The climate change conspiracy

Today we don our tinfoil hat to look at the issue of climate change. While climate change, previously referred as global warming, isn’t usually considered a conspiracy theory, it does share many conspiracy characteristics.

One obvious parallel between climate change and conspiracies is that proponents of climate change have made numerous predictions about the effects of climate change. Like predictions about martial law and FEMA camps, very few of these predictions have come true.

The numerous doomsday predictions of climate scientists are well-documented, although few media sources compare the actual climate events to the sensational headlines from between 10 and 30 years ago. Partial lists can be found in sources as varied as the Washington Times, Townhall.com, and Daily Tech. A more complete list can be found on WattsUpWithThat.com. These failed predictions include:

· In 1989, a senior UN climate scientist said that nations could be destroyed by climate change by the year 2000.

· In the late 1980s, Dr. James Hansen of NASA predicted that New York’s West Side Highway would be underwater in 20-30 years and that severe droughts would lead restaurants to serve water by request only.

· In 2000, Dr. David Viner said that snow would soon be “a very rare and exciting event” and that “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Recent winters in both the UK and the US have set records for snowfall and low temperatures.

· In 2005, the UN warned that there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010.

· In 2007, scientists feared that Arctic ice would be entirely gone by 2013. Yet less than a decade later, ice coverage in the Arctic has dramatically increased in both thickness and area.

· In 2006, Al Gore predicted in “An Inconvenient Truth” that sea levels would rise enough to threaten Pacific island nations. This was merely one of many fallacies in Gore’s movie.

· In 2006, Al Gore said that we had “10 years” to act on global warming.

Like proponents of other conspiracy theories, global warming alarmists are undaunted when their predictions fail. Like believers in martial law and FEMA concentration camps, global warming proponents simply revise their theory to explain the delay and change the dates on their predictions.

Perhaps because of the inaccuracy of these predictions, the term “global warming” has largely been replaced by the more ambiguous term “climate change.” Climate change can be blamed for a number of weather phenomena that global warming cannot. While denying that cold weather is proof against global warming, proponents simultaneously blame both hot and cold weather on climate change. The Daily Caller and the Daily Signal have both compiled lists of things that alarmists attribute to climate change. As other conspiracy theorists twist news stories to fit their theory, climate change proponents also frequently find a climatological angle to events of the day. Some of the things attributed to global warming include droughts, Ebola, rape, and the Syrian civil war.

The term “climate change” probably also entered the vernacular because global warming apparently stopped about 20 years ago in the late 1990s. Climate scientists who disagreed with the “consensus” wrote as early as 2006 that warming had plateaued. No computer models predicted this pause in warming and climate change theorists initially did not even admit that it was occurring. Today the response ranges from denial that there is a global warming hiatus to adjusting theories to fit the new facts. Revising theories is true to the scientific method, but climatic computer models should be taken with a grain of salt until they can accurately predict future climate changes, rather than simply explaining what has already happened.

Recent revelations that 2014 was the “hottest year in recorded history” often fail to note that recorded climate observations only go back to 1880, notes Robert Tracinski in The Federalist. Also missing from the stories is that the increase in 2014 was 0.02 degrees Celsius, which is far less than the margin of error of 0.10 degrees Celsius. Rising sea levels can be explained by the fact that sea levels have been rising since before the 20^th century. In fact, a NASA graph shows that sea levels have been rising since the last glacial maximum 25,000 years ago. Rising temperatures and rising seas are both far less than predicted by global warming alarmists.

Although warming proponents widely believe that humans are contributing to climate change, they do not claim that this is being done purposefully to destroy the world. Where is the conspiracy that turns the theory of climate change into a conspiracy theory?

Alarmists might argue that the conspiracy comes from a conspiracy of oil companies to undercut climate change activists, presumably selling out the world’s future for short-term oil profits. To the alarmists, this excuses ad hominem attacks against skeptics, commonly derided as “deniers.”

The reality is that there is a proven conspiracy to silence climate change skeptics. In 2009, a hacker stole 1,000 emails and 3,000 documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and posted them online. Another 5,000 emails were hacked and released in 2011. As James Taylor wrote in Forbes, the emails show that many scientists who contribute to IPCC reports engaged in deception and tried to conceal how weak the data supporting manmade climate change really was. Additionally, the emails showed that researchers were at a loss to explain both the recent global warming hiatus and the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period from the 9^th to the 13^th centuries when the Earth was warmer than it is today.

Alarmists use several methods to stifle dissent. A popular claim is that there is a strong scientific consensus on global warming and that 97 percent of scientists are in agreement. Joseph Bast and Dr. Roy Spencer found the 97 percent claim baseless when they examined it in a 2014 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. In 2013, Forbes reported that a peer-reviewed study of earth scientists, engineers, and meteorologists found that only 36 percent considered global warming a crisis. The majority believed that global warming was a natural phenomenon and/or not a serious problem.

Many scientists may not want to publicly identify as skeptics. There are numerous reports of harassment of scientists and public figures who are skeptical of climate change alarmism. As far back as 2005, there were indications that skeptical papers were not being published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals. The bias against skeptical papers may well explain the small number of papers published by skeptical scientists. Earlier this year, NPR reported on harassment of skeptics by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.). Some, such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have called skepticism “treason” and called for skeptics to be jailed. In another recent case, Western Washington University students tried to have the college degree of self-proclaimed “climate agnostic” Doug Erickson, a state senator from Washington, revoked by the university.

The bottom line of the debate may be whether climate alarmists put their money where their mouths are. There seems to have been no exodus of wealthy, liberal, climate refugees from low-lying coastal cities such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco to higher ground in “flyover country.” In fact, in 2010 Al Gore purchased an ocean-view mansion in California. In Florida, people will learn about climate change – and irony - at the new Frost Museum of Science, a $300 million facility located in Miami at about eight feet above sea level.

 

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Georgia Tech plays role in Climategate 2.0

Two years ago, before a UN climate conference in Copenhagen, an anonymous hacker revealed a trove of private emails in which climate scientists apparently colluded to cover up the lack of scientific evidence for global warming and discredit climate change skeptics. Several investigations of the emails in the US and the UK did not find wrongdoing on the part of the scientists. Under the Obama Administration, the scandal had little effect on federal climate policy.

Recently, just before the climate conference in Durban, South Africa, history repeated itself. A hacker calling himself “FOIA,” a reference to the Freedom of Information Act, released another bundle of more than 5,000 hacked emails. Many of the same figures from the 2009 release figure prominently in the 2011 release as well. The emails from both releases are compiled on the FOIA2011.org website in a searchable database. The emails span over ten years with the most recent dated November 10, 2009. Few media outlets in the US have picked up the story of the 2011 release.

The emails contain many examples of climate scientists making unguarded comments that are starkly different from their normal public statements. One scientist, Tommy Wils of the University of Swansea, cast doubt on the notion that climate science is settled: “Scientists talk about probabilities, not about truth or knowledge….” He continued, “What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal [sic] natural fluctuation? They'll kill us probably...” (1682).

Several scientists acknowledged the flaws in current climate models. Phil Jones, a prominent climatologist at the University of East Anglia, wrote that the “basic problem is that all models are wrong - not got enough middle and low level clouds” (email 4443). Rob Wilson of Edinburgh University wondered whether the sun might be responsible for warming. He wrote that “by weighting the solar irradiance more strongly in the models, then much of the 19th to mid 20th century warming can be explained from the sun alone” (2267). He worried that “Jeez - I sound like a sceptic [sic] - this is not my intension [sic].”

The Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period from the 9^th to the 13^th century when temperatures were warm enough to allow limited agriculture in Greenland, was difficult for the climatologists to rationalize. Edward Cook of New York’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory wrote that the MWP “was more regionally extreme (mainly in terms of the frequency and duration of megadroughts [sic]) than anything we have seen in the 20^th century, except perhaps for the Sahel. So in certain ways the MCA [Medieval Climatic Anomaly] period may have been more climatically extreme than in modern times.”

In another email, a Chinese scientist, Rean Guoyoo, wrote that “we did some analyses of the urban warming effect on surface air temperature trends in China, and we found the effect is pretty big…” (0044). Guoyoo went on to say, “Unfortunately, when we sent our comments [on how urban heat skews temperature readings] to the IPCC AR4 [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report], they were mostly rejected.” Guoyoo’s research seems to support anthropogenic warming locally, rather than globally.

In another email from 2004 that preceded the common usage of the term “climate change,” Asher Minns of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Bo Kjellen of the European Institute for Policy Studies discuss how “global warming freezing,” the idea that global warming might lead to a colder climate, causes public relations problems (4141). They discuss rebranding global warming as “climate change” to provide “a new story for the old news.”

A number of the emails refer to Georgia Tech. A Tech student, Jun Jian, requested and received climate data from East Anglia’s Phil Jones (1320). The email containing the data was also sent to Dr. Peter Webster, a professor at Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Dr. Webster apparently told Canadian mathematician and climate change skeptic Stephen McIntyre about the data. At the time, McIntyre was performing a statistical analysis of the famous “hockey stick graph.”

When McIntyre asked Jones for a copy of the data supplied to Georgia Tech, Jones apparently refused to supply it. According to one email (125676554), McIntyre then submitted a request for the data under the Freedom of Information Act and was again refused. When Jones refused requests for the data citing confidentiality agreements, readers of McIntyre’s blog, ClimateAudit.org, submitted requests for the agreements and only a few were found to exist. Neither Webster nor McIntyre were immediately available for comment.

This is not necessarily conclusive proof that global warming is not real. As the Atlanta Creationism Examiner wrote in a recent article, there is still strong evidence that the human activity is warming the earth. However, the comments in many of the emails do show that the data is not as convincing as many would have it appear.

Some hardliners evidently took pains to hide this doubt. Phil Jones himself wrote that “one way to cover yourself… would be to delete all emails” (2440). Jones also said, “I've been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts.” Further, Jones wrote that “Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get - and has to be well hidden” (1577). Duke University’s Thomas Crowley assured Jones that “there will be no dirty laundry in the open” (2733). Crowley continued in another email (4693) that “truth” may not always be “worth reaching if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships.” This attitude of secrecy and hiding data is at odds with the scientific ideal of objectively making predictions that can be verified and tested in the future.

 

Read this article on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/georgia-tech-plays-role-climategate-2-0

The Climate Conspiracy

Conspiracy theories have become a hallmark of modern life. The modern conspiracy theory probably can be traced back to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the belief that undiscovered gunmen actually killed the president. Another long lasting conspiracy theory is the belief in a government cover-up of an alien spacecraft’s crash in Roswell, New Mexico. More recently, conspiricists on the left and right have been busy promoting theories that the Bush Administration was complicit in the 9/11 attacks or that President Obama’s birth certificate was fake.

From time to time, however, proof of an authentic conspiracy emerges. This was the case with the recent publication of hacked emails from East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit. After years of hearing about climate science being “settled” and that there was a scientific consensus supporting the belief in human-caused global warming, the leaked emails present a very different picture. Ironically, the story has received scant coverage from most media sources in spite of the implications to the upcoming Copenhagen conference and cap-and-trade debate.

The conspiracy was revealed when an unknown hacker penetrated the Climate Research Unit’s computers and forwarded thousands of documents and emails to a server in Russia. Shortly after, a link was posted to the documents along with the message “"We feel that climate science is too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it" [1].

Global warming skeptics quickly learned that the documents revealed two important things about global warming proponents. First, much of the data that “proved” the reality of global warming was corrupt. As global temperatures flattened or declined in the years after 2000, climate scientists were at a loss to explain the lack of warming. For example, an email from Dr. Kenneth Trenberth, a scientist at the US Center for Atmospheric Research, said “This means we can't fully comprehend or understand exactly what is going on. We know that it cooled in 2008 but we are not 100 per cent sure why….”[1].

Second, the documents confirmed the belief that there was a widespread conspiracy to discredit dissenting scientists and deny publication of scientific papers that pointed out the flaws in global warming theory. Scientific journals rely on peer review of scientific papers to ensure their validity. The climate conspirators would use their status as article reviewers to prevent scientific journals from publishing articles critical of global warming theory. In one email, Phil Jones of East Anglia University writes of dissenting articles, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" [4].

In 2003, after a paper questioning the extent of warming in the 20th century was published in the journal Climate Research, Dr. Michael Mann, director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center, sent emails to his colleagues to boycott the publication: "I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal" [3].

The scientists also discussed ways to mislead opponents. In one discussion of the medieval warm period, a period of extremely warm weather from AD 800-1300 which led to an economic boom, Dr. Trenbarth suggested creating a blog on a neutral web site and then referring inquiries to his own blog [5].

The email trail extended as far as the White House itself. One email was authored by President Obama’s science advisor, Dr. John Holdren. Dr. Holdren had sent an email in 2003 defending Dr. Mann’s research. Dr. Holdren was working at Woods Hole Research Center at the time.

Since many of the scientists who contributed to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report were implicated in the email scandal, the conclusions of the report itself have been cast into further doubt. The inability of climate change scientists to explain the lack of warming also casts global warming and the need for expensive government programs to combat it into doubt. The Environmental Protection Agency has been on the verge of regulating carbon dioxide due to the conclusions of the IPCC report.

Global warming defenders have decried the leak of the emails claiming that not all emails were released; only those that were the most damaging. They do not, however, deny the validity of the emails.

Already, the release of the emails has sparked legal action. In Congress, Republican lawmakers have launched an investigation into the role of the implicated scientists in the formulation of the IPCC report. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has also announced the intention to sue NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies for failure to provide climate-related documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

The obvious question is how the revelation of the climate fraud will affect the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen and President Obama’s attempt to pass a cap-and-trade energy tax in the United States. Hopefully, diplomats and lawmakers will step back and examine the science on both sides of the debate before rushing into climate policies that would be potentially disastrous for the economies of the world.
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Q: How many climate scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. There's a consensus that it's going to change, so they've decided to keep us in the dark.
-James Taranto

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Sources:
A complete database of the emails can be found here: www.eastangliaemails.com
1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/24/2752337.htm
2. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559630382048494.html
3. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125902685372961609.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular
4. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574557583017194444.html
5. http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=868&filename=1206628118.txt
Secaucus NJ

Whatever Happened To Global Warming?

"...for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero)."
-UK Telegraph

Recently, the question of whether the US should face higher standards of environmentalism and carbon reductions than the rest of the world has been raised. Politicians have suggested massive increases in gasoline taxes, the introduction of carbon taxes, and draconian restrictions on carbon emissions.
Ironically, as I sit at my computer, my home state of Georgia is undergoing the second snowstorm of the week. In a state, which has, over the last few years, received almost zero snowfall, this is certainly big news.

When I was growing up in Georgia in the 1970s and 1980s, Georgia typically got about two or three snows each winter. These snows would get us out of school for a couple of days (since Georgia has virtually no road clearing equipment) and would stay on the ground for several days. Over the past several years, when Georgia had snowfall, it came only once or twice a year and, if it accumulated at all, would be usually be gone by lunchtime. When I examined this anecdotal data from my own life, I was hard pressed to argue with global warming activists, at least on a local scale.

The news of flattening global temperatures comes at the same time that many parts of the United States are experiencing record winter storms and, coincidentally, at the time of the two major winter storms that swept Georgia. If I didn't doubt before, I certainly would now.

Global warming has always been a rather theoretical. It is based on short data trends and computer models. Even the data on which the short trends are based is suspect. Most automated weather stations that climate data are based on have serious quality problems (see surfacestations.org). As a professional pilot, I can tell you that we take the information that we get from automated weather stations with a large dose of salt.

Assuming that the global warming activists are right, the problem is a world problem, not just an American one. In 2006, China surpassed the United States in carbon dioxide emissions, and combined, the two nations make up less than half of the total. Developing nations make up an even larger share of other forms of pollution. It is clear that the problem is not the United States alone and the solution cannot focus solely on the United States.

Additionally, there is a lack of scientific evidence to show that carbon dioxide is responsible for warming the earth at all. Data indicates that there is indeed a correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide, but not the one that you would expect. In the past, temperature increased first, then carbon dioxide increased several hundred years later. If temperature changed first, then carbon dioxide cannot be responsible for the change.

It seems that the recent information would indicate that it would at least be a good idea to wait and see if which trend continues before we make major changes in an attempt to prevent global warming. If it does, we should look at alternative explanations for warming, such as changes in solar radiation. Temperatures of other planets are also increasing, but their warming definitely cannot be attributed to earthly carbon emissions.

Let's not ban carbon based fuels or initiate massive taxes on carbon until we find out for sure what kind of problem we are facing. Our economy is based on carbon fuels and such legislation would almost certainly slow the economy to a recession. This would be especially tragic if the destruction of the economy did nothing to solve the warming problem. A safer approach would be to begin a change to alternative energy sources, such as cheap, reliable nuclear power, as we continue to research global warming.

Granted, the climate is changing, but how is it changing? The new data questions whether the earth is still warming. Even environmentalists are speaking less of “global warming” and more of “climate change.” The climate is always changing, however. There have been numerous ice ages and warm periods throughout recorded history.

Might we be better off by focusing on adapting to climate change rather than preventing it? Previous warm periods, such as the Medieval Warm Period around AD 1000, were a boon to mankind. Warm temperatures and increased carbon dioxide were so helpful to agriculture that the Vikings were even able to cultivate now frigid areas of Greenland. Warm temperatures might even mean less energy use for heating, which would also save money for individual families.

Environmental issues are a global concern. Regardless of whether carbon is at fault for global warming, global initiatives should be taken to reduce pollution. These initiatives should focus on developing nations as well as nations that are already industrialized, such as the United States. We should be careful not to take curative steps that would be worse than the climate change disease.

Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml= /opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/74352.html
http://www.sciencebits.com/IceCoreTruth

Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth

The inconvenient truth is that Al Gore's movie is way off base. The film has lost enough of its credibility that a British court recently ruled that it cannot be shown in schools without a disclaimer detailing its political bias.

The most damning scientific flaw in Gore's movie is his claim that of a link between global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels. There is a link, but, unfortunately for Gore's believers, it is not as he suggests. In truth, increased carbon dioxide levels come about 800 years after increases in temperature. If the temperature changes first, then how can CO2 be the cause of the temperature change?

In fact, carbon dioxide isn't even the most prevalent greenhouse gas in our atmosphere. Water vapor actually causes from 36-70% of the earth's greenhouse effect.

Gore's claims that the earth is hotter than ever before also do not bear scrutiny. Environmentalists have cited NASA data that showed that 1998 was the warmest year on record, but that was recently revealed to be untrue. Steven McIntyre, of the Climateaudit blog, determined that NASA's algorithm used to determine the hottest year had been corrupted by the Y2K bug. NASA corrected their figures (without a press release of any kind) and 1934 is now officially the hottest year on record. Five of the ten hottest years are now known to be before WWII.

Further giving lie to Gore's claims is the Medieval Warm Period. The Medieval Warm Period occurred from AD 800-1300. In this era, the glaciers shrank enough that the Vikings were able cultivate parts of Greenland. Parts of North America suffered severe droughts. Radiocarbon dating from the Sargasso Sea showed sea temperatures 1 degree celsius warmer than today. Alaska has been through three separate warm periods in the last two thousand years.
Following the Medieval Warm Period, the world entered the Little Ice Age. During the Little Ice Age, the Sargasso Sea was about 1 degree celsius cooler than today. This ice age lasted until the middle of the 19th century when the world entered a warming cycle, which we are still in today.
Gore also ignores the scientific advances of the last fifty years. Certainly there are more cars and factories operating today than in past decades, but today's technology makes them burn more cleanly than the fewer cars of old.

If man made carbon dioxide emissions are not causing the earth's warming, then what is? The answer may be the sun. A 2001 article in Nature describes the relationship between the sun and the ratio of oxygen-18 to the more common oxygen-16 molecule. Over a period of 3000 years, the authors of the study found a direct correlation between the intensity of cosmic rays striking the earth's atmosphere and the earth's temperature (http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issu e.asp?year=2007&month=08). It would seem that the sun is responsible for the cyclical heating and cooling of the earth's climate.

When considering climate change, ask yourself several questions. Based on what we can see locally, the earth is getting warmer, but is it a true global change? Data from surfacestations.org casts doubts on data from improperly located automated weather stations. Stations located in urban areas may falsely report higher than actual temperatures.

If so, is the warming caused by man? As stated earlier, carbon dioxide cannot cause temperature change because carbon dioxide levels change 800 years after the temperature.

If so, is it reversible? Even if global warming were caused by man, it is highly unlikely that the whole world would agree to the draconian cuts on CO2 emissions that Gore and the environmentalists want. The US is not the problem. China and other developing countries have lax environmental standards and are set to pass the US in CO2 emissions in the next few years.

Is global warming bad? The earth is constantly changing. Warm periods in our history have typically been prosperous due to longer growing seasons for crops and require less energy for heating homes. Some areas would benefit and some would not. Even the UN report on climate change does not support the more hysterical environmental claims of catastrophe. Even if all of the ice caps melted, for instance, sea levels would rise less than two feet. Rising seas would not flood all low lying areas as Gore and company claim.

Finally, if the environmentalists are so concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, then why don't they support nuclear power? The French have proved that nuclear power can be a safe, clean, cheap source of electricity. Why not promote its use worldwide as an alternative to carbon based sources of energy?

The jury is still out, but the science used by the environmentalists is seriously in question. It is always a good idea care for the environment, but not at the cost of destroying our economy.