Global Warming Hype

Dr. James Hansen, testifying before Congress, said that global warming "deniers" ought to be tried for crimes against humanity.

What about Dr. Hansen himself? If it turns out that his endless tinkering and fudging of surface temperature data is leading us to believe there is warming when none exists then should he be tried for crimes against humanity? Steve McIntyre at climateaudit.org has already found one big error in Hansen's GISS data series. How many errors make a felony?

Satellite temperature measurements, after holding steady since 1992, are now in decline:



This really looks like the beginning of a down cycle. What could explain that?

A German group came up with one possible explanation, which was that the cool Atlantic Ocean waters would keep temperatures down for about 10 years. Another possible explanation came from an Australian group, who related the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter to the Sun's position at the solar system, which shifts around a bit, causing the actual center to be outside of the Sun's surface at times. This has an effect on the sun's energy output. The Australian astrophysicists predict that the sun's current cycle will result in Earth cooling for 20 to 30 years, just as it had been responsible for much of the uptick in the previous 20 to 30 years.

It would seem that there is much work to be done in the realm of climate science before we can start burning people at the stake for questioning it.

More Global Warming Junk

Arctic indigenous peoples urged the United States on Friday to join other nations in cutting greenhouse gas emissions to brake an accelerating thaw of the polar ice.

What do the scientific studies of artic ice show?

Johannessen et al. (1999) used surface-based measurements to derive variations in area-averaged Arctic sea-ice thickness from 1978 to 1991. They, too, detected a downward trend in this parameter. All of the drop occurred rather abruptly over a single period of not more than three years (1987/88-1990/91) .

Winsor (2001) based on a more extensive analysis concluded that "mean ice thickness has remained on a near-constant level around the North Pole from 1986 to 1997."

Holloway and Sou (2002) On the basis of a number of different data-fed model runs, they found that for the last half of the past century there had been no downward trend in artic ice thickness. They noted that year to year variablity of ice thickness can be large.

Polyakov et al. (2002) and Polyakov et al. (2003), reported that the available fast-ice records "do not show a significant trend."

Laxon et al. (2003) Using radar techniques over the largest areas surveyed up to now they saw high year to year variablity in artic ice mass not supportive of current ideas of global warming induced change.

Pfirman et al. (2004) analyzed Arctic sea-ice drift dynamics from 1979-1997, showed that ice was being pushed out of the artic into seas further south by higher winds in certain years, a phenomenon which probably best explains the high annual variablity of the artic ice mass. The life of sea ice in the artic can be as short as 3 years as ice pushed out is constantly being replaced. Thus, the whole system is highly dynamic and subject to variablity from a number of factors, including the winds and ocean currents during certain years.

It's the old story. High degrees of natural variablity in certain measurements are filtered through global warming groupthink to become evidence of impending doom, and anecdotes of eskimos falling through thin ice are made to trump carefully done scientific studies.

Bjorn Lomborg Vindicated -- Again

Bjorn Lomborg is an inconvenience for statist environmentalists, who have yet to produce any credible objections to the bulk of his work. Yes, he made a few minor mistakes, which he has acknowledged, but they do not amount to a repudiation of his main thesis -- that things are generally getting better for man and the planet, and will continue to do so.

That is why the weird decision of the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty has been deployed so often by his enemies. The committees found that Lomborg had been scientifically dishonest, but didn't mean to be, which is a pretty odd definition of dishonest, if you ask me. The committees did no independent investigation of the charges, instead relying almost exclusively on a series of articles in Scientific American by scientists whose conclusions Lomborg disagreed with.

Well, Bjorn's institute in Denmark today issued this press release:

Lomborg Decision Overturned by Danish Ministry of Science

The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has today repudiated findings by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DSCD) that Bjorn Lomborg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" was "objectively dishonest" or "clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice"

The Ministry, which is responsible for the DSCD, has today released a critical assessment of the Committee's January 6 ruling. The Ministry finds that the DCSD judgment was not backed up by documentation, and was "completely void of argumentation" for the claims of dishonesty and lack of good scientific practice.

The Ministry characterises the DCSD's treatment of the case as "dissatisfactory", "deserving criticism" and "emotional" and points out a number
of significant errors. The DSCD's verdict has consequently been remitted.

The DCSD report was a hatchet job designed to keep Lomborg out of contention for a position as the head of the Environmental Research Institute in Denmark. His book has been a great blow to the environmentalist cult worldwide. The dishonesty and cynicism of the cult, of which the DCSD report is typical, has been apparent in their response to Lomborg as in nowhere else.

In the book, Lomborg argues that environmentalist claims that the world is running out of resources, that the air and water are getting more and more polluted, and that the earth cannot sustain human population growth are not supported by the evidence. In fact, most resources are nowhere near running out now or in the foreseeable future. Those resources such as oil that are likely to become less abundant in two or three generations can be replaced by technological advances, and human activity is unlikely to have that much of an effect on, for example, the atmosphere or the oceans.

Moreover, he argues that living conditions for peoples the world over have been steadily improving as a result of institution of public health, economic, and technology solutions such as improved communication, free trade, open markets, and sanitation. He points out how simple solutions such as providing a clean water supply to communities has a much greater effect on human wellbeing than any of the priorities of the environmentalists are likely to have. (IN fact, his emphasis on human well-being as a criteria for environmental policy rankles environmentalists to no end.) He regards evironmentalism inspired efforts such as the campaign to limit population growth or limit commerce and industrial activity (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol) as misguided and counterproductive.