Warming 101, which is the most clear and concise explanation of the global warming conundrum I have ever seen. Well worth the time, even if it needs to be read twice. I will try to put this into memory, because it really does distill the whole question down into the most basic parts.

In short, energy coming in from the sun equals energy out, radiating from the earth. However, various factors can change the equilibrium for a time. That's what all the debate is about.

Greenhouse gases (water vapor is the biggest factor along with a related factor, clouds) retard the flow of energy back into space. CO2 is a factor, but by itself this is minor. The slight warming caused directly by CO2 can be amplified by water vapor or diminished by clouds. The degree of warming will be highly dependent on the latter two factors, which are in dispute.

Now we come to the issue of mathematical computer climate models. The warming predicted for our future, which global warming alarmists to inflame the media and the public, will depend greatly on how the H2O amplification factor and the cloud formation factor are represented in the mathematical model.

Dr. Spencer does a Climate Model Reality Check in another web page that packs the essential information into a short essay. A few quotes:

"...virtually everyone now agrees that the direct warming effect from extra CO2 is relatively small – too small to be of much practical concern."

"...the main reason the models produce so much warming depends upon uncertain assumptions regarding how clouds will respond to warming. Low and middle-level clouds provide a ‘sun shade’ for the Earth, and the climate models predict that those clouds will dissipate with warming, thereby letting more sunlight in and making the warming worse. [High-altitude (cirrus) clouds have the opposite effect, and so a dissipation of those clouds would instead counteract the CO2 warming with cooling..."

The key here appears to be the response of clouds to higher temperature. The earth has been warming slightly over the past century. What has happened to cloud cover and what will happen to cloud cover as a result is simply unknown. Therefore at the heart of the climate models predicting global warming is a factor for a decrease in clouds (amplifying CO2 warming or other causes of warming) which is a huge question mark. A giant "guess factor." That factor may in fact be at odds with observations of clouds via satellite.

And forget about cloud response to global warming. What caused the slight warming in the first place?

Guesswork. It's all guesswork. A savvy and honest scientist will say, "We don't know." Period.

Global cooling: cause unknown

2009-03-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

[Global] Warming Might be On Hold, Study Finds

"Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.

"'This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950,' Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one.'"

If scientists don't understand what is causing current cooling, it is axiomatic that they do not understand what controls warming, either.

We don't understand where CO2 comes from or where it goes!

2009-02-27T10:56:00.000-08:00

We cannot understand the effect of CO2 on climate change, and it is folly to attempt to regulate it, if we do not know all the sources and sinks of CO2. The USA launched a satellite to study the issue -- a satellite which failed to reach orbit. Canada already has a functioning satellite to try to find answers to this essential question.

"The problem is that where carbon dioxide comes from, and where it is sucked out of the atmosphere, remains poorly understood.

"Clearly, if we're going to do something about climate change, we need to understand where CO2 is produced and particularly where it's absorbed.That's much less clear,' Quine said." [Ben Quine, the director of space engineering at York University]

article here

An astronaut skeptic

2009-02-16T08:12:00.000-08:00

Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn’t believe that humans are causing global warming.

"I don’t think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect," said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

read the rest in The Boston Herald

No sea level rise

2009-02-14T06:01:00.001-08:00

While global warming alarmists continue to spout shocking predictions about our coasts being inundated by rising sea levels, the best data given current interpretations is that the sea levels have not risen for several years.

An article by Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Josh Willis describes a project for measuring sea level from 3000 autonomous ocean floats maintained by the Argo project.

Willis is an ardent believer in global warming, caused by man. Note: "Now that humans have become a major force in the Earth’s climate, it is of paramount importance to build and maintain observing systems that can keep track of our ever-increasing impact." He has accepted the dogma that humans are a "major force" in earth's climate.

Willis also believes that the oceans will give us the easiest and best guage of global warming. "The most sensitive yardstick of human influence on the climate is the rise in globally-averaged sea level. On climate-relevant time-scales, total sea level rise equals the sum of the melt water from glaciers and ice sheets, plus the thermal expansion of seawater caused by absorption of excess heat. The first effect represents the response of the ice to a warming atmosphere. The second is directly related to the balance of incoming and outgoing energy of the Earth as a whole. That’s because 80 – 90% of the excess energy from anthropogenic forcing winds up warming the oceans (Levitus et al., 2005)."

Nevertheless, earlier data showed a rapid drop in sea levels, a fact reported by Rush Limbaugh, to the consternation of the "consensus" that man was causing dangerous warming.

With greater care to reduce software and measuring biases, a corrected result has been obtained. Sea level measurements when corrected for these errors no longer show rapid global sea level decline (and therefore global cooling). On the other hand, they show no sea level rise, either. Assuming that the glaciers are melting into the oceans, which would normally cause sea level increases, sea volume (per equivalent mass of H20) must be shrinking by an amount that counteracts the added glacial melt. Why? Because there is no rise in sea level from 2003 to 2006.
Josh Willis' article is a cautionary tale about the difficulty of accurately measuring anything that relates to global climate. It is also sobering for global warming alarmists. Sea levels may not be falling. But they do not appear to be rising, contrary to the shrieking of scientists and activists trying to convince us that we are destroying the planet with greenhouse gases.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the scientific "consensus" -- predicts a sea level rise of 0.18 - 0.59 meters ( 7 - 23 inches) by the year 2099, depending on the models and assumptions used. If sea levels were to rise 0.5 meters (approximately 18 inches), that would require an average increase of 5mm/year sea level rise. However, past measurements have shown only a 3mm annual rise, and recent measurements show no rise at all. It appears that even conservative predictions have been overly alarmist.

Either the glaciers are not melting, or the oceans are not warming. How else can one explain the non-rise in sea levels? Possibly both conditions are occurring.

Global surface air temperatures have been in decline for ten years.

The Antarctic Ice Sheet is growing.

Glaciers that have been melting for over a century are now growing. (Actually, on average, glaciers have been melting for over 10,000 years, but that could change. A look at temperature trends over the past 400,000 years indicate we are overdue for a return to a long ice age.)

The melting of Greenland ice is not accelerating, perhaps slowing.

It is time to follow the advice of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "Don't panic!" The people who are trying to incite panic are trying to sell you something.

Carbon credits/trading "a scam"

2009-01-23T07:47:00.000-08:00

President Obama and John McCain both campaigned on instuting a system of trading carbon credits ("cap and trade") as a means to reduce CO2 release. But rabid promoters of the global warming scare say such a system is a poor way to accomplish the goal.

"Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning," says James Lovelock, originator of the GAIA theory, and longtime environmental alarmist.

About carbon sequestration, another technique President Obama wants to promote, Lovelock says, "That is a waste of time. It's a crazy idea - and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done."

James Hansen, the "famous NASA scientist" who has been raising global warming alarm for many years, dissented from the current plans of Democratic Party environmentalists on their plans to deal with carbon release. From the Wall Street Journal:

"...Mr. Hansen endorses a straight carbon tax as the only 'honest, clear and effective' way to reduce emissions, with the revenues rebated in their entirety to consumers on a per-capita basis. 'Not one dime should go to Washington for politicians to pick winners,' he writes."

While Hansen may have lost his head when describing trains delivering coal to power generating plants as equivalent to the Nazi death trains bringing Jews to concentration camp crematoria, he seems to be clear on the incestuous relation between politicians and industry that would be fostered by "cap and trade."

What is cap and trade? Wikipedia gives a good overview. "A central authority (usually a government or international body) sets a limit or cap on the amount of a pollutant that can be emitted. Companies or other groups are issued emission permits and are required to hold an equivalent number of allowances (or credits) which represent the right to emit a specific amount. The total amount of allowances and credits cannot exceed the cap, limiting total emissions to that level. Companies that need to increase their emission allowance must buy credits from those who pollute less. The transfer of allowances is referred to as a trade. In effect, the buyer is paying a charge for polluting, while the seller is being rewarded for having reduced emissions by more than was needed." Al Gore's company and others like it will make millions brokering such trades.

Again, from the Wall Street Journal: "[Washington politicians prefer] posturing that disguises the cost of rising energy prices, such as cap and trade. This 'subterfuge,' as Mr. Hansen terms it, shifts the direct burden onto businesses, which then pass it along to consumers. Congress may flatter itself that it is saving mankind, but what the Members really want is a cap-and-trade windfall that they can redistribute in the green pork of Mr. Obama's 'new energy economy,' whatever that means."

It's all about money. Government money, regulations, and tax breaks benefitting big corporations and businesses. Pork. Now it becomes green pork. Haven't we had enough reckless spending already?

Physicists may save us from climate alarmists

2008-12-29T10:55:00.000-08:00

The physics community is starting to move into the global warming fray in a more public way. 2008 saw two physics publications endorse more debate and skepticism about the claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- especially claims that we are facing catastrophe of some sort.

These catastrophic predictions are based on computer models, which are essentially complex mathematical formulas. These formulas are the product of educated guesswork about how factors like sunlight, water vapor, the reflectivity of the earth's surface, CO2, methane, aerosols, and a few other factors act and interact with each other to increase or decrease global temperature. Physics is a field that is built on the bedrock of mathematics. Physicists are starting to intensely analyse and critique the models that climate scientists are using to predict disaster ahead as a result of man's fossil fuel usage.

Most recently, an editorial in Physics Today concluded, "Although the radiative [i.e. warming] effect of CO2 cannot be ignored, the science of climate change is more complex than presented by the IPCC." Author Roger A. Pielke Sr., senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, continues, "Humans are significantly altering the global climate, but in a variety of diverse ways beyond... CO2." (Physics Today, November 2008) In other words, the climate models are not sufficient to account for the many effects (both warming and cooling effects) of human activity.

Earlier this year in the Forum on Physics & Society, an online publication of the American Physical Society (the second largest organization of physicists in the world), an editorial announced, "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that [man-made] CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion. This editor (JJM) invited several people to contribute articles that were either pro or con." Whereas Al Gore says that the debate is over, a large group of qualified physicists still feel that debate is essential, because limiting carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases could have serious impact on our economy, and may be unnecessary. In short, many physicists and scientists in general do not agree that it is certain humans are primarily responsible for global warming.

Serious debate in scientific journals is needed. Such debate has started in the physics community. We need to understand climate before we think about attempting to manipulate it. So far, a "considerable presence within the scientific community" feel that we do not have that level of expertise and understanding.

Media Thought Police: Global Warming Skeptic Banned From TV

2008-11-30T20:20:00.000-08:00

"FOR YEARS David Bellamy was one of the best known faces on TV.

"A respected botanist and the author of 35 books, he had presented around 400 programmes over the years and was appreciated by audiences for his boundless enthusiasm.Yet for more than 10 years he has been out of the limelight, shunned by bosses at the BBC where he made his name, as well as fellow scientists and environmentalists.

"His crime? Bellamy says he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming. "

Read the rest...

Obama ignores the facts about climate change

2008-11-19T07:33:00.000-08:00

Obama Addresses Global Warming Summit

"'Few challenges facing America -- and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change,' he says in the video. 'The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season. Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken our economy and threaten our national security.'"

Sea levels (global mean, measured by satellite) rose 42mm in the 12 year period from 1994-2006. 42 mm. That's 1.7 inches. Are you frightened yet? I thought not. Also, notice on this graph that sea levels seem to have started a slight decline since 2006. This corresponds with falling global temperatures. (Sea levels are an expression mainly of volume, which expands or contracts with rising/falling temperature.) Generally speaking, sea levels have been rising for about 18,000 years, without any help from man. The general trend, has been up, and continued to be up in the 20th century.

"'[Leadership on climate change] will start with a federal cap and trade system,' he says. 'We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 percent by 2050. Further, we will invest $15 billion each year to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean energy future. We will invest in solar power, wind power, and next generation biofuels. We will tap nuclear power, while making sure it’s safe. And we will develop clean coal technologies.'"

Solar and wind cannot economically compete with nuclear. I favor nuclear, but I question Obama's commitment to it, given his inconsistent statements. Clean coal? He cannot wave a magic wand and make it happen. Maybe it can be done, maybe it can't. If not, Obama wants to destroy the coal industry or at least raise prices on electricity (through this cap and trade system) for all of us depending on coal-generated electricity.

Obama: "This investment will not only help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil, making the United States more secure. And it will not only help us bring about a clean energy future, saving our planet. It will also help us transform our industries and steer our country out of this economic crisis by generating five million new green jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced."

Increasing domestic energy supply is a worthwhile security goal. But Obama's statements about climate change are not correct. Earth's surface temperatures have been cooling since 1998. The atmosphere does not show the signature warming of the air approximately 10 miles up that should be evident if the warming we have seen (small as it has been in the past 100 years) were really due to greenhouse gases. Warming is seen mainly at the surface.

100 years from now, people will look back on this era and either laugh, or shake their heads in dismay, because we seemed unable to put real scientific data in perspective and exercise caution about making draconian changes in our economy on the basis of our primitive understanding of a very complex system -- global climate.

Science vs. science: NASA rewriting temperature data?

2008-11-15T08:11:00.000-08:00

War of the surface temperature readings:

On the one hand, we have the "HAD-CRUT" record of global temperature, from the UK Meteorological Office's Hadley Research Center for Climate Studies, which shows temperatures decreased since 1998.

The temperature-sensing satellites cataloged by the University of Alambama at Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) show a similar decrease.

NASA's Goddard Institute For Space Studies (GISS) data on Global Temperature Land-Ocean Index seems to show accelerating warming since the late 1990s. How can they disagree? Are we getting warmer or cooler?

The NASA data is managed by Dr. Hansen who is Al Gore's chief science advisor, and perhaps the most vociferous global warming advocate in the scientific community. Could they be massaging the data? Indeed they are.

This article at The Register ("Is The Earth Getting Warmer, Or Cooler?"), graphs and compares the global surface temperature records discussed above and shows how NASA is publishing temperature graphs today that differ from their 1999 graphs. NASA lowered temperature readings prior to 1970, making the increase in global temperatures since 1970 seem greater. At the same time, temperatures on the NASA graph since 1970 seem to have become subtly higher, making the recent increases look greater than before.

Obviously, when you see a graph from NASA (GISS), they are not reporting actual temperature readings. They are reporting "real" thermometer readings corrected for... what? (There are a number of reasons for corrections, but these are all subject to interpretation. You are not getting pure, unvarnished data. You are getting massaged data, for better or worse.) For example raw temperature readings from NASA's Arctic sensing stations have been massaged upward by approximately one-half degree in recent years.

Is the time coming when we will view official climate data from the government with the same degree of disbelief that we receive official economic statistics? Perhaps that time has come.

The Register author concludes: "Both of the satellite data sources, as well as Had-Crut, show worldwide temperatures falling below the IPCC estimates. Satellite data shows temperatures near or below the 30 year average - but NASA data has somehow managed to stay on track towards climate Armageddon. You can draw your own conclusions, but I see a pattern that is troublesome. In science, as with any other endeavour, it is always a good idea to have some separation between the people generating the data and the people interpreting it."

Thirty years of warming reversed. Poof! It's gone!

2008-11-05T22:08:00.000-08:00

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/10/20/lorne-gunter-thirty-years-of-warmer-temperatures-go-poof.aspx

Average global temperatures increased in the first part of the century until World War II. Then temperatures declined until around 1980. Since then we have experienced a slight global warming, up until the early 2000s.

The trend is down. All the warming experienced before has reversed in the last two years. The temperature is back where we started at the beginning of this recent warming trend in 1980.

The earth warms. Poof! It cools. Al Gore knoweth not why.

Thank God for global warming

2008-07-04T07:16:00.000-07:00

Take a look at the temperature graph on this page -- displaying temperatures for the past 400,000 years. Note that in previous times when the earth came out of an ice age -- approximately 120,000 years, 230,000 years, and 320,000 years ago -- the temperature spiked and then declined rapidly. Now notice the warming that occurred from approximately 15,000 - 10,000 years ago. The temperature did not spike up and then start to decline. It has risen about 10 degrees to the present level, and stayed fairly stable for many thousands of years. The temperature has reached and maintained some sort of plateau.

Can you imagine what life in North America and Europe might be like if the current natural warming trend had followed past patterns? It would be getting very cold indeed.

Science does not have a clear understanding of the reasons for this temperature plateau -- the oasis of warmth we've been enjoying in a history of much colder temperatures. Thank God for global (natural) warming!

Another feature of interest is to compare the CO2 levels to the temperature levels. Temperature increases clearly precede CO2 increases. CO2 did not initiate global warming in the past. Causes do not follow effects. This is illogical. At least in the past, CO2 did not cause rapid global warming.

Cooler global forecast, but fears of warming persist

2008-07-03T21:42:00.000-07:00

Although we are bombarded almost daily with stories of the melting North Pole, other details oddly do not get reported.

"Global temperature for 2008 is expected to be 0.37 °C above the long-term (1961-1990) average of 14.0 °C, the coolest year since 2000, when the value was 0.24 °C..."
And then, the excuses:

"These cyclical influences can mask underlying warming trends with Prof. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, saying: 'The fact that 2008 is forecast to be cooler than any of the last seven years (and that 2007 did not break the record warmth set on 1998) does not mean that global warming has gone away. What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007 with an average of 0.44 °C above the 1961-90 average was 0.21 °C warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000.'"

Sure. Makes perfect sense. The warming is happening, but it is masked. Global warming's there, but you won't see it because of the global cooling. Trust us.

Going Underwater, But Who Is To Blame?

2008-06-05T06:03:00.000-07:00

Kiribati atoll slowly sinking under the waves

Of course, the cause is "climate change." This phrase has come to automatically mean an implication of mankind and industrialization. Yes, climate changes. Sea levels have been rising for 10,000 years. Why blame man? They were rising faster in the previous decade than they are in this one!

...sea level is certainly rising – of course, it has been rising for the past 10,000 years. During the last glacial period, sea level dropped 400 feet as water was tied up in ice, and as we have moved out of the cold glacial period, sea level has recovered. The question for climate change experts is not “Is sea level rising” but rather “Is sea level rise accelerating?” In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote “No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected”, while in 2007, IPCC wrote “Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 [1.3 to 2.3] mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 [2.4 to 3.8] mm per year. Whether the faster rate for 1993 to 2003 reflects decadal variability or an increase in the longer-term trend is unclear.” To say the least, the IPCC has been very cautious on the issue of accelerated sea level rise.

Join the Flat Earth Society!

2008-04-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

On CBS 60 Minutes program last weekend, Al Gore compared those who don't believe in man-made global warming to members of the Flat Earth Society, and conspiracy theorists who claim the moon landing was a hoax.

Perhaps so, but if you fit into that group -- doubters in global warming caused by humans -- you join a rarified group of scientists, including:

Dr. Edward Wegman–former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences–demolishes the famous “hockey stick” graph that launched the global warming panic.

Dr. David Bromwich–president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology–says “it’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now.”

Prof. Paul Reiter–Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute–says “no major scientist with any long record in this field” accepts Al Gore’s claim that global warming spreads mosquito-borne diseases.

Prof. Hendrik Tennekes–director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute–states “there exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies” used for global warming forecasts.

Dr. Christopher Landsea–past chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones–says “there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity.”

Dr. Antonino Zichichi–one of the world’s foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society, who discovered nuclear antimatter–calls global warming models “incoherent and invalid.”

Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski–world-renowned expert on the ancient ice cores used in climate research–says the U.N. “based its global-warming hypothesis on arbitrary assumptions and these assumptions, it is now clear, are false.”

Prof. Tom V. Segalstad–head of the Geological Museum, University of Oslo–says “most leading geologists” know the U.N.’s views “of Earth processes are implausible.”

Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu–founding director of the International Arctic Research Center, twice named one of the “1,000 Most Cited Scientists,” says much “Arctic warming during the last half of the last century is due to natural change.”

Dr. Claude Allegre–member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science, he was among the first to sound the alarm on the dangers of global warming. His view now: “The cause of this climate change is unknown.”

Dr. Richard Lindzen–Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T., member, the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, says global warming alarmists “are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn’t happen even if the models were right.”

Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov–head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science’s Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station’s Astrometria project says “the common view that man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations.”

Dr. Richard Tol–Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University, calls the most influential global warming report of all time “preposterous . . . alarmist and incompetent.”

Dr. Sami Solanki–director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who argues that changes in the Sun’s state, not human activity, may be the principal cause of global warming: “The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.”

Prof. Freeman Dyson–one of the world’s most eminent physicists says the models used to justify global warming alarmism are “full of fudge factors” and “do not begin to describe the real world.”

Dr. Eigils Friis-Christensen–director of the Danish National Space Centre, vice-president of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, who argues that changes in the Sun’s behavior could account for most of the warming attributed by the UN to man-made CO2.

(list from The Deniers by Lawrence Solomon in The National Post, as noted by commenter "Michael G" in the New York Times Dot Earth blog.)

Plateau in global warming/negative feedback to CO2

2008-03-22T14:25:00.000-07:00

The Australian reports

Welcome to the new ice age?

2008-03-07T13:40:00.000-08:00

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

...And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

From "Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age" National Post, February 25.

Earth's temperature is tied to variations solar activity. The reduction in sunspot numbers in recent months has been dramatic. If activity does not increase soon, it may signal an extended period of severe cold, like the "Maunder Minimum" between 1650 and 1700 AD, when glaciers were expanding and winters were unusually fierce.

Nine distortions of Gore movie continued

2008-02-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

from http://newparty.co.uk/articles/inaccuracies-gore.html

Gore Climate Film's Nine Errors

2008-01-19T08:14:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm

"A High Court judge who ruled on whether climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, could be shown in schools said it contains nine scientific 'errors'.

"Mr Justice Burton said the government could still send the film to schools - if accompanied by guidance giving the other side of the argument."

The nine errors, summarized:

1. The melting of Greenland or Antarctica, causing a 20-foot rise in sea levels, will not happen "in the near future" as claimed by Al Gore, but in millennia.

2. The receding snow on Mt. Kilimanjaro cannot be scientifically attributed to human factors, as suggested by the movie.

3. The movie claimed polar bears drowned swimming trying to find ice, presumably melted by human-caused global warming. The only study produced as evidence in court detailed four polar bears drowning as a result of a storm.

4. The film suggests that over the past 650,000 years rising CO2 has caused rising temperature. Over that time frame, the evidence is that temperature increases preceded rising CO2 levels by about 800-2000 years. Effect does not precede cause.

5. The movie suggests hurrican Katrina was the result of global warming. Experts admit that solitary events cannot be linked to global warming.

6. The film suggests the drying up of Lake Chad was caused by global warming. Experts could not show this to be the case in a court of law.

[to be continued...]

Polar bears will have to find another scapegoat

2008-01-07T22:32:00.000-08:00

The warming of the Arctic is partly due to natural causes, claims a new study in the journal Nature.

It is difficult for the true believers to give up the paradigm that human-caused global warming plays a role in turning the Arctic into slushpile. However, since average global temperatures have not increased for ten years (see previous entry of this blog), the warming in the Arctic must be matched by cooling elsewhere on the globe. By definition, it is not global warming, since the globe is not warming, on average.

In this context, the warming of the Arctic must be a local condition, caused by natural factors, as cited in the new study.

If polar bears are suffering, we are not to blame. Mother Nature is.

Global warming takes a vacation - no warming for past ten years

2008-01-07T16:24:00.000-08:00

Where did global warming go?

The Boston Globe reports:

THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold...

Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.

The mainstream media is beginning to get skeptical of doomsday pronouncements by the likes of Al Gore as the scientific evidence begins to accumulate and pile on the most vociferous proponents of the view that blames man for the lion's share of climate change.

The United States is Evil... NOT!

2007-12-16T20:30:00.000-08:00

After all the grief given those in the government who have opposed signing the Kyoto Treaty, who'd have thunk that our carbon emissions are increasing at a slower rate than those who have signed the treaty.

The American Thinker has a piece about this, with a downloadable Excel file with the data, for the obsessives out there.

The Kyoto treaty was agreed upon in late 1997 and countries started signing and ratifying it in 1998. A list of countries and their carbon dioxide emissions due to consumption of fossil fuels is available from the U.S. government. If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.
Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

So, is it better to sign, or not to sign?

Even the Pope!

2007-12-12T15:09:00.000-08:00

The Daily Mail reports that the Pope has attacked "prophets of doom" who are creating fear of global warming based on ideology more than science.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering. The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.

God bless the Pope for telling it like it is.

Latest IPCC report still admits large uncertainty

2007-11-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes. The text of the report claims scientists are 90% certain of the report's conclusions about global warming. But look at the actual data, supplied graphically in the 2007 report. (click image to enlarge)

Their estimate of man-made contribution to global temperature rise is expressed as somewhere between 0.6 watts/m² and 2.4 watts/m². That is a variance of a factor of four. It could be a little, it could be four times that amount!

Also, note that the level of scientific understanding of many important factors influencing global temperature is still admittedly low. On the column farthest to the right, the "LOSU" (level of scientific understanding) of aerosols, surface albedo (reflectivity), contrails, ozone, is all medium to low.

The IPCC claims to be 90% sure. Are they 90% sure that their understanding of these important factors is low? It would appear so. Here it is, in black and white (and red and blue) in the graph published in their report.

The BBC begins to tell the other side

2007-11-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

No consensus on IPCC's level of ignorance

The BBC has been bearing down hard on the global warming alarmism for several years. Never was heard a skeptical word. Now, their tone seems to be softening somewhat. At least they are letting other voices be heard, voices of those who doubt the central thesis and wisdom of dire predications about climate. This article discusses the intertwining of political and scientific interests in the publication of the IPCC reports.

At an IPCC Lead Authors' meeting in New Zealand, I well remember a conversation over lunch with three Europeans, unknown to me but who served as authors on other chapters. I sat at their table because it was convenient. After introducing myself, I sat in silence as their discussion continued, which boiled down to this: "We must write this report so strongly that it will convince the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol." Politics, at least for a few of the Lead Authors, was very much part and parcel of the process. And, while the 2001 report was being written, Dr
Robert Watson, IPCC Chair at the time, testified to the US Senate in 2000 adamantly advocating on behalf of the Kyoto Protocol, which even the journal Nature now reports is a failure.

The author is a scientist who builds computer climate models -- of the type upon which the IPCC report's predictions depend so heavily. Models are designed to conform to past climate records. What we don't know is whether these models will perform well in the future. That will be the true scientific test.

Mother Nature is incredibly complex, and to think we mortals are so clever and so perceptive that we can create computer code that accurately reproduces the millions of processes that determine climate is hubris (think of predicting the complexities of clouds).
Of all scientists, climate scientists should be the most humble. Our cousins in the one-to-five-day weather prediction business learned this long ago, partly because they were held accountable for their predictions every day.

Answering the question about how much warming has occurred because of increases in greenhouse gases and what we may expect in the future still holds enormous uncertainty, in my view.

To counter overconfidence in computer modelling, the author offers an anecdote from his formative ears:

The best advice regarding scientific knowledge, which certainly applies to climate, came to me from Mr Mallory, my high school physics teacher.
He proposed that we should always begin our scientific pronouncements with this statement: "At our present level of ignorance, we think we know..."

Intelligence²: Global Warming is not a crisis (radio debate)

2007-10-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

In March, public radio aired a debate produced by the Rosenkranz Foundation on the proposition "Global Warming is Not a Crisis." Experts for and against the statement gave their views, and the audience voted. Comparing a poll of the audience before and after the debate, the number believing that we do NOT have a crisis increased from 30 percent to 46 percent.

When people learn more of the facts, they become more skeptical of the global warming crisis "consensus."

Read about the debate at npr.org, or download the MP3 audio file of the debate directly at this link.

Policy planning in an "atmosphere" of uncertainty

2007-08-19T05:39:00.000-07:00

Let's return one last time to the Summary For Policymakers written in 2001 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the source many global warming alarmists cite as the "consensus" view that proves we must act to prevent further global warming.

The complete chart from that report showing influences on warming in the industrial era (since 1750), is reproduced here, and this time we want to pay particular attention to the very bottom of the chart. You can click on the chart at any time for a larger view.

The bottom of the chart represents the IPCC's estimate of our level of scientific understanding of each of the factors contributing to the warming of planet earth since 1750. They claim a "high" or "medium" scientific understanding of carbon dioxide (C02), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), halocarbons, and tropospheric ozone (O3) as warming factors. They also claim a medium level of scientific understanding of the cooling factor stratospheric ozone.

Now let's note what they admitted (in 2001) that science does NOT understand very well. Warming of the planet caused by solar radiation? They classify scientific understanding of solar-induced warming (over which man obviously has no control) as "very low." Similarly, they confess a "very low" level of understanding of the cooling effects caused by changes in land use, and the indirect effects of aerosols -- how tiny particles we release into the atmosphere affect cloud formation and precipitation, which cool the earth.

What else do we understand poorly? According to the IPCC, our understanding of global cooling from sulphates, organic carbon from burning of fossil fuels released as aerosols, and biomass burning. Also, the effects of aviation contrails, mineral dust, and carbon black from fossel fuel burning are poorly understood.

To summarize, of the major factors influencing the warming of the planet (according to the IPCC, the scientific "consensus"), we have a high level of understanding of greenhouse gases, a medium level of understanding of the effects of ozone, and a low or very low level of understanding of eight other factors: sulphate, carbon black, organic carbon, biomass burning, mineral dust, indirect effects of aerosols, aviation contrails, and the effects of the sun. I think this last item cannot be repeated enough: the IPCC admits to a "very low" level of scientific understanding of the role changes in the sun play in global warming in the industrial age.

Two global warming factors we understand well, eight factors we do not. How can accurate climate models even exist, when eight out of a dozen or so factors are poorly understood? This is a no-brainer. It is impossible to even create a reliable computer model to predict future climate and temperature when most of the major factors in such a model are poorly understood. Such was the admission of the 2001 report by the IPCC, clear to anyone who would examine their summary closely.

The "consensus" of climate scientists reports that we are heading for disastrous global warming. It does so on the basis of computer climate models. The models must take into account many factors for which our level of scientific understanding is admittedly "very low." Why should the public pay any heed to predictions that are based on such huge uncertainties?

Next time, we will update this information by examining the most recent IPCC report from 2007. The basic conclusions do not change. Their estimates are, by their own admission, subject to a very wide range of possible outcomes. The uncertainty of any such estimates is built-in, via computer models, which must necessarily take into account many things we understand poorly.

Human land use cools the planet

2007-08-13T07:33:00.000-07:00

Examining a section of the same graph seen in the two previous entries, a graph from the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, note that humans change the surface of the earth, by planting or harvesting forests, by cultivating land for farming, by building cities, and other activities that change the reflectivity (albedo) of the earth's surface. If man takes a forest and plows it up to create a field of bare dirt, the blackness of the soil will absorb more of the sun's heat, and this creates a warming effect.

According to the scientists represented by the IPCC, however, the net effect of human activity on albedo is actually a cooling effect.

On the other hand, increased solar activity, the item on the right edge of the graph, is a warming influence. This graph was designed to compare the pre-industrial climate and conditions (circa 1750 A.D.) to the current day. Clearly the IPCC believes that increased solar activity is partly responsible for our slightly warmer global temperatures today compared with the climate 250 years ago.

Man-made global COOLING!

2007-08-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in their "Summary for Policymakers" showed the cooling -- yes, cooling -- effects of human activity.

Granted, humans burn fossil fuels releasing CO2, domesticated animals release methane gas, and we release Freon and other industrial chemicals that contribute to climate warming.

But humans also create aerosols of various sorts. Aerosols are small particles that stay airborne and affect the properties of the atmosphere. Note this section of a chart from the 2001 IPCC report that identifies aerosols that can cause both warming (in the pink area, black carbon and mineral dust) and cooling (in the blue section, sulphate, organic carbon, biomass burning, and indirect effects). What are the indirect effects of small particles floating in the atmosphere? They tend to cause cloud formation, and clouds reflect solar energy away from the earth, thus cooling the planet by shading the earth from the hot, hot sun.

Therefore, not every activity of man contributes to global warming. Aerosols contribute to global cooling, and therefore they offset the warming of our carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Have you heard this discussed in your newspaper? newsmagazine? television news report? talk radio? It is unlikely you have. Not only is the IPCC ignoring the data in their own report, almost everyone else seems oblivious to the implications as well.

The Uncertainty of Warming Estimates

2007-07-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

The Nature Reports: Climate Change website recently alerted readers to an oddity in the report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC is the source of the "consensus" on global warming/climate change that is often reported in the media.

At issue is something fundamental to any future planning we might do to deal with climate change. To make a long story short, Nature Reports, in the article "Quantifying Climate Change: Too Rosy a Picture?", suggest that the "consensus" conclusion doesn't take into account how uncertain science is about the factors that might warm or cool the planet.

The IPCC published this graph in 2001, showing how human activity is responsible for both warming and cooling effects on climate:

To start, notice that the chart is divided into pink and blue parts. The pink area is for warming effects, and the blue area is for cooling effects. On the left hand side we find carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), which are often blamed for global warming. Human activity also produces ozone, which is a cooling effect in the stratosphere (upper atmosphere), but causes warming in the troposphere (the lower atmosphere).

So ozone, carbon dioxide, and methane, plus a few other pollutants, are responsible for some warming of the planet, according to this graph published by the IPCC. There is a little bit of cooling from stratospheric ozone, but not enough to offset the warming from low-altitude ozone, CO2, methane, and other gases. Next time, we'll look at cooling effects, and also begin to note some of the uncertainty of the science. Even the "consensus" report of the IPCC admits the science is uncertain.

The Journal Science Waffles on Warming

2007-07-15T07:07:00.000-07:00

In the American Thinker, James Lewis comments on a News-of-the-Week feature in Science, the official journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Science news item, Another Global Warming Icon Comes Under Attack, notes that "mainstream atmospheric scientists" are disputing the reliability of the computer models used to predict future warming, and " researchers are giving some ground."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations committee, has produced a series of reports that have become a Holy Bible of sorts for the global warming alarmists. The reports contain an analysis of current computer global climate models.

The latest IPCC report averaged the results of 14 different computer models and compared the numbers to actual temperature readings throughout the last century. While there is a fair match between actual temperatures and some of the computer predictions, there are uncertainties factor unaccounted for in the IPCC's analysis.

Science's James Kerr writes, "Greenhouse gas changes are well known... but not so the counteracting cooling of pollutant hazes, called aerosols. Aerosols cool the planet by reflecting away sunlight and increasing the reflectivity of clouds. Somehow... modelers failed to draw on all the uncertainty inherent in aerosols so that the 20th-century simulations look more certain than they should."

Bottom line: Aerosols cool the earth. It is uncertain exactly how much they cool the earth. Climate models make predictions which are used to scare the public about global warming. However, the models do not account for the large uncertainty in the amount of cooling from aerosols, including clouds.

The warming effects of greenhouse gases are said to be well-understood and are widely reported. The cooling effects of aerosols are poorly understood, hardly ever reported, and this is not fully explained in the United Nations' official IPCC reports on climate change. What is wrong with this picture?

How can we make rational decisions about public policy when one of the major factors affecting global cooling is not well-understood and not properly taken into account in predictions of climate warming? The answer, obviously, is that we can't.

This new analysis is extremely important, and will be dealt with in one or more future installments on the Global Warming Swindle blog.

NOTE: What are aerosols? "Aerosols are tiny particles suspended in the air. Some occur naturally, originating from volcanoes, dust storms, forest and grassland fires, living vegetation, and sea spray. Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and the alteration of natural surface cover, also generate aerosols." (from http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Aerosols) Aerosols play an important part in cloud formation. Clouds exert a cooling effect by reflecting solar radiation back into space.

Man can produce greenhouse gases which warm the planet, and he also produces aerosols which lead to cooling. However, in both cases, man's contributions are less a factor in earth's temperature than nature itself, especially solar activity.

Unwarranted emphasis on CO2

2007-07-07T07:22:00.000-07:00

If you listen to global warming alarmists for very long, you will get tired of hearing about carbon dioxide, CO2.

To put things into perspective, let us take as fact the speculation of the scientists at realclimate.org who are promoting the theory of man-made global warming.

In comment #17 of this page ("The lag between temperature and CO2"), we learn that Hansen, a NASA scientist who has been much in the news, has estimated that all the greenhouse gases put together account for 35-55% of total warming of earth's climate. CO2 is "roughly half of the total greenhouse gas change," so that brings the figure down to 17-27% of the warming.

The CO2 produced by man's activities is a fraction of the natural CO2 produced by the planet. It is hard to estimate the real impact of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere, but even using the calculations of global warming alarmists, man's contribution to global warming through CO2 is a fraction of the 17-27% already noted.

Obviously CO2 is a greenhouse gas -- it helps the atmosphere trap heat from the sun. But man's contribution to CO2 levels, even if all of the rise from the historic norm (say, 280 parts per million in the year 1000 AD up to the current level of 380 parts per million) was caused by man, is about one fourth of the total.

Man is responsible for 25% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. The CO2 in the atmosphere accounts for 17-27% of the warming, according to the most famous NASA climate scientist. Man's contribution to global warming through CO2 emissions is therefore between 4% and 9% (i.e. 25% of 17-27%).

2007-07-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

On Breitbart.com, July 5, an AFP story, "Oldest DNA ever recovered shows warmer planet," details the results of boring 2 kilometers down into a Greenland glacier to discover much warmer temperatures in the past than had been expected. The DNA of ancient plants and animals indicated a "lush forest" environment. In Greenland!

DNA of trees, plants and insects including
butterflies and spiders from
beneath the southern Greenland glacier was
estimated to date to 450,000 to
900,000 years ago, according to the remnants
retrieved from this long-vanished
boreal forest.

The article also points out that temperatures were on average 9 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today during the period between ice ages 116,000 - 130,000 years ago.

Another paper from the premier journal Science, reports that ice cores from Antarctica, providing a record of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere going back 800,000 years, show a variation of 27 degrees Fahrenheit over this time span. In the previous ice age, temperatures were 18 degrees colder than today. At other times, temperatures have been up to 9 degrees higher.

Global warming alarmists are worried about a 1º F temperature rise over the past 100 years. Given that temperatures have historically sometimes been much higher, and at other times much lower on the earth, is it time to panic about a one degree rise?

Climate change is a real phenomenon. Climate is always changing. The ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica prove this. Change is in the nature of climate, even in times when humans did not even exist, let alone burn any fossil fuels.

Religion versus science

2007-07-05T15:05:00.000-07:00

This blog will compare the claims of global warming alarmists, especially those who blame the changes in climate on human activity, with scientific research.

Humans affect nature. At question is the type and the degree of the effect.

First, is the earth warming? If so, where? how much has it warmed? how fast is it warming?

Second, if the earth is warming, what might be the most likely causes of that warming? If humans are responsible for part of the warming, how much? 10%? 50%? 80%?

If humans are responsible, or even if they are not, can the warming be stopped? Should it be stopped? Are there benefits to a warmer earth? Would it be less expensive to adapt to climate change than to attempt to stop it?

All these are scientific questions. Some have claimed that the "debate is over" on climate change and global warming. We have caused it by burning fossil fuels and releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, they say. Yet scientists are encountering more and more evidence that does not fit this interpretation of global warming. Are we to ignore the new evidence?

A scientific explanation should be subject to revision as new facts come to light. If proponents of a particular theory cannot change or modify their position in the light of new information, we are dealing not with science, but faith. For some, human-caused global warming has become nearly a religion.

We reject this view. Facts are stubborn things. And many facts stubbornly refuse to fit with the explanations of global warming alarmists. Yet, perhaps they are right. Perhaps humans are causing the earth to warm. We must know for certain before we act, or we may be wasting precious resources. We might even unintentionally make the problem worse!

As future entries to The Global Warming Swindle will demonstrate, the debate is decidedly not over!