Friday, July 25, 2008

Ceaseless Hot Air and Wasted Dollars

By Alan Caruba

There is a point at which one’s contempt for the environmentalists and their allies is irredeemable. There is no longer the usual excuse that’s there’s room for argument or discussion regarding global warming. Having been labeled “deniers” for years, the sense that the end of this hoax is in sight brings no desire to forgive and forget.

Recently, Dr. Roy Spencer, an atmospheric scientist who formerly worked for NASA, testified before a Senate committee. Free now to speak without the impediments of bureaucratic oversight, Dr. Spencer told the committee, “I am pleased to deliver good news from the front lines of climate change research.

“Our latest research results, which I am about to describe, could have an enormous impact on policy decisions regarding greenhouse gas emissions. Despite decades of persistent uncertainty over how sensitive the climate system is to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, we now have new satellite evidence which strongly suggests that the climate system is much less sensitive than is claimed by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…the warming we have experience in the last 100 years is mostly natural.”

Read that again, “mostly natural.” The notion that human beings have had any impact on the Earth’s climate, while absurd when compared to that of the Sun, the Oceans, and other natural factors, is now headed for the trash bin of really bad ideas.

As Dr. Spencer put it, “If climate change is mostly natural then it is largely out of our control and is likely to end—if it has not ended already, since satellite-measured global temperatures have not warmed for at least seven years now…”

Why then has the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Center for Integrative Environmental Research at the University of Maryland, financed by the Environmental Defense Fund, just announced that, “climate change threatens New Jersey’s economy and coastal communities”?

Let me put the question another way. If it’s a short summer, filled with lots of rain, with a spate of colder weather before Labor Day, everyone who makes a living at Jersey’s famed shore knows that their economy has been affected by “climate change.” That’s because the climate or, more specifically, the weather changes all the time.

We don’t need a report saying that coastal residents and businesses could, might, possibly will, be affected by changes in the weather. We know that already! This report, like all the others that have preceded it, is about “scaring” people into believing that policy makers, i.e., legislators can do anything whatever about the climate.

They can’t. They never could. This, however, will not stop them from coming up with all manner of laws whose justification is “climate change.” These people should be driven from office with a combination of votes and pitchforks.

We have in this nation, an army of so-called scientists who devote themselves to conjuring up this kind of hogwash because it means a paycheck. The environmental scam has put their children through college, put a new car in the garage, and provided a vacation for the whole family. All they have to do is keep churning out idiotic, useless, and very expensive “research.”

Consider the Environmental Protection Agency announcement that they are going to throw $2.25 million at a study of “biodiversity” because it is deemed “critical for environmental well-being.” You cannot make up stuff like this. Several institutes and university entities will divvy up your money to study whether the “differences in animal community composition affect the risk of Lyme disease transmission in Duchess County, New York.”

Others will “investigate the relationships between diversity in plant, bird, and mosquito populations and West Nile virus prevalence in urban wetland community in northern New Jersey. Not to be left out, the University of California, Los Angeles, will investigate “the role of migratory birds in West Nile Virus transmission and use earth observations to better understand how climate and anthropogenic changes to the environment might predict risk.”

Those getting this money are going to dine out on your hard-earned dollars and eventually tell you that various species of ticks and mosquitoes are known to transmit these diseases. This, I assure you, is already well established and well known, but you have just forked over $2.25 million to be told the obvious.

The Greens specialize in taking the obvious and turning it into costly research that always results in a scary headline that we’re doomed in some way.

Meanwhile real scientists like Dr. Roy Spencer will try to make the boneheads we elected to high office understand that THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING BEING CAUSED BY HUMAN BEINGS, DRIVING CARS, USING AIR CONDITIONING, OR ANYTHING ELSE WE DO.

Since I live in New Jersey, I will wait breathlessly for the results of the EPA’s $2.25 million research grants. In the meantime, I will give thanks to the sensible folks who, decades ago, before the advent of environmental charlatans, set up a mosquito eradication program to protect people from this well known transmitter of a variety of nasty, nasty, nasty diseases.

13 comments:

Unknown said...

I was watching the HBO mini series "John Adams" which I recently bought. One of my observations about back then and now is not so much education or book smarts but an emotional inteligents, and connection to the present moment and whats going on.


It seems that with extreme liberalism, extreme concervatism there is an emotional dis-connect. Not that they are not smart people as King James the 3rd was but they are just out of touch with anything real.

This same emotional inteligence it what sets up healthy boundries, and emotional fullfillment. It definatly seems that much of the U.S. population has this same emotional disconnect. Even though they have the inteligence there emotional knowing is rather poor. So they chase after all sorts of weird things irrationally.

When Adams said "Enlightened people have the ability to govern them selves" That term "enlightened" not only referanced book smarts but "emotional inteligence" Faith, mindfulness, open focus awarness...etc.

So american society today is rather "un-enlightened" thus has trouble governing itself.

What do you think? This is just an observation, and perhaps nothing. This observation tends to fit in with Global warming and everyones stubborness over it.

Alan Caruba said...

This is a big topic to tackle, but I will cede that America was extraordinarily fortunate to have such a remarkable group of men come together at just the moment to seize freedom from the British yoke. All were, for their time (and probably ours) very well educated, even if self-educated. And they had the good sense to recognize in Washington his extraordinary character.

Francis W. Porretto said...

It's been clear for some time that the Climate Change Corps was defending an article of faith rather than a fact-and-reason-based scientific thesis, but Dr. Spencer's testimony is quite welcome all the same.

Concerning "climate" and "weather," quite a number of folks would like to efface the distinction, and are striving to do so. But we could use a little more specificity on the matter as well. Just as a certain mass of "anecdotes" eventually acquire the respect of "data," at some point repeated occurrences of "weather" sum to the estate of "climate." The relevant questions are: How much evidence do we require? How long does a "climate" have to last to be treated as such? How prolonged and dramatic do variations have to be to be considered a "climate change?"

I don't expect agreement on these things to be swiftly or easily reached.

Alan Caruba said...

I am always surprised that many people don't understand the distinction between climate, trends measured in hundreds of years, and weather, the event occurring on a daily basis.

bi -- International Journal of Inactivism said...

Alan, you said that I should be "confronting the actual science". I came here looking for some actual science to confront, and I couldn't find any.

Where's the science, Alan?

Alan Caruba said...

bi -- Let's start with the SUN. If it gets more active, i.e., sunspots, the Earth warms up. If it is less active, as is the present case, the Earth cools off.

If this is too difficult for you to grasp, then any more science data will be largely wasted on you.

davefxx said...

Given the circus that has been made of "global warming", I hesitate to bring this up.

Let me say at the outset: 1. Man-made global warming is phony (we don't produce nearly enough CO2 for that); 2. Many of those pushing the idea have ulterior motives; 3. Al Gore in particular is a hypocrite; 4. People are already going hungry over it; 5. We should be increasing U.S. domestic cost-effective energy production.

However, there is a little-known problem with CO2 that may actually be a serious threat. It appears to cause acidification of the oceans. If so, this is a strong argument for weaning our civilization off of fossil carbon fuels. Luckily it looks like there are, and will be, alternatives -- including perhaps remediation by capturing CO2 and sequestering it.

Like I said, I don't like to even mention this after seeing the hype and damage ensuing from a phony version of the "problem". "Unintended consequences" etc.

bi -- International Journal of Inactivism said...

Alan:

"Let's start with the SUN. If it gets more active, i.e., sunspots, the Earth warms up. If it is less active, as is the present case, the Earth cools off."

Well...
"they [Lassen and Friis-Christensen] also explicitly concluded that after 1985 the temperature continued to rise while the sunspot cycle length flattened out, and thus no longer correlated with surface temperature."

Oops, I think your "science" just got falsified.

"If this is too difficult for you to grasp"

It's simple enough to grasp... and it's false.

So, where's the science I'm supposed to confront? I'm still looking for it...

Alan Caruba said...

So you're saying that, since 1985, the Earth has been warming and we can discount any solar radiation as a possible cause?

Nice try. Since 1998, whatever NATURAL warming occurred previously has given way to a definite cooling.

You are too clever for some, but there is no global warming occurring and what did occur was NATURAL.

All of which takes us back to the 1970s when Greens were warning about a coming Ice Age. At least, then, they were right.

It has nothing to do with human activity. Never has. Never will.

Nonin Stone said...

The focus, thus far, has been on preventing release of CO2 in order to stop contributing to the warming which the IPCC itself admits will continue to happen, regardless of our efforts, for the duration of this century.

Curiously, no proposals have been offered as a means by which to adjust to these new so-called "crisis" conditions. Since it is those conditions that are peddled as the crises, one would think that the scientific community would be focused on accommodating them.

Or perhaps these disasters are neither as "dire" nor as imminent as they've been presented.

Alan Caruba said...

Nonin, you can discount anything the IPCC has had to say now for years. All the computer models, the only justification they ever offered for their predictions and claims, have been proven inaccurate and, sometimes, deliberately deceptive.

The IPCC is a political propaganda machine to drive the global warming hoax and now Mother Nature is having the last laugh as the Earth begins to cool.

There never was and is not now any reason to reduce CO2 emissions.

It's a scam, a fraud, a hoax.

Go over to www.heartland.org and check out the data from their conference in March.

Or visit
http://www.climatechangefraud.com, a site that is both informative and entertaining.

Then visit www.iceagenow.com.

Chris Crawford said...

Mr. Caruba, I happened to bumble onto this blog and I see that you offer some rather strong opinions regarding AGW. I myself am convinced that AGW is quite real and does offer a significant threat to our future well-being, and I have long desired to understand the reasoning of AGW deniers. Unfortunately, every attempt I have made to discuss the issues with AGW deniers has only yielded a cacaphony of invective from the deniers rather than a rational discussion. So far, I have come to the conclusion that there is no rational process behind AGW denial; its adherents start off with their conclusion, and work backwards from there. I have encountered a few people, such as Steve McIntyre, who impress me with their intellectual integrity -- but they're skeptics, not deniers.

Anyway, I was wondering if you would enjoy a rational, gentlemanly discussion of the issue. I would like to concentrate on the scientific question -- I readily concede that the policy question (what we should do about AGW) is highly subjective and men of good will can disagree honestly about the policy question.

Are you interested in such a discussion? If so, perhaps an examination of the current lead post of my own blog (you can navigate to it by clicking on my name) can provide you with a starting point for discussion here.

Alan Caruba said...

Chris: This is a blog, not a forum. That is to say, it is my opinion, based on experience, research, et cetera. I welcome comments, but the blog is not intended to be a platform for an extended discussion or dialogue.

I have written extensively on what AG has little validity when compared to the action (or inaction) of the Sun, the oceans, winds, clouds, and other natural factors whose power far exceeds anything humans do with regard to the environment.

Most certainly we can foul our air and our water. I favor reasonable efforts to clear both. I oppose destroying our economy in the name of a hoax for which there is no scientific evidence or support.