Wednesday, October 13, 2010

From Desperate Housewives to Desperate Climate Liars

By Alan Caruba

Not long ago, the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Harold Lewis, caused quite a stir in science circles when he resigned from the American Physical Society. Physics is an exacting science, bound by immutable laws that are true throughout our universe.

It was not widely reported to the general public, but Lewis who had been a member of the American Physical Society for 67 years, made his reason quite clear after having received an APS statement supporting global warming.

“It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the Climategate documents, which lay it bare.”

“I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientists, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientists.”

Anthony Watts, one of the leaders of the movement to dispute and debunk the global warming hoax, called Lewis’ resignation letter comparable to the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door, thus setting off the Reformation.

The Climategate emails that were leaked in November 2009 revealed that a small group of conspirators, otherwise acclaimed climate scientists, had colluded to provide bogus science to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to support global warming claims. They had also made significant efforts to keep any challenge by other scientists from being published in respected science journals.

The entire global warming fraud has tainted groups like the American Physical Society and the American Meteorological Society among others that lent their prestige and support to it.

This brings us to an opinion editorial by Michael E. Mann that was published in The Washington Post on October 8 titled, almost comically, “Get the anti-science bent out of politics.” Mann gained notoriety among climate scientists for his “hockey stick” graph that alleged a steep rise in the Earth’s temperatures while ignoring other critical factors in its long history such as the medieval warm period. It wasn’t science. It was propaganda, a deliberate falsehood.

The global warming hoax would not have lasted as long as it did if governments all over the world didn’t throw millions of public funds toward so-called climate change science that was, in reality, simply a huge windfall of money for any scientist who wanted to cash in on it. And many did.

What has Mann worried is that, if Republicans gain control of Congress or even just the House, he is going to be hauled before Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) who will be the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Mann believes that a “hostile investigation of climate science” will ensue.

He’s wrong. What will ensue will be an investigation of the manipulation of science for the purpose of advancing political agendas hostile to the welfare of the nation.

Right now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is threatening to regulate carbon dioxide, the gas blamed for “causing” global warming if the Senate does not pass the hideous Cap-and-Trade Act, the greatest increase in taxes in the history of the nation.

Desperately, Mann says, “My employer, Penn State University, exonerated me after a thorough investigation of my e-mails in the East Anglia archive.” Yeah, sure, we can be completely confident that Penn State University is going to investigate itself after it and Mann benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in climate science funding.

Decrying the potential House investigation and one by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (the University of Virginia was a previous employer), Mann declared there had been “a twenty-year assault on climate research, questioning basic science and promoting doubt where there is none.” None? When a relative handful of internationally renowned climate scientists stood their ground against the Climategate hucksters and the likes of Al Gore, they were labeled “deniers” and calls to jail or execute them were common.

Like any trapped rat, Mann repeated the global warming mantra that “The basic physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide and other human-produced greenhouse gases trap heat in the lower atmosphere have been understood for nearly two centuries. Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers, and raising sea levels.”

All this is FALSE. The Earth has been COOLING for the whole of this decade, Arctic ice is growing, glaciers are not melting, and sea levels are not dramatically rising. But Mann was not through; he claimed that “scientists are in broad agreement on the reality of these changes and their near-certain link to human activity.”

For the past four years, leading climate and other scientists from around the world have attended the unreported or under-reported international climate change conferences sponsored by The Heartland Institute of Chicago, publishing data and holding seminars that reveal the true science that undermines the lies put forth by Mann and his fellow conspirators.

Desperately Mann said “the attacks against the science must stop. They are not good-faith questioning of scientific research. They are anti-science.”

The central methodology of science is to question hypotheses and to test them in order to determine their accuracy. The “science” of the climate hucksters has utterly failed and, in point of fact, their efforts have been “anti-science” as they strove to foist a political agenda on the world that enriched themselves, their universities, and those who invested in the carbon credit exchanges created to enrich others.

How ironic and how pathetic it is to read Mann’s closing statement that “My fellow scientists and I must be ready to stand up to blatant abuse from politicians who seek to mislead and distract the public.”

Why then are President Obama, former Vice President Al Gore, and others of their ilk still talking about “climate change”, the new code words for global warming? The answer is to mislead and distract the public.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

11 comments:

Eddy said...

I find it funny that those who are in charge in society (President, Congress, UN, World Bank, IPCC) and have the cultural "over-tone" in the climate change drama (Mainstream Media, Colleges, Universities, Holywood, et cetera), feel themselves "threathened" by people who disagree with them. The majority fearing a small minority? Or maybe the small minority is not so minor, and the great majority is not so major? If the "deniers" are such a small minority and have so little to base themselves on, why the worry? A fact is a fact is a fact. Once it was established clearly that the earth was flat, uh, round, the discussion was over. Nobody today worries about a few nutcases in Iran who still claim that the world is flat or the sun turns around the earth. Again, what are they so worried about if science is so clear and certain? Wouldn't it be sooooo easy to convince a Republican congress that the facts are clear? Or is that exactly where the problem lies. Indeed, if the facts are not 100% clear, but can be interpreted either way, well then of course, it becomes a matter of belief. And then indeed, they have something to worry about.

Alan Caruba said...

@Eddy: The facts about CO2's role in the atmosphere are not subject to being interpreted one way or the other. It simply does not play a significant role, if any, in climate change and this has been known for a very long time.

The charlatans were counting on being able to repeat the lie enough times to make everyone believe it.

Alan Caruba said...

@Mr. Xyz. Your comments are not being posted because I try to avoid rumor and speculation regarding individuals by others than myself. I am willing to have my opinions challenged, but not willing to pass along other's that raise questions about character, intent, etc.

Christopher Miller said...

Dear Alan,

I really enjoy your editorials. Saw this latest one via Icecap.

I agree with you that Mann’s editorial was irresponsible, and, to my amazement for a scientist, it was so very very sloppy.

Says a lot about him!

But I would caution you in some of your responses below:

“All this is FALSE. The Earth has been COOLING for the whole of this decade, Arctic ice is growing, glaciers are not melting, and sea levels are not dramatically rising.”

Actually:

(1) The earth has been cooling for the decade, but the global temperature spike for 2010 is getting close to the 1998 peak. [Both peaks are related probably to ENSO, but still, after 2010 there will be a twin spike to 1998. After THIS year, however, things should drop like a rock.]

http://www.drroyspencer.com/

(2) Arctic ice is actually not growing. In the long term, it has been on a slow decline....although this Autumn it is increasing seasonally at a rapid rate!

[Nothing to worry about....probably related to multidecadal cycles in the Atlantic and Pacific and fluxuations in wind patterns over the Arctic. But definitely not the chicken little emergency that that alarmists are trying to force down our throats.]

(3) Some glaciers are retreating....and some are advancing. These are related to seasonal and long-term shifts in precipitation patterns, local land use issues, and again, ocean cycle variations that affect land temps, but again, nothing within the bounds that natural variability can’t handle. ;-)

(4) Sea Level. This one is absolutely correct. The worlds probably preeminent authority on sea level, geophysicist Nils-Axel Morner in Sweden, emphatically says that in the past 100 years, during the first half, maximum global mean sea level rise was, at most, 1 mm per year. Then it fell a bit for a while. And now, is stable.

So...as you say....nothing to worry about.

My biggest problem with the CAGW scam is that they use it to advance an agenda to control the world with carbon credits.

It is a mass cognitive dissonance / groupthink phenomenon of the highest order where masses of scientists and even more masses of people think in their head that they can “change” the climate for the good.

And, more sinisterly, there are forces at work through the HUGE carbon credit trading industry that is set to make a lot of bozos like Gore, a LOT of money.

A similar, politically motivated money supply helps fund the bogus research of Mann and others, as you point out.

If all of these alarmists would just be honest and talk about the problems of catastrophic anthropogenic global pollution [“CAGP”, let’s call it], and how to solve them [Co2 not included because it is NOT a pollutant], then perhaps we would get somewhere.

But they won’t...because the money’s not in it.

So they will continue to beat the CAGW drum until the next ice sheets advance.

Why? Because they are suffering from mass cognitive dissonance and delusion, not unlike other salient times in human history, when huge crowds of people, scientists, intelligentsia, and common people alike, believed a lie.

Chris
Norfolk, VA

Ronbo said...

Global Warming is the "Big Lie" told by our modern day fascists for the same reason the fascists of the 1930s told the "Big Lie" about the Jews, Americans, Britons, etc.

That is _

World domination by a self elected elite like Algore who lack the intelligence and leadership skills needed to guide a troop of Boy Scouts to the bathroom.

But we are on to their dirty little game now and we have lots of prison space for fraudsters and fascists.

Anonymous said...

To the average person who may lie occasionally, usually accompanied by guilt unless it was to spare someone‘s feelings, the present occupation of copious lying by politicians and scientist is un-nerving. It is unfathomable that they can do this with almost every sentence out of their mouth. Do they also do this in private? If so how do they not slip up while doing it in public? It’s a feat that boggles the mind. When you know the truth of a subject and someone stands up in public, who also knows the truth and lies about every aspect of the subject it is incredulous, insulting and maddening. This is one reason I come here to read Alan’s blog and avoid the nightly news. If I watch the news my Television is in danger of being rendered useless because of flying objects. I wonder how much more of this Americans can take? The politicians, newscasters and other liars need to be sent back to their homes where their families can ostracize them like any of us would if we had a compulsive liar in our midst. I'm thankful every day for the internet and blogs like Alan's that inform us honestly about what we are facing.It makes me wonder if there would even be a Tea Party movement without the internet?

Alan Caruba said...

@Cabby: Have you signed up as a "follower"? I am only a handful away from having 500!

I find that amazing, but a very nice confirmation that I must be doing something right.

Cheers!

LarryOldtimer said...

I agree completely with Hal Lewis. Scientists like him inspired me to learn about chemistry and physics. The whole concept of "greenhouse gas warming" was shredded by a most excellent professor of chemistry in my first year of college back in 1953/1954. H2O vapor and CO2 simply are not factors in warming the air in greenhouses. H2O is most certainly a huge factor in moving and distributing heat around Planet Earth.

Climate change is also bunk. Climate is simply a compendium of weather events, and there has been, in history, huge variances in weather and temperature in any given geographical area, or "agriculture climate zone". As Mark Twain said, "Climate is what you expect, and weather is what you get."

But, a good understanding of the fundamentals of chemistry, physics statics & dynamics, thermodynamics and electrical and math, such as theories of random distribution and probability along with the concept of margin of error are all required to get any comprehension of "how weather works".

Even with all of that, weather forecasting that is accurate is a matter of chance, and weather forecasts can't be reliable. Ever.

Imagining that there are "trends" that will continue is no more than extrapolating from 2 points on a curve into the future, which all of my science professors and math professors strongly cautioned their students never to do.

Even to say that "the wind blows" is no better than saying, "The sun rises in the east." It might look to an observer as if either does, but that isn't what is actually happening.

I thought to myself when I entered high school in 1949, "How nice it is to live in an age of reason." That age of reason ended along about 1962, with the publication of Silent Spring, a book of complete sensationalist hokum that so many foolish people bought into.

Anonymous said...

Hi Alan,
I did sign up as as a follower the other day after I saw your note to another persons comments, and yes you are definitely doing something right.

Angry Old Git said...

In 85,800 molecules of air, 94% of which are water vapour, just 33 are CO2 molecules.

Of those 33 CO2 molecules 32 are produced by Nature, mankind produces the other 1.

Mann, the UN and its bought and paid for, climate change scientists and crooked politicians have the gall to claim that this 1 molecule of CO2 is soley responsible for overheating the 85,000 plus molecules of water vapour that contain it.

Who need oil or nuclear energy when 1 molecule of CO2 contains more energy than a molecule of either.

Alan Caruba said...

@Angry: AMEN AND AMEN!

You'd think it would be easy to explain such obvious science to people, but they often seem to prefer being scared.