posted August 15, 2006 10:13 PM            

WASHINGTON -- "More Frequent Heat Waves Linked to Global Warming" declared the Aug. 4 Washington Post headline of a story predicting that record-breaking killer heat waves might soon become the norm in the United States and Europe.

Because of the Earth's warming climate, this story warned, the lethal heat that scorched Europe in 2003, killing thousands, would by 2040 return every other summer. The United States, too, would suffer frequent hellish summers, presumably in punishment for our environmental sins of greenhouse pollution.

With 100-plus degree heat index temperatures baking America's Northeast from Boston to Washington, D.C., some Post readers doubtless rushed into air-conditioned theaters to immerse themselves in former Vice President Al Gore's doomsayer documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," a science fiction worst-case scenario of catastrophic global warming.

But are such heat waves, however extreme, really evidence of a fast-warming global climate as Gore and the mainstream media would have us believe? Even Post reporter Juliet Eilperin conceded that "it is impossible to attribute any one weather event to climate change."

"Virtually all climate experts agree that it is impossible to attribute any single weather event – a heat wave, drought or hurricane – to global warming," wrote the New York Times near the bottom of an Aug. 1 editorial, "given the myriad factors that influence weather."

"A heat wave is a heat wave," is the more blunt assessment of Jim St. John, a meteorological scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. "We've always had them in the summer months, and they don't necessarily tell us anything about climate change."

Atmospheric scientists have good reasons to be skeptical about purported weather-climate connections. Weather involves short-term phenomena such as rainstorms, heat waves and dry spells that happen on time scales from minutes to at most a few years. Weather changes constantly and often goes to extremes of hot and cold, wet and dry.
Climate, by contrast, describes a place's average patterns of weather over 30 years or more – and therefore reflects the continuing influence of temperature, wind, precipitation and many other factors. A place's – or a planet's – climate cannot be redefined by a few days, or even a few years, of unusual weather.

Environmental radicals claimed that this summer's heat wave shattered all previous high-temperature records, and they implied that this heat came at least in part from human-caused global warming. Such claims are incorrect or unproven, according to Virginia Polytechnic Institute climatologist Patrick Michaels.

"From June 1 to Aug. 31, 1930," Michaels told Cybercast News Service, "21 days had high temperatures that were 100 degrees or above" in metropolitan Washington, D.C. Many heat records were set that year, especially from July 19 to Aug. 9. "That summer has never been approached," said Michaels, "and it's not going to be approached this year."

The blazing summer of 1930 began the longest American drought of the 20th century. "In 1934, dry regions stretched from New York and Pennsylvania across the Great Plains to California," wrote CNS reporter Randy Hall. "A ‘Dust Bowl' covered about 50 million acres in the south-central plains during the winter of 1935-36," and drove many thousands of busted Oklahoma and Arkansas farm families -- Okies and Arkies --westward to California.

Then as now, a few scientists became media darlings by warning of an impending climatic disaster from global warming. A handful of those scientists identified carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels as a climate-warming greenhouse gas, but human cars and factories were too few to have caused the Dust Bowl.
But a sudden chill began around 1940, the start of nearly four decades of climatic cooling in the Northern Hemisphere. By the late 1970s the Mississippi River was clogging with winter ice. Water pipes five feet underground were freezing and bursting in Chicago. Buffalo, N.Y., was buried beneath record blizzard snowfall. Snow even fell briefly on the beaches of Miami, Florida. The same weekly news magazines that today tout Gore's extreme claims about global warming were only three decades ago warning of a fast-approaching new ice age.

Weather runs to extremes over the United States and Europe because our skies are a battleground where churning warm air moving north from the equator collides with cold air pushing south from the Arctic. This gives the United States the most varied, turbulent weather anywhere on Earth, from desert "witches winds" in the West to Tornado Alley and blizzards in our heartland to hurricanes along our Gulf and East Coasts. A heat wave typically happens when warm air pushes farther north than usual. But at the same time, chances are that somewhere else around the planet cold Arctic air is bulging farther south than usual as Earth's "weather machine" redistributes energy in the atmosphere.

The mainstream media trumpets hot spells as evidence of the global warming on its political agenda. Here's some of the opposite-but-equal unusual cold it scarcely reported:

In December 2005 devastating cold chilled the Rocky Mountain West. Last Dec. 7 at West Yellowstone, Mont., the temperature fell to 45 below zero, fully six degrees colder than the previous record set in 1927, according to the National Weather Service. In Fort Collins, Colo., the mercury plunged to 37 below zero, and even in Lubbock in the Texas panhandle it dipped to only six degrees above zero.

Across the Pacific Ocean, February 2006 temperatures along Russia's Siberian coastline plummeted to 69 degrees below zero, shattering all previous cold records by six degrees. Unusual cold and snow blasted other regions of the former Soviet Union, from Moscow to Georgia along the southern beaches of the Black Sea.

Winter snowfall has been breaking records in the United States and Eurasia since March 1993's "Storm of the Century" dumped snow up to four feet deep from New York to Alabama, as TechCentralStation reported June 2. On Feb. 17-18, 2003, Boston set a new all-time storm record with 27.5 inches of snow. On Feb. 17-18, 2006, a blizzard dumped 26.9 inches of snow on New York City's Central Park, a record unequalled since the blizzard of 1888.

The climate is now measurably cooling in Eastern Europe. Even Gore in his global warming book, An Inconvenient Truth, shouts that "temperature increases are taking place all over the world" (p. 78) but in the back of the book's fine print admits that "some parts of the globe – such as northern Europe – might actually become colder" (p. 321).

We now know that the 2003 European heat wave was caused by rare events in Earth's upper atmosphere, not by global warming. Recent record snowfall, as well as 2005's brief burst of hurricanes, has been driven by known cycles in such weather phenomena, not necessarily by global warming.

posted August 16, 2006 05:21 PM              

Aug. 7, 2006 — Bottom fish and crabs washing up dead on Oregon beaches are being killed by a recurring "dead zone" of low-oxygen water that is larger than in previous years and may be triggered by global warming, scientists said.

There are signs it is spreading north to Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Scientists studying the 70-mile-long zone of oxygen-depleted water conclude that it is being caused by explosive blooms of tiny plants known as phytoplankton, which die and sink to the bottom, and then are eaten by bacteria which use up the oxygen in the water.

The recurring phytoplankton blooms are triggered by northerly wind, which generates a process in which nutrient-rich water is brought to the surface from lower depths.

"We are seeing wild swings from year to year in the timing and duration of the winds that are favorable for upwelling," Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine ecology at Oregon State and a member of the Pew Oceans Commission, said. "This increased variability in the winds is consistent with what we would expect under climate change."

Scientists first noticed a dead zone off Newport in 2002. That one was traced back to a rare influx of cold water rich in nutrients and low in oxygen that had migrated from the Arctic, said Jack Barth, professor of oceanography at Oregon State and with Lubchenco a principal investigator for the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans.

Dead zones have returned each summer since then, but these have been marked by intense bursts of upwelling that were followed by calm periods, when the water contains lower nutrient levels, Barth added.

"The simple fact is there's not enough oxygen," said Francis Chan, a research professor of zoology at Oregon State who has been measuring ocean oxygen levels.

Oxygen levels are generally lower in deeper water, said Lubchenco, but what is unusual about this condition is that it is moving into relatively shallow water, about 50 feet deep, and moving toward shore, where the richest marine ecosystems are.

Deep water fish, such as ling cod, wolf eels and rockfish, are showing up in Oregon tide pools, apparently driven toward shore by the advancing dead zone, said Lubchenco.

Although the dead zone has been documented along 70 miles of coast, dead crabs and fish also have been showing up along Washington's Olympic Peninsula, Barth said.

"If we continue like we are now, we could see some ecological shifts," Barth said. "It all depends on what happens with the warming and the greenhouse gases."

Dead zones in other places around the country, such as Hood Canal in Washington and the Mississippi River Delta off Louisiana are caused by agricultural runoff fueling blooms of algae that rot and deplete oxygen levels, said Lubchenco.

But dead zones like the one off Oregon also occur off Namibia and South Africa in the Atlantic and off Peru in the Pacific.

posted August 16, 2006 05:37 PM              

U.S. Agency Confirms Above-Normal Hurricane Season Prediction
Updated forecast for 12-15 named storms, three to four major hurricanes

By Cheryl Pellerin
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- With the peak of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season approaching, experts from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have confirmed their prediction for an above-normal number of storms.

For the full 2006 season, which ends November 30, NOAA projects a total of 12 to 15 named storms, of which seven to nine will intensify to hurricanes, and three or four of these could become major hurricanes—rated at category 3 or higher.

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is a 1 to 5 rating based on hurricane intensity. A category 3 hurricane has winds of 178 to 209 kilometers per hour, and storm surge is generally 2.7 to 3.6 meters above normal.

Hurricane Katrina was a category 4 storm when it hit the north-central U.S. Gulf Coast in August 2005, with winds between 210 and 249 kilometers per hour. It was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history, and the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded.

NOAA’s current forecast is slightly lower than the outlook the agency issued in May, but it is above the seasonal average of 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes. (See related article.)

So far in 2006, three named tropical storms – Alberto, Beryl and Chris -- have occurred but none became hurricanes.

“While the beginning of this hurricane season has been relatively calm compared to last year,” NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher said during an August 8 press conference, “it does not mean we are off the hook.”

The peak period of hurricane season is from mid-August through October, he added, “and it's important that all citizens who live along our coasts, in areas that may be prone to hurricanes ... have an emergency plan and [are] able to execute that plan on warnings of severe storms.”

Doppler radar image of Hurricane Rita, September 24, 2005. [file photo] (©AP/WWP)

Doppler radar image of Hurricane Rita, September 24, 2005. [file photo] (©AP/WWP) HURRICANE FORMATION

According to Gerry Bell, NOAA's lead seasonal hurricane forecaster, major climate factors expected to influence 2006 storm season activity are the ongoing multidecadal signal, which produces wind and atmospheric pressure patterns favorable to hurricane formation, and continuing warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures. NOAA attributes the same factors to the current active Atlantic hurricane era that began in 1995.

Bell said conditions were favorable in 2005 for early season storm development.

"La Niña-like convection in the central equatorial Pacific during June and July of 2005 contributed to the development of numerous early-season storms," he added. "Conditions this year reflect a more typical active season, with peak activity expected during August-October."

La Niña is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific. This is in contrast to El Niño, which is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific.

NOAA's seasonal outlook does not specify where or when tropical storms and hurricanes could strike.

"Science has not evolved enough to accurately predict on seasonal timescales when and where these storms will likely make landfall," Bell said.

"Exactly when and where landfall occurs is strongly controlled by the weather patterns in place as the storms approach land,” he added. “These weather patterns generally cannot be predicted more than several days in advance."

"As we approach the peak of the hurricane season, our message remains the same, be informed and be prepared," said Max Mayfield, director of the NOAA National Hurricane Center in Florida.

"Preventing the loss of life and minimizing property damage from hurricanes are responsibilities shared by all,” he added. “Remember, one hurricane hitting your neighborhood is enough to make it a bad season."

The 2006 Atlantic Hurricane Outlook and additional information on hurricanes are available at the NOAA Web site.

posted August 16, 2006 05:39 PM              

U.S. Study Links Global Warming, Hurricane Intensity
Implications for life, property in Caribbean, Mexico, parts of United States

Washington -- Climate change is affecting the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes, and hurricane damage likely will continue to increase because of greenhouse warming, according to a new study funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The study shows for the first time a direct relationship between climate change and hurricane intensity, unlike other studies that have linked warmer oceans to a likely increase in the number of hurricanes, according to an August 15 press release from the American Geophysical Union (AGU). (See related article.)

James Elsner of Florida State University examined the statistical connection between the average global near-surface air temperature and Atlantic sea surface temperature, comparing the two factors with hurricane intensities over the past 50 years.

"The large increases in powerful hurricanes over the past several decades, together with the results presented here, certainly suggest cause for concern," Elsner said.

He found that average air temperatures during hurricane season between June and November are useful in predicting sea surface temperatures -- a vital component in nourishing hurricane winds as they strengthen over warm waters -- but sea surface temperatures are not useful in predicting air temperatures.

Several recent studies have warned that human-induced climate warming has the potential to increase the number of hurricanes, and previous research and computer models suggest that hurricane strength will intensify with increasing global mean temperatures.

Others hypothesize that the relationship between sea surface temperatures and hurricanes can be attributed to natural causes, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, an ongoing series of long-term changes in the sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Using detailed data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to monitor sea temperature anomalies over the past half century, Elsner used a special test to establish evidence in support of the climate change/hurricane intensity hypothesis.

The World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Environment Programme established the IPCC to assess scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant to the understanding of climate change, its impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.

Elsner’s analysis helps verify a link between atmospheric warming caused largely by greenhouse gases and the recent upswing in frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes, including Katrina and Rita, which devastated parts of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas in 2005.

"I infer that future hurricane hazard mitigation efforts should reflect that hurricane damage will continue to increase, in part, due to greenhouse warming," Elsner said.

Elsner said his research moves “the debate away from trend analyses of hurricane counts and toward a physical mechanism that can account for the various observations."

The text of the press release is available at the AGU Web site.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

posted August 27, 2006 10:24 AM            

We should stop listening to the crackpot scientists and start listening to the fashion designers.

posted August 27, 2006 03:14 PM              

Published August 27, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The warming of our planet's surface and a possible correlation with rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels has sparked considerable controversy about the origin of this warming (human-induced or an unpredictable act of nature?).

Whether it's the fact that 9 out of 10 of the warmest years on record occurred in this past decade or that 2006 (just the first half) was the warmest year for the United States, or that average global temperatures have been rising (by about 1 degree during the last century), evidence abounds of warming.

Despite many claims to the contrary, natural and human activity can alter the Earth's atmosphere and modify our environment. All the oxygen we breathe (21 percent of our atmosphere) was produced by life via photosynthesis. Smog is a more direct effect of human/industrially induced atmospheric alteration. Indeed, many past societal catastrophes such as the Dust Bowl mass migrations of the 1930s were likely caused by over-farming. With our great potential to create and learn, we also have great potential to cause our own self-destruction.

Our atmosphere is comparable to a rubber glove stretched over a bowling ball -- it is very thin. Due to our atmosphere, we don't suffer the extremes of temperature of Mercury and our moon. In the opposite extreme, since our atmosphere isn't as thick or dense as Venus, we don't suffer from oppressive heat (850 Kelvin) due to greenhouse warming that prevents water from condensing there.

Earth developed a very fortunate (for life) state of quasi-equilibrium. This allowed water to condense, removed most of the carbon dioxide from the air. And with liquid water as solvent, life evolved. However, human activity is probably altering this equilibrium by producing greenhouse gases (most notably carbon dioxide). These gases trap heat, warming Earth's surface and further release carbon dioxide (trapped in melting glaciers or warming oceans), further warming Earth's surface and creating a new equilibrium state in which all life may not survive.

Unlike water, which readily condenses into liquid and solid (ice/snow), carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere roughly 100 years before its natural removal. Thus, any effort initiated today to reverse the warming trend will not bear fruit until decades later. Though carbon dioxide levels have cyclically varied from about 180 parts per million to 280 ppm over the last 650,000 years, we have never measured higher carbon dioxide concentrations during this period than now (370 ppm) -- roughly 27 percent higher than at any point in the Earth's "recent" history. Though many argue that greenhouse gas release via human activity pales by comparison with volcanoes and other geothermal releases, these events are very short term and have created problems for life in the past but were "rapidly" corrected.

Carbon dioxide produced by all life (not including humans) may be larger than that created by human activity. But without humans, it has been in equilibrium/balance for much time via the carbon cycle. Humans continue to add enormous additional quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and are also removing the ability of life to remove/sequester carbon dioxide (by e.g. decimating rain forests). This alters the Earth's natural homeostatic balance and it's possible we are only beginning to see the negative results.

To provide some perspective of the sheer quantity of CO2 introduced, consider that a gallon of gasoline releases about 20 pounds of CO2 (among other greenhouse gases) and given that our nation consumes more than 20 million barrels of oil every day, this implies about 9 billion tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere every day.

Whenever rapid change occurs, all life suffers as it struggles to adapt. The Earth's natural equilibrium can only take so many shocks before it irreversibly goes to a new state that may not support life, as in the rest of our solar system. We are conducting an experiment on our only home, Mother Earth, the results of which may not be known for some time and which may be catastrophic and irreversible.

Tragically, most of the voices from whom the public have heard discuss global warming (such as author James Creighton or politician Al Gore) are not scientists and have spun (or misunderstood) the science behind this phenomenon to suit their own political or dogmatic needs.

Scientists such as James Hanson who have been studying global warming for decades have been censored/muzzled by political bosses who have no little or no scientific training. Other scientists such as Peter Doran have had their data misinterpreted and misrepresented for political aims.

Unfortunately for humans, there is no politics in nature but absolute natural laws. We cannot go on pretending these laws of nature don't exist and can be violated without disastrous consequences. Whether it is warming, pollution, dwindling natural resources, pestilence and disease or overpopulation, the human race is on a collision course with reality and only science can avoid likely catastrophes ahead.

In that spirit, I encourage all members of the public and their leaders to first of all learn the science behind the phenomenon of global warming and engage scientists in the debate so we can all decide together on the future course of action to tackle and prepare for global warming for the survival of the human race.

MICHAEL PRAVICA
Assistant Professor of Physics
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
This essay was based upon a University of Nevada-Los Vegas University Forum talk given by Mr. Pravica last Spring and most recently given to the Las Vegas City Council to support their passage of a resolution on global warming.

posted August 27, 2006 05:33 PM              

Skip this one all together...

posted August 27, 2006 11:12 PM            

What else could one believe when these nuts reject every alternative source of energy most of which are CO2 free?

Oh I know genetically altered trees might run amok and take over the earth. A seagul might fly into the blades of a generator at a wind farm. There might be a meltdown at a nuclear power plant that sends the entire nuclear core rocketing into the bowels of the earth and of course, the salmon have rights too so even hydroelectric power plants are a big no-no.

In fact, in typical leftist fashion, they rule everything out that makes any sense at all, economic or otherwise.

August 24, 2006 7:31 PM

Bull-Headed Greens
Global-warming foes fight global-warming cures.

By Deroy Murdock

If Al Gore is right and global warming is genuine, grave, and the fault of mankind, why do he and so many environmentalists oppose measures that would reduce those pesky carbon-dioxide emissions? Power sources that could cut atmospheric CO2 rarely seem good enough to satisfy the greens.

Unlike oil and coal, nuclear power does not generate CO2. It may be the most practical, atmosphere-friendly power source now available. And yet the former vice president seems unimpressed.

“I’m skeptical about it playing a much larger role,” he said in London’s Guardian newspaper last May 31. “I don’t think it’s going to be a silver bullet.”

True, nuclear plants produce radioactive waste that must be stored somewhere. Despite an impressive safety record in America, where nuclear power meets 20 percent of energy demand — and even more so in France, where 75 percent of power is nuclear — the potential remains for catastrophic accidents or sabotage. But as Gore and his pals should understand, life involves trade-offs between low-risk options and clear-and-present dangers. If global warming truly is the unfolding horror show that environmentalists say it is, then why do they consider atomic energy even more dangerous?

Indeed, Competitive Enterprise Institute scholar Chris Horner wonders why environmentalists reject alternatives to fossil fuels if they agree with Sir David King, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s science adviser, that global warming is “the greatest threat facing mankind” and is “worse than terrorism.”

“It is hypocritical that Kyotophile greens almost unanimously still oppose nuclear power and that [the Kyoto treaty’s] own terms exclude greenhouse-gas-free nukes from its permissible sources of gaining ‘credits,’” Horner writes in his forthcoming Regnery book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.

Green groups are almost comically conflicted on this issue. “Climate change is the greatest threat of all,” Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth U.K. told the Guardian last March 3. But then FOE’s website declares: “Nuclear power…cannot be part of the solution to climate change.” So, apparently, some threats are greater than “the greatest threat of all.”

Greenpeace executive director Stephen Tindale believes that global warming “will claim hundreds of thousands of lives.” Nevertheless, the group’s website says, “Greenpeace is campaigning to end nuclear power.”

How about hydroelectric? Letting water run through dams, spin turbines, and generate juice is carbon friendly. And yet environmentalists want fewer, not more, dams. The latest ecological craze is to breach dams so fish can swim freely. PacificCorp will begin re-licensing hearings in San Francisco on August 21 that could prompt their demolition of power-generating dams on the Klamath River to give salmon a fin up.

Well, what of wind power? Here, too, liberals offer double talk. A proposed 130-turbine wind farm off Cape Cod blew into a buzz saw when global-warming foe Sen. Ted Kennedy moaned that it would ruin the ocean view from his Hyannis Port compound.

Amazingly enough, tree huggers even object to using trees to absorb CO2. Naturally, trees inhale CO2 and exhale oxygen. What could be more benign than that?

Yet, after pondering the idea of planting tree farms to consume CO2, eco-crats balked. In November 2000, United Nations and European Union officials involved in the Kyoto treaty process said such tree farms would “destroy the environmental integrity of the agreement.” At negotiations in Milan in December 2003, Horner writes, “those expressing the greatest fear of increased carbon dioxide concentrations quirkishly demanded a limit on what kind of trees be permitted to soak up the menacing precursor of photosynthesis as part of its cruel infliction of more and more oxygen on the unsuspecting planet.”

At the November 2002 World Environment Summit in Johannesburg, Friends of the Earth International and the World Rainforest Movement issued a news release that insisted: “Genetically modified trees must be banned from the Kyoto Protocol.” Thus, even crossbreeding trees so that they neutralize more CO2 than usual, is apparently scarier than global warming itself.

Environmentalists seem to think conservation, ethanol, and perhaps attractive-but-costly solar power can halt global warming in its tracks. That’s dubious. If this supposed problem truly is the imminent planetary death sentence that global warmers say it is, they should grow up and fight CO2, not the tools to lasso it.

posted September 20, 2006 12:24 AM              

Read the letter in full here (pdf) http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1876538,00.html

David Adam, environment correspondent
Wednesday September 20, 2006
The Guardian

posted September 27, 2006 05:45 PM            

HOT & COLD MEDIA SPIN CYCLE: A CHALLENGE TO JOURNALISTS WHO COVER GLOBAL WARMING
SENATOR JAMES INHOFE CHAIRMAN, SENATE ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE

SENATE FLOOR SPEECH DELIVERED MONDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2006

I am going to speak today about the most media-hyped environmental issue of all time, global warming. I have spoken more about global warming than any other politician in Washington today. My speech will be a bit different from the previous seven floor speeches, as I focus not only on the science, but on the media’s coverage of climate change.

Global Warming -- just that term evokes many members in this chamber, the media, Hollywood elites and our pop culture to nod their heads and fret about an impending climate disaster. As the senator who has spent more time speaking about the facts regarding global warming, I want to address some of the recent media coverage of global warming and Hollywood’s involvement in the issue. And of course I will also discuss former Vice President Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age.

From the late 1920’s until the 1960’s they warned of global warming. From the 1950’s until the 1970’s they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.

Recently, advocates of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try to convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral issue of our generation. Just last week, the vice president of London’s Royal Society sent a chilling letter to the media encouraging them to stifle the voices of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism.

During the past year, the American people have been served up an unprecedented parade of environmental alarmism by the media and entertainment industry, which link every possible weather event to global warming. The year 2006 saw many major organs of the media dismiss any pretense of balance and objectivity on climate change coverage and instead crossed squarely into global warming advocacy.

SUMMARY OF LATEST DEVELOPMENTS OF MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING HOCKEY STICK

First, I would like to summarize some of the recent developments in the controversy over whether or not humans have created a climate catastrophe. One of the key aspects that the United Nations, environmental groups and the media have promoted as the “smoking gun” of proof of catastrophic global warming is the so-called ‘hockey stick’ temperature graph by climate scientist Michael Mann and his colleagues.

This graph purported to show that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, then spiked upward in the 20th century presumably due to human activity. Mann, who also co-publishes a global warming propaganda blog reportedly set up with the help of an environmental group, had his “Hockey Stick” come under severe scrutiny.

The “hockey stick” was completely and thoroughly broken once and for all in 2006. Several years ago, two Canadian researchers tore apart the statistical foundation for the hockey stick. In 2006, both the National Academy of Sciences and an independent researcher further refuted the foundation of the “hockey stick.”

http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697

The National Academy of Sciences report reaffirmed the existence of the Medieval Warm Period from about 900 AD to 1300 AD and the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1850. Both of these periods occurred long before the invention of the SUV or human industrial activity could have possibly impacted the Earth’s climate. In fact, scientists believe the Earth was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland.

Climate alarmists have been attempting to erase the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period from the Earth’s climate history for at least a decade. David Deming, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Geosciences, can testify first hand about this effort. Dr. Deming was welcomed into the close-knit group of global warming believers after he published a paper in 1995 that noted some warming in the 20th century. Deming says he was subsequently contacted by a prominent global warming alarmist and told point blank “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” When the “Hockey Stick” first appeared in 1998, it did just that.

END OF LITTLE ICE AGE MEANS WARMING

The media have missed the big pieces of the puzzle when it comes to the Earth’s temperatures and mankind’s carbon dioxide (C02) emissions. It is very simplistic to feign horror and say the one degree Fahrenheit temperature increase during the 20th century means we are all doomed. First of all, the one degree Fahrenheit rise coincided with the greatest advancement of living standards, life expectancy, food production and human health in the history of our planet. So it is hard to argue that the global warming we experienced in the 20th century was somehow negative or part of a catastrophic trend.

Second, what the climate alarmists and their advocates in the media have continued to ignore is the fact that the Little Ice Age, which resulted in harsh winters which froze New York Harbor and caused untold deaths, ended about 1850. So trying to prove man-made global warming by comparing the well-known fact that today's temperatures are warmer than during the Little Ice Age is akin to comparing summer to winter to show a catastrophic temperature trend.

In addition, something that the media almost never addresses are the holes in the theory that C02 has been the driving force in global warming. Alarmists fail to adequately explain why temperatures began warming at the end of the Little Ice Age in about 1850, long before man-made CO2 emissions could have impacted the climate. Then about 1940, just as man-made CO2 emissions rose sharply, the temperatures began a decline that lasted until the 1970’s, prompting the media and many scientists to fear a coming ice age. Let me repeat, temperatures got colder after C02 emissions exploded. If C02 is the driving force of global climate change, why do so many in the media ignore the many skeptical scientists who cite these rather obvious inconvenient truths?

SIXTY SCIENTISTS

My skeptical views on man-made catastrophic global warming have only strengthened as new science comes in. There have been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for 50% of 20th century warming. Recently, many scientists, including a leading member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun’s output.

A letter sent to the Canadian Prime Minister on April 6 of this year by 60 prominent scientists who question the basis for climate alarmism, clearly explains the current state of scientific knowledge on global warming.

The 60 scientists wrote:

“If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.” The letter also noted:

“‘Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes occur all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise.’”

COMPUTER MODELS THREATEN EARTH

One of the ways alarmists have pounded this mantra of “consensus” on global warming into our pop culture is through the use of computer models which project future calamity. But the science is simply not there to place so much faith in scary computer model scenarios which extrapolate the current and projected buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and conclude that the planet faces certain doom.

Dr. Vincent Gray, a research scientist and a 2001 reviewer with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has noted, “The effects of aerosols, and their uncertainties, are such as to nullify completely the reliability of any of the climate models.”

Earlier this year, the director of the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks Alaska, testified to Congress that highly publicized climate models showing a disappearing Arctic were nothing more than “science fiction.” In fact, after years of hearing about the computer generated scary scenarios about the future of our planet, I now believe that the greatest climate threat we face may be coming from alarmist computer models.

This threat is originating from the software installed on the hard drives of the publicity seeking climate modelers.

It is long past the time for us to separate climate change fact from hysteria.

KYOTO: ECONOMIC PAIN FOR NO CLIMATE GAIN

One final point on the science of climate change: I am approached by many in the media and others who ask, “What if you are wrong to doubt the dire global warming predictions? Will you be able to live with yourself for opposing the Kyoto Protocol?”

My answer is blunt. The history of the modern environmental movement is chock full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future.

The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict. These failed predictions are just one reason I respect the serious scientists out there today debunking the latest scaremongering on climate change. Scientists like MIT’s Richard Lindzen, former Colorado State climatologist Roger Pielke, Sr., the University of Alabama’s Roy Spencer and John Christy, Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, Colorado State University’s William Gray, atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Oregon State climatologist George Taylor and astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, to name a few.

But more importantly, it is the global warming alarmists who should be asked the question -- “What if they are correct about man-made catastrophic global warming?” -- because they have come up with no meaningful solution to their supposed climate crisis in the two decades that they have been hyping this issue.

If the alarmists truly believe that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are dooming the planet, then they must face up to the fact that symbolism does not solve a supposed climate crisis. The alarmists freely concede that the Kyoto Protocol, even if fully ratified and complied with, would not have any meaningful impact on global temperatures. And keep in mind that Kyoto is not even close to being complied with by many of the nations that ratified it, including 13 of the EU-15 nations that are not going to meet their emission reduction promises.

Many of the nations that ratified Kyoto are now realizing what I have been saying all along: The Kyoto Protocol is a lot of economic pain for no climate gain.

Legislation that has been proposed in this chamber would have even less of a temperature effect than Kyoto’s undetectable impact. And more recently, global warming alarmists and the media have been praising California for taking action to limit C02. But here again: This costly feel-good California measure, which is actually far less severe than Kyoto, will have no impact on the climate -- only the economy.

Symbolism does not solve a climate crisis.

In addition, we now have many environmentalists and Hollywood celebrities, like Laurie David, who have been advocating measures like changing standard light bulbs in your home to fluorescents to help avert global warming. Changing to more energy-efficient light bulbs is a fine thing to do, but to somehow imply we can avert a climate disaster by these actions is absurd. Once again, symbolism does not solve a climate crisis.

But this symbolism may be hiding a dark side. While greenhouse gas limiting proposals may cost the industrialized West trillions of dollars, it is the effect on the developing world’s poor that is being lost in this debate.

The Kyoto Protocol’s post 2012 agenda which mandates that the developing world be subjected to restrictions on greenhouse gases could have the potential to severely restrict development in regions of the world like Africa, Asia and South America -- where some of the Earth’s most energy-deprived people currently reside.

Expanding basic necessities like running water and electricity in the developing world are seen by many in the green movement as a threat to the planet’s health that must be avoided. Energy poverty equals a life of back-breaking poverty and premature death.

If we allow scientifically unfounded fears of global warming to influence policy makers to restrict future energy production and the creation of basic infrastructure in the developing world -- billions of people will continue to suffer. Last week my committee heard testimony from Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who was once a committed left-wing environmentalist until he realized that so much of what that movement preached was based on bad science. Lomborg wrote a book called “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and has organized some of the world’s top Nobel Laureates to form the 2004 “Copenhagen Consensus” which ranked the world’s most pressing problems.

And guess what?

They placed global warming at the bottom of the list in terms of our planet’s priorities. The “Copenhagen Consensus” found that the most important priorities of our planet included: combating disease, stopping malaria, securing clean water, and building infrastructure to help lift the developing nations out of poverty. I have made many trips to Africa, and once you see the devastating poverty that has a grip on that continent, you quickly realize that fears about global warming are severely misguided.

I firmly believe that when the history of our era is written, future generations will look back with puzzlement and wonder why we spent so much time and effort on global warming fears and pointless solutions like the Kyoto Protocol.

French President Jacques Chirac provided the key clue as to why so many in the international community still revere the Kyoto Protocol, who in 2000 said Kyoto represents “the first component of an authentic global governance.”

Furthermore, if your goal is to limit C02 emissions, the only effective way to go about it is the use of cleaner, more efficient technologies that will meet the energy demands of this century and beyond.

The Bush administration and my Environment and Public Works Committee have been engaged in these efforts as we work to expand nuclear power and promote the Asia-Pacific Partnership. This partnership stresses the sharing of new technology among member nations including three of the world’s top 10 emitters -- China, India and North Korea -- all of whom are exempt from Kyoto.

MEDIA COVERAGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE:

Many in the media, as I noted earlier, have taken it upon themselves to drop all pretense of balance on global warming and instead become committed advocates for the issue.

Here is a quote from Newsweek magazine:

“There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth.”

A headline in the New York Times reads: “Climate Changes Endanger World’s Food Output.” Here is a quote from Time Magazine:

“As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.”

All of this sounds very ominous. That is, until you realize that the three quotes I just read were from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek Magazine and The New York Times, and Time Magazine in 1974.

They weren’t referring to global warming; they were warning of a coming ice age.

Let me repeat, all three of those quotes were published in the 1970’s and warned of a coming ice age.

In addition to global cooling fears, Time Magazine has also reported on global warming. Here is an example:

“[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right… weathermen have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.”

Before you think that this is just another example of the media promoting Vice President Gore’s movie, you need to know that the quote I just read you from Time Magazine was not a recent quote; it was from January 2, 1939.

Yes, in 1939. Nine years before Vice President Gore was born and over three decades before Time Magazine began hyping a coming ice age and almost five decades before they returned to hyping global warming.

Time Magazine in 1951 pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof that the planet was warming.

In 1952, the New York Times noted that the “trump card” of global warming “has been the melting glaciers.”

BUT MEDIA COULD NOT DECIDE BETWEEN WARMING OR COOLING SCARES

There are many more examples of the media and scientists flip-flopping between warming and cooling scares.

Here is a quote from the New York Times reporting on fears of an approaching ice age.

“Geologists Think the World May be Frozen Up Again.”

That sentence appeared over 100 years ago in the February 24, 1895 edition of the New York Times.

Let me repeat. 1895, not 1995.

A front page article in the October 7, 1912 New York Times, just a few months after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, declared that a prominent professor “Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age.”

The very same day in 1912, the Los Angeles Times ran an article warning that the “Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.” An August 10, 1923 Washington Post article declared: “Ice Age Coming Here.”

By the 1930’s, the media took a break from reporting on the coming ice age and instead switched gears to promoting global warming:

“America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise” stated an article in the New York Times on March 27, 1933. The media of yesteryear was also not above injecting large amounts of fear and alarmism into their climate articles.

An August 9, 1923 front page article in the Chicago Tribune declared:

“Scientist Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada.” The article quoted a Yale University professor who predicted that large parts of Europe and Asia would be “wiped out” and Switzerland would be “entirely obliterated.”

A December 29, 1974 New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade.”

The article also warned that unless government officials reacted to the coming catastrophe, “mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence” would result. In 1975, the New York Times reported that “A major cooling [was] widely considered to be inevitable.” These past predictions of doom have a familiar ring, don’t they? They sound strikingly similar to our modern media promotion of former Vice president’s brand of climate alarmism.

After more than a century of alternating between global cooling and warming, one would think that this media history would serve a cautionary tale for today’s voices in the media and scientific community who are promoting yet another round of eco-doom.

Much of the 100-year media history on climate change that I have documented here today can be found in a publication titled “Fire and Ice” from the Business and Media Institute.

MEDIA COVERAGE IN 2006

Which raises the question: Has this embarrassing 100-year documented legacy of coverage on what turned out to be trendy climate science theories made the media more skeptical of today’s sensational promoters of global warming?

You be the judge.

On February 19th of this year, CBS News’s “60 Minutes” produced a segment on the North Pole. The segment was a completely one-sided report, alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap.

It even featured correspondent Scott Pelley claiming that the ice in Greenland was melting so fast, that he barely got off an ice-berg before it collapsed into the water.

“60 Minutes” failed to inform its viewers that a 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showing that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice and mass and that according to scientists, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today.

On March 19th of this year “60 Minutes” profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration.

In this segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed aside in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen.

The “60 Minutes” segment made no mention of Hansen’s partisan ties to former Democrat Vice President Al Gore or Hansen’s receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. There was also no mention of Hansen’s subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004.

Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen’s huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation.

The foundation’s money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.

“60 Minutes” also did not inform viewers that Hansen appeared to concede in a 2003 issue of Natural Science that the use of “extreme scenarios" to dramatize climate change “may have been appropriate at one time” to drive the public's attention to the issue.

Why would “60 Minutes” ignore the basic tenets of journalism, which call for objectivity and balance in sourcing, and do such one-sided segments? The answer was provided by correspondent Scott Pelley. Pelley told the CBS News website that he justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of “Holocaust deniers.”

This year also saw a New York Times reporter write a children’s book entitled” The North Pole Was Here.” The author of the book, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, wrote that it may someday be “easier to sail to than stand on” the North Pole in summer. So here we have a very prominent environmental reporter for the New York Times who is promoting aspects of global warming alarmism in a book aimed at children.

TIME MAGAZINE HYPES ALARMISM

In April of this year, Time Magazine devoted an issue to global warming alarmism titled “Be Worried, Be Very Worried.”

This is the same Time Magazine which first warned of a coming ice age in 1920’s before switching to warning about global warming in the 1930’s before switching yet again to promoting the 1970’s coming ice age scare.

The April 3, 2006 global warming special report of Time Magazine was a prime example of the media’s shortcomings, as the magazine cited partisan left-wing environmental groups with a vested financial interest in hyping alarmism.

Headlines blared:

“More and More Land is Being Devastated by Drought”

“Earth at the Tipping Point”

“The Climate is Crashing,”

Time Magazine did not make the slightest attempt to balance its reporting with any views with scientists skeptical of this alleged climate apocalypse.

I don’t have journalism training, but I dare say calling a bunch of environmental groups with an obvious fund-raising agenda and asking them to make wild speculations on how bad global warming might become, is nothing more than advocacy for their left-wing causes. It is a violation of basic journalistic standards.

To his credit, New York Times reporter Revkin saw fit to criticize Time Magazine for its embarrassing coverage of climate science.

So in the end, Time’s cover story title of “Be Worried, Be Very Worried,” appears to have been apt. The American people should be worried --- very worried -- of such shoddy journalism.

AL GORE INCONVIENIENT TRUTH

In May, our nation was exposed to perhaps one of the slickest science propaganda films of all time: former Vice President Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” In addition to having the backing of Paramount Pictures to market this film, Gore had the full backing of the media, and leading the cheerleading charge was none other than the Associated Press.

On June 27, the Associated Press ran an article by Seth Borenstein that boldly declared “Scientists give two thumbs up to Gore's movie.” The article quoted only five scientists praising Gore’s science, despite AP’s having contacted over 100 scientists.

The fact that over 80% of the scientists contacted by the AP had not even seen the movie or that many scientists have harshly criticized the science presented by Gore did not dissuade the news outlet one bit from its mission to promote Gore’s brand of climate alarmism.

I am almost at a loss as to how to begin to address the series of errors, misleading science and unfounded speculation that appear in the former Vice President’s film Here is what Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist from MIT has written about “An Inconvenient Truth.” “A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse.”

What follows is a very brief summary of the science that the former Vice President promotes in either a wrong or misleading way:

• He promoted the now debunked “hockey stick” temperature chart in an attempt to prove man’s overwhelming impact on the climate

•He attempted to minimize the significance of Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age

•He insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most sciences believe does not exist.

•He asserted that today’s Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930’s were as warm or warmer

•He claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that is only true of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice.

•He hyped unfounded fears that Greenland’s ice is in danger of disappearing

•He erroneously claimed that ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss on local land-use practices

•He made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way out side of any supposed scientific “consensus” and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature.

•He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing

•He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits

•He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving

•He completely failed to inform viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004

Now that was just a brief sampling of some of the errors presented in “An Inconvenient Truth.” Imagine how long the list would have been if I had actually seen the movie -- there would not be enough time to deliver this speech today.

TOM BROKAW

Following the promotion of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the press did not miss a beat in their role as advocates for global warming fears.

ABC News put forth its best effort to secure its standing as an advocate for climate alarmism when the network put out a call for people to submit their anecdotal global warming horror stories in June for use in a future news segment.

In July, the Discovery Channel presented a documentary on global warming narrated by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw. The program presented only those views of scientists promoting the idea that humans are destroying the Earth’s climate.

You don’t have to take my word for the program’s overwhelming bias; a Bloomberg News TV review noted “You'll find more dissent at a North Korean political rally than in this program” because of its lack of scientific objectivity.

Brokaw also presented climate alarmist James Hansen to viewers as unbiased, failing to note his quarter million dollar grant form the partisan Heinz Foundation or his endorsement of Democrat Presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 and his role promoting former Vice President Gore’s Hollywood movie.

Brokaw, however, did find time to impugn the motives of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism when he featured paid environmental partisan Michael Oppenhimer of the group Environmental Defense accusing skeptics of being bought out by the fossil fuel interests.

The fact remains that political campaign funding by environmental groups to promote climate and environmental alarmism dwarfs spending by the fossil fuel industry by a three-to-one ratio. Environmental special interests, through their 527s, spent over $19 million compared to the $7 million that Oil and Gas spent through PACs in the 2004 election cycle.

I am reminded of a question the media often asks me about how much I have received in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. My unapologetic answer is ‘Not Enough,’ -- especially when you consider the millions partisan environmental groups pour into political campaigns.

ENGINEERED ‘CONSENSUS”

Continuing with our media analysis: On July 24, 2006 The Los Angeles Times featured an op-ed by Naomi Oreskes, a social scientist at the University of California San Diego and the author of a 2004 Science Magazine study. Oreskes insisted that a review of 928 scientific papers showed there was 100% consensus that global warming was not caused by natural climate variations. This study was also featured in former Vice President Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,”

However, the analysis in Science Magazine excluded nearly 11,000 studies or more than 90 percent of the papers dealing with global warming, according to a critique by British social scientist Benny Peiser.

Peiser also pointed out that less than two percent of the climate studies in the survey actually endorsed the so-called “consensus view” that human activity is driving global warming and some of the studies actually opposed that view.

But despite this manufactured “consensus,” the media continued to ignore any attempt to question the orthodoxy of climate alarmism.

As the dog days of August rolled in, the American people were once again hit with more hot hype regarding global warming, this time from The New York Times op-ed pages. A columnist penned an August 3rd column filled with so many inaccuracies it is a wonder the editor of the Times saw fit to publish it.

For instance, Bob Herbert’s column made dubious claims about polar bears, the snows of Kilimanjaro and he attempted to link this past summer’s heat wave in the U.S. to global warming – something even alarmist James Hansen does not support.

POLAR BEARS LOOK TIRED?

Finally, a September 15, 2006 Reuters News article claimed that polar bears in the Arctic are threatened with extinction by global warming. The article by correspondent Alister Doyle, quoted a visitor to the Arctic who claims he saw two distressed polar bears. According to the Reuters article, the man noted that “one of [the polar bears] looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted." The article did not state the bears were actually dead or exhausted, rather that they “looked” that way.

Have we really arrived at the point where major news outlets in the U.S. are reduced to analyzing whether or not polar bears in the Arctic appear restful? How does reporting like this get approved for publication by the editors at Reuters? What happened to covering the hard science of this issue?

What was missing from this Reuters news article was the fact that according to biologists who study the animals, polar bears are doing quite well. Biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut, a territory of Canada, refuted these claims in May when he noted that

“Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.”

Sadly, it appears that reporting anecdotes and hearsay as fact, has now replaced the basic tenets of journalism for many media outlets.

ALARMISM HAS LED TO SKEPTICISM

It is an inconvenient truth that so far, 2006 has been a year in which major segments of the media have given up on any quest for journalistic balance, fairness and objectivity when it comes to climate change. The global warming alarmists and their friends in the media have attempted to smear scientists who dare question the premise of man-made catastrophic global warming, and as a result some scientists have seen their reputations and research funding dry up.

The media has so relentlessly promoted global warming fears that a British group called the Institute for Public Policy Research – and this from a left leaning group – issued a report in 2006 accusing media outlets of engaging in what they termed “climate porn” in order to attract the public’s attention.

Bob Carter, a Paleoclimate geologist from James Cook University in Australia has described how the media promotes climate fear:

“Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as ‘if’, ‘might’, ‘could’, ‘probably’, ‘
perhaps’, ‘expected’, ‘projected’ or ‘modeled’ - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense,” professor Carter concluded in an op-ed in April of this year.

Another example of this relentless hype is the reporting on the seemingly endless number of global warming impact studies which do not even address whether global warming is going to happen. They merely project the impact of potential temperature increases.

The media endlessly hypes studies that purportedly show that global warming could increase mosquito populations, malaria, West Nile Virus, heat waves and hurricanes, threaten the oceans, damage coral reefs, boost poison ivy growth, damage vineyards, and global food crops, to name just a few of the global warming linked calamities. Oddly, according to the media reports, warmer temperatures almost never seem to have any positive effects on plant or animal life or food production. Fortunately, the media’s addiction to so-called ‘climate porn’ has failed to seduce many Americans.

According to a July Pew Research Center Poll, the American public is split about evenly between those who say global warming is due to human activity versus those who believe it’s from natural factors or not happening at all.

In addition, an August Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe global warming is naturally occurring is on the rise.

Yes -- it appears that alarmism has led to skepticism.

The American people know when their intelligence is being insulted. They know when they are being used and when they are being duped by the hysterical left.

The American people deserve better -- much better -- from our fourth estate. We have a right to expect accuracy and objectivity on climate change coverage. We have a right to expect balance in sourcing and fair analysis from reporters who cover the issue.

Above all, the media must roll back this mantra that there is scientific “consensus” of impending climatic doom as an excuse to ignore recent science. After all, there was a so-called scientific “consensus” that there were nine planets in our solar system until Pluto was recently demoted.

posted September 28, 2006 03:37 PM              

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/world_warmth.html

09.25.06

A new study by NASA climatologists finds that the world's temperature is reaching a level that has not been seen in thousands of years.

The study appears in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, authored by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y. and colleagues from Columbia University, Sigma Space Partners, Inc., and the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). The study concludes that, because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years. This warming is forcing a migration of plant and animal species toward the poles.

Image right: Because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels seen in the last 12,000 years. This color-coded map shows average temperatures from 2001-2005 compared to a base period of temperatures from 1951-1980. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and purple indicates the greatest cooling. Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA

The study includes worldwide instrumental temperature measurements during the past century. These data reveal that the Earth has been warming at the remarkably rapid rate of approximately 0.2° Celsius (.36° Fahrenheit) per decade for the past 30 years. This observed warming is similar to the warming rate predicted in the 1980s in initial global climate model simulations with changing levels of greenhouse gases.

"This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made (anthropogenic) pollution," said Hansen. In recent decades, human-made greenhouse gases (GHGs) have become the dominant climate change factor.

posted September 28, 2006 03:38 PM              

Hansen and his colleagues in New York collaborated with David Lea and Martin Medina-Elizade of UCSB to obtain comparisons of recent temperatures with the history of the Earth over the past million years. The California researchers obtained a record of tropical ocean surface temperatures from the magnesium content in the shells of microscopic sea surface animals, as recorded in ocean sediments.

Image left: Data from this study reveal that the Earth has been warming approximately 0.2 degrees Celsius (.36 Fahrenheit) per decade for the past 30 years. This rapid warming has brought global temperature to within about one degree Celsius 1.8 Degrees Fahrenheit) of the maximum estimated temperature during the past million years. Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA

One of the findings from this collaboration is that the Western Equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans are now as warm as, or warmer than, at any prior time in the Holocene. The Holocene is the relatively warm period that has existed for almost 12,000 years, since the end of the last major ice age. The Western Pacific and Indian Oceans are important because, as these researchers show, temperature change there is indicative of global temperature change. Therefore, by inference, the world as a whole is now as warm as, or warmer than, at any time in the Holocene.

According to Lea, “The Western Pacific is important for another reason, too: it is a major source of heat for the world’s oceans and for the global atmosphere.”

posted September 28, 2006 03:39 PM              

Hansen and his colleagues suggest that the increased temperature difference between the Western and Eastern Pacific may boost the likelihood of strong El Ninos, such as those of 1983 and 1998. An El Nino is an event that typically occurs every several years when the warm surface waters in the West Pacific slosh eastward toward South America, in the process altering weather patterns around the world.

Image left: This study notes that the greatest warming is occurring at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Here, white, snow-covered terrain acts a giant reflector that bounces incoming solar radiation back into space. As the snow cover melts, the percentage of sunlight reflected, or “albedo,” decreases. Instead, the darker ocean and exposed ground can absorb the light and heat-up, thus adding more energy for continued melting. Click image to view animation. Credit: NASA

The most important result found by these researchers is that the warming in recent decades has brought global temperature to a level within about one degree Celsius (1.8° F) of the maximum temperature of the past million years. According to Hansen “That means that further global warming of 1 degree Celsius defines a critical level. If warming is kept less than that, effects of global warming may be relatively manageable. During the warmest interglacial periods the Earth was reasonably similar to today. But if further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about three million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today.”

Global warming is already beginning to have noticeable effects in nature. Plants and animals can survive only within certain climatic zones, so with the warming of recent decades many of them are beginning to migrate poleward. A study that appeared in Nature Magazine in 2003 found that 1700 plant, animal and insect species moved poleward at an average rate of 6 kilometers (about 4 miles) per decade in the last half of the 20th century.

That migration rate is not fast enough to keep up with the current rate of movement of a given temperature zone, which has reached about 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) per decade in the period 1975 to 2005. “Rapid movement of climatic zones is going to be another stress on wildlife” according to Hansen. “It adds to the stress of habitat loss due to human developments. If we do not slow down the rate of global warming, many species are likely to become extinct. In effect we are pushing them off the planet.”

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/world_warmth.html

posted September 28, 2006 03:57 PM            

The largest and most dramatic advancements in human well being have occurred during periods of warming...bar none.

Periods of cooling or periods when the earth climate was stable and cold produced starvation, decline of civilization, starvation of animals and extinction of species.

Rational people aren't interested in going there.

Of course, we will go there and right on the sun's schedule. When that happens, the cycle of starvation, decline of civilization and extinction of species will occur all over again.

Junk scientists have yet to explain how human activity ended the last ice age...or the ice age before the last ice age or the ice ages before the last 2 ice ages.

Junk scientists also are mum on the fact all the planets in the solar system are heating up and experiencing..global warming.

posted September 30, 2006 10:57 AM            

So, what's crazy Al's latest culprit in the crackpot global warming scam?

If you said methane emissions from the thawing tundra...you'd be wrong. Of course, methane, as a greenhouse gas is about 30 times more potent than CO2...but that's an inconvenient fact to the global warming nuts.

No, crazy Al now says lit cigarettes are a significant cause of global warming.

Crazy Al hasn't yet gotten around to mentioning that 5+ billion humans radiating at a constant 98.6*F is a significant cause of "global warming". I wonder what crazy Al's solution to that problem would be. All you heat radiators out there take note.

GORE: CIGARETTE SMOKING 'SIGNIFICANT' CONTRIBUTOR TO GLOBAL WARMING
Fri Sep 29 2006 09:04:05 ET

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming!"

Gore, who was introduced by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the world faces a "full-scale climate emergency that threatens the future of civilization on earth."

Gore showed computer-generated projections of ocean water rushing in to submerge the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, parts of China, India and other nations, should ice shelves in Antarctica or Greenland melt and slip into the sea.

"The planet itself will do nicely, thank you very much what is at risk is human civilization," Gore said. After a series of Q& A with the audience, which had little to do with global warming and more about his political future, Annan bid "adios" to Gore.

Then, Gore had his staff opened a stack of cardboard boxes to begin selling his new book, "An Inconvenient Truth, The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It," $19.95, to the U.N. diplomats.

Developing...
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash6.htm

If we reduced the hot air coming out of the mouths of crackpot global warming nuts, that would have a significant impact on global warming.

posted October 10, 2006 05:55 PM            

An essential role for remote stars in everyday weather on Earth has been revealed by an experiment at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.
It is already well-established that when cosmic rays, which are high-speed atomic particles originating in exploded stars far away in the Milky Way, penetrate Earth’s atmosphere they produce substantial amounts of ions and release free electrons. Now, results from the Danish experiment show that the released electrons significantly promote the formation of building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei on which water vapour condenses to make clouds.

Hence, a causal mechanism by which cosmic rays can facilitate the production of clouds in Earth’s atmosphere has been experimentally identified for the first time.

The Danish team officially announce their discovery on Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, published by the Royal Society, the British national academy of science.

The experiment

The experiment called SKY (Danish for ‘cloud’) took place in a large reaction chamber which contained a mixture of gases at realistic concentrations to imitate the chemistry of the lower atmosphere. Ultraviolet lamps mimicked the action of the Sun’s rays. During experimental runs, instruments traced the chemical action of the penetrating cosmic rays in the reaction chamber.

The data revealed that electrons released by cosmic rays act as catalysts, which significantly accelerate the formation of stable, ultra-small clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules which are building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei. A vast numbers of such microscopic droplets appeared, floating in the air in the reaction chamber.

‘We were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons do their work of creating the building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei,’ says team leader Henrik Svensmark, who is Director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research within the Danish National Space Center. ‘This is a completely new result within climate science.’

A missing link in climate theory

The experimental results lend strong empirical support to the theory proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen that cosmic rays influence Earth’s climate through their effect on cloud formation. The original theory rested on data showing a strong correlation between variation in the intensity of cosmic radiation penetrating the atmosphere and the amount of low-altitude clouds. Cloud cover increases when the intensity of cosmic rays grows and decreases when the intensity declines.

It is known that low-altitude clouds have an overall cooling effect on the Earth’s surface. Hence, variations in cloud cover caused by cosmic rays can change the surface temperature. The existence of such a cosmic connection to Earth’s climate might thus help to explain past and present variations in Earth’s climate.

Interestingly, during the 20th Century, the Sun’s magnetic field which shields Earth from cosmic rays more than doubled, thereby reducing the average influx of cosmic rays. The resulting reduction in cloudiness, especially of low-altitude clouds, may be a significant factor in the global warming Earth has undergone during the last century. However, until now, there has been no experimental evidence of how the causal mechanism linking cosmic rays and cloud formation may work.