ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

More Problems for Weary Global-Warming Advocates

   

This has not been a good month for advocates of the theory of global warming.

    After a slew of articles concerning the fact that the Earth has not been warming for the last eleven years plus the fact that the trend now seems to be toward cooling, a Court in the UK has dealt yet another blow to the proposition that belief in global warming is a “science.”

 

    Ironically, this setback occurred in a case actually won by an advocate of the global warming theory.  The advocate had been dismissed from his employment after complaining that his company’s policies were insensitive to preventing global warming—and the Court held the dismissal improper because the company had discriminated against the advocate’s religious/philosophical views:

When it comes to climate change, just have a little faith!

In an unusual case in the United Kingdom, it has been ruled that climate change beliefs should be afforded the same legal protections as religious freedoms.

… When Mr. Nicholson began to gripe and express his environmental sentiments, he was later dismissed. He took his former employers to court, contending that the same laws that protect religious freedoms protected his “philosophical belief about climate change and the environment.”

Daily Tech. com http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16721

“Global Warming Afforded Same Legal Status as Religion in UK”

    Thus, by relegating belief in global warming (or, as it is now conveniently called, “climate change”) to a philosophical/religious belief rather than a scientific belief, the plaintiff in the UK case has won his battle but has helped enshrine in law the notion that the belief is essentially based on faith, not evidence.

    Further buffeting global warming advocates comes this report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

NOAA: U.S. Posts Third Coolest-Highest Precipitation for October on Record November 10, 2009

The October 2009 average temperature for the contiguous United States was the third coolest on record for that month according to NOAA’s State of the Climate report issued today. Based on data going back to 1895, the monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis is part of the suite of climate services provided by NOAA.

The average October temperature of 50.8 degrees F was 4.0 degrees F below the 20th Century average. Preliminary data also reveals this was the wettest October on record with average precipitation across the contiguous United States reaching 4.15 inches, 2.04 inches above the 1901-2000 average.

   

Even politicians seem to be getting the message-

   

Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf says the White House focus on deficit reduction could easily kill the cap-and-trade effort. “I think this means cap-and-trade has to go to the backburner,” he said.

Politico.com http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29471.html “After spending binge, White House says it will focus on deficits” By Mike Allen & Jim Vandehei

Thus, Al Gore’s mantra of “An Inconvenient Truth” is increasingly becoming “Inconvenient Data” for global-warming advocates.  George Will, Newsweek, November 16, 2009, http://www.newsweek.com/id/221608:

 There is much debate about the reasons for, and the importance of, the fact that global warming has not increased for that long [11 years]. What we know is that computer models did not predict this. Which matters, a lot, because we are incessantly exhorted to wager trillions of dollars and diminished freedom on the proposition that computer models are correctly projecting catastrophic global warming. On Nov. 2, The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey Ball reported some inconvenient data. Soon after the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—it shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Thinking Man's Thinking Man—reported that global warming is "unequivocal," there came evidence that the planet's temperature is beginning to cool. "That," Ball writes, "has led to one point of agreement: The models are imperfect."

EVEN BBC IS NO LONGER SURE ABOUT "GLOBAL WARMING"...

Although political correctness has held that the debate over global warming is over (man is warming up the planet), increasingly there is evidence that we are actually in a period of global cooling.

The only thing really warming up may be the continued debate over this evidence. In an article entitled "What happened to global warming?" published on October 9, 2009 by the BBC, the BBC's climate correspondent notes:

 For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

...

...last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

    The man-made-global warming advocates, the article points out, are still convinced of their science; but the author indicates the issue is no longer free from doubt.

    From today's Washington Times

Carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels recorded their largest drop in 19 years last year, the federal government's chief clearinghouse for energy information reported, adding new fodder to the debate in Congress about how -- or whether -- to reduce greenhouse gases.

   

SATELLITE TRACKING SHOWS ARCTIC ICE AT 7-YEAR HIGH

    From the IARC-JAXA Information System website:

    "The IARC-JAXA Information System (IJIS) is a geoinformatics facility for satellite image analysis and computational modeling/visualization in support of international collaboration in Arctic and global change research at the International Arctic Research Center in corporation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)."

The website's graph of the Arctic ice extent shows that 2009 represents a 7-year high in such extent.  To see this graph, go to this page.  

 

HOW CAN WE RELY ON THESE PREDICTIONS?

    The Associated Press  reports today on a recalculation by the University of Bristol (Great Britain) of the sea-level rise from a warmer planet.

     Just a couple of years ago, you will recall, global-warming gurus confidently predicted that the Earth's seas would rise 16-19 feet because of melting ice.  Now, however, University researchers have concluded that

the entire [Antarctic ice] sheet would not collapse, with parts of it remaining grounded on the continent. Thus, they said, sea level rise would be only about 3 meters, or just under 10 feet.

     So, in just a few short years the consensus prediction of a nearly 20-foot rise in sea levels has been nearly halved.  Moreover, per the Bristol study, the 10-foot rise will take 500 years to occur.

     So, the government (more accurately, opportunistic politicians), big business (have you noticed all the "green" commercials on TV lately?) and the more extreme environmentalists are asking us to curb our lifestyles based on unreliable forecasts of doom and gloom.  Even accepting the Bristol study as accurate (in a couple of ore years, will there be yet another revision?), to avoid a 10-foot ocean rise over 500 years should we all be plunged into an even deeper recession, or even a depression, now through such nutty schemes as California's AB 32 or the federal government's brilliant decision to declare carbon dioxide (i.e., the breath we exhale and that plants need to breathe) a "pollutant"?

     The clarions of doom and gloom about global warming will eventually be recorded by history as climate ideologues, not as rational thinkers.  Indeed, even now, have you noticed how many of these ideologues are changing their warnings from ones about "global warming" to warnings about "climate change"? 

     Since human intervention totally aside, the climate has been,is and always will be, "changing", these claims can never be disproved.  Thus, belief in "climate change" is more like a religion than a scientific movement; if we are going to make public policy based on this new religion, let's at least admit that we are doing so.

    

BELIEF IN HUMAN-CAUSED GLOBAL WARMING DECREASING

        A surprising new poll from the respected Rasmussen Reports on whether people think global warming is caused by humans (poll of voters):

     34%-yes

     45%-no

     11%- not sure

     Just one year ago, 47% blamed humans for causing global warming.

     More results from Rasmussen indicating "environmentalists" are losing ground: By 63%-29%, US adults say finding new sources of energy is more important than reducing current energy consumption.  And 58% say the US needs more nuclear power plants, with only 25% opposed. 

    

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS REACHES NEW HEIGHT OF BIAS

     In an article labeled "Obama left with little time to curb global warming", theAssociated Press once again reveals that it is not the press service of record, but rather the Left's press service of record.  AP accomplishes this task by trying to convince us of the equivalent of up is down and down is up-- i.e, it's been getting colder, that's why it's been getting warmer.

      When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.

    ***

    Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.

The average global temperature in 2008 is likely to wind up slightly under 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, about a tenth of a degree cooler than last year. When Clinton was inaugurated, 57.9 easily would have been the warmest year on record. Now, that temperature would qualify as the ninth warmest year.

(emphases added)

     The AP's article, of course, leaves out the abundant contradictory evidence that was available to--but ignored by--the author.  For example, see my Post of November 30, 2008, wherein it was pointed out:

It's not even science any more; it's anti-science." [David] Bellamy [an Australian botanist] notes that official data show that "in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002, Arctic ice actually increased." Exhibit B: MIT Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Richard S. Lindzen recently wrote, "There has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995.

     As another example, see this from my Post of July 12, 2008:

Late last month, some leading climatologists and meteorologists met in New York at the Energy Business Watch Climate and Hurricane Forum. The theme of the forum strongly suggested that a period of global cooling is about [done], though possible concerns for a political backlash kept it from being spelled out  However, the message was loud and clear, a cyclical global warming trend may be coming to an end for a variety of reasons, and a new cooling cycle could impact the energy markets in a big way. 

     Need more?  OK-see my Post of November 10, 2007:

Fact:  Per ABC News, August 25, 2007: "Was 1998 the hottest year in United States history, as most reporting on climate change has presumed? Or was that record set back in 1934 before ‘global warming’ became a scary household phrase?..A corrective tweak to National Aeronautics and Space Administration's formulation shows that the hottest year on record in the United States indeed was back during the Dust Bowl days."

     Why did none of this evidence and respectable scientific opinion made its way into this AP analysis?   Can you say "agenda"?  The AP's credibility is declining to zero.  Now, maybe that's a temperature reading AP can undesrtand.

 

 

CALIFORNIA TAKES ANOTHER STEP TOWARD ECONOMIC SUICIDE (?)

     Per the Associated Press, today:

California on Thursday adopted the nation's most sweeping plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions, issuing rules that could transform everything from the way factories operate to the appliances people buy and the fuel they put in their cars.

The eight-member [California] Air Resources Board ["CARB"]unanimously approved the plan despite warnings it will put costly new burdens on businesses at a time when the economy is in extreme crisis, with California forecasting a staggering budget gap of $41.8 billion through mid-2010.

***

The strategy relies on 31 new rules affecting all facets of life, including where people may build their homes and what materials they use to do it.

     Not everyone is buying into the CARB "solution", however.  Witness the editorial in today's  San Diego Tribune:

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office and six economists hired to do a peer review of the CARB's plan have chronicled its cherry-picking of data, its weak methodology and the absurdity of many of its premises.

For one example, the CARB says that any action by a business that reduces greenhouse gas emissions is automatically “cost-effective” – meaning going out of business is therefore cost-effective.

No wonder one independent economist worried about AB 32's threat to 1.5 million California manufacturing jobs. No wonder two others said the air board's report looked more like an attempt to justify AB 32 than to evaluate its economic effects. No wonder another said the air board's work was so weak it could undermine efforts to combat global warming in a responsible way – and called it “useless for identifying a cost-effective portfolio of policies to achieve the ambitious objectives of AB 32.”

     Having spent a good part of my career helping businesses to close down in California and move to more business-friendly States, I don't look forward to what's coming next.

 

TEMPERATURES GETTING COLDDER/ARCTIC ICE INCREASING?

     Columnist Debra J. Saunders has a column worth reading in today's San Francisco Chronicle:

Here's another reason why people don't trust newspapers. When science reporters write about, say, hormone therapy or drinking red wine, they report on studies that find that hormones or red wine can be good for you, as well as studies that suggest otherwise. Any science involving complex organisms is rarely black and white.

When it comes to global warming, newspapers play up stories that reinforce the prevalent the-sky-is-falling belief that global warming is human-caused and catastrophic. But if a study or scientist does not portend the end of the world as we know it, it rarely rates as news.

***

"It's not even science any more; it's anti-science." [David] Bellamy [an Australian botanist] notes that official data show that "in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002, Arctic ice actually increased." Exhibit B: MIT Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Richard S. Lindzen recently wrote, "There has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995."

     To read the full article, go to this link.

More scientifc evidence you will NOT read about in The New York Times or see/hear broadcast by CBS News

  This just in... from Texas Energy Analyst.com; more science you will NOT read about in the mainstream press:

Four scientists, four scenarios, four more or less similar conclusions without actually saying it outright -- the global warming trend is done, and a cooling trend is about to kick in. The implication: Future energy price response is likely to be significant.

Late last month, some leading climatologists and meteorologists met in New York at the Energy Business Watch Climate and Hurricane Forum. The theme of the forum strongly suggested that a period of global cooling is about emerge, though possible concerns for a political backlash kept it from being spelled out.

However, the message was loud and clear, a cyclical global warming trend may be coming to an end for a variety of reasons, and a new cooling cycle could impact the energy markets in a big way.