February 1, 2010

The Death of Global Warming

Walter Russell Mead

The global warming movement as we have known it is dead. Its health had been in steady decline during the last year as the once robust hopes for a strong and legally binding treaty to be agreed upon at the Copenhagen Summit faded away. By the time that summit opened, campaigners were reduced to hoping for a ‘politically binding’ agreement to be agreed that would set the stage for the rapid adoption of the legally binding treaty. After the failure of the summit to agree to even that much, the movement went into a rapid decline.

The movement died from two causes: bad science and bad politics.

After years in which global warming activists had lectured everyone about the overwhelming nature of the scientific evidence, it turned out that the most prestigious agencies in the global warming movement were breaking laws, hiding data, and making inflated, bogus claims resting on, in some cases, no scientific basis at all. This latest story in the London Times is yet another shocker; the IPCC’s claims that the rainforests were going to disappear as a result of global warming are as bogus and fraudulent as its claims that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. It seems as if a scare story could grab a headline, the IPCC simply didn’t care about whether it was reality-based. Gore_Pachauri

With this in mind, ‘climategate’ — the scandal over hacked emails by prominent climate scientists — looks sinister rather than just unsavory. The British government has concluded that University of East Anglia, home of the research institute that provides the global warming with much of its key data, had violated Britain’s Freedom of Information Act when scientists refused to hand over data so that critics could check their calculations and methods. Breaking the law to hide key pieces of data isn’t just ‘science as usual,’ as the global warming movement’s embattled defenders gamely tried to argue. A cover-up like that suggests that you indeed have something to conceal.

The urge to make the data better than it was didn’t just come out of nowhere. The global warmists were trapped into the necessity of hyping the threat by their realization that the actual evidence they had — which, let me emphasize, all hype aside, is serious, troubling and establishes in my mind the need for intensive additional research and investigation, as well as some prudential steps that would reduce CO2 emissions by enhancing fuel use efficiency and promoting alternative energy sources — was not sufficient to get the world’s governments to do what they thought needed to be done. Hyping the threat increasingly doesn’t look like an accident: it looks like it was a conscious political strategy.

Now it has failed. Not everything that has come out of the IPCC and the East Anglia Climate Unit is false, but enough of their product is sufficiently tainted that these institutions can best serve the cause of fighting climate change by stepping out of the picture. New leadership might help, but everything these two agencies have done will now have to be re-checked by independent and objective sources.

The global warming campaigners got into this mess because they had a deeply flawed political strategy. They were never able to develop a pragmatic approach that could reach its goals in the context of the existing international system. The global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet. As it happened, the movement never got to the first step — it never got the world’s countries to agree to the necessary set of treaties, transfers and policies that would constitute, at least on paper, a program for achieving its key goals.

Even if that first step had been reached, the second and third would almost surely not have been. The United States Congress is unlikely to pass the kind of legislation these agreements would require before the midterm elections, much less ratify a treaty. (It takes 67 senate votes to ratify a treaty and only 60 to overcome a filibuster.) After the midterms, with the Democrats expected to lose seats in both houses, the chance of passage would be even more remote — especially as polls show that global warming ranks at or near the bottom of most voters’ priorities. American public opinion supports ‘doing something’ about global warming, but not very much; support for specific measures and sacrifices will erode rapidly as commentators from Fox News and other conservative outlets endlessly hammer away. Without a commitment from the United States to pay its share of the $100 billion plus per year that poor countries wanted as their price for compliance, and without US participation in other aspects of the proposed global approach, the intricate global deals fall apart.

From Gallup

Since the United States was never very likely to accept these agreements and ratify these treaties, and is even less prepared to do so in a recession with the Democrats in retreat, even “success” in Copenhagen would not have brought the global warming movement the kind of victory it sought — although it would have created a very sticky and painful political problem for the United States.

But even if somehow, miraculously, the United States and all the other countries involved not only accepted the agreements but ratified them and wrote domestic legislation to incorporate them into law, it is extremely unlikely that all this activity would achieve the desired result. Countries would cheat, either because they chose to do so or because their domestic systems are so weak, so corrupt or so boththat they simply wouldn’t be able to comply. Governments in countries like China and India aren’t going to stop pushing for all the economic growth they can get by any means that will work — and even if central governments decided to move on global warming, state and local authorities have agendas of their own. The examples of blatant cheating would inevitably affect compliance in other countries; it would also very likely erode what would in any case be an extremely fragile consensus in rich countries to keep forking over hundreds of billions of dollars to poor countries — many of whom would not be in anything like full compliance with their commitments.

For better or worse, the global political system isn’t capable of producing the kind of result the global warming activists want. It’s like asking a jellyfish to climb a flight of stairs; you can poke and prod all you want, you can cajole and you can threaten. But you are asking for something that you just can’t get — and at the end of the day, you won’t get it.

The grieving friends and relatives aren’t ready to pull the plug; in a typical, whistling-past-the-graveyard comment, the BBC first acknowledges that even if the current promises are kept, temperatures will rise above the target level of two degrees Celsius — but let’s not despair! The BBC quotes one of its own reporters: “BBC environment reporter Matt McGrath says the accord lacks teeth and does not include any clear targets on cutting emissions. But if most countries at least signal what they intend to do to cut their emissions, it will mark the first time that the UN has a comprehensive written collection of promised actions, he says.”

Gosh! A comprehensive written collection of promised actions! And it’s a first!! Any day now that jellyfish is going to start climbing stairs. Sure, it will be slow at first — but the momentum will build!

The death of global warming (the movement, not the phenomenon) has some important political and cultural consequences in the United States that I’ll be blogging on down the road. Basically, Sarah Palin 1, Al Gore zip. The global warming meltdown confirms all the populist suspicions out there about an arrogantly clueless establishment invoking faked ‘science’ to impose cockamamie social mandates on the long-suffering American people, backed by a mainstream media that is totally in the tank. Don’t think this won’t have consequences; we’ll be exploring them together as the days go by.

Posted in Energy & Environment, Essays, Politics

Dave Minnich

Even if AGW were correct, it’d be much cheaper just to adapt as circumstances change then to try to do anything as impossible as “cool the globe”. Adaptation to climate change is what humans have always done, and we are much better equipped now to adapt without serious consequences to health and life.
Norm

It seems to be that Lomborg has the right of it. To the extent that the purpose of the spending is to prevent human hardship, it’s foolishness to spend trillions with questionable benefit before we spend a few billion that provides tangible benefits in the way of clean water and vaccinations. It’s also pretty clear that the green policies will lead to substantially lower growth, but a richer world would be more able to cope with possible catastrophe. The recent juxtaposition of the relative human toll of the recent Northern California (0 deaths) and Haitian earthquakes (over 100,000) shows how the relative wealth of the area hit by disaster can ameliorate the human cost with common-sense precautions like building codes.
http://harrisonprice.com Harrison

Nice article but don’t forget that in England the global warmers could not be prosecuted because the offences happened more than 6 months ago or that Obama is only interested in global warming for the taxes he can suck out of it to fund Obamakare.
http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com Mike’s America

The author talks about “consequences” for the leftwing politicians and activists who have been pushing this fraud on the American people.

Don’t hold your breathe.

Was the left ever held accountable for trying to block President Reagan’s policies which won the Cold War? Do they ever admit they are wrong?

The left will just latch onto some other big scare/big lie and with the help of their media acolytes attempt once again to push another of their big government/big socialist plans down our throats.

I’ve yet to hear anyone say: “you lefties were WRONG on such and such, why should we listen to you this time?”
Daddy-O

There is something truly frightening here. The fact that political agenda can so sway “scientific data” as to cause a near hysterical movement ought to give all those who value truth severe pause.

Those against the concept of man-made global warming we demonized- my own flesh and blood brother called me a “flat-earther”. Any deviation from the mantra was ridiculed, and the idea of questioning authority was squelched.

This I find more frightening than any carbon capping legislation that has been talked about.

People truly are sheep.
Fairbanks, Alaska

I was so looking forward to global warming.
Bowshooter

Can you imagine how bad off we would be as a nation, If Al Gore would have been elected President. To me he is a criminal and so are the scientists who lied about global warming to line their own pockets with so called carbon credits.
Mitty

Al Gore walked them into the political trap when he said, “There’s no longer any debate in the scientific community about global warming.” And the fell into it scientists must’ve felt they had to back him up.
Mark Needham

Yet another vehicle the socialists hoped to use to get to their goal of a world wide socialist utopia has been driven into the ditch.

It was always about redistribution of wealth and power of government over the individual. Now watch the socialist true believers glom onto another crisis as their new vehicle.
Dan R.

Those of us who have, for years, confidently assured anyone who would listen that man-made global warming was total bulls**t …. and were routinely derided as “deniers” and “flat-earthers” by condescending alarmists … are really enjoying watching this, the “Greatest Scam of All Time”, progressively unravel bit by bit. The lies are now starting to bubble to the surface and people are taking a closer look instead of just accepting what’s been reported to them by a fawning news media who was just as cuplable in the con as anyone else. A Nobel Peace Prize for Al Gore? It would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.
Laurence L. Sheets

By God’s Grace we have seen Truth overpower the Lie. Amen
jlori

The AGW crowd is comprised of two groups. The first group (the followers) includes the uninformed, the gullible, the well intentioned but naive, the sincere but mislead, many journalists and researchers, and yes, the just plain stupid. I would think it safe to say that these people all believe that most of the recent global warming must have been or was caused by human activity – primarily CO2 emissions and that wind farms fix the problem. These people are not evil, they are just wrong. How anyone could rationally think that the IPCC fairytales prove their position is beyond hope and not worthy of debate.

The second group (the leaders) includes primary, government funded researchers, left leaning political leaders, activist and environmentalist leadership, and, of course, the Hansens, Gores, Manns, Briffas, Pachauri, and the rest of the extremists with which we are burdened. To the surprise of those in the first group, but not at all to the rest of us, these people do not necessarily believe or, for the most part, even care if global warming is anthropogenic. And, unlike the first group, these people are not only evil and wrong but also dangerous. They are not out to save the world but to gain political power and financial control over individuals, businesses and countries.

There are legitimate environmental issues. Surly we must continue to fight for and to find a way to protect our environment, reduce stress on fisheries, manage water, land and forest resources, protect endangered species if possible and were practical, and a myriad other environmental issues and crises we face. The real tragedy of the AGW shibboleth is that it will destroy the credibility of legitimate environmental movements, divert needed funding away from them, and make the efforts of those movements even more difficult. And this is why the people of the first group, if and when they ever figure it out, should forever condemn those of the second.

The rest of us already have.
Blane Burns

We continue to thaw from the last ice age. That is the only truth about global warming. It is not catastophic, it is nature. We will most certainly enter another ice age before the earth reaches its warmest climes in which strawberries grow int the arctic circle and Earth is only 3% coverede in ice. We currently sit at about 10% ice coverage. Still in the thaw stage. Science? It seems these folks have no background in historical geology. There is where the history of the terrestial climate lies. It is settled and ageed.
http://www.dolan.com Tom Dolan

The environmentalist’s plan to re-engineer the industrial economy is dead. Unfortunately trust and confidence in the leading western democracies is also dead as a consequence of empty headed support for this travesty. We can laugh at outrageous politicians and call them fools but it is an awful shame that the good names – NASA, NOAA, etc – also spent their credibility on this foolhardy venture. The scientific community has demonstrated a lack of intellectual credibility on the scale of bankers and real estate brokers!
Mike-USN-ret

Global warming is a fact but so is global cooling. The climate will change weather we do anything or not. This entire scam has been perpatrated for the express purpose of exerting more control over the lemmings (us). The political powers in this world and particularly the UN has seen this issue as an opertuity to attemt to wrest some world control from the US and tranfer it to itself. Any US citizen with half a brain should inform their political reps that the support this farce at their peril.
Kent Crawford

How many countries adopted a Cap and Trade [read Tax] policy to fight a non-existant foe? I’m waiting for the law suits to begin. Government leaders guilty of fraud and mis-appropriation of tax funds, grant recipients guilty of fraud…
R. L. Hails Sr. P. E.

The situation is dire, far worst than presented here. There is a global melt down in trust in science, unique since Galileo. We just witnessed a worldwide conference of 45,000 attendees, which promoted a redistribution of wealth due to climate change. In the run up to the conference, we were told by prominent scientists and political leaders that this was our last chance, if we do not curtail CO2, billions were doomed. The US Supreme Court, on the basis of this science, granted permission to our EPA to regulate our entire economy to curtail this molecule. However the debate is now about cover up, fraud, lying and deceit, in the basic science. Scientists now enjoy the level of esteem of street barkers. Like Catholic priests, 99% do not deserve this distrust, but it is real, due to not only criminal conduct, but high level official cover up. CO2 curtailment has the very real potential to destroy our way of life, end our society. This is dire.
http://newsbusters.org/ StewartIII

NewsBusters — Open Thread: Walter Russell Mead proclaims the “death of global warming” (the movement)
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb-staff/2010/02/01/open-thread
http://blog.sustainablemiddleclass.com John Freeland

Those convinced that global warming is some kind of hoax have extraordinary faith in global homeostasis. Humans have altered the composition of the atmosphere, which affects heat absorption. Humans have radically altered the surface of the earth, mainly to grow crops and build cities – which affects the radiation budget of the earth. To have all this happen and expect zero net effect to climate is an amazing leap of faith.

Today, Arctic sea ice is abou 1.5 million square kiometers less than the median area based on 1979-2000 satellite date. That comes from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Are they wrong too?

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Mark

I guess people only accept being hoodwinked when it’s a matter of wiretapping their phone calls and reading their mail. That’s OK, but this….this is an outrage.

There’s simply no way that pumping more and more pollution into the atmosphere and the oceans is not having any effect at all, and likewise no way that such an effect could be positive.

But, as usual, the noisy minority will shout everyone else down, in favour of increased production and making more money. Then when the problem is irreversible and so obvious that nobody can pretend it doesn’t exist any more, the narrative will switch to, “this is nobody’s fault, now is not the time for finger-pointing, we’re all in this together, blah, blah blah”.
JMartJr

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

An interesting look at the most relevant history of the junk science an the intentional tangling of bad science with a political agenda.
M Long

Seems to me that the most important aspect in this article is the fact that people are starting to wake up. I think more and more people are going to demand proof to these “finding” and “theories”. The real death of Global warming will come when these environmentalist have to prove what they are saying BEFORE they get any more money.
Banjo

The audience for Fox is politically engaged. The folks who watch the alphabet networks skew older and passive. They are the people who would still be hoodwinked by Walter Cronkite’s phony objectivity if he were alive and warming the anchorman’s chair.
SJD

OK, so 90% or so of the world’s climatologists, meteorologists and other earth scientists all got together, regardless of the political views, and conspired with the democrats, alternative energy companies, peer reviewed journals and all domestic and foreign media except FOX to create this huge hoax. Yeah, right. These people don’t even like each other, much less make a hoax of this magnitude. Oh yeah… and it was theorized 100 years ago. I am sure that he was just waiting to turn the U.S. “socialist”.

How do you all think the melting of the arctic, the receding of glaciers, the rising of sea level, the migration of species away from the equator, etc. is happening?

The ‘natural’ idea that the earth warms and cools is so logically flawed. There is always a cause and effect. What’s the cause? And don’t say solar activity. That has been proved false so many times it’s silly.

Anyways, I am sure I’ll get some ‘Al Gore’ and ‘It’s cold outside’ arguments. You deniers are so uneducated it’s unreal and sickening.
Tes

As any con man will tell you it is easy to deceive those who want to be deceived. The greedy are the easiest of all. With AGW we have greed for money, greed for power and greed for status (saviours of the planet) and greed for votes all coming together and available to so many if they believe in AGW.

There are also many jobs on the line: How many in the MGM have jobs like correspondent for climate change? How many government departments, politicians and officials oversee policy on climate change/global warming?

It is like dismantling a church. If there is no God are they all going to go off and do something else? Not if they can help it. I expect there will be another international junket before very long so that the pigs can put their snouts back in the trough.
Mark

Al Gore zero to Palin’s one?
Al Gore has made million’s off of Global Warming.
His only loss is the Billion’s he had planned to make.
http://rcp Dick Workman

First, good article. But Fox News is not a conservative outlet! Fair and Balanced, Yes! And now the most trusted (49%) News organization in the country. Why? Truth. Next was CNN at 39%. When Fox Reports, Fair and Balanced, both sides of the issues, and we decide, then whether you are republican, democrat, independent, liberal, conservative, or moderate, we the voters, are fully informed, without biased opinion from journalists.

Global warming dead? No, it will be revived again and again. Liberalism never dies, it just changes it’s name, and fools a new generation of people. Much of this is due to our educational system, and what our children our taught.

America needs energy. And we have plenty of energy sources. Fossil Fuels is the chosen and cheapest energy sources. Coal, oil, and natural gas are plentiful at this time in our nation’s history. These are plentiful enough to sustain our energy needs for at least the next 100 years. And that gives those in favor of alternative energy, lots of time to get the alternative energy research completed for future use. I must also include nuclear energy with the fossil fuels as a great source of energy, with a longer time line of use. At present, we can drill (gas and oil), dig (coal), and build (nuclear) our way out of any energy shortage that we could imagine, but the (paid in most cases) environmental wackos of the left continue to protest and tie up the court system to keep us from obtaining our own energy. So the fight continues. These crazies protest off shore drilling, even though China already has an agreement with Cuba to drill for oil off it’s coast. They (environmental wackos) continue to protest the mountain top removal mining for coal in the appalachian mountains, and claim to be in favor of underground mining (where fatalities are much greater), while condemning the burning of coal (coal mined underground is still coal). I will also add that they hate drilling for natural gas and the building of transmissions lines, as many states have regulated the smaller businesses out of business. And yes they are still protesting with the No Nukes cries of 35 years ago. As many of the protesters of 35 years ago, now favor nuclear energy, and say they were wrong to protest.

Time to face the facts, as there are not enough GREEN jobs to get Americans back to work. Environmentalist wackos continue to hurt the economy in so many ways. Yet, their very small minority voice seems to have so many comrades in the halls of Congress, but this will soon change. Wind and solar are not ready to become dominate energy sources, but research should continue to be developed to help bring their high cost down for the generations of the future. In the meantime, if these folks don’t want to get a real job, maybe they should go and protest against a volcano erupting somewhere, or maybe they could protest against the lightning strikes that cause forest fires every year in the west from the uncut underbrush. Gee, there is a couple of causes that bring pollution that could bring employment to scientists (since there is no global warming) and unemployed loggers.
Chad

You know a political movement has jumped the shark when it denies science wholesale.

Conservatives will not be remembered kindly by history.
Jesse in Maryland

This is a good piece, one that is actually honest about the virtual impossibility of any meaningful action to combat global warming on an international level. The simple fact is that cutting carbon emissions to the levels discussed in Copenhagen is economic suicide, even if the United States were not in the middle of a deep recession. Not to mention the fact that even Copenhagen’s supporters admit that such drastic cuts in carbon would have a negligible effect, on the order of 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit. Economic hobbles on the world economy for this? I certainly hope not.

I am an anthropogenic global warming skeptic, but any passion I have on the subject is driven solely by the political manipulations and doomsday predictions that have come to characterize AGW supporters. I know the climate changes, that it gets warmer and cooler in cyclical fashion (long before human beings were a significant factor). I have yet to hear a cogent argument regarding (a) why a temperature rise on the order of a degree or two would produce negative effects outweighing the many positive effects, or (b) why the world economies should be pouring trillions into meeting wildly unrealistic carbon emissions standards instead of spending hundreds of billions in preparing for the warming that even global warmists agree will happen anyway, despite our best efforts.

In any case, if the recent setbacks to the global warmist propaganda machine smacks AGW supporters with a good dose of common sense and realism, that’s just fine. Take the politics and the hype out of the science, and maybe they might begin to influence people like me, who enjoy and respect the scientific endeavor, but get too much politicking in every other arena of their lives. Open the scientific dialogue to ALL scientists, not simply those who toe the AGW line.

Thanks!
Marcus

They will have to ‘find” another panic to take to the people. I thought it was going to be that the “next …….. flu” is going run you over but that too panic has lost its hold as well (Swine /bird/ ?). In the end it has been and always will be about taking money from people to fund thier projects. The Presidents CoS and fellow chicago native was correct in saying you can’t let a good crisis go to waste-
Margo

According to NASA, 2009 was the 2nd warmest year on record. You can see a chart of global temperatures from 1880 to 2000 in the right hand column of http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/temp-analysis-2009.html.

Talking about how much snow you had this year is like telling your oncologist, “Doc, I know I don’t have cancer, because today I feel better.”

It’s interesting how the same people who admire Noah don’t want to follow his example.
bob

Given the comments in response to Mead’s interesting analysis, one would think the only take away is that either global warming is not occuring or that human activity is not contributing to it. Nothing that Mead wrote disproves the claim that global warming is occuring and caused by human activity. As he mentioned, the data are pretty serious and troubling. So, for those who think that global warming is a hoax, I suggest you try and defy gravity. What we do about this issue is another matter, but policy must respond to create alternative energy, fuel efficiency, and myriad other avenues. Those who believe that we need do nothing surely are those who believe that jellyfish can climb stairs.
PAPA4

I am reminded of President Eisenhower’s warning in his farewell address; “Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Rarely is this quote referenced by the MSM.
Yet the same media often cites his warning about the unwarranted influence of the “military-industrial complex.”
How objective of them!
Sev

here is exactly zero evidence that CO2 has anything whatsoever. In fact the evidence is overwhelming that there is no such thing as AGW at all. The whole theory has been debunked by real scientists.
Danram

John Friedland writes: “Today, Arctic sea ice is about 1.5 million square kiometers less than the median area based on 1979-2000 satellite date. That comes from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Are they wrong too?”

Interesting point, John. Now take a look at the antarctic ice sheet, which has been actually GROWING for the past 25 years, no shrinking.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/17/revealed-antarctic-ice-growing-not-shrinking/

Why don’t the warmists ever mention this rather inconvenient fact?
freddie

What has always bothered me about the global warming movement is their “all or nothing” approach. What about incremental changes, that most people would be willing to make (i.e., reducing the morning shower by a few minutes)? What about more attention to daily changes we can make to enhance conservation? Nope; gotta radically change everyone’s lives in order to make a difference. *snort*
Don Larose

Its a wonder to see. After all of the attacks on George Bush for ‘qestioning’ the global warming science and suggesting that more research needed to be done, it turns out he was right again. Amazing isn’t it ?
SeattleMark952

Al Gore and many other progressive leaders are con artists. They enrich themselves through carefully orchestrated opportunistic ploys. I hope that this has been a good learning experience for those that were duped by the “unquestionable science” claims that were foisted by the mainstream media on their trusting listeners and readers.
Dan Pangburn

Curious about what caused global warming, its end, and the ongoing temperature downtrend?

All average global temperatures since 1895 are accurately predicted by a simple model. There was no need to consider any change to the level of CO2 or any other greenhouse gas.

The model, with an eye-opening graph, is presented in the October 16 pdf at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true. (Replace all references to PDO with ESST which is short for Effective Sea Surface Temperature).
Rosinante

I had hopes for AGW. It would have been the best thing to happen to humans since the ice sheets started to melt.
If the Arctic Ice cap melts, that will mean shipping by sea between Russia and Canada. That will be a boon to both nations. Sea Levels WILL NOT rise, since Ice displaces it’s volumn in water.
For those of simple mind, Ice makes a hole in the water it floats in (displacement). When that ice melts, it EXACTLY fills that hole in the water.
A direct sea route will be needed since Siberia and Northern Canada will become some of the most fertile and populated places on earth.
I say bring on Global Warming. The More the merrier.
Al

Mr. Mead,
Is it possible that “cockamamie social mandates” are not the Means, but the Ends, in this whole issue? Is fighting the “climate crisis” actually the Means?
Ellen

I sent the following e-mail to the Factcheck.org editor.

“In light of the IOC’s ruling this week which stated that UEA broke the Access to Information law, I think you should correct your statement “what’s less clear is whether any deliberate obstruction actually occurred.” to “it is now clear a deliberate obstruction occurred.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7004936.ece”

Since this site is used extensively by teachers and students, I believe it is important that we keep them honest.
Optimus Maximus

As we suspected, AGW was nothing but a watermelon….green on the outside and red on the inside….

Rather a dramatic coincidence that the AGW scam is revealed just as the USA president tries to ram his socialist agenda down the throat of the American people, with the largest congressional liberal majorities in decades, just in time for gearing up a really good battle in the 2010 midterm elections and perhaps causing the American voter to question other elitist ideas on managing energy, health care, the economy, and various other nanny state regulatory schemes where “the science is settled” …

God does indeed work in mysterious ways…

Let us hope that there is indeed truth in the quip widely attributed to Bismarck that “God looks out after fools, drunkards, and the United States of America”
FeralCat

Global warming is regarded by the sheeple as true, by those who can think for themselves as false and by the power mad and money grubbers as … … useful.
- Seneca the Younger paraphrased

What would be the effect of this Global Warming fraud and coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth. Al Gore and the Global Warming fraudsters and fanatics converted simple changes in the weather into an engine for enslaving mankind to filch wealth and power to themselves. They, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Scientists.
- Thomas Jefferson paraphrased

The Church of Global Warming says the earth is dangerously heating up, but I know that it is not, for I have seen the snow and ice and have felt their bitter cold, and I have more faith in snow and ice than in the Church of Global Warming, and it’s High Priests
- Ferdinand Magellan paraphrased
Ted Viter

The comments on this thread seem to draw conclusions more from ad hominem observations than from compelling science to the contrary. On this serious topic, it’s probably better to pay more attention to the atmosphere than the blogosphere. To get further perspective on the e-mail matter, check out: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/debunking-misinformation-stolen-emails-climategate.html
WM

“…their realization that the actual evidence they had — which, let me emphasize, all hype aside, is serious, troubling and establishes in my mind the need for intensive additional research and investigation…”

What evidence? There is now NO evidence for global warming–period. There are no temperature records anywhere which show an increase in temperatures. All the records had been doctored, where there are actually any records. Climategate revealed that academia had no evidence, just fraudulent programs. The recent “Son of Climategate” revealed that NASA and NOAA were doctoring their temperature records as well.

Nor is there indirect evidence of warming (c.f. the new Glaciergate and Amazongate scandals). It was all U.N. propaganda.

The scientific causation model has been disproven–there is no positive temperature feedback. And now recent cooling has been explained by net reduction of atmospheric water vapor. The CO2 story was entirely made up and passed off as fact with no evidence whatsoever.

There is no evidence for global warming, and there never was. Nada. Nothing. It was all a scam. Don’t you get it? There is no global warming. There is not even evidence that warming would be a threat if it were real. It was all a lie. People have got to stop giving the climate “lientists” any benefit of the doubt. Everything they say is a lie designed to yoke you to a false paradigm.
RockyRoad

There are indeed a number of benefits arising from anthropogenic CO2 added to our atmosphere: Plant growth has improved, the globe is greening (literally), and the deserts are blossoming as the rose (this includes that most magnificient of sand traps, the Sahara). China’s food production is up 20+% due to carbonization of the atmosphere, as is that of every other food-consuming country. And since that includes all 6+ billion people on the earth, that’s good news. Are there challenges? Yes! Can we address them adequately? Yes! Are we seeing benefits to added CO2 to the atmosphere? Yes! And do greenhouses increase CO2 levels to at least 1,000 ppm (about three times normal) and see substantial benefits? Yes! Sounds like a series of Wins to me!
Robert S.

George Bush looks smart once again. Ridiculed for his refusal to blindly sign the Kyoto treaty in 2001, we now see that his suspicions about the science and motivation of the global warming movement were spot-on.
moderateGuy

“The death of global warming (the movement, not the phenomenon)…” you are correct; the “phenomenon of global warming” couldn’t be dead, because it has never existed. It was always a giant hoax and fraud perpetrated on humanity by people who hoped to ride the “fix” into permanent power, influence and wealth.
Far from being simply a transfer of wealth from 1st world to the 3rd, as many have suggested it was all about transfer of wealth from productive sector of humanity (and that exists in China, India, Brazil, and I imagine upper Volta) to the freeloading, jet-setting, “cultured” elites that are running out of inherited wealth.
The movement would permanently impoverish vast sections of US, Europe, Japan, and kept most of 3rd world, as well as China, India and such like – whatever they are categorized these days as – at the current level of poverty.
Oh, and…while this is not really relevant to what was going on, since climate was NOT what this was all about … it would not have done one tiny difference to the global climate;
JulianusRex

The globe periodically warms and cools, but “man-made” global warming doesn’t exist. Wise up! Some of those so-called scientists belong in jail, and those Nobel Prizes should be rescinded.
Timothy L. Pennell

And yet, there was our IDIOT President, Tuesday night, telling the world that, “Everybody agrees on the SCIENCE of GLOBAL WARMING”.
Idiot.
Terry Holmes

The last paragraph says as much as any “conservative” (read: common sense) outlet could. Man has adapted to short-term weather and long-term climate fluctuations for many centuries and will continue to do so. To “control the weather” or to “control the climate” is folly.
Michael

Well put.

The faked data, scientists as political actors, and advocacy turning back to drive the research results are the worst aspect of this.

Advocacy research undermines science as well as twisting policy. This creation of “truth” is found in absurd body counts in Iraq published by epidemiologists who refuse to release details, large numbers of annual dead from lack of private health insurance reported by national health insurance advocates created by massaging “controls” for other factors, or think-tank results about how religion improves life which come from carefully selected methods.

After all, why bother to base policy in reality when the political class can just twist our view of reality to support policy? It has to start with science and research policing themselves: the effect of a few bad apples is to ruin the whole bushel.
Jim Hodgen

What exactly still remains that justifies the “…troubling and establishes in my mind the need for intensive additional research and investigation, as well as some prudential steps that would reduce CO2 emissions by enhancing fuel use efficiency and promoting alternative energy sources…”?

Is it the deeply flawed GISS dataset that is more and more obviously a product of Hansen et al’s failure to correct for UHI effect? IS ist the disregard for Svensmark’s more and more verified causation theory? IS it the complete non-correlation between CO2 concentration and mid-tropo / mid tropic heat buildup (the only even mildly plausible mechanism ever proposed for AGW)?

There is nothing left except GCM’s that never had any predictive power, even backwards, and have no physical mechanisms to model that produce AGW symptoms without having them injected through table-lookups.

Fraud is fraud… find a basis, a mechanism besides dire need to rule the lives of others and there can be a discussion. Right now Gore and PAchauri deserve that medal almost twice as much as the subsequent peace rize winner… and you shouldn’t hold you breath for a pulitzer on this piece either… or then again maybe you’re in the running. Who knows?
Dr. Albert Gortenbull

Spending trillions to send mankind backwards is a crime against humanity! Albert
http://www.lippmannforcongress.us Stan Lippmann

Mr. Mead,
You had it right in September when you expressed amazement at the Town Hall protesters. We the People (70% of us) don’t trust the Government at all on anything, and you seemed proud that your competitors in your own elite circle were made to look like the fools they are over health care. Now you are backing down, acting as if you can continue to pontificate from inside the CFR, as if we don’t know what the elites are up to and how few days left they have, before the whole FED Monopoly game ends ingloriously either with a mass slaughter of your mercenaries in the Foreign Legions, a dumping of the dollar by China, hyperinflation, civil disobedience, tax boycott, or overthrow of Pelosi and Reid, or impeachment of Geithner or Obama himself.
Runnymede

It is all illusion the level of incompetence demonstrated by hope to be central governors is breathtaking.
Next target Banks and by hope to be central governors will never realize they are being taken to the cleaners. Change the rules and different people will get rich but the poor will still be poor and the truly wealthy will still be wealthy.
zracz

Amen.
Brian W. Loss

Amen. I could not have said it better nor can I agree more. Global Warming will no doubt be seen in historical retrospect as the Great Hoax of the late twentieth century. The question that I would ask is: How were so many people so easily mislead?
pjwg

“… support for specific measures and sacrifices will erode rapidly as commentators from Fox News and other conservative outlets endlessly hammer away.”

Wow! Who knew Fox News and other conservative outlets were so powerful! 3.2 million viewers in prime time for FNC compared to 20 million viewers for network news – global warming theory cheerleaders. Geez, could it be that just maybe the “theory” is the problem?
steve

whats worse here is that there will be an erosion of trust in science. these idiots at the royal academy should be at a minimum fired. I expect politicians to pull these kind of stunts, but scientists who do need discipling.
JJMurray

When will folks realize that the best way to deal with a warming or changing climate is to investigate and implement ways of adapting to it and taking advantage of what it will change. The climate is not nor has it ever been a static thing, it is constantly changing and while what we do may have some effect it is far from being the primary mover. Nature is fluid and the best way to deal with it is to “go with the flow” instead of fighting the current.
Laura

The global warming scam is symptomatic of how the international left does business generally. It tries to rely on distortion,fabrication and intimidation because its statist snake oil is a toxic brew that the public won’t buy if accurately described.Putting it in a green package rather than the red one fools only the terminally gullible
trafamadore

Meanwhile, we are on track right now for a record low ice cover year in the Arctic. The Global Warming Deniers amaze me with their stupidity.
JohnR22

The real goal of the elitests behind AGW was to transfer wealth from the 1st world (primarily the US) to the 3rd world. This would serve two purposes: (1) to provide aid to struggling 3rd world economies, and (2) to reduce the wealth/power of the US which is seen by many in Europe as inherently fascist/capitalistic/racist. Thus, you hear nary a word of criticism about the failure of China, India, and Brazil to agree to any measures to restrict their CO2 emissions. The focus is ALL on the US.
Jon Trotter

The great bulk of all fears produced by agencies like the EPA etc are unfounded. Endangered spicies behind every bush, in every stream…it’s hogwash but does provide jobs for many who couldn’t earn an honest living.
Benjamin Norbert

Accurate assessment insofar as the fraud and
politics go — but the author’s wrong about two things: the scientific evidence is weak and getting weaker even sans the hype & fraud; and if ever and anthropogenic-anything catastrophe were truly looming, the political will would no doubt be found. Meanwhile, let’s (we the West) stop being the laughingstock of a world we formerly owned, and harness our great technical capacities to return to making things and producing energy. Also stop the political madnesses (PC, reverese colonization, self-loathing…) & return to cultural confidence & economic leadership.
Donn Lobdell

How does Mr Mead justify his statement that, “The global warmists were trapped into the necessity of hyping the threat…” ? They were only “trapped” into lying because the science wouldn’t support their belief. Thus they were not acting as scientist but as advocates for some other cause. Was it adding to the CV by serving on the “Global Warming is Real – Really” panel or by staying on the correct side of the “peer reviewers” who would recommend publication only if the “global warmists” licked the polically correct boots? Either way their views and “proofs” are thoroughly discredited by their own actions and no amount of “the science is settled” pronouncements from Al Gore and his accomplices can make it other than stinking to high heaven.
Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

“The global warming campaigners got into this mess because they had a deeply flawed political strategy. They were never able to develop a pragmatic approach that could reach its goals in the context of the existing international system. The global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet.”

Methinks the _goals_ were the political changes, using Global Warminating as the pretext. Nobody would listen to communist silliness after 1989, so they had to latch onto a different message to try and snow the proles.

Scratch a Green, and you’ll find a Red.
Jim

“Consequences” is too mild a term by far. The storm that is coming will make the Massachusetts Massacre seem like nothing. The Democratic Party is finished for at least a generation. The only question that remains is what will take its place.
Speaktopower

The great question is not whether this will be remembered as another pseudo-scientific hoax (it will), but rather whether all those who persecuted and attacked the “deniers” and scientific skeptics who went against the “church’s” teachings will be humbled by this, or just go on to the next feat of faith and belief and pretend that they were never a priest, inquisitor, and executioner for their AGCC religion.

If this recent incarnation of “scientific evidence” for the necessity of slavery and ceding of liberty to elites who have all knowledge and all truth for, “the greater good” has taught us anything, it is yet more evidence that the American public, and the Western World at large, is woefully lacking in basic math and science education. Only an ignorant and uneducated public could be so easily led to believe that global cataclysm was just around the corner because of a tiny increase in a trace gas. Or, that given the size and complexity of the system, that is our atmosphere, such minute changes could cause Armageddon. Carbon dioxide accounts for .00038 of our atmosphere. By contrast, there is 2,631 times as much water vapor in the atmosphere, and it is more than 20 times as important in our planet’s atmosphere’s natural greenhouse effect (you know, the one that allows life on Earth to exist).

If this is not taken as a stern warning that we need to do a better job of teaching science to all citizens, then we are in a great deal of trouble. Scientists should not be treated like The Great Oz, or cloistered priests who have esoteric knowledge we wouldn’t understand. Science if for everyone, and in our technological societies it is an absolute necessity or we are going to have more and more hoaxes like this one.
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Cryingloon

Awwww…….Too bad, Fatboy Gore won’t be able to dupe millions of our dollars even though he already has sucked up a few million since he started this farse!
shirl

I hope Al Gore and all the other cheats lose every cent they have invested in trying to capitalize on this fraud. Criminal charges should be brought against these “scientists” who have received government money by falsely representing their data.
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Robert

A wonderfully written rear guard piece. The non-science of AGW lays exposed. Global warming may be taking place, that said, humanity is along for the ride (as it has always been)!
Koblog

Tell me, do all scientists lie to us like this, or only Climate “scientists.”
http://www.whatisthought.com/essays.html Natural Philosopher

I’m a PhD physicist and I’ve long known AGW was BS by reading the science. Never mind the leaks, the IPCC report utterly fails to scientifically justify its conclusions. The surface data sets are worthless due to local siting problems, never mind hand massaging and selection of the worst sites, and tend to make me think the globe has actually cooled, not warmed over the last century. The tropical troposphere hasn’t warmed an iota in the 50+ year history of the time series. The GCM’s are buggy and worthless, with more parameters than data points, and they have been falsified by the lack of warming since 2001. Theoretically, CO2 based global warming should scale logarithmically, meaning if we quintuple the CO2 from here, we should see essentially no additional warming result. In short, (1) there is no reason to worry about carbon emissions, at least as pertains to climate and (2) the globe in 2100 is as likely to be cooler as it is to be warmer.
http://miriamsideas.blogspot.com miriam

Besides bad politics and bad science is the fact that climate change is all lies. The truth will out, eventually.
jackbenimble

Now that the movement has collapsed, what makes you so certain that the phenomenon is “serious and troubling” or even real? It turns out that the GISS has systematically been discarding data from tempurature stations in Northern Latitudes, high altitudes, and rural areas in favor of stations near airports, in urban areas and at low altitudes. They have sytematically falsified the data. Most of the phenomenon is really just urban heat island effect. It is time to stick a stake through the heart of this fake science.
RonS

Great article. Thanks goodness sanity is returning. Too bad it hasn’t reached Obama yet or the New York Times.
I just read Climategate, The CRUtape letters, by Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller. This is a step by step analysis of what the CRU emails reveal and the folks that write it know the skilled crew that uncovered the dodgy science, so it ties together. It is a “read it and weep” kind of expose. we were being lead down the garden path!
Harley2002

Well since the whole thing is a scam to shift money from countries like the US to other countries. And also give people like Obama another step towards the Marxism he wants I am happy at least the truth came out this one time compared to all the other lies the elitists try and push on us serfs.
Freedom Fan

Wikipedia is a primary player in the ClimateGate scam, led by William Connoley, cofounder of Mikey Mann’s RealClimate.org:

One person in the nine-member Realclimate.org team “U.K. scientist and Green Party activist William Connolley” would take on particularly crucial duties.

Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known ” Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003 … he rewrote Wikipedia?s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world?s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn?t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it ” more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred ” over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions…

The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/12/18/370719.aspx

Al Gore’s Mann-made global warming hoax is a scam that dwarfs the Madoff swindle.
John Pennell

If the real goal of the warmers was to abate warming, they would have turned to SCIENCE for methods (iron seeding etc.) instead of politics.

The goal was societal change, with themselves in charge.
http://realclearpolitics. ReConUSMC

The movement died from two causes: bad science and bad politics … Walter Russell Mead say’s .

I’ll personally ad gross deception , massive lying for and to keep Scientific grants and the largest cover up in world history of a obvious Fraud and scam .
We have finally learned in the 11Th. hour .

There is no reason to lie about or twist the truth and Facts unless it kills your high paid Hoax and Con game for political power .
Case in Point Al Gore went from a net worth of 3 Million the day he left Washington to 6 years later being worth between 102 and 114 Million dollars .
Follow the money .

Sounds to many of us like this has reached the Bernie Madoff scam level just far more greedy and trillions later .

Only here with Global Warning scam it is far bigger than Bernie Madoff”s measly 65 Billion con game now the second biggest scam ever .

Team Gore , the UN and the radical Left has out done Madoff by Trillions .
I have contended for years this is the greatest hoax in world History .

Why ? We know The Sun and Sun Spots decides 98.2 % of our Temperatures on Earth along with our Ocean waters , Swamps, Lakes , Bays and Rivers 72.4 of the Earth’s surface that decides 1.4 % .
We also know that a huge Volcano in Asia caused the Mini Ice age 1420 to 1847 dipping Temperatures 30-60 degrees . Summers became Harsh Winters .
Mother Nature and God is our Weatherman not Al Gore, the UN or the left .

Proof ? In 92 years of testing since the famous Dust bowl ….. No country has been able to make it rain or stop the rain or made a storm or stop a storm much less a hurricane or Tornado .

Just maybe now Common sense finally rules if that is at all possible ? Seeing this Adm. gross misbehavior doing the right thing is a 10 % out 100 % chances sadly .
Vote’ Um Out !
kwnf29gfq2g

“Breaking the law to hide key pieces of data isn’t just ’science as usual,’ as the global warming movement’s embattled defenders gamely tried to argue. A cover-up like that suggests that you indeed have something to conceal.”

You’re naive, this is science as usual.
George

As I read this story I am sitting in over 8 inches in snow in the South. Where is “Global Warming” when you need it!
Dogwood

…but everything these two agencies have done will now have to be re-checked by independent and objective sources.

CRU’s work can not be re-checked because they threw away their original data, which makes recreating their results impossible….for them or for independent researchers.
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http://www.cosmicconservative.com/weblog CosmicConservative

The dirtiest little secret in a veritable sea of dirty secrets of Global Warming, is that there is no actual proof that even if Global Warming is real, that it will harm humanity in any way. Previous warming eriods have coincided with great growth and advancement of human society. It is only the “sky is falling” mentality of the Left that immediately assumes that warming is necessarily “bad.” That is because the “environmental” movement is no longer about the environment, it is about preservation of the status quo and the accumulation of political power. That’s all.
Doug

And for the corruption of data by US agencies, check this link:

http://www.iceagenow.com/NASA_NOAA_cooking_the_data.htm
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http://none david elder

Most scientists would accept some global warming – if we double CO2 we expect a temperature rise of about one degree Celsius. But that is not much. It can be made greater if it leads to increased evaporation of water vapour, a greenhouse gas. But water vapour can form clouds, which can do various things to temperature, but one of them is to cool the earth. So what is the overall temperature effect of water vapour? This central part of the science is not settled. Computer models do not settle it because climate is too complex. All we can say for sure is that over the last decade or so global temperature has not risen. Claims (from NASA/GISS) that 2009 was the equal second hottest year are debatable since another dataset (NOAA) has 2009 as only equal fifth. The Medieval Warm Period was probably warmer than today since the Vikings could colonise Greenland and grapes grew in the north of England. Temperature did rise in the 20th century by 0.7 deg C but half of this had occurred by 1940 whereas our emissions did not take off till mid-century. This rise was therefore natural. The other half of the rise (1977-1998) might have something to do with our emissions, but might also be connected with a natural cycle, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Shrinking Arctic ice is connected to a natural cycle, the Arctic Oscillation. Antarctic ice loss is largely confined to one small atypical region, the Antarctic Peninsula which stretches well out from the continent and can therefore be contacted by a warm current. I see no clearl sign of catastrophic warming yet. If it does eventuate I believe nuclear power is the only existing proven technology that could counter it.
Paul

Algore and O-bummer both Nobel peace prize winners…what a worthless prize
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Tex Lovera

One quibble: the post mentions that “support for specific measures and sacrifices will erode rapidly as commentators from Fox News and other conservative outlets endlessly hammer away.”

Well, wouldn’t you agree that the MSM has been relentlessly pushing the pro-AGW agenda for years, and actively ignored the argumants against AGW, not to mention the entire climategate scandal??

The rules of the game were already “set” before it started to turn against the AGW crowd; they don’t get to complain about them now.
RichN

Global warming was never about warming it is in fact about population control and is a movement pushed by so called progressives. Basically the same progressive movement made up of socialite and political elites that pushed for eugenics and euthanasia early last century.
Norm

It seems to me there’s been some warming. In Restoration Britain they had an annual winter festival on the frozen Thames and there are the antebellum Currier & Ives prints of ice-skatingon theHudson. That sort of prolonged freezing isn’t happening any more. How much warming has taken place and why it has taken place is being vigorously debated outside of circlesw where further debate is inconvenient.
Oakley

The “in the tank” media needs to stay “in the tank” with the stair climbing jellyfish!
Fearless Bear

The author’s comment that stressing efficiency would have been a constructive way to approach the asserted warming problem is the key insight that the Gai’a worshippers have missed. Stressing efficiency would allow for competitive alternative energy supplies. It would produce a reduction in GHGs that would be significant. But they could not get behind that because it does not give them the control over the economy that they think they should have; instead it relies on human ingenuity and market forces. No good central planner or holier than thou green can stomach such competitive thoughts.
yy

ok last 1

is it correct that the NYT basically refused to write of the scam that is climategate?

all the news thats fit to print? no? then they should close down

like Obamas communications director, who managed campaign messages, married to his birth cert legal quarterback, new WH counsel

folks such deception it is unreal, and not from Bush as the weak minds protest but the shock doctrine LEFT America haters, they are vile as they defile and debase what their parents bequethed them

and want to give it away as they are self indulgent fools

the facts of life are conservative
http://demandtruth.org Harmon

First of all, I have been saying for years that the AGW cultists were wrong, and backed up my arguments with evidence, proofs, and logic. Of course, it was like spitting upwind.
Second of all, I’m a Democrat, and I would like everybody to stop equating the AGW cultists and warm-mongers with “progressives” and “democrats” and assuming that the deniers and anti-AGW folks are all Republicans and conservatives. The AGW arguments and models are wrong on many levels, and seeing that isn’t an issue that breaks down along progressive vs. conservative lines, but along intelligence and rational lines.
When Al Gore’s movie won the Nobel prize, I was shocked, because it indicated how many people throughout the world could not see that it was all lies, fraud, and rhetorical tricks.
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Jerry Pulley

I, for one, am sick to the point of despair over comments like the parenthetical in this sentence from Mr. Mead’s fifth paragraph above:

–quote–
The global warmists were trapped into the necessity of hyping the threat by their realization that the actual evidence they had — which, let me emphasize, all hype aside, is serious, troubling and establishes in my mind the need for intensive additional research and investigation, as well as some prudential steps that would reduce CO2 emissions by enhancing fuel use efficiency and promoting alternative energy sources — was not sufficient to get the world’s governments to do what they thought needed to be done.
–end quote–

As far as I can tell, there has never been any reliable measurement of any human effect on climate. I don’t say such an effect doesn’t exist in theory, but if it does it is evidently too small to measure.

I’ve read some of the leaked CRU code and code comments. If you think the emails are damning, the computer code puts the question beyond doubt. A lot of highly trained people have bet their careers on AGW and searched for it diligently. In the end they their hoped-for indications simply weren’t there and had to be manufactured.

Mr. Mead, can you cite any reliable observations or other-than-anecdotal indications that might justify the investigation and preemptive action you wish for? Or is your vestige of belief in this fraud of the “there must be a pony” variety?
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John Blake

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) since the putrescent Hansen’s non air-conditioned testimony before the U.S. Congress in 1988 has always been a propaganda exercise, a tissue of junk-science lies. Cyclical rebounds from a 500-year Little Ice Age ending c. 1880 – 1890 have been deceitfully plotted as a linear trend correlated with atmospheric CO2 emissions by late-Industrial/Technological Western civilization, which for deep psychological reasons Climate Cultists’ Green Gang of Luddite sociopaths despise.

For fundamental reasons, any “greenhouse effect” anthropogenic or otherwise is mathematically and physically impossible. First, as Edward Lorenz’s Chaos Theory showed in 1964, “complex dynamic systems” such as Earth’s atmosphere are non-random but indeterminate, non-linear in any form.

Second, thermodynamic Conservation Laws define “entropy” as prohibiting 100% efficiency of any heat-engine in either open or closed contexts: Thermal equilibrium self-adjusts by means of cooling vs. warming processes. Warmist ignoramuses assert Perpetual Motion, equating Earth with Venus, whose geophysical dynamics bear no resemblance to our own.

Over a generation now, this massive fraud has sabotaged world energy economies, subverted objective, rational scientific inquiry, promoted a terminally dysfunctional elite like Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, too busy raking off ill-gotten Cap-and-Trade gains in Thieves’ Markets to proofread or even minimally review their doltish IPCC, GISS/NASA, Penn State ESSC, or Hadley CRU pronouncements. Now as Cycle 24′s “dead sun” presages a 70-year Maunder Minimum, most likely ending Earth’s 12,250-year Holocene Interglacial Epoch, Warmists’ legacy could well be mega-deaths worldwide.l
darrell dvorak

hmmm…..so Mr. Mead seems to be saying that the problem is strategic/tactical, not smash-face reality. Sorry, but one side has empirical evidence and the other doesn’t; and you’re on the wrong side.
Seerak

The movement died from two causes: bad science and bad politics.

Impressive, considering that’s from whence it was born.
Don

Global Warming is a hoax. Billions of dollars have already passed to those who have committed what can now only be construed as fraud. What is worse, steps being taken in some areas to stop the “warming” of our planet which is now actually cooling, will cost people their livelihoods and in some cases, too many I fear, their lives.
Norm’s Buddy

Gee, Norm.

Currier & Ives prints prove it. What about all those Woolly Mammoths carcasses found in LA? You think it was damn could in Southern California at some point?
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http://globalwarmingnotes.i8.com Adrian Vance

CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere and insignificant by definition. Water vapor is six times a better absorber or infrared, IR, energy, molecule for molecule, and has 200 times as many molecules for 1200 times the heating effect. Or you can say, “Water vapor it responsible for 99.9% of all atmospheric heating.” However, carbon is 84% of all petroleum fuels. Taxing and control of carbon is the key to more political power than anything since the Magna Carta.
Milwaukee

“Meanwhile, we are on track right now for a record low ice cover year in the Arctic. The Global Warming Deniers amaze me with their stupidity.

Comment by trafamadore – February 1, 2010 @ 2:30 pm”

The Arctic ice comes and goes with the seasons. We have had previous periods when the Northwest passage was open, briefly. We have also had recent years large grow back of the winter ice. But the ice is building up in the Antarctic. What about that?

Don’t forget that Ken Lay, of Enron fame, is the originator of the idea of “cap and trade”, and that Europe’s system is rife with corruption and fraud.

I’m all for less pollution, for it’s own sake. Newer, high efficient coal plants, pollute less, and extract more energy from each ton of coal. There are ways we could pollute less, in the name of polluting less, than in the name of global warming.

My fear is that ground water will be substantially contaminated by the mercury from improperly disposed compact fluorescent light bulbs. Power plants are more likely to do a better job collecting mercury from the emissions than clumsy people are at cleaning up their dropped compact fluorescent bulbs. Or those just tossed in the trash by users too lazy to dispose of them appropriately.
http://blog.sustainablemiddleclass.com John Freeland

Back to Danram:
No, the Antarctic sea ice area is not shrinking and is slightly greater than the 1979-2008 mean.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png

However, the net change in global sea ice, adding the Arctic and Antarctic components, is more than 1 million square kilometers below the 1979-2008 mean. This is roughly equal to the area of Spain and France combined. See graph link below.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Don Jacobson

Norm I also believe the temps have been up. Here in Lincoln Nebraska our winters have been rather mild compared to the 60′s and 70′s, but so have the summers.

If as darrell dvorak states the empirical evidence is on one side or the other I would follow that evidence. I have seen no evidence that humans are the cause of any climate trend.
Malak

The lesson, which should have already been clear after the events of 20th century, is thus:

The recognized experts, for all their supposed intelligence and influence, are just as fallible – and even often times full of crap – as the rest of us.

And usually unworthy of the power they seek to grab for themselves.
BobC

@ Daddy-O:
“There is something truly frightening here. The fact that political agenda can so sway “scientific data” as to cause a near hysterical movement ought to give all those who value truth severe pause.”

(Comment by Daddy-O – February 1, 2010 @ 11:01 am)

Interestingly, President Eisenhower predicted that this would happen in his farewell address to the American people on January 17, 1961:

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.”

http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/All_About_Ike/Speeches/Farewell_Address.pdf
Barry Farnum

If it were true that the artic and antartic ice was melting to a dangerous amount It seems to me that there would be some flooding in low lying areas around the world. Where did all that water go if not to the oceans of the world.Maybe it’s in Al Gores swimming pool.
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Darbacour

The global warming campaigners got into this mess because they had a deeply flawed political strategy.

No, The GW campaigners got into this mess because they got into politics and corrupted the science to fit their political agenda. Nothing more, nothing less.
plaasjaapie

The author, Walter Russell Mead asserts that

” The global warmists were trapped into the necessity of hyping the threat by their realization that the actual evidence they had — which, let me emphasize, all hype aside, is serious, troubling and ESTABLISHES IN MY MIND {emphasis mine} the need for intensive additional research and investigation, as well as some prudential steps that would reduce CO2 emissions by enhancing fuel use efficiency and promoting alternative energy sources”

From Wikipedia…

Walter received his B.A. in English Literature from Yale University, but never went to graduate school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Russell_Mead

What is it about going to an Ivy League University that seems to make graduates feel entitled to seriously make policy pronouncements about technical and scientific matters about which they know absolutely nothing?

I thought that Obama was bad about this. Mr. Mead, however, takes this sort of “intellectual” arrogance to entirely new heights.
yy

please dont tell obama about this, he’ll be devastated
Tom in Kansas

Can someone at least revoke the Nobel Prize given to Al Gore for all of his lies and energy consumption.
Louise in California

3 “strikes” and the IPCC should be “out” !!!

Strike #1
ClimateGate: the CRU “scientists” in England
• favored data which supports the case for ‘global warming’ and ignored other data
•would not share data when asked to under “freedom of information” laws, and appears to have destroyed some data that should have been shared.
•distorted data to support their view

Strike #2
Glaciergate
The IPCC claim of total glacier melt in the Himalayas by 2035 was based on “sheer speculation” — not peer-reviewed scientific work. The claim was made in their 2007 IPCC report and the IPCC has only recently acknowledged they were wrong.

Strike #3
The IPCC misrepresented an unpublished report linking climate change with an increase in natural disasters even when the report’s author, Dr Robert Muir-Wood, a researcher in risk management not climatology, had explicitly stated the opposite.

The media in other countries are exposing the IPCC’s poor science record, why aren’t more of the US media exposing the IPCC?
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steve

However we arrived at the present situation, there has definitely been some questionable behavior going on in East Anglia.

When scientists delete or omit data because they don’t conform to a preconceived notion we are getting into dangerous territory. Objectivity and rigorous investigation are hallmarks of scientific inquiry. Little of that seems on display in this kerfuffle.

To many conservatives, AGW amounts to an international attempt at social engineering. A Robin Hood complex of sorts. Take from the rich and give to the poor. In many ways it is socialism writ very large. In the U.S., Van Jones was the green jobs czar until his troubles last year–at least nominally blamed on his having signed a 9/11 Truther petition. If you want the actual reason Google Mr. Jones and Climate Summit April 2009. If you see his speech to that conference it should be abundantly clear why he was asked to “resign.”

The area I live in depends on the coal industry for economic sustenance. As you might imagine global warming and its adherents aren’t popular in these parts. Most people here view cap-and-trade as the death warrant for the coal business. If that happened this would become a place where most of the population had to live on the dole.

Instead of trying to regulate and pass laws that destroy vital and vigorous American energy companies, why not find a way for those industries to be cleaner. Research continues into clean coal technology. Most of it centers on liquefying. the coal and capturing the carbon emissions before they reach the atmosphere. But there are many other possible routes to explore. Filters that trap the harmful pollutant for both homes and businesses might help. Scientific research and the entrepreneurial spirit can accomplish wonders. Wouldn’t it be better to work to contain the problem and deal with present consequences now? Why do the draconian thing and wreck whole sectors of the economy for what might well be junk science wed to far-left social justice goals? Why take people’s jobs because they are unlucky enough to work in an industry that the enviros don’t approve of? The American economy needs more jobs and free enterprise, not less.

BTW, don’t all of us humans pollute each and every second, minute,hour, day and year of our lives by breathing out our respiratory waste product..CO2? What do the warmers plan to do about that? Will we have to wear masks and buy credits to pollute the air with our carbon dioxide. What about all those pesky farm creatures? Don’t they give off lots of the offending gaseous molecule? And yet the Earth has withstood it all for hundreds and hundreds of years. Only the liberals could have created this kind of a mess.
http://theillinoisguy.wordpress.com theillinosguy

The global warming conspiracy should have been dead long ago. This is the only way that these socialist, redistributionist agendas can get through, by cheating and lying. These jobs killing policies will turn America into a third world country, and then who will be left to lead the world? Nice of Obama to finally mention jobs, after a year of dealing with things that really don’t matter if people are out of work. We’ve elected a narcissist in chief with no concern for anything but himself and his legacy. No offense, but most Americans have no desire to embrace European style socialism, or the more radical ideas of the progressive wing of the Democrat party. Obama will probably do more to push America to conservative principles and beliefs even more than Reagan. http://theillinoisguy.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/more-on-jobs/
http://www.daveinboca.blogspot.com daveinboca

AGW & Cap & Trade symbolize the incredible crime spree that the Democrats have been waging across the board with ridiculous taxation, immense deficits, and a complete and total DISREGARD for what the American people really want.

I can remember when Bill Clinton used to intone about the great collective wisdom of the American people. Now that the American people have figured out that the elitist scam artists have been trying to foist a ruinous takeover by Big Government through Stealth legislation like the backroom healthcare fiasco, the elites claim the Americans are too stupid to deserve a great POTUS like Barry Soetero.

Berthold Brecht made a famous remark in 1953 after riots by workers made the GDR government observe that the German people did not deserve the wonderful Communist system the Soviets had installed. Brecht, a lifelong Communist, wrote a short poem calling on the GDR to “dissolve the German people and choose itself a new people to communize.”

That’s how stupid the left-wing elitists in the US MSM like Joe Klein and Keith Olbermann seem to be. Perhaps they can find a new people for Barry Soetero to drag into a super-bureaucrat slave state.

The American people, as they showed in MA, just aren’t ready for the glorious future the Demo-cretins had planned.
http://blog.sustainablemiddleclass.com John Freeland

Arctic sea ice is already in the ocean. Melting that won’t cause a rise in sea level.
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Tom Walton

Mr. Mead understates his case. The most realistic upside projections for global warming trends over the next one hundred years (less than the “break-even” rise of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would entail a net economic gain for the world and especially for its temperate regions where the vast majority of the planet’s population resides. This would follow from longer growing seasons in the temperate regions and from increased plant growth everywhere. (See, e.g., Yale Professor Robert Mendelsohn, “A Critique of the Stern Report,” Reason, at http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv29n4/v29n4-5.pdf )

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a potent fertilizer. The extra CO2 in our atmosphere may have increased plant growth by as much as 15 percent over the last century.

Those of us living in the temperate regions could and should help those living in the lower latitudes to adapt to any damages that could follow from a warmer climate and rising sea levels. But the potential for “climate change” does not justify costly subsidies for fuel efficiency technologies or alternative energy sources. Adaptation is by the far cheaper alternative, just as the first blogger maintains and as Professor Mendelsohn’s research confirms.
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MikeyP

While you single-out Fox’s lonely voice on Cable-of-All-Things, you seem to have missed the endless pro-warming dirge from the Alphabet Gang (ABC-BBC-CBS-NBC-NYT).

Not to worry. The sky is ALWAYS falling somewhere… for those who need it.
MJ

Despite the demise of the AGW political -socioeconmic movement, there have been success stories. Al Gore is now nearly a billionaire, and hundreds, if not thousands of minor league academics have enjoyed a comfortable living for most of their adult lives doing [an activity best not described in a family-friendly blog like this one - ed].
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btturner

I wish climate change were not true, or that it were natural and easy for us to adapt to. But the evidence is overwhelming that we are on track for unprecedented climate changes that will contribute to very large problems for humankind.
A meter sea level rise, 50% less freshwater availability, shifting crop and species patterns, significantly more intense major storms and forest fires – these reasonably foreseeable outcomes will create major hardship in this country alone – and we have the best capacity to adapt. If, in addition to a pecuniary interest in the well-being of your own nation, you have a moral sense, then I ask you to consider for a minute these (again, reasonably foreseeable) impacts on the less wealthy on the globe. How can we not act?
Along with the physical science, the economic and technological analysis is sound and robust to a wide range of assumptions – investing in efficient energy use and low-carbon energy sources is far cheaper than adaptation, and can be achieved with equal economic growth and human well-being, whether compared to the (unfortunately unavailable) comparator of growth with no climate change, or compared to the actual business-as-usual trajectory and its climate change outcomes, where we will perform much much better with a low-carbon economy.
I appreciate skeptical science, and I hope that the recent uncovering of unprofessional conduct and mistakes in a some climate science will make the overall endeavor much stronger.
But those that leap from these lapses to the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is not happening at all – or moreover that it is all a hoax, perpetuated by thousands of scientists for decades and encouraged by evil politicians intent on socialist takeover – exhibit as much magical thinking, unfounded conviction, and blind slavish devotion to a preconceived convenient narrative as those they accuse. I suggest that because you hope it is not true, you allow yourself to latch on to slivers of hope – and your fellows in disbelief shouting together begin to sound like a chorus. You have convinced yourselves it is not true.
Look in the mirror, yo.
H. G. Meindl

I find it extremely frustrating to deal with many so called intelligent friends & relatives whose basic premise on Global Warming is – “My Mind is made up, dont’ confuse me with facts”. This may just be the reluctance to admit their errors in judgement!
onegunfu

Just another leftist fraud to justify their “redistribution of wealth scheme” I cannot remember when these “activists” have ever told the truth even under oath. Global warming is real, so is global cooling, it is cyclical. There is no compelling scientific evidence to suggest that human activity exacerbates either. If you seek the truth on this devisive issue, follow the money and see who benefits financially from terrorizing the public with doomsday scenarios and loud impassioned cries of “The sky is falling” and indoctrinating school children and the simpleminded with their patently false “Chicken Little Syndrome.”
D Leffingwell

Over 10 years ago I remember following the articles about global warming. At the time most were well written and truly “scientific” in nature – meaning that they didn’t hype or unequivocally state their theory as a fact. At some point, around the beginning of the decade (after the Y2K scare was a non-event), I remember the European and U.S. political “left” grabbing onto the global warming theories and I thought “Oh well, there goes any hope of sane scientific debate on this subject”. Sure enough, the mainstream media latched onto it and in a few short years it became “fact”. The only problem was that it was only a “political fact” – in other words propaganda – not fully-vetted science.

The rank-and-file meteorologists were right to be skeptical – as was the general population – especially when politics and ideology became involved. We can only hope that sanity will prevail and we can resume thoughtful scientific debate on this subject.
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Andi Prama

Watch my video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7I_eFoIk64

It’s about climate change, earth catastrophe and our planet as we lives in.

Thank you.
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nomoregore

If any actual scientific science, as opposed to political science, actually remains concerning this subject, it’s pretty simple. The weather changes from day to day, from month to month, from year to year, from century to century and from geological age to geological age. Thus it has been and thus it shall always be. What we have been seeing is the footprint of a large cadre of socialist/communists who were shown in the late 1980s that their brand of anti-free market, reduced individual freedom and big government regulation and taxation just wasn’t selling. So they latched on to the weapon of co2 to deploy against the above targets. They already had virtual control of the NGO, university and mass media to promote this scheme. And, let’s face it, the scheme was diabolically clever because, after all, every walking talking human on the planet is thus a carbon burning, co2 emitting, pollution machine. Apparently, we saved ourselves by halting at the edge of the cliff. Now maybe we can get back to the business of studying actual weather and understanding when, where and what changes can be predicted. But I have heard that the “catastrophists” are now aiming at nitrogen as their next bogeyman. BTW Andi, if you want people to watch your video you need to do better than sentences such as “it’s about… our planet as we lives in.”
SamIam

It’s not dead. Leftists always regroup and try again in different ways. They merely go into hibernation for a while until memories fade. AGW was always a means to an end and it’s too good to abandon completely. Look for new heads from the hydra to appear.
http://gtbmediawarrior.blogspot.com/ Gary B

Global Warming is dead…GOOD! maybe we can deal with something REAL like pollution. How about being concerned about toxic runoff into groundwater or industrial waste. This that are real threats to the environment.
Docjohn52

I live in Las Vegas, and I remember in high school, it snowed for the first time in 38 years.
It was only a half inch, and didn’t stick. Gone in about three hours, but…
They had to let school out, there were kids that had never seen snow.
It has been steadily getting colder, until in the winter 2008-9 it snowed for an entire 4 days…
The first time in my memory, ever. I have pictures…
This winter, it just layed down snow in Texas!! Winter ice has overrun the Copenhagen summit, and snowed-in the upper and lower hemispheres. England doesn’t own a snowplow. The satellite pictures were truly epic.

It’s definitely getting colder or they wouldn’t have had to ‘hide the decline’

There are more cold planets than warm ones, and the majority of the universe, is cold, not hot.
You can look into the sky at night and see how far you have to look to see the next heat source.
The only three sources of heat we have are the sun, the core, and man-made.

The reason man or anything lives on earth right now, is because the moon has been slowly stripping the atmospheric soup from the planet.
This is known as a reducing atmosphere. Very rare as planets go.

I think the atmosphere is just about right, and we should start thinking about doing something about that pesky moon, before the only thing we have to eat, are liberals.

Not that I mind, but we need a lot more efficient methods of trapping them.
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Andy Scrase

Check out the Tyndall’s instruction manual on how to make people “believe”

This is a must read to this Orwellian nightmare

“The Social Simulation of the Public Perception
of Weather Events and their Effect upon
the Development of Belief in
Anthropogenic Climate Change”

http://www.tyndall.uea.ac.uk/sites/default/files/wp58.pdf
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/ M. Simon

Jevon’s Paradox says improving efficiency will increase CO2 output.
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/ M. Simon

Currier & Ives prints prove it. What about all those Woolly Mammoths carcasses found in LA? You think it was damn could in Southern California at some point?

Comment by Norm’s Buddy – February 1, 2010 @ 7:30 pm

About 18,000 years ago Chicago was covered by a mile of ice. It is gone. I blame global warming.
http://www.beitshalom.org Julio Dam

THERE IS NO “GLOBAL WARMING”! ASK ME, WHO LIVES IN A COUNTRY LIKE PARAGUAY, SOUTH OF BRAZIL, WHICH HAS FROM 100 TO 130 DEGREES FARENHEIT (48 TO 52 CELSIUS) FROM NOVEMBER TO MID MAY, YEAR AFTER YEAR FOR THE LAST TWENTY YEARS OR MORE! I CALL IT “GLOBAL EXTREMISM”: COLD COUNTRIES GET COLDER, AND WARM COUNTRIES GET MUCH WARMER. (This year it has been milder, for the first time in twenty years or so).
Doug Patti

Julio, How many grades in school did you skip before you went directly to the Funny Farm? You obviously missed the Geography course that teaches that equatorial countries have warmer climates than countries closer to the polar circles. But like a true leftist, don’t let any facts obscure your vision of Utopia. You probably also think Hugo Chavez is a brilliant scientist, economist, statesman, etc. whereas in the real world he is merely a blustering buffoon.
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typical zealot

You people are sheep! Don’t drink the Kool aid! Liberals want to destroy America! Obama is behind it! Global warming is a hoax designed to take our babies from us and feed them to extreme hippie vegans!
Dodgy Geezer

“.. the actual evidence they had — which, let me emphasize… is serious, troubling and establishes in my mind the need for intensive additional research and investigation…”

The evidence the Global Warmists SAY they have may be troubling. But if you investigate it closely, you find that it is all poor science and not conclusive in any way. In many cases it depends on unpublished ‘corrections’ being applied to base data, without which there would be no warming at all.

The world should be calling for those who have hyped the data and concealed their amendments to be punished. But it should be calling louder for ALL the base data to be published. Amazingly, this has still not happened, and until it does the Global Warming circus will still proceed – albeit with different people at the helm…
http://CommieBlaster.com CommieBlaster

FLASH!!

This Brand New Video Blows a Huge Gaping Hole in Obama’s Cap and Tax Scheme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVm5-6H_sH4
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anyka

global warming…hmmm.
idk?
thought i saw a woolly mammoth the other day….
or?
was it i T-rex?
.
yep..climates do change..
geological history proves it.
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ED

This is not enough payback. The many millions wasted & the attempted fraud call for legal action to punish the leaders of this movement for the attempted fraud.It would also make a point for the next fraud (jail sentences are appropriate in some cases)
T

If you think the greed behind the AGW scientists is absurdly high, you should take a look at the greed for keeping the status quo.
bachaboy

The left should just concede. We’re liars, charlatons, have no moral character, abide to no ethical standards, wish the worst on everyone else (I mean, we’ll feed your babies to the vegans! [human baby meat must be the only meat vegans will touch]).

Let’s give up. Let those who know better run the world. If there really is no global warming, terrific. If there is, well, who the hell cares. We’ll be gone. Screw our grandkids–we would have just fed them to the vegans anyway.

Forget the good fight. It isn’t. How could the left ever imagine it was noble or even moderately good when the corporate/christian/media Triumvirate obviously knows better? How could the left be so dumb as to argue with this intellectual tri-lateral colossus?

Let it go. Let those who know better bomb/poison/castrate/convert to christianity (whatever suits their know-better fancy), all the ragheads, slanty-eyes, wetbacks, jigaboos, and lefites.

Let the whiteright decide the future of earth. Come on mateys, let’s go have a beer and fornicate. Might as well live up to the whiteright’s God-ordained opinion of us while we still got time. We made our pact with the devil (thanks Pat for reminding us) so we might as well enjoy it.

Trying to get along with our one, our only, little earthship is SUCH a bogus concept.
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Charles

“What has always bothered me about the global warming movement is their “all or nothing” approach. What about incremental changes, that most people would be willing to make (i.e., reducing the morning shower by a few minutes)? What about more attention to daily changes we can make to enhance conservation? Nope; gotta radically change everyone’s lives in order to make a difference. *snort*”

Leftists never do anything incrementally. Whether it’s climate change, gay marriage, health-care reform, whatever they want, everything has to come via radical change overnight, and damn the consequences. We’re seeing this in the health-care reform debates in the US: Nearly everybody (including most conservatives) agrees that the current system is broken, but the left is facing strong opposition because the people feel they’re doing too much too fast.

Regarding the article:

Personally, I became skeptical for two reasons:
A) If changing the scare phrase from “global warming” to the much less specific “climate change” is not a clear example of moving the goal posts, I don’t know what is, and
B) when the alleged solution to the alleged crisis just happens to be the same things you’ve been trying to get society to do for decades (more government regulation of everything, radical erosion of private property rights, Malthusian population control) then the “crisis” can’t be that serious.

The minute someone says “the debate is over” they’ve just admitted that they’re afraid of debate. As my father said in response to the Creation/Evolution debate: If the data is so overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, then why are they so afraid to let people examine it for themselves? Out of everyone in the discussion, the hardcore atheo-evolutionist was the only one advocating withholding information from students.

His point was not to defend Creationism or to attack Evolution, but simply that good science should be able to stand on its own, and should not require the silencing of dissenting opinions. Whether the consensus is correct (evolution) or not (AGW) the tendency to ignore/silence/attack skeptics rather than engage their points is detrimental not only to science, but to politics as well.
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JMW

For all of you squealing about how FINALLY it’s been proven that global warming is a total sham, why are you ignoring this part of the piece?

“the actual evidence they had — which, let me emphasize, all hype aside, is serious, troubling and establishes in my mind the need for intensive additional research and investigation, as well as some prudential steps that would reduce CO2 emissions by enhancing fuel use efficiency and promoting alternative energy sources”

Seems to complicate things a little, no?
BilllD

A lot of scientists, me included, think that there is a good chance that 2010 will be the hottest year globally in the measured history. Certainly the January UAH satellite data is already at reacord levels. I don’t see how we can talk about the death of global warming when temperatures are approaching record levels during a major solar minimum. At some point, with increading temperature, decreasing arctic ice and wide spread droughts, there is a chance that even many of you will be convinced.
Joe Cushley

Oh dear. You denialists are going to look really stupid very soon. Oops, you look really stupid already. Unfortunately, you are messing up everybody else’s planet with your anti-scientific obfuscation.
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HMS

This is a scam of such epic proportions that every single leader who promoted it should be arrested and charged with fraud….imprisoned or shot in public….depending on their level of promoting it.
The morons who supported global warming will continue to deny the scam, and call those of us who dont buy into the big lie…uneducated and stupid.
They should also be dragged out into the streets and shot….in order to stop the CO2 output they pollute the world with by breathing!
This is a disgraceful scam.
Today, Washington DC is buried in snowfall moreso then its ever been in history since we have kept track.
God is laughing at these global warming fools.
And so is the rest of the intelligent world.
HMS

Global warming scientists who supported this scam with false data, and, to this day continue to tell us the earth is warming, while collecting grants and government money to support the lie with false data…should be the first people drug out into the streets and shot in public.
All the loudmouth, so called “educated” fools who claim everyone else is stupid who doesnt believe in the lie… should follow them.
In the name of saving the planet from CO2 emissions… they should be sacrificed in order to save us all!
Then maybe the will feel they have made the right choice by supporting it, and giving up their disgusting, disgraceful exhistances and the frauds they are….by making the ultimate sacrifice.
Its high time the world gather up these fools in the millions and dispose of them.
They are the ones ruining the planet with their idiotic drivel….and insane rantings about man made…global warming….
While the rest of the world is experiencing record freezing temperatures and snowfall.
Mike

If the left hadn’t latched onto the science of global warming and saw it as a chance to reorganize the world and the global economy, we wouldn’t be where we are today. I mean, come on. Of course the world is warming. But the solutions proposed were too ludicrous to take seriously. I suggest everyone read the global warming chapter of “Super Freakanomics.” The point it makes is that it is better to get 1,000 people organized and spend $100 million than to try to get 6 billion organized and spend trillions.

Despite what the left says, there is plenty of time, say a decade or so, to act. (It doesn’t have to happen right this second; it doesn’t have to involve stealing trillions of dollars from the West and giving it to the corrupt governments of the East. I mean… seriously. Who in their right minds thought that that was a good idea? [… edited here[ The Al Gores and the ilk must have thought we were all morons.)

No worries, folks. There are several projects being developed that will be able to cool our planet. We’ll choose the right one after an honest, open debate.
OC

In the end a lot of the critique directed at the IPCC and climate science seems to be another media hype. And if that’s a hype than it’s probably a dangerous one. This is a must-read and even if its from Greenpeace they seem to have a point: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/no-scandal-behind-these-gates
fatamorgana

Thank you btturner- one of the few coherent voices on this page.

It’s remarkable how all the standard pseudo-arguments are recycled yet again above:
1. The Earth is not warming. [because (i) it's not hot here, (ii) I don't believe any of the huge body of existing data, (iii) and anyhow, there is no possible data that I would believe.]

2. If the Earth is warming, then it’s “natural”. [Apparently "natural" means "without any cause". All previous warming periods on the planet are linked with and caused by CO2˽increases http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml.

3. Anyhow, warming is good for us. [heat waves, droughts, fires, extreme weather, political unrest- bring it on!]

4. It’s all a left wing plot. [This plot has some odd bedfellows: CEO of Munich RE, the largest reinsurer in the world: "Climate change is a fact, and it is almost entirely made by man." http://tinyurl.com/ya6tsbk; DOD Quadrennial Defense Review, by Bush-appointed Secty of Defense Gates "Climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment." http://www.defense.gov/QDR/ ; Veterans’ Alliance for Security and Democracy "Veterans Urge Clean Energy for National Security"; Center for Naval Analyses, http://securityandclimate.cna.org/report/

5. Name-calling. [Science doesn't care who shouts the loudest or fling the worst insults. Continental plates continue to move no matter how many humans believe (or not) in plate tectonics.]

6. An error by one scientist disproves the work of thousands. [Let's apply the same standards to the purveyors of fact-free "science" that permeate the climate-denier web sites. Or try this nutty nugget from above "The reason man or anything lives on earth right now, is because the moon has been slowly stripping the atmospheric soup from the planet"]

True skeptics are essential for the progress of science, indeed are an integral part of science. But that kind of skeptic uses actual data and rational arguments to uncover errors, reinterpret results, and present and defend rigorous new theories. A real skeptic needs to provide a clear theory that explains current climate observations better than the very well supported theory we have now. Climate change deniers have yet to propose any plausible alternative theory.
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sdcougar

Even IF [in never never land] every country actually cut CO2 emissions to the levels the ‘experts’ desire, the only impact would be grave repurcussons to their economies.

“One of the things the scientific community is pretty agreed on is those things will have virtually no impact on climate no matter what the models say. So the question is do you spend trillions of dollars to have no impact? And that seems like a no brainer.”–Prof. Richard Lindzen, MIT
mangazeya

Fascinating to see is: there is a huge consensus that climate change is one if not the most important threat to economic and all other well-being on the planet. And that the worst can be still avoided if we modernize our economy and ways of living.

That is the consensus in the entire western OSCE world, including the UK. Exeption: Canada and the US (and Italy to some extend).

So why is that?
http://www.realclimate.org Brian Dodge

“Hyping the threat increasingly doesn’t look like an accident: it looks like it was a conscious political strategy.”
For a second there, I thought you had segued into a discussion of WMDs and oil geopolitics.
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Dan Pangburn

Since 2000 the atmospheric carbon dioxide level has increased by an amount equal to 21% of the increase from 1800 to 2000. According to the average of the five reporting agencies (four since Climategate), the average global temperature has not changed much for several years and during the ten years from 2001 through 2009 the trend shows a DECREASE of 0.5°C/century. This measured SEPARATION between the increasing carbon dioxide level and not-increasing average global temperature is outside of the ‘limits’ of all of the predictions of the IPCC and ‘consensus’ of Climate Scientists. The separation has been increasing at an average rate of about 2% per year since 2000. It corroborates that, at the present CO2 level, atmospheric carbon dioxide increase has no significant influence on average global temperature.

The average global temperature anomalies averaged for each year for the five agencies are as follows.
YEAR AVG
1998 0.55
1999 0.23
2000 0.22
2001 0.37
2002 0.45
2003 0.44
2004 0.38
2005 0.48
2006 0.41
2007 0.42
2008 0.28
2009 0.42 (Hadley through Sept, others through Dec, 2009)

The data can be checked using the following links to the five agencies:

NOAA
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/annual.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat

Hadley (The last time I checked the temperature data was reported only through Sept 2009)
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt

GISS
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

RSS
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean.txt

UAH
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt

The CO2 data is:
1800, 281.2 ppmv; 2000, 369.4; Nov 2009, 388.1 The data for 1800 can be obtained from
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/siple2.013 The recent data is from Mauna Loa at
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
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Steven Sullivan

“Now it has failed. Not everything that has come out of the IPCC and the East Anglia Climate Unit is false, but enough of their product is sufficiently tainted that these institutions can best serve the cause of fighting climate change by stepping out of the picture. ”

This is absolutely absurd overstatement, and it;s not driven by the science. The amount of so-called ‘tainted product’ (a soubriquet bestowed by a hysterical media) is miniscule relative to the bulk of data on climate change. Once again politics is driving calls for science policy change. The science itself has certainly not substantially changed, despite what denialist commentators are claiming here. Read the scientific literature, or read some websites that actually do a good job of patiently summarizing it, and refuting the usual denialist lies and distortions — e.g. skepticalscience.com or realclimate.org.
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NotSoCommon

Our oil-dependence mostly benefits:

- Saudi Arabia
- Iran
- Venezuela

Any car that doesn’t meet the strictest fuel-efficiency standards should be sold with a bumper sticker that reads: “Iranian Patriot!” or “Hugo can polish my bumper anytime!!”

Global warming is irrelevant. Oil production will be in *decline* within 20 years. That means everything that depends on oil — ie, food, plastics, rubbers, textiles, detergents and so on — will sky-rocket in price as falling supply fails to keep up with rising demand.

Now, would some of the geniuses posting above care to speculate again why it’s a bad thing to try to diversify away from oil-dependence?
g mack

Once China surpassed the US as the biggest emitter of green house gases, global warming as an issue died. The politics which could impact and world’s previous biggest polluter will not apply to the new emitting king.

It’s over the rest of the decade will witness its slow death – only to be further accelerated when India surpasses the US as the 2nd biggest polluter. These economies will not be slowed by any concern about green house gases.

The US will not be expected to lead and will, therefore, willingly, in the interests of competing on the global trade stage, will continue to emit green house gases unabated.

It’s over folks – you are just waiting for the memo which you will receive circa 2015.
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Gregor Mendel

Yes, I selected data sets that were kind to my hypothesis. Yes, I manipulated and teased out data trends.

But I ask you, didn’t I end up correct anyhow?
(Spoken as Gregor Mendel)

The argument that because one set of scientists have done something wrong means all scientists are inherently therefore wrong….is illogical and dangerous. Mendel steered his experiments in ways a modern scientist would cry murder over. But, for all his bias, the fact remained he was still correct. A case study in logic.

In this case, it seems an uncooperative sun at a historic minimum will be the pendulum upon which all conservative ideology will be pressed. One warm year does not a climate make…nor one cold year. I suspect that in a few more years, when the Sun gets back to it’s own historic norms (Flux finally reached into the 90′s this week, still under average) the magnifying glass that is the atmosphere will be back to it’s devices.

The atmosphere compromises 1/1,200,000 of the Earth system. Arguing that because CO2 is only x% of the atmosphere sounds great and meaty, but when you consider that the atmosphere makes up so little of our planet, that percentage’s effects could invariably be large and magnified.

I’m sorry, but this piece’s argument fails the basic test of logic. Either side may still be proven correct, but one side has empirical evidence from many different areas of scientific research…the other has self-aggrandizing windbag pieces like this one.

Respectfully,
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Ed

Michael Mann was investigated for fraud and cleared on all charges of fraudulently manipulating data (further investigation is taking place on the charge of ‘bringing science into disrepute’.)

The science of global warming is based on atmospheric physics. CO2 absorbs and re-emits heat – in other words it traps it, and this is easy to check in a laboratory. If you add more to the atmosphere then the surface of the Earth is warmed. This can be seen in the temperature records and, more importantly, it implies that we should NOT go down the route of fossil-fuel based economic growth.
Warren Tyre

Transfer of wealth is a sham tied to the global warming myth. By promising 3rd world countries a big piece of free cake they got them to get behind the issue and push. Rest assured that the vast amount of funds would be sucked up by the leftists and the third world countries would get a few crumbs. They are simply
“useful idiots” as Lenin called the suckers who believed in him.
A similar ploy is unfolding here in the USA with the
healthcare scam…
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Dan Pangburn

Scientific data and analyses show that there is no significant human-caused global warming.

During the late Ordovician the planet plunged into the Andean/Saharan ice age when the CO2 level was several times the present.

During the last and previous glaciations, atmospheric CO2 increase often lagged temperature increase by hundreds of years

Proxy data from ice cores show temperature trend direction changes. Temperature trend direction changes are not possible if NET feedback from average global temperature is positive.

Average global temperatures for over a century have trended down then up then down then up then down while average annual atmospheric CO2 levels have always risen since 1800. Lack of correlation proves lack of causation.

The Kiehl & Trenberth Global Energy Flows chart is in error for not recognizing that part of the absorbed radiation is thermalized. This chart is widely used in the Climate Science community and is included in IPCC AR4.

A simple model accurately predicts average global temperatures since 1895 (i.e. over 114 years…and counting) without any need to consider the effects of change to CO2 level or any other ghg. The model, with an eye-opening graph, is presented in the October 16 pdf at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true. (Replace all references to PDO with ESST which is short for Effective Sea Surface Temperature).

It is woefully naive to think that all that needs to be done to get global weather models (calling them climate models does not make them climate models) to predict climate is to run them longer.
Big_A;

The story so far: Global warming advocates have overplayed their hand and their scare-mongering has backfired. The tools they used to gain public attention are now being used against them and their attempts to grab power have become evident. Their icons are now being shown as hypesters and snake-oil salesman (Yes Al, that’s you) and as the house of cards collapses larger and larger pieces of the lie is seeing the light of day. Himalayan glacers aren’t evaporating, African rain forests aren’t being vaporized, polar bears aren’t floating to extinction on melting ice floes. As with a stock bubble, there is always someone left holding the bag. In this case, the few lonely liberal voices who rage at the “skeptics” and the “republicans” as the cause of their woe. Soon they will realize they were snookered and will self-consciously disappear into the crowd.
Is the climate changing? Absolutely! It has been changing without our involvement for billions of years, and it will continue to change long after our last artifacts erode and disappear. In our arrogance we somehow had a brain-fart and felt we really made a “big” difference. for those who still feel that way, just consider the size of the cosmos and then tell me exactly how important you are in the face of all things.
Can we throw money at this “problem”? Sure! Will it solve anything? Not really except to make a few people rich. (That’s you I’m pointing at now Barry O.!) In the meantime, inbetween time, we all somehow eke out a living and deal with one more self-inflicted shot in the foot.
As someone trained as a scientist, AGW and the junk science at its core is something to be loathed. No data purity at any level. No accountability either. Crappy simulations being ‘tweaked’ to hide declines (that means – ‘fix the data so it fits my preconceived model because I have a press conference in three days and I can’t tell the public “I don’t know”‘
There is so much to say…. in summary, Manmade global warming, Anthropomorphic global warming, CO2 global warming are all synonymous with “S.C.A.M”.
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This is stupid

GWH! What is that? Global Warming Hoax! Ther is no such thing as Global Warming! The Earth was warm, (dinosaurs) and the the Ice Age! It melted! Then, ANOTHER Ice Age! And guess what! It melted. BUT! There was no one to pollute! Explain that! MAYBE just MAYBE things happen just flat out becuase it does! It’s a cycle here! Sure we need to be “eco-friendly”. But that doesn’t me you have to be an extremist! Can you explain that Mr. Scientist? You have to avoid MANY things!Just so your article can make money! I could go on and on!
http://unclecephas@blogspsot.com Kepha

Maybe the exposure of the AGW hoax via the shoddy science in East Anglia is further proof that scientists and journalists, like everyone else, form a great, thundering herd of independent minds?
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Kad Clemhopper

I noticed several hold out here… people attempting to recreate an environmental movement despite its untimely death. You should be angry – at the lying scientists. They did all of us who care about the environment a deep disservice. They have diminished all the credibility of anyone who will now attempt to sound the real alarm. But I still blame you too… for your childish naivete — thinking that Al Gore or his cadre of religious followers (to which you belong), were going to stop even one bulldozer, or one factory spill, or one “development project” – no you weren’t – not even with your bogus and nazi-esque recycling police or fetid rhetoric ala 1010UK… Now, thoroughly discredited also, we can wait for the fate that is deserved for idiots.
http://www.dentistsinsacramento.net/ Clinton Stichter

With all the sites out there with content on them with a ton of rubbish it’s nice to find a blog whose admin takes the time to construct good information. Appreciate for the good read.
http://www.egamingnews.org Vanda Fiddler

Global warming isn’t the problem. Global socialism is the problem, global warming was just their latest tactic. If you think this problem will ever go away you probably think communism is dead, just google, “Soviet flags at Copenhagen”.

Now they will clam down, regroup in the shadows and lull the rest of the world into complacency (unless His “O”lliness unleashes the EPA), the communists will never go away, they will just “progress” to new monikers and wrap themselves in green instead of red.
http://vampon.blogspot.com TryoninCanada

“.. the actual evidence they had — which, let me emphasize… is serious, troubling and establishes in my mind the need for intensive additional research and investigation…” Let’s drop the sop to the slop.
http://vampon.blogspot.com TryoninCanada

#13 anyka says:
“thought i saw a woolly mammoth the other day….” Was it this one: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_e_-R32Xt4l4/TQ6kuwW2fLI/AAAAAAAAARE/zjAGBX99o-Q/s1600/Un.jpg ?
http://www.cornersofa4u.com Corner Sofa Man

The Global warming scam is being allowed to die now that it’s purpose has been served. The idea behind it was to convince the world and American consumers in particular, that we all need to go green. Well now every where I look I read and hear about going green as if it is not even a question but rather a moral imperative.
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BillD

Really, if climate change and global warming are dead, someone forgot to tell the plants and animals that inhabit the earth. Check out the web site for “Global Change Biology.” Most of the articles, written by scientists from around the world are open access and filled with good data. That journal publishes about 120 articles per year and it’s only one of dozens of journals devoted to climate science. Several thousand scientific articles on climate change are published each year and the number is increasing quickly. Maybe the politics of climate change are open to debate, but the science is very clear. I try to keep up with new science on climate change even only one of my publications is in that field. The quality of the science is excellent.

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