Global warming lies and climate change hysteria

creating stampedes and hysteria has become a major activity of those hyping a global-warming “crisis.” They mobilize like-minded people from a variety of occupations, call them all “scientists” and then claim that “all” the experts agree on a global-warming crisis. ... Those who bother to check the facts often find that not all those who are called scientists are really scientists and not all of those who are scientists are specialists in climate. But who bothers to check facts these days?

The party line of those who say that we are heading for a global warming crisis of epic proportions is that human activities generating carbon dioxide are key factors responsible for the warming that has taken place in recent times. The problem with this reasoning is that the temperatures rose first and then the carbon dioxide levels rose. Some scientists say that the warming created the increased carbon dioxide, rather than vice versa.

Dear Sir:

It was interesting to see that Viscount Monckton of Benchley - who once wrote an article titled "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS", recommending quarantine for all HIV carriers - has written to the South China Morning Post, attempting to put the editors right regarding global warming.

Sadly, Monckton fails to muster arguments that make his case. Claiming global surface temperatures have not risen in a statistically significant sense since 2001, he omits to mention that NASA ranks 2005 the warmest year in over a century, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently reported that "Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature (since 1850).”

Plus, in seeking a trend over just six years, Monckton has tumbled into his own trap of lacking statistical significance. The warming trend is clearly upwards, and the latest data suggests the rise is faster than previously estimated.

Monckton also refers to apparent anomalies in temperatures recorded in the tropical upper troposphere, and states that from these we now know that the relatively minor warming that ceased (sic) in 2001 was largely not caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Here, he ignores the large errors in upper troposphere temperature measurements. And - as so often with global warming "sceptics" - he ignores the mountain of scientific publications that show global warming resulting from greenhouse gas emissions is real and significant, and cherry picks from the molehill of science that suggests otherwise.

In concluding that no imposts should be inflicted upon us unless we are told how much they will cost and how much effect they will have, Monckton reveals his narrow knowledge of global warming. The IPCC has forecast that measures to mitigate the worst impacts of global warming could slow global GDP growth by an average of 0.12 percentage points.

The Post was correct to write of a “planetary emergency”. We are all effectively locked in a test tube, in surely the greatest experiment man has ever performed. If the worst projections come true, this will mean the transformation of life as we know it: a dire, apparently sci-fi scenario, yet a succession of news reports tell us of warming-related events that are unfolding at a startling pace.

This is not a time for debating and waiting and seeing, but for action.

Yours faithfully,
Dr Martin Williams

I am writing regarding the article "Alarmism is not the way to tackle climate change", by Kendra Okonski, of the International Policy Network. Finding the article highly unbalanced, I checked re the network, and learned it has received over US$390,000 from ExxonMobil - surely the most infamous supporter of global warming "sceptics".

Given this, Okonski's claim of "biases" - towards global warming "alarmism" - resulting from funding by "powerful interest groups" is ludicrous. Her piece is riddled with cherry picked facts, half truths, or worse.

It's immensely deceptive to claim, "The science of climate change remains hotly contested." No, it does not; witness the standpoints of august bodies such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Britain's Royal Society, and our own Hong Kong Observatory. Among all but a tiny minority of actual scientists, there is no longer debate over whether warming due to greenhouse gases is real - instead, any debates are now over just how severe it will be, and what measures are needed to ensure we don't devastate the world as we know it.

Okonski asserts the International Government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "is also biased towards alarmism" - which is curious, given that some of the more alarming forecasts of scientists have been removed during the editing process. She appears oblivious to the fact that some observed changes - such as melting of Arctic ice, and expansion of the Tropics, have proceeded more swiftly than in even some of the more alarming forecasts.

While noting the number of people killed by weather disasters has fallen since good records began, Okonski fails to mention vastly improved warning systems, and Oxfam’s report that the number of number of natural disasters has increased fourfold since two decades ago.

With no scientific foundation whatsoever, Okonski claims the best thing to do about climate change is adapting, while helping people create wealth. Here, she is seemingly blinded to the obvious: if the worst of climate change predictions come true, adaptation will prove impossible for countless people, and there will be widespread economic reversals.

Overall, it seems Okonski's piece stems from fear of doing the right thing, and adopting measures that economists have suggested could cost 1 percent of world income. With climate change real, the outcomes uncertain yet potentially devastating, it is alarming to read calls for yet more procrastination.

Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they've chosen to believe.

a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.

With politicians and lobbyists, of course, you are dealing with sophisticated people versed in the ways of public opinion whose very prosperity depends on positioning themselves via such cascades. Their reactions tend to be, for that reason, on a higher intellectual level.

The more one examines the current global warming orthodoxy, the more it resembles a Da Vinci Code of environmentalism. It contains a grain of truth - and a mountain of nonsense.

"We appear to have entered a new age of unreason, which threatens to be as economically harmful as it is profoundly disquieting.

Lawson's concern is that nothing interferes with globalisation, but he ignores the fact that climate change could destroy more demand-and-supply chains around the world than new government policies ever could.

More importantly, however, the callousness underpinning the argument is reprehensible. The losers in this case won't pay with their stock options, houses and retirement income. They will pay with their lives. And the winners might yet join them.

Lawson's line is the worst kind of self-satisfied I'm alright Jack and good luck to the rest of you argument I've heard in a long time. He talks of adapting and of building seawalls to stop the rising tides, safe in the knowledge that his personal wealth and the wealth of his home nation will protect him from the worst of any climate disaster.

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims.
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I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman
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I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct.

an entire Global Warming fraud industry has grown up, based on years of pseudo-scientific false alarms, and feeding scare headlines without end around the world. But the science is finally clear: Any reasonable evidence [sic] is not only missing, but can in principle not be obtained in a system as complex as the earth climate. End of story --- at least among scientists with a shred of integrity left.

Suppose some pinko-liberal or even commie country were to go to war with the US of A - exactly how many people would die? Or even if some terrorists let off a few dirty bombs in some US cities, how many would die now and in future, inc from side effects? You can't predict for sure? Then - according to your absurd piece on American Idiot (Thinker? - hahahaha, gimme a break) these are not real threats, and we shouldn't do anything to prevent them happening.

Gore is an embarrassment to the nation and should be recognized for being a despotic fool not someone who promoted the cause of peace. ... Al Gore is a lying demagogue. Only fools like the mainstream media and left wing Marxist idiots would believe such a brain-dead imbecile or a shrewd conniving political exploiter. Global warming is a fool’s folly. Al, “We the People” are not idiots. ... Folks, carbon gases and man causing global warming just ain’t so regardless how many people say it is. We the People will suffer greatly if we don’t realize what the Al Gore global warming agenda really is. Gore is promoting a communist one world order through international taxation and control over nation states. It will destroy us.

Timothy Ball chairs the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, a federally incorporated nonprofit in Canada.

He says his skepticism is based on assumptions about global warming that have never been confirmed.

"In this case it is assumed carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that will trap heat in the atmosphere, that the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide will increase because of human industrial activity and specifically the burning of fossil fuels, and that atmospheric carbon dioxide will double," he said.

Ball said that this hypothesis became fact before the research had begun, "because it fit a political agenda and the views of the environmentalists."

Leaders throughout Europe have accepted the IPCC position on climate change, and have been looking for ways to take collective action, primarily via the Kyoto Accord. Yet North Americans have lagged behind, hamstrung by a lingering debate in the media and among politicians about climate science.
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who are the donors? No one will say.

"[The money's] not exclusively from the oil and gas industry," says Prof. Cooper. "It's also from foundations and individuals. I can't tell you the names of those companies, or the foundations for that matter, or the individuals."

When pushed in another interview, however, Prof. Cooper admits, "There were some oil companies."

[PR Company boss James Hoggan, who has couple of people investigating skeptics' funding]: 'I don't think that the people who are involved in this should be able to get away with it. My goal is to find out as much as we can about these people and make it public. Who are they? Who is paying them? What motivates them? How is it they can sleep at night?" '

Evangelical Christians have radically different priorities from the rest of the country about the challenges the U.S. must confront in the next 10 years.

According to a Barna poll, that's especially true concerning global warming alarmism.

Only about a third of evangelicals gave global warming "top priority" status. They rated the issue lower than any of the other 80 groups in the survey. Topping the priority list for evangelicals was the health of churches.

Stuart Shepard, managing editor of CitizenLink, who is also a meteorologist, said major news outlets are largely to blame for the hype.

“If people get their information from the mainstream media, they’re only hearing one side of this," he told Family News in Focus. "There are top scientists and researchers who are skeptical of the outrageous claims about global warming and they make some solid science-based arguments, but you'd never know it from the evening news.”

He said Focus on the Family Action has been strongly encouraging evangelicals to not allow global warming alarmism to become a defining or a dividing issue.

“Most evangelicals do not and should not see this as an issue that would rise to the level of evangelism, the sanctity of life, and the protection of marriage and religious liberty.”

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said the poll doesn’t mean evangelicals are not interested in taking care of the planet.

“Despite what the media may want to project upon evangelicals," he said, "they understand that if we, as a nation, get the spiritual issues right and build strong marriages and families — most of the other problems will be solved.”

There has been little debate and instead personal attacks, threats, loss of funding, calls for speech suppression, and even Nuremburg Trials.

As the long and dreary Russian winters become balmier, billions of dollars will be saved on heating and there will be fewer cases of depression, says Vladimir Klimenko, a professor at the Moscow Energy Institute, whose lab is funded by the state-run oil and gas company.

In the end, as the planet has indeed been much warmer in the past than it is today - despite protestations to the contrary by folks with a political agenda

As for me, I reckon papers can be right or wrong, but I see "Heartland Institute" on anything, and think woah! - I'll be surprised if there's any truth and balance here.

Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who have recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame.

A new study of the Karakoram, Hindu Kush, and Western Himalaya mountain ranges by researchers at England's Newcastle University shows consistent recent growth among the region's glaciers.

New research into climate change in the Western Himalaya and the surrounding Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains could explain why many glaciers there are growing and not melting.

The findings suggest this area, known as the Upper Indus Basin, could be reacting differently to global warming, the phenomenon blamed for causing glaciers in the Eastern Himalaya, Nepal and India, to melt and shrink.

I was concerned that you have the wrong impression of the Heartland Institute. We are a free market think tank based in Chicago.

We are a non-partisan organization that believes free markets provide the best solutions to social and economic problems.

We do not represent any business interests.
... [blah blah blah]
We may disagree on philosophy, but I think we are trying to accomplish the same thing. Heartland is especially interested in school choice and healthcare reform.

Regards,

Tom Swiss
Director - Public Relations
The Heartland Institute