Saturday, December 5, 2009

Climategate: A Willful Ignorance


By Alan Caruba

"Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age."
-- MIT Professor Richard Lindzen, PhD, Atmospheric Science

“On such (climate) models we are supposed to wager trillions of dollars—and substantially diminished freedom.”--George F. Will, syndicated columnist, Washington Post

Long ago I took one science course in college because it was required, not because I had any great interest in science. The course was zoology and only my end of semester paper on raccoons, an assigned subject, avoided a failing grade. To this day, more than fifty years later, I still recall that its Latin name was Procyon lotar.

I cite this to indicate that anyone can learn science. It is neither mysterious, nor arcane. To some it is an intoxicating, powerful search for new understanding and new truth that becomes a lifelong pursuit, but even someone with no particular aptitude can grasp its fundamentals with a minimum of effort.

Why, then, do men entrusted with explaining the world to us, the reporters and editors of respected journals, resolutely refuse to embrace the truths that science offers in favor of the man-made myths intended to influence public opinion and policy?

Why do otherwise educated and apparently intelligent men publish a magazine like The Economist and put on its cover “Stopping Climate Change”, about a 14-page “special report”?

This is an astonishingly stupid headline. Even a child knows you cannot “stop” climate change. None of the more than six billion people on Earth can “stop” climate change because one of the definitions of change is “to become different” and a planet that has existed for 4.5 billion years has passed through many changes long before the first appearance of Homo sapiens.

Imagine a child saying, “Make it stop snowing” or “make the Sun come out.” But there are more than 16,500 men and women this very day who are gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark at a “Climate Change” conference based entirely on lies that defy simple truths about how the Earth functions.

Unless one was determined upon a willful ignorance of those truths, the vast body of lies that continue to be reported would and should sink beneath the weight of real science, legitimate science, not the computer model inventions that conveniently ignore the Medieval Warm period when temperatures were higher than they are now, a time when Chaucer (1342-1400) would write of vineyards in northern England, a time well before the Industrial Revolution and the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) that result from the use of coal, oil, and natural gas.

It is only willful ignorance that would keep a reporter or anyone else from knowing what has been known for years, that CO2 increases over the past 300,000 years have never caused temperature rise. Indeed, the rise of CO2 always follows in the wake of a temperature increase. What is so terribly wrong about the Copenhagen conference and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sponsoring it is that its own member scientists know that too.

A week after the revelations of more than a thousand emails between the chief perpetrators of the science fraud that has since come to be called Climategate, an editor at The Economist could still write, “This newspaper believes that global warming is a serious threat, and that the world needs to take steps to try to avert it.”

Could The Economist be so uninformed, misinformed, or willfully ignorant of the commonly known fact that, despite a rise in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the Earth has been in a new, natural cooling cycle for a decade?

Can all the labors of the 16,000 scientists, diplomats, politicians, and other assorted conspirators manage to ignore that fact?

Not only can they, the newest form of the fraud has emerged already and was trumpeted in the pages of The Economist, claiming beyond all credulity that the Earth’s vast “carbon sinks”, its oceans, forests and all vegetation, are unlikely to be able to “absorb” all the CO2 being produced by that most horrid of all creatures, human beings.

The IPCC should be disbanded as a threat to mankind. The EPA should be required by Congress to produce scientific proof that CO2 is a “pollutant” to be regulated. It cannot!

The people attending the conference should be run out of Copenhagen as if peasants were once again pursuing the monster, Frankenstein.

And The Economist, along with all the so-called scientific magazines and news outlets that have prostituted themselves to the global warming fraud, should issue an apology to their readers.

13 comments:

Unknown said...

Alan,
I skimmed through the Economist's story on CO2 sinks. If I remember correctly, there is an analogy with a tap emptying a container at a fixed rate. If the CO2 coming in is greater than the tap can let out at the fixed rate, CO2 builds up in the container (the atmosphere). If we stop human CO2 production right now, it will still take the atmosphere thousands of years to get rid of the excess CO2.

This is such a childish and ignorant story that I had to check the cover of the magazine to make sure I hadn't picked up "Discover", "National Geographic" or "Scientific American" where idiotic fairytales abound.

Fritz
PS. The halflife of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is 7-10 years. The IPCC claim that it is hundreds of years is absolutely false.

Geoff A said...

I continue to marvel at the fact that one block of scientists argue that a temperature shift of small parts of a degree and a CO2 change of a few parts per million will leave Earth sterile, while another body of scientists believe it is worth spending billions on SETI projects to detect life out in space. If the window for Planet Earth is so miniscule, is it rational to think that planets in distant space will accidentally present themselves within this microscopic window?

Geoff Alder

Necromancer said...

There is an article on FOX news that claims Co2 will be put on the public danger list by the EPA. Here's the link. I think.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/06/epa-set-delare-carbon-dioxide-public-danger/?test=latestnews

Alan Caruba said...

The EPA is engaging in an outright fraud.

Unknown said...

Many here don't need to read another article on the "Climategate" controversy to understand it. However,it seems very few understand exactly which “decline” was being hidden, what “trick” was used to do so to create what many now know to be the "greatest scientific fraud in history".

The best article I've read that can help non-techy people understand is on the American Thinker website:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html

Anonymous said...

This is class warfare. The elitists desire to impose collectivism on the masses while they continue living lavishly. The common man's life got too good during the industrial revolution and the elitists are too greedy to allow the common man to enjoy a comfortable and prosperous life if he so chooses. The elitists can't stand sharing prosperity; we're seeing them attempt to reverse industrialization to return the common man to a slave-like state, easily controllable, expendable and powerless.

Guy said...

Willful Ignorance ... a perfect description of a liberal friend of mine, who calls himself an independent. I attended a hockey game with him last night, and during the game, I asked him if he regretted voting for Obama yet. He immediately launched into a huge speech about how nobody is giving Obama a chance, and if they would just back off and let him do what he wants to do, wonderful things will happen. When I challenged him with the facts, he went on to mimic the Democratic party line just like a parrot....

I told him voting for a Socialist was going to come back to haunt him, but he told me he could have never voted Republican with "that moron Sarah Palin" on the ticket. I asked him if he had ever met her, or heard her speak in person, and he said he hadn't, but he was sure she's as dumb as a rock. I then asked him how he could possibly know anything about her if he'd never met her or heard her speak, and he told me he'd heard all he needed to hear on the news. I asked him if he'd ever watched FOX news to get a different perspective on things, and he came back with some rant about how stupid Bill O'Reilly was. I gave up at that point, but told him that if he continued to make his decisions based on what the mainstream media is feeding him, he'll never be able to make an educated decision.

This is a 48 year-old guy who never went to college, and is currently working two part time jobs. He lost his full time union job in the printing business after demanding (and being denied) a raise from his employer, and then going on vacation for two weeks. He came back to find his job taken by the guy who filled in for him while he was gone. I didn't have the heart to ask him where his UNION was when he got fired "without cause"...

I came home last night wondering how anyone can be so dense. How can a guy with virtually NO education who's about to turn 50, working two crappy part time jobs, with no health care, no retirement plan, and virtually nothing to show for his entire life call people like Palin and O'Reilly stupid? These are people who have extensive educations, have made great careers for themselves, and have forgotten more than this guy will ever know. There's only one explanation ...and it's simply Willfull Ignorance. Sad ....

Samboc said...

After reading all these blogs I am left with 3 questionsa.

1: CO2 is the life blood of this planet.

With out it all life DIES:
Repeat"ALL" life dies.

What is the minimum amount of CO2 that substains life.

2: What is the maximum amount of CO2 that the atmosphere can tolerate before a run away temp occurs.

3 What is the optimum CO2 level for the planet earth.

Alan Caruba said...

Paul, you and anyone else can secure the answers to these questions with a bit of research.

Suffice it to say, the Earth has proven to be a self-regulationg mechanism that has found the answers.

Samboc said...

Alan ,

Your comment is typical of a " Climate Change Activist"

My question was simple.

1: At what point will all life on this planet ceast to exist as CO2 is reduced.

2: At what point will CO2 cause a runaway temp .

3: What is the optimum CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.


Just give you answers in PPM .

Alan Caruba said...

Paul, this will surprise you, but I do not exist to do YOUR research.

Don't bother responding with another comment. You're blocked.

The Hero Among Sell-outs said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
John Douglas said...

May I call your President Lysenkobama ?