Walter Cunningham's "Global Warming: Facts versus Faith"

Global Warming: Facts versus Faith

From Wiki:

Cunningham rejects the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic global warming (AGW). In 2010, he published a pamphlet titled "Global Warming: Facts versus Faith" in which he states: "The current debate is not unlike Galileo's historic disagreement with the Catholic Church, or the battle over evolution versus creationism. In all three cases, facts are pitted against faith and science against religion. The conflict over global warming has deteriorated into a religious war between true believers in AGW and non-believers, the so-called 'skeptics.'"

In an editorial published in the Houston Chronicle on August 15, 2010, Cunningham argued that the empirical evidence does not support the claims of global warming. The editorial, titled "Climate change alarmists ignore scientific methods", stated his opinion that the global warming debate hinged on four key points. "About 20 years ago," he stated, "a small group of scientists became concerned that temperatures around the Earth were unreasonably high and a threat to humanity. In their infinite wisdom, they decided:

1. that CO2 (carbon dioxide) levels were abnormally high
2. that higher levels of CO2 were bad for humanity
3. that warmer temperatures would be worse for the world
4. that we are capable of overriding natural forces to control the Earth's temperature. Not one of these presumptions (opinions) has proven to be valid."

Comment: Top link is to his pamphlet

Two different takes on James Hansen

NYTimes: A Prophet of Doom Was Right About the Climate

Excerpt:

With the perspective of three decades, it is fair to ask: How right was his forecast?

The question defies a simple answer. In 1988, Dr. Hansen had to offer a prognostication not just about how the Earth would respond to greenhouse gases, but also about how much of those gases humans would choose to inject into the air.

He did what any cautious forecaster would do: He offered low, medium and high scenarios. The warming over the past 30 years has indeed fallen well within his upper and lower bounds.

One of Dr. Hansen’s scenarios, Scenario B, has turned out to be a reasonably close match for fossil-fuel emissions as they actually occurred. Yet we now know Scenario B predicted too much global warming, by something like 30 percent.

Two reasons for that stand out. One is that Dr. Hansen had assumed a continued increase in certain refrigerant gases that warm the climate. Those gases were ultimately brought under control by a global treaty, the Montreal Protocol — proof that scientific warnings, if taken seriously, can be acted upon at a worldwide scale. 

The bigger problem was that the computers he was using in the 1980s could not operate fast enough to give a realistic picture of the upper atmosphere; as a result, his model was most likely overestimating the Earth’s sensitivity to emissions. In the years since, computer modeling of the climate, though hardly perfect, has improved.

So while his temperature forecast was not flawless, in a larger sense, Dr. Hansen’s 1988 warning has turned out to be entirely on target. As emissions have soared, the planet has warmed relentlessly, just as he said it would; 1988 is not even in the top 20 warmest years now. Every year of this century has been hotter.

The ocean is rising, as Dr. Hansen predicted, and the pace seems to be accelerating. The great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are dumping ever-rising volumes of water into the sea. Coastal flooding is increasing rapidly in the United States. The Arctic Ocean ice cap has shrunk drastically.

WSJ: Thirty Years On, How Well Do Global Warming Predictions Stand Up? James Hansen issued dire warnings in the summer of 1988. Today earth is only modestly warmer.

Excerpt:

Mr. Hansen’s testimony described three possible scenarios for the future of carbon dioxide emissions. He called Scenario A “business as usual,” as it maintained the accelerating emissions growth typical of the 1970s and ’80s. This scenario predicted the earth would warm 1 degree Celsius by 2018. Scenario B set emissions lower, rising at the same rate today as in 1988. Mr. Hansen called this outcome the “most plausible,” and predicted it would lead to about 0.7 degree of warming by this year. He added a final projection, Scenario C, which he deemed highly unlikely: constant emissions beginning in 2000. In that forecast, temperatures would rise a few tenths of a degree before flatlining after 2000.

Thirty years of data have been collected since Mr. Hansen outlined his scenarios—enough to determine which was closest to reality. And the winner is Scenario C. Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16. Assessed by Mr. Hansen’s model, surface temperatures are behaving as if we had capped 18 years ago the carbon-dioxide emissions responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect. But we didn’t. And it isn’t just Mr. Hansen who got it wrong. Models devised by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago. 

What about Mr. Hansen’s other claims? Outside the warming models, his only explicit claim in the testimony was that the late ’80s and ’90s would see “greater than average warming in the southeast U.S. and the Midwest.” No such spike has been measured in these regions.

As observed temperatures diverged over the years from his predictions, Mr. Hansen doubled down. In a 2007 case on auto emissions, he stated in his deposition that most of Greenland’s ice would soon melt, raising sea levels 23 feet over the course of 100 years. Subsequent research published in Nature magazine on the history of Greenland’s ice cap demonstrated this to be impossible. Much of Greenland’s surface melts every summer, meaning rapid melting might reasonably be expected to occur in a dramatically warming world. But not in the one we live in. The Nature study found only modest ice loss after 6,000 years of much warmer temperatures than human activity could ever sustain.

Several more of Mr. Hansen’s predictions can now be judged by history. Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted in a 2016 study? No. Satellite data from 1970 onward shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature. Have storms caused increasing amounts of damage in the U.S.? Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no such increase in damage, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product. How about stronger tornadoes? The opposite may be true, as NOAA data offers some evidence of a decline. The list of what didn’t happen is long and tedious.

Comment: Why reading the NYTimes is worth the price ... just for the comedy value alone! Text of his testimony


Added: Another view

From "Ice Age" to "Nice Age"

Comment: Not so sure about the 21,000 years but the point is well made!

The Okotoks

Pretty hard to grow crops on fields of ice and snow. Small temp drop would end agriculture in Canada.

Comment: Source

Frozen Al Gore

Frozen Al Gore

Comment: Pics ... video at above link

No ice-water for you!

The Great and Powerful Climate Oz: Global warming fearmongers say restaurants must stop serving ice water

Excerpt:

Mr. Pachauri has good reason to want to gloss over inconvenient facts. The man who joined Al Gore in sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize is too busy calling for an end to the Western lifestyle. "Today we have reached the point where consumption and people's desire to consume has grown out of proportion," he tells The Observer, a British newspaper.

In the near future, he explains, car use will have to be "curbed," hotels and restaurants will stop serving ice water, and guests will have their energy use monitored. Heavy taxes will also have to discourage people from flying and force them to take the train. Last year, he called for sharp cutbacks in meat consumption because of the greenhouse emissions livestock are responsible for.

Mr. Pachauri says the key to realizing his ascetic vision is mobilizing young people, who "will be far more sensitive than adults, who have been corrupted by the ways we have been following for years now." Hmm, hundreds of emails showing scientists working together to distort their findings obviously isn't the kind of "corruption" Mr. Pachauri worries about. The real scandal is that burger and iced tea you're about to consume.

Comment: Who made him G-d? (Er .... Oz). Ice water image source: PD Photo

Climategate

WSJ: The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start

Excerpt:

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges that critics have lobbed at climatologists from outside this clique are routinely dismissed and disparaged.

Comment: Creation science is also suppressed: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

50 days to save the earth!

Britain’s Brown Warns of Climate Catastrophe

Excerpt:

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday that failure to strike a new global deal on reducing greenhouse emissions would be catastrophic, and urged other national leaders to personally attend a climate summit in Denmark later this year.

Amid fears that momentum for agreement at the December meeting is stalling, Brown urged countries to compromise with one another to avoid ''the catastrophe of unchecked climate change.''

The British leader plans to attend the Copenhagen summit, intended to cap two years of negotiations on a global climate change treaty, and has called on fellow leaders to join him. So far, few have said they will go.

Brown told a meeting of the world's biggest economies in London that efforts to agree on a new global pact to tackle climate change are a historic test of international cooperation.

''There are now fewer than 50 days to set the course of the next few decades,'' Brown said.

''We cannot afford to fail. If we fail now we will pay a heavy price ... If we falter, the Earth will itself bet at risk.''

Comment: Global warming hysteria!

So what on Earth is going on?

What happened to global warming?

Excerpt:

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

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

Comment: Meanwhile ... we awoke to snow this morning in Plymouth MN.

The climate-change "Inquisition"

The EPA Silences a Climate Skeptic - The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign.

Excerpts:

Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. "We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA," the report read.

The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from "any direct communication" with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: "The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." (Emphasis added.)

Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate." Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.

The emails were unearthed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Republican officials are calling for an investigation; House Energy Committee ranking member Joe Barton sent a letter with pointed questions to Mrs. Jackson, which she's yet to answer. The EPA has issued defensive statements, claiming Mr. Carlin wasn't ignored. But there is no getting around that the Obama administration has flouted its own promises of transparency.

...

Unable to defend the EPA's actions, the climate-change crew -- , led by anonymous EPA officials -- is doing what it does best: trashing Mr. Carlin as a "denier." He is, we are told, "only" an economist (he in fact holds a degree in physics from CalTech). It wasn't his "job" to look at this issue (he in fact works in an office tasked with "informing important policy decisions with sound economics and other sciences.") His study was full of sham science. (The majority of it in fact references peer-reviewed studies.) Where's Mr. Hansen and his defense of scientific freedom when you really need him?

Mr. Carlin is instead an explanation for why the science debate is little reported in this country. The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign. The global-warming crowd likes to deride skeptics as the equivalent of the Catholic Church refusing to accept the Copernican theory. The irony is that, today, it is those who dare critique the new religion of human-induced climate change who face the Inquisition.

Comment: Just like evolutionary "science" ... inconvenient!

Global Warming: "Where's the beef?"

'Global Warming is Baloney' Signs Put the Heat on Burger King

Excerpt:

The franchisee, a Memphis-based company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, has described Burger King as acting "kinda like cockroaches" over the controversy. MIC says it does not believe Burger King has the authority to make it take the signs down.

The dispute began to sizzle last week, when a local newspaper reporter in Memphis, Tennessee, noticed the signs outside two restaurants in the city and contacted the corporation to establish if the message represented its official viewpoint. Burger King's headquarters in Miami said it did not, adding that it had ordered MIC to take the signs down.

But a few days later readers of the Memphis paper said they had seen about a dozen Burger King restaurants across the state displaying the signs and that some had yet to be taken down. Media attempts to contact MIC to establish why it was taking an apparently defiant stance were rebuffed, but the Guardian managed to grill MIC's marketing president, John McNelis.

"I would think [Burger King] would run from any form of controversy kinda like cockroaches when the lights get turned on," said Mr McNelis. "I'm not aware of any direction that they gave the franchisee and I don't think they have the authority to do it."

McNelis added: "The [restaurant] management team can put the message up there if they want to. It is private property and here in the US we do have some rights. Notwithstanding a franchise agreement, I could load a Brinks vehicle with [rights] I've got so many of them. By the time the Burger King lawyers work out how to make that stick we'd be in the year 2020."

He continued: "Burger King can bluster all they want about what they can tell the franchisee to do, but we have free-speech rights in this country so I don't think there's any concerns."

Comment: Also:
'Global warming is baloney' signs put the heat on Burger King

Recasting "global warming"

Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus

Excerpt:

The term [global warming] turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations by someone who sat in this week on a briefing intended for government officials and environmental leaders.

Comment: Dem-speak

I'm "melting polar ice caps, raising sea levels and killing rain forests"

Fatties cause global warming

Excerpt:

Scientists warned that the increase in big-eaters means more food production — a major cause of CO2 gas emissions warming the planet.

Overweight people are also more likely to drive, adding to environmental damage.

Dr Phil Edwards, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “Moving about in a heavy body is like driving in a gas guzzler.”

Each fat person is said to be responsible for emitting a tonne more of climate-warming carbon dioxide per year than a thin one.

It means an extra BILLION TONNES of CO2 a year is created, according to World Health Organisation estimates of overweight people.

The scientists say providing extra grub for them to guzzle adds to carbon emissions that heat up the world, melting polar ice caps, raising sea levels and killing rain forests.

The environmental impact of fat humans is made even worse because they are more likely to travel by car — another major cause of carbon emissions.

Comment: I'm an eco-terrorist! You know if more of us would use Beano, there would be less CO2!

Astronaut wisdom on global warming

Former astronaut speaks out on global warming

Excerpt:

... the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making."

Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are proclaiming in global warming.

"Not that the planet hasn’t warmed. We know it has or we’d all still be in the Ice Age," he said. "But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there’s disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming."

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.

Comment: Graphic from the NOAA: here.

Meanwhile: Hamburgers are the Hummers of food in global warming

Simply switching from steak to salad could cut as much carbon as leaving the car at home a couple days a week.

Climate Change Hurts Blacks More?

House Majority Whip: Climate Change Hurts Blacks More


Excerpt:

“Though far less responsible for climate change, African-Americans are significantly more vulnerable to its effects than non-Hispanic whites,” the report says. “Health, housing, economic well-being, culture, and social stability are harmed from such manifestations of climate change as storms, floods, and climate variability.


“African-Americans are also more vulnerable to higher energy bills, unemployment, recessions caused by global energy price shocks, and a greater economic burden from military operations designed to protect the flow of oil to the U.S,” it says.

Comment: Oh Please!

Imagine No Global Warming…

Comment: Check out M4GW

HT: Darrell Dow

Disturbing trend or underwater volcanic eruptions?

Arctic's First Ice-Free Summer Possible Even This Year

Excerpt:

The distinct possibity that this summer -- for the first time in recorded history -- the North pole could be free of sea ice, is now a common subject of discussion among the world's climate experts.


Volcanic eruptions reshape Arctic ocean floor

Excerpt:

Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.

The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.

Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms.

But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts finally got a first-ever glimpse of the ocean floor 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath the Arctic pack ice, they were astonished.

What they saw was unmistakable evidence of explosive eruptions rather than the gradual secretion of lava bubbling up from Earth's mantle onto the ocean floor.

Previous research had concluded that this kind of so-called pyroclastic eruption could not happen at such depths due to the crushing pressure of the water.

"On land, explosive volcanic eruptions are nothing exceptional, although they present a major threat," said Vera Schlindwein, a geologist with Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Sea and Polar Research, which took part in the study.


Comment: Mainstream media want to point to "global warming" ... but perhaps it is just "underwater heating"!

Global warming frenzy

Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas

Excerpt:

Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “Interglacial periods”. For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period. That might well be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.

Comment: Excellent read

What this tax will really do

First In Nation 'Pollution Fee' Coming To SF - Move Meant To Help Slow Global Warming

Excerpts:

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District's board of directors on Wednesday approved new rules to charge businesses a fee for the pollution they emit.

The group's board of directors voted 15-1 on unprecedented new rules that will impose fees on factories, power plants, oil refineries and other businesses that emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

The agency, which regulates air pollution in the nine-county Bay Area, will be the first in the country to charge companies fees based on their greenhouse gas emissions, experts say. The new rules will take effect July 1.

The modest fee -- 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide -- probably won't be enough to force companies to reduce their emissions, but backers say it sets an important precedent in combating climate change and could serve as a model for regional air districts nationwide.

The fee will not be imposed on vehicles, district spokeswoman Lisa Fasano said.

"It doesn't solve global warming, but it gets us thinking in the right terms," said Daniel Kammen, a renewable energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley. "It's not enough of a cost to change behavior, but it tells us where things are headed. You have to think not just in financial terms, but in carbon terms."

...

More than 2,500 businesses will be required to pay the proposed fees. About seven power plants and oil refineries will have to pay more than $50,000 a year, but the majority of businesses will pay less than $1, according to district estimates.

The proposed program, which requires companies to measure and report their own emissions, could make it more complicated and expensive to do business in the Bay Area, said Shelly Sullivan, who heads the AB32 Implementation Group, a coalition of business groups working with state regulators to implement California's global warming law.

"It's going to make Bay Area businesses less competitive because companies outside the area won't face similar costs," Sullivan said. "There would be a patchwork of plans that would not be consistent."

Comment: Get this .. some businesses will only pay $ 1. But they will pay many dollars in calculating that $. Who will pay? Jobs lost!

Melting Glacier on the Brain

John McCain Has Melting Glaciers on the Brain

Dear John,

The liberal mainstream media is going to give you a pass on this, but I would be remiss if I didn’t help set the record straight while you’re on your panderfest with treehuggers in the Pacific Northwest.

A few essential reads for your perusal:

Antarctica Ice Cap Growth Reaches Record High Levels
New NASA Evidence Refutes Global Warming
Arctic Sea Ice Back to its Previous Level
Unusual Winds Caused Arctic Ice Melts, Not Global Warming
NASA Examines Arctic Sea Ice Changes Leading to Record Low in 2007
Arctic Sea ice loss - “it’s the wind” says NASA
Sea Ice May Be on Increase in the Antarctic: A Phenomenon Due to a Lot of ‘Hot Air’?
Antarctic volcanoes identified as a possible culprit in glacier melting
Ancient Greenland was actually green! DNA analysis reveals ice-covered country was once home to butterflies

Comment: The last link about Greenland is very good!

Using tragedy to advance an agenda

Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a 'Consequence' of Global Warming

Excerpt:

“And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated,” Gore said. “And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”

Comment: Like the title says: advancing an agenda!