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Climategate goes American: NOAA, GISS and the mystery of the vanishing weather stations

For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a link to US weatherman John Coleman’s magisterial demolition of the Great AGW Scam. I particularly recommend part 4 because that’s the one with all the meat. It shows how temperature readings have been manipulated at the two key climate data centres in the United States – the NASA Goddard Science and Space Institute at Columbia University in New York and the NOAA National Climate Data Center in Ashville, North Carolina. (Hat tip: Platosays) This is a scandal to rank with Climategate. What it shows is that, just like in Britain at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) temperature data records have been grotesquely distorted by activist scientists in order to exaggerate the appearance of late 20th century global warming. They achieved this – with an insouciant disregard for scientific integrity which quite beggars belief – through the simple expedient of ignoring most of those weather station sited in higher, colder places and using mainly ones in warmer spots. Then, they averaged out the temperature readings given by the warmer stations to give a global average. Et voila: exactly the scary “climate change” they needed to persuade bodies like the IPCC that AGW was a clear and present danger requiring urgent pan-governmental action. The man who spotted all this is a computer programmer called EM Smith – aka the Chiefio. You can read the full report at his excellent blog. In the 70s, the Chiefio discovered, GISS and NOAA took their temperature data from 6,000 weather stations around the world. By 1990, though, this figure had mysteriously dropped to 1500. Even more mysteriously this 75 per cent reduction in the number of stations used had a clear bias against those at higher latitudes and elevations. Here’s an excellent example of this: Bolivia.

Notice that nice rosy red over the top of Bolivia? Bolivia is that country near, but not on, the coast just about half way up the Pacific Ocean side. It has a patch of high cold Andes Mountains where most of the population live.

One Small Problem with the anomally map. There has not been any thermometer data for Bolivia in GHCN since 1990. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set. So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data from the last 20 years? Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away. So what is within 1200 km of Bolivia? The beaches of Chili, Peru and the Amazon Jungle. Not exactly the same as snow capped peaks and high cold desert, but hey, you gotta make do with what you have, you know?

Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo has also been on the case. You can find a link to his superb analysis of the scandal at Watts Up With That. (Sorry: I would give you a more direct link to his pdf file but I can’t work out how to do it)

In Canada the number of stations dropped from 600 to 35 in 2009. The percentage of stations in the lower elevations (below 300 feet) tripled and those at higher elevations above 3000 feet were reduced in half. Canada’s semi-permanent depicted warmth comes from interpolating from more southerly locations to fill northerly vacant grid boxes, even as a pure average of the available stations shows a COOLING. Just 1 thermometer remains for everything north of latitude 65N – that station is Eureka. Eureka according to Wikipedia has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” .

You know what this means, don’t you? It means the ragbag of eco-loons, politicians and technocrats pushing AGW can no longer plausibly deploy their main excuse about Climategate – that it was all a little local difficulty of no great importance because the HadCrut temperature data sets were independently confirmed by those at GISS and NOAA. What this story demonstrates, as many of us suspected all along, is that not just the British temperature records but those in the US too have been hijacked by political activists. I need hardly say that this breaking scandal has been almost completely ignored by the MSM. Not unpredictably, the director of one of the two institutions implicated in this – Dr James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies – has issued a (very carefully worded – which makes you wonder what he’s not telling us) denial of any skullduggery.

“NASA has not been involved in any manipulation of climate data used in the annual GISS global temperature analysis.”

The idea that a man of Dr Hansen’s radical persuasion should be running an organisation as important as GISS is looking increasingly absurd. To get an idea how absurd, think Tony Benn in charge of Britain’s defence policy, or – let’s get really weird – imagine if Ed Balls were in charge of Education or Gordon Brown were running the country. More on Hansen’s activist sympathies in another blog.Source by James Delingpole

Earthquakes didn't kill Haitians – Underdevelopment did

Environmentalists campaigned against urban development that could have saved many Haitians

Written by Phelim McAleer, Not Evil Just Wrong producer

It is only a matter of time before Environmentalists and some scientists blame the Haiti earthquake and its massive death toll on Global Warming. They have already laid the groundwork with this Sept 2009 article in the UK Guardian newspaper. According to Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Center, at University College London an upcoming scientific conference would show how “global warming threatens the planet in a new and unexpected way – by triggering earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions.” Despite these claims the earthquake in Haiti was not caused by Global Warming.

And the death and destruction was not because Haitians had made a pact with the devil.

The reason so many people died in Haiti is because its people live in poorly built houses and have not benefited from development which brings with it cities and houses which can withstand earthquakes.

But guess who are the most active opponents of cities and modern concrete housing?

The environmental movement, sees cities and growing urbanization as “unsustainable” and something that must be stopped. Mark Fenn, the head of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Madagascar, believes development, in the form of jobs and prosperity, will be a negative for some of the world’s most impoverished people. These environmentalists view development as an evil – destroying indigenous cultures. As the millionaire Hollywood actor Ed Begley Jr. says they may be poor, but they seem happy and development might threaten this happiness.
For Begley rampant child mortality and horrible deaths in inadequate houses during earthquakes are small prices for others to pay as long we can visit them on eco-holidays.

Environmentalists call this sustainable development but the only thing sustained is poverty. In the face of this massive earthquake it has meant visiting death and destruction on some of the poorest people on the planet. Shame on environmentalists, and shame on Ed Begley Jr.

Climategate book released!

Climategate: The Crutape Letters, written by Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller has just been released:

The Climategate scandal covered from beginning to end–from ‘Hide the Decline’ to the current day. Written by two authors who were on the scene–Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller–Climategate takes you behind that scene and shows what happened and why. For those who have heard that the emails were taken out of context–we provide that context and show it is worse when context is provided. For those who have heard that this is a tempest in a teacup–we show why it will swamp the conventional wisdom on climate change. And for those who have heard that this scandal is just ‘boys being boys’–well, boy. It’s as seamy as what happened on Wall Street.

Mosher, widely known, as a “lukewarmer” is perhaps the one man outside of the Motley CRU, The Hockey Team, and the whistle blower/hacker to receive the file, and recognize the game-changing importance of what he was reading. Mosher’s story was told in vivid detail a couple of days ago by Steve McIntyre. Tom Fuller is a writer and self-described “liberal skeptic”, and was perhaps the first journalist to cover the Climategate story in detail as it was breaking. So, one is a liberal and the other is a “lukewarmer”, so it’s hard to dismiss them out-of-hand as right-wing ideologues. Undoubtedly, Joe Romm and others will smear them anyway – it’s what the alarmists do when they’re desperate. Hat tip: Many thanks to Steven Mosher for the heads up.
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The North-West Passage has been open more often than you think

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley A kind reader has sent us the following historical update on the history of the North-West Passage – Regarding the North-West Passage, since the 1942 expedition by Henry Larsen the passage has been navigated on a number of occasions, several times by unaided yachts without icebreaker assistance. This is in contrast with sensationalist news in 2007 that the passage had been open “for the first time in history.” In 1977 the Belgian sailor Willy de Roos and his steel ketch Willywaw became the third yacht to go through, largely single-handed. By 2003, only 20 yachts had ever completed the North-West Passage. Of these 14 made it through in one season, and fewer than 10 (including Norwegian Blue), without ice breaker assistance. The first and until now, only British yacht to have completed the Passage was Rick Thomas’ Northanger. He sailed her East to West, wintering in Inuvik in 1988. He was closely followed by David Scott Cowper in his converted British lifeboat Mabel E Holland. It took David 4 seasons to complete his transit, having suffered three consecutive bad ice years. On 18 July 2003, Richard & Andrew Wood, father and son, with Zoe Birchenough sailed Norwegian Blue into the Bering Strait which marks the entrance to the North-West Passage. Exactly two months later, in what proved to be a very difficult ice year and without ice breaker assistance, she sailed into the Davis Strait to become the first British yacht to transit the Northwest Passage from West to East. She also became the only British vessel to have completed the North-West Passage in one season. The Norwegian Blue crew were happy to have spent the last few weeks of their time on ice in the company of Eric Brossier’s Vagabond and his fantastic crew. Of a record seven attempts at the North-West Passage in 2003, Vagabond & Norwegian Blue were the only two yachts to successfully complete their transit. Both were fortunate enough to have been in the right place for the one day of the year the ice opened in Larsen Sound & Franklin Strait, traditionally the most difficult part of the North-West Passage. On 10 October 2003, having set out from New Zealand only five months earlier, Zoe & Andrew sailed Norwegian Blue into St Mary’s Harbour in the Isles of Scilly, having covered over half the globe via one of the world’s most challenging and difficult sea routes – the North-West Passage. Here, as in many other areas of “global warming” propaganda, a little straightforward history such as that which our kind reader has sent us is enough to set the record straight and nail the lie.Source

Hippie Logic

Hippies are afraid of everything, except things they should be afraid of. Global warming scaremongers are afraid of better tomatoes, scared of cheap coal-power and they oppose nuclear power with knee-jerk ferocity.

it’s not much, but it’s a start

Yet they look the other way when giant fans shred rare birds with alarming regularity and haven’t got a word to say about the risks of geo-engineering the planet. Is it just me, or are hippies on the wrong side of every issue, every time? Round-Up tomorrow, as usual.Source

The Next Big Hoax: Ocean Acidification

By Alan Caruba

Just when you thought “global warming” has been put to rest by the revelations of how the computer models supporting the hoax had been deliberately falsified to “hide the decline” in the Earth’s temperature, along comes the next Big Lie, focused again on carbon dioxide (CO2).

Wednesday, January 13, has been designated “Wear Blue for Oceans Day” by some coalition calling itself Clean Ocean Action. I don’t even care whose funding this scam, but Friends of the Earth is proudly announcing it is part of it.

They are still smarting over the December debacle in Copenhagen despite being “one of the main groups organizing a December 12 march that attracted more than 100,000 participants…” The FOE neglected to mention they all stood out in a snow storm to make their voices heard on the way the Earth was warming.

Perhaps sensing that people might begin to wonder where all the global warming had gone since a global cooling cycle began in 1998, these perpetrators of the fraud turned their attention to the fact that the same CO2 that was supposed to “cause” global warming was nonetheless building in the atmosphere and that means in the oceans as well.

At far back as February 2009, these scare mongers organized an international symposium, the second one actually, on “The Ocean in a High-CO2 World.” It brought together “150 marine scientists from 26 countries” who allegedly are “calling for immediate action by policy-makers to sharply reduce CO2 emissions so as to avoid widespread and severe damage to marine ecosystems from ocean acidification.”

An article in Science Daily reported that “The scientists note that ocean acidification is already detectable and is accelerating.”

What these scientists are more interested in detecting is where the next wasted billions in government and foundation grants can be found.

The oceans of the world comprise some 70% of the Earth’s surface. They are like the lungs of the Earth, absorbing and releasing carbon dioxide. They have been doing this for billions of years and a rise in the amount of CO2 is essentially meaningless.

“It is well established among researchers that the uptake of increased amounts of carbon dioxide will make ocean water more acidic as the gas dissolves to create carbonic acid,” said the Science Daily article and, to scare you just a bit more, “Ocean chemistry is changing 100 times more rapidly than in the 650,000 years that preceded the modern industrial era…”

The global warming fraud was based on the assertion that, as the Earth encountered greater industrialization, the increased use of oil, natural gas, and coal as sources of energy, the CO2 released was “causing” the Earth to warm exponentially.

The only problem with that “theory” is that it was (1) based on phony computer models and other false interpretations of data, and (2) the latest, perfectly natural climate cycle, is causing havoc around the world by dumping mountains of snow everywhere along with breaking cold temperature records faster than new readings can be taken.

So, please, do not “Wear Blue for Oceans Day” on Wednesday because it will only indicate you are one of the idiots who still believe in global warming and that you are now prepared to further confirm that by thinking the oceans cannot handle a rise in CO2 in the same fashion they have for eons.

For the scientifically inclined, check out
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/noaa-ocean-temperatures-june-2009-warmest-on-record.php

Why is it important to know that global ocean temperatures are the warmest since records began in 1880? Because the colder the water, the more carbon dioxide it retains. Warmer oceans would generate less, not more acidification.

Also see:

Penetrating the Smog: How the EPA and the Media Distort Climate Science

As a scientist, I have long been troubled by the way the mainstream media covers science in general and the environment in particular. Long before “global warming” became a watchword and Al Gore started burning tens of thousands of gallons in aviation fuel to lecture people around the world about their profligate energy use, journalists routinely butchered scientifically-focused stories so badly that it would make a high school physics teacher cringe. While many people have been shocked to learn how close the ties between leading global warming alarmists and some environmental reporters are, the only surprise for many of us in the scientific community is that it has taken this long to reveal those connections. For the truth is that global warming coverage in the mainstream media is merely a symptom of a larger disease. Global_Warming_polar_bear The latest boil to burst forth upon the body of environmental journalism began to fester on Thursday, January 7, when the USEPA announced that it was proposing the latest, greatest and most-badly- needed-ever smog standard. (Officially the pollutant is “ground-level ozone”, but we’ll stick with “smog” for convenience). Mainstream media outlets everywhere fell over themselves to heap praise on the EPA for imposing a standard that administrator Lisa Jackson described as “long overdue.” This lead, from the Chicago Tribune’s lead environmental reporter/head Sierra Club cheerleader Michael Hawthorne’s January 8 story, was typical:

“Chicago and other urban areas across the U.S. would need to clamp down harder on air pollution under tough smog limits proposed Thursday by the Obama administration, which scrapped a George W. Bush-era rule that ignored the latest scientific advice.”

“Latest scientific advice” is, of course, code for “scientific consensus”, a phrase that has become all the rage. A funny thing this “consensus”; when it comes to global warming, or the new smog standard, or a host of other environmental topics, consensus: a) doesn’t matter, and b) doesn’t exist. Jackson’s EPA wants to lower the smog standard for the fourth time since the agency was created. The original Clean Air Act set a standard of 120 parts per billion. It was lowered under the Clinton administration to 80 parts per billion and again, under President Bush, to 75 parts per billion. These Clinton and Bush reductions share a couple of common characteristics: EPA did not pick the lowest proposed number in either case, and the costs associated with each of these new standards played a role in the agency’s final decision. Where these two actions differed was in the reaction of the mainstream media. The Clinton-era reduction was hailed as an environmental triumph. The Bush-era reduction, notwithstanding the fact that it was more stringent than the Clinton-era standard, was decried as an environmental disaster. The EPA’s sin under President Bush is that the agency did not pick an even lower number, like 70 or even 65 parts per billion. That’s the kind of number that the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) wanted to see, and it’s CASAC that provides the media’s basis for claiming that George W. Bush “ignored the latest scientific advice.” In a January 7 press release, USEPA cited CASAC prominently. So you might be wondering: what is CASAC, this purportedly “independent” advisory panel that speaks with the voice of “consensus”? Who are the scientists on this committee? There are seven scientists on CASAC, four of whom have absolutely no qualifications, by either education or experience, to opine on the potential health effects of smog. The other three have spent their lives in academia, performing research – much of it publicly funded – designed to discover new and ever more horrendous ways that minute amounts of air pollutants can cause illness and death. ozone-pollution-smog The three CASAC members who sport public health credentials are: Dr. Jonathan Samet, who has spent most of his career doing research, much of it publicly-funded, about second-hand smoke and who is an advisor to the American Lung Association, which, in turn is one of the biggest organizations to lobby for – no surprise – tighter smog standards; Dr. Helen Suh MacIntosh, whose credentials include a stint on the web as the answer lady at treehugger.com; and Dr. Joseph Brain, a Harvard professor who has spent his professional career studying the effects of minute amounts of things that we breathe and why they are bad for you. Given the make-up of CASAC it is hardly surprising that they would recommend using the lowest proposed number. Had someone thrown out 50 parts per billion, or 20 parts per billion, there’s no doubt that such a number would have become the “latest scientific advice” instead. The reason CASAC didn’t pick 50 or 20 or some lower number is that EPA hasn’t proposed such a number – yet. Eventually, they will. The definition of “clean air” is an always moving, ever-shrinking target. This is known within the EPA as “job security”. According to the EPA, the “scientific community, industry, public interest groups, the general public and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee” all get to play a role whenever the agency sets new standards. This is the way EPA approached the issue under President Bush, President Clinton and every president before them. But now, under President Obama, the agency has effectively handed that authority over to a group of seven scientists, four of whom know nothing about public health and three of whom have spent their careers wearing the kind of academic blinders that leave them unable to perform any sort of reasonable risk vs. reward analysis. It’s every bit as remarkable, and outrageous, as it would have been if President Bush had turned the process over to the American Petroleum Institute. One of the biggest reasons that CASAC and groups like the American Lung Association want the new standard involves asthma. Many believe that alarming increases in childhood and other forms of asthma over the last thirty years are related to increasing rate of smog formation in big cities. Hang on. Did I say “increasing rates” of smog formation? Seems I had this darn graph flipped upside down. According to USEPA monitoring data, smog has been reduced by an average of twenty five per cent in big cities over the last thirty years. If we really want to help kids breathe better, perhaps the best solution is to raise the standard, not lower it. And the consequences of all of this nonsense? It will be expensive, and you and your kids will pay the price down the road, long after Obama has left office. Which is, in a way, what makes this move so devilishly brilliant. The president has written yet another I.O.U., one that helps restore his “green” credibility (which was so damaged after the “Hopenhagen” fiasco), and the bill for implementing this utopian vision won’t come due until long after he returns to community organizing.Source by Rich Trzupek

Cognitive Disconnect: Cold Equals Warming

By Alan Caruba

Over the course of Obama’s first year in office I have become convinced that he and his cronies think you are STUPID.

That’s why Nancy Pelosi could say the process by which Obamacare was put together and passed in the House and Senate was “open” and still think that doing it behind closed doors in both chambers while bribing every Democrat vote with public funds went unnoticed by the voters.

She thinks you’re STUPID.

It’s why Harry Reid may still hold onto his job as Majority Leader in the Senate after saying things about his favorite “Negro” that got Trent Lott removed from the same job in just under a month. We tend to forget that, from FDR to JFK, the Democrats thwarted civil rights legislation until they no longer could.

He thinks you’re STUPID.

The latest example of the complete disdain the White House has for the public is a response by press secretary Robert Gibbs who dismissed the worldwide cold snap as just another example of “climate change”, the new term for “global warming.”

On January 6, the Drudge Report headline links were as follows:

Winter Could Be Worst in 25 Years for USA…
CHILL MAP…
Britain’s big snow shuts cities…
GAS SUPPLIES RUNNING OUT IN UK…
Elderly burn books for warmth?
Army drafted to rescue 1,000 snow stranded motorists…
Vermont sets ‘all-time record for one snowstorm’…
Iowa temps ‘a solid 30 degrees below normal’…
Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years…
3 die in fire at Detroit home; power was cut…
Midwest Sees Near-Record Lows, Snow By The Foot…
Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade; Florida Gov Signs Emergency Order …
Cold snap spurs power rationing in China…

It’s “cognitive disconnect”, a fancy way of saying that the White House and Congress is under the impression that Americans actually believe that “warming” means “colder” and colder “proves” that warming is happening.

As the Drudge headlines then and since reflect, cold weather has historic implications. Indeed, if the Earth had not begun to warm at the end of the last ice age, some 11,500 years ago, the world would be a very different place than it is today. It only took one or two degrees Fahrenheit to bring about the advent of civilization, i.e. the spread of agriculture, the early cities, the movement of people to warmer climes.

The first warming era began around 4,300 BC when the Sahara bloomed with plants and forests spread over Northern Europe and Canada. Then, for a thousand years, cold returned until another short warming occurred around 1,450 BC. Then the cold returned and it wasn’t until the Roman Warm Era began in 250 BC that populations began to grow. When it got cold in Scandinavia, the Vikings climbed into their longboats and began to pillage and then colonize warmer southern lands.

There was a Medieval Warm Period that began around 800 AD which was a time of great achievement and prosperity. There was farming in Scotland and Norway. Greenland was colonized. Vineyards bloomed in England, in Prussia and in Norway.

Trouble returned with the Little Ice Age that began around 1,300 AD and brought with it famine and food riots. The Spanish Armada was destroyed by the horrid weather that afflicted Europe. During the frigid years of the Dalton Minimum (1790 to 1820 AD), Napoleon lost most of his army when he attempted to conquer Russia. In America, the Continental Army or what was left of it over-wintered in Valley Forge.

So weather and, in particular, long cold spells can have a dramatic affect on history. It was so cold in the 1970s that the environmentalists were all predicting a new ice age. Warm weather means farming and that ensures enough food. If you look around the world, people tend to congregate where it is warm.

Telling people that it is warming when it is demonstrably getting colder is STUPID. Assuming that people are stupid enough to believe you is a good way to get thrown out of office.

The collapse of the recent Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in the midst of a huge blizzard that hit that city and much of the northern hemisphere should mark the end of the huge fraud of “global warming.”

Now the U.S. and Europe has to walk itself back from all the idiotic laws passed that were based on the global warming hoax, not the least of which is Cap-and-Trade that is still waiting a vote in the Senate.

Has it occurred to anyone why President Obama took his winter vacation in Hawaii instead of Wyoming or the Dakotas? It wasn’t just because he was allegedly born there.

Temperatures drop, alarmism heats up

This is a strange time for the promoters of apocalyptic global warming – oops, they now prefer “climate change” since the Earth hasn’t been warming for a while – to assail skeptics (like me) as Sun columnist Tom Schaller did this week. (See “Climate skeptics are denying facts, not ‘theories'” on this page Jan 5.) He says “deniers” are caught up in absurdities and self-delusions.

It’s weird timing because, much to the dismay of the believers that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing what will quickly be cataclysmic warming that must be thwarted by any means possible (even though there is really nothing that can effectively reverse such a climate change if it is under way), the reality is we are in the grip of exceedingly cold temperatures throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere.

This is the so-called Gore Effect in hyper-overdrive. The Gore Effect is the phenomenon of chilly weather, up to and including blizzards, uncannily striking an area either shortly before, during or shortly after the former vice president makes an appearance there to drone on before enthusiastic true believers about how the “Earth has a fever” and all that rot.

To help understand that it is alarmists, not deniers, who are caught up in absurdities and self-delusions, consider some news headlines from recent days: “Over 1,200 new cold and snow records set in the last week in U.S.”; “Britain braced for heaviest snowfall in fifty years”; “World under arctic siege”; “Winter could be worst for 25 years in U.S.A.”; ” Vermont sets all-time record for one snowstorm”; “Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade”; “Seoul buried under heaviest snowfall in 70 years.”

This is just a brief sampling of such headlines. It could easily continue through the rest of my allotted space here. The point is we are not warming, we are now cooling – which in the absurd thinking of die-hard alarmists means global warming is the cause of this abnormal cooling.

The assertion of such nonsense in the face of what can be seen and felt by normal human beings no doubt helps stoke the palpable lack of interest they now have in the issue. The BBC managed, for example, to have five of its correspondents speculate on the important things the world faces in 2010, and there was a single, buried mention of climate matters. This would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.

Professor Schaller dismisses the importance of the leaked e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. that revealed the efforts of leading climate-alarmist scientists to fiddle with data and stifle dissenting peer opinions (the Climategate scandal) saying deniers are misrepresenting the e-mails, which show nothing more than “a legitimate disagreement among scientists.” Most of Big Media would agree with that, having fervently embraced the global warming religion.

On this newspaper’s editorial page, we often read predictions of impending calamity unless we adopt the prescriptions of the alarmists, massively taxing carbon emissions, drastically curtailing the use of fossil fuels and otherwise shackling our already troubled world economy to address global warming, uh, climate change.

In a letter to Mr. Schaller, a listener of mine, a physicist, said this: “Climategate doesn’t prove that man-made climate warming doesn’t exist. But I’m pretty sure that is not the points that most make, and even if some make it, is that the viewpoint you should address? Shouldn’t you address the most valid point rather than the weakest ones? The main point is that Climategate undercuts the supposed strength of the case made that man-made climate warming is proved.”

Most people aren’t very much aware that climate changes naturally, sometimes quite drastically. What the well-funded proponents of climate alarmism have found most helpful is that the people can therefore be persuaded that natural change is actually unnatural and is caused by human activity.

So here we are, plagued by a severe winter, much like the ones in the 1970s that helped an earlier generation of alarmist scientists peddle the doomsday scenario of an impending ice age. I do believe there’s a greater danger to humanity from that possibility than from any warming trend. Bundle up.

Ron Smith can be heard weekdays, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., on 1090 WBAL-AM and WBAL .com. His column appears Fridays in The Baltimore Sun. His e-mail is rsmith@wbal.com.

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