\u201cToo many elected officials in Washington are still calling climate change a liberal hoax,\u201d declared U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, in prepared remarks as he opened his fifth annual \u201cNational Clean Energy Summit\u201d show in Las Vegas Aug. 7. \u201cThey falsely claim scientists are still debating whether carbon pollution is warming the planet. …\u201d<\/p>\n
But \u201cThis year alone, the United States has seen unparalleled extreme weather events — events scientists say are exactly what is expected as the earth\u2019s climate changes. The Midwest is experiencing its most crushing drought in more than half a century — or maybe ever. … Corn crops are withering and livestock are dying — or going to slaughter early — as heat waves parch America\u2019s breadbasket, breaking records set during the Woody Guthrie Dust Bowl years.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Frankly, I\u2019m surprised the senator is even familiar with old Woody.)<\/p>\n
\u201cNow ravaging wildfires have replaced the dust storms of the 1930s,\u201d Sen. Reid continued, just getting warmed up. \u201cDevastating fires have swept New Mexico, Idaho, Colorado, Nevada and other parts of the Mountain West, destroying hundreds of homes and burning millions of trees. These fires are fed in part by vast areas of dead forest ravaged by beetles and other pests that now survive through warmer winters. … Our nation\u2019s infrastructure is literally falling apart because it wasn\u2019t designed to withstand these conditions. Runways are melting, trapping planes. Train tracks are bending, derailing subways. Highways are cracking, buckling and breaking open. … Yet despite having overwhelming evidence and public opinion on our side, deniers still exist, fueled and funded by dirty energy profits. These people aren\u2019t just on the other side of this debate. They\u2019re on the other side of reality. It\u2019s time for us all … to stop acting like those who ignore the crisis or deny it exists entirely have a valid point of view. They don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Good heavens. And I\u2019ve even left out Harry\u2019s chilling account of the monsoons of Bangladesh. Who ever heard of a monsoon hitting Bangladesh, before?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more extreme climate change gets, the more extreme the weather will get,\u201d the senator asserted. \u201cIn the words of one respected climate scientist: \u2018This is what global warming looks like.\u2019 Dozens of new reports from scientists around the globe link extreme weather to climate change. …\u201d<\/p>\n
Responding to this rhetorical version of a Godzilla movie, Norman Rogers, Ph.D. in physics from the University of Hawaii, member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society, and senior policy advisor at the Heartland Institute, Chicago, posted on the following Friday at http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/92bhl58:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe advocates of global warming are beginning to have the classic doomsday cult problem. The Earth hasn\u2019t been warming for 16 years, and that\u2019s starting to get very embarrassing. The first adjustment to the dogma was to stop talking about global warming and start talking about climate change. The latest version of the party line is that we are going to have more extreme weather. The reality is that the weather is not any more variable or extreme than in the past. But with suitable fishing in the data, it is easy to make a case that this or that weather phenomenon has become more extreme.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scientist Richard Lindzen has pointed out that the extreme weather theme is inconsistent with the global warmers\u2019 own theories,\u201d Mr. Rogers continues. \u201cThe global warmers have long claimed that the poles will warm faster than the tropics. One of their key scary claims is that vast amounts of ice at the poles will melt and raise sea level. So, according to warmer theory, the temperature difference between the poles and the equator will lessen. But it is that very temperature difference that drives weather, particularly extreme weather. … So the warmers\u2019 claims are fundamentally contradictory. How can weather become more extreme when the driver of extreme weather, the pole-to-equator temperature difference, is supposed to weaken?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I MADE A MISTAKE\u2019<\/p>\n
Sen. Reid insists: \u201cVirtually every respected, independent scientist in the world agrees the problem is real, and the time to act is now. Not tomorrow. Not a week from now. Not next month or next year. We must act today.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, it would be foolish to a degree which would rival the crop rotation mistakes of the ancient Maya and the dietary preferences of the Norse settlers of Greenland (who appear to have starved rather than eat fish) to further cripple our economy by continuing down this road, when even the patron saints of global warming are falling out along the route of march, recanting their former faith for all the world like starched-collar sailors \u201cgoing native\u201d in Tahiti.<\/p>\n
On April 23 of this year, London\u2019s Daily Mail reported (at http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/9aygh3h<\/a>):<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018I made a mistake\u2019: Environmental scientist James Lovelock, renowned for his terrifying predictions of climate change\u2019s deadly impact on the planet, has gone back on his previous claims, admitting they were \u2018alarmist\u2019. … He added that other environmental commentators, such as former vice president Al Gore, are also guilty of exaggerating their arguments.<\/p>\n \u201cThe admission comes as a devastating blow to proponents of climate change who regard Lovelock as a powerful figurehead,\u201d the Daily Mail reported.<\/p>\n \u201cFive years ago, he had claimed: \u2018Before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cBut in an interview with msnbc.com, he admitted: \u2018I made a mistake.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n And it\u2019s only been a couple of years since, on Feb. 14, 2010, the Daily Mail reported (at http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/yb2loyt<\/a>): \u201cClimategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995.<\/p>\n \u201cThe academic at the centre of the \u2018Climategate\u2019 affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble \u2018keeping track\u2019 of the information,\u201d the Mail reported.<\/p>\n \u201cColleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers. … The data is crucial to the famous \u2018hockey stick graph\u2019 used by climate change advocates to support the theory.<\/p>\n \u201cProfessor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now \u00d0 suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he said that for the past 15 years there has been no \u2018statistically significant\u2019 warming.<\/p>\n \u201cThe admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made,\u201d The Daily Mail reported.<\/p>\n Professor Jones is the guy who stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia\u2019s Climatic Research Unit \u201cafter the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data,\u201d the Mail reports.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve read some of those leaked files. \u201cManipulating date\u201d is gentle. They were making stuff up.<\/p>\n The two sides will continue to claim they have some hundreds of scientific signatories on some new petition. But \u201cscience,\u201d as I understand it, is decided not by majority vote, but rather by empirical observations and relevant reproduceable experiments, which seem to be curiously lacking from the alarmists\u2019 current bag of tricks.<\/p>\n So instead, I\u2019d like to introduce a new and more useful question, especially aimed at scientists:<\/p>\n How do you feel about the esteem in which science is currently held, in our culture?<\/p>\n \u2018SCIENCE\u2019: IF YOU\u2019VE GOT THE MONEY, THEY\u2019VE GOT THE TIME<\/p>\n I submit \u201cscience\u201d and the scientific method have has been held in extremely high esteem for two full centuries — something for which Ben Franklin gets far too little credit — and that both science and western culture have benefited. Science tells us diseases are caused by germs, that we should build sanitary sewers, wash our hands, sterilize our surgeries. We do. It works.<\/p>\n Now imagine a culture in which the majority declare: \u201cScientists? They\u2019re the bought-and-paid for agents of government and the big corporations. They\u2019ll rig their results to please whoever\u2019s footing the bills. If one of these \u2018scientific\u2019 scum tells me something, I believe just the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n What could be the long-term costs of such a massive shift in public opinion?<\/p>\n Yet \u201cscientists\u201d increasingly run this risk, succumbing to the urge to produce the results being paid for. When initial studies of second-hand tobacco smoke failed to show the correlation with disease desired by the sponsors, was the required degree of probability cut in half to make the study \u201ccome out right\u201d?<\/p>\n