Tag: Copenhagen
VIDEO: IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri ‘is going to jail for fraud’
U.S. to launch new climate agency amid growing doubts about the theory
By Tony Hake
Despite Congress’ inability to agree to climate change legislation, falling public belief in global warming, and new questions about the science behind the theory, the Obama administration announced plans to launch a new climate change agency. Falling under the umbrella of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Climate Service would be the U.S. government’s one-stop-shop for climate change information. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said, “By providing critical planning information that our businesses and our communities need, NOAA Climate Service will help tackle head-on the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change.” Locke reiterated President Barack Obama’s oft-repeated refrain that ‘green jobs’ and technology will help the nation out of the recession. “In the process, we’ll discover new technologies, build new businesses and create new jobs.” The new service would bring together all of NOAA’s climate-related departments under a single agency called the NOAA Climate Service. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said it would look much like the National Weather Service but dedicated to climate change instead of weather. Carol Browner, President Obama’s ‘global warming czar’, echoed Lubchenco saying, “Through NOAA’s improved climate services we will be better able to confront climate change, and the many challenges it presents for our environment, security, and economy.” The timing of the announcement has raised eyebrows given the current state of climate science and growing doubt amid the public and policy leaders. One claim in NOAA’s press release has drawn been looked at with bemusement by some. Touting NOAA’s past climate work, the statement discussed, “The climate research, observations, modeling, predictions and assessments generated by NOAA’s top scientists – including Nobel Peace Prize award-winners.” This presumably is alluding to the work of many climate scientists on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for its work on climate science and the group’s AR4 report has been viewed as one of the most important pieces of work in the field. That very same report however has recently come under fire for dozens of errors and questionable citations. Claims of disappearing glaciers and rain forests, humanitarian disasters in Africa, increased natural disasters and more have all been disproven in recent weeks. Scientists that participated in the authoring of the report have said the spurious claims were included simply for political reasons. Some of those very same scientists were also at the forefront of the Climategate email scandal that continues to reverberate throughout the discussion on manmade climate change. The source of those emails, the University of East Anglia in Britain, has been found to have broken the law by trying to prevent the release of climate information. The head of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the university, Dr. Phil Jones, continues to be investigated for his role. Jones and his fellow scientists at CRU were principal contributing authors to the IPCC’s work. In the United States, Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University similarly finds himself under investigation. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, has similarly come under fire after it was revealed he chose to ignore the errors leading up to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in Denmark. Investigations by British media have also shown that Pachauri has financially benefitted from his position raising calls that he has a severe conflict of interest. The attempt to create a new government agency is being viewed by some as an ‘end run’ by the Obama administration around Congress and the American people. Climate change legislation incorporating a cap and trade tax scheme was considered a hallmark of the administration but it has since stalled in Congress. While the House of Representatives passed a version of the legislation, a similar measure sits fallow in the Senate and it appears unlikely it will move forward any time soon. Public doubts about global warming are also on the rise as shown by recent polls. According to the Pew Research Center, it ranks last in what the public believes should be a priority for the federal government. The American people, already casting a wary eye on a growing U.S. government and ballooning debt are not likely to view the new agency favorably. The state of climate science has not been at a lower point than it is now. 2009 was dubbed “The year climate change and global warming activists would like to forget” for the many events that dealt significant blow to the theory.Source
The Hottest Hoax in the World
It was presented as fact. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, led by India’s very own RK Pachauri, even announced a consensus on it. The world was heating up and humans were to blame. A pack of lies, it turns out.
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrarywise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see? —Alice in Wonderland The climate change fraud that is now unravelling is unprecedented in its deceit, unmatched in scope—and for the liberal elite, akin to 9 on the Richter scale. Never have so few fooled so many for so long, ever. The entire world was being asked to change the way it lives on the basis of pure hyperbole. Propriety, probity and transparency were routinely sacrificed. The truth is: the world is not heating up in any significant way. Neither are the Himalayan glaciers going to melt as claimed by 2035. Nor is there any link at all between natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and global warming. All that was pure nonsense, or if you like, ‘no-science’!
The climate change mafia, led by Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), almost pulled off the heist of the century through fraudulent data and suppression of procedure. All the while, they were cornering millions of dollars in research grants that heaped one convenient untruth upon another. And as if the money wasn’t enough, the Nobel Committee decided they should have the coveted Peace Prize. But let’s begin at the beginning. Mr Pachauri has no training whatsoever in climate science. This was known all the time, yet he heads the pontification panel which proliferates the new gospel of a hotter world. How come? Why did the United Nations not choose someone who was competent? After all, this man is presumably incapable of differentiating between ocean sediments and coral terrestrial deposits, nor can he go about analysing tree ring records and so on. That’s not jargon; these are essential elements of a syllabus in any basic course on climatology.
You cannot blame him. His degree and training is in railroad engineering. You read it right. This man was educated to make railroads from point A to point B.
THE GATHERING STORM
There are many casualties in this sad story of greed and hubris. The big victim is the scientific method. This was pointed out in great detail by John P Costella of the Virginia-based Science and Public Policy Institute. Science is based on three fundamental pillars. The first is fallibility. The fact that you can be wrong, and if so proven by experimental input, any hypothesis can be—indeed, must be—corrected. This was systematically stymied as early as 2004 by the scientific in-charge of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Change Unit. This university was at the epicentre of the ‘research’ on global warming. It is here that Professor Phil Jones kept inconvenient details that contradicted climate change claims out of reports. The second pillar of science is that by its very nature, science is impersonal. There is no ‘us’, there is no ‘them’. There is only the quest. However, in the entire murky non-scientific global warming episode, if anyone was a sceptic he was labelled as one of ‘them’. At the very apex, before his humiliating retraction, Pachauri had dismissed a report by Indian scientists on glaciers as “voodoo science”. The third pillar of science is peer group assessment. This allows for validation of your thesis by fellow scientists and is usually done in confidence. However, the entire process was set aside by the IPCC while preparing the report. Thus, it has zero scientific value. The fact that there was dissent within the climate science teams, that some people objected to the very basis of the grand claims of global warming, did not come out through the due process. It came to light when emails at the Climate Research Centre at East Anglia were hacked in November 2009. It is from the hacked conversations that a pattern of conspiracy and deceit emerge. It is a peek into the world of global warming scaremongering—amplify the impact of CO2, stick to dramatic timelines on destruction of forests, and never ask for a referral or raise a contrary point. You were either a believer in a hotter world or not welcome in this ‘scientific fold’.
HOUSE OF CARDS AND COLOUR OF CASH
So we have the fact that a non-expert heads the IPCC. We have the fact that glaciers are not melting by 2035; this major scaremongering is now being defended as a minor error (it was originally meant to be 2350, some have clarified). The date was spouted first by Syed Hasnain, an Indian glacier expert, in an interview to a magazine. It had no scientific validity, and, as Hasnain has himself said, was speculative. On the basis of that assertion, The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) that Pachauri heads and where Hasnain works in the glaciology team, got two massive chunks of funding. The first was estimated to be a $300,000 grant from Carnegie Corporation and the second was a part of the $2 million funding from the European Union. So you write a report that is false on glaciers melting and get millions to study the impact of a meltdown which will not be happening in the first place. Now if this is not a neat one, what is? The same goes for dire predictions on Amazon rain forests. The IPCC maintained that there would be a huge depletion in Amazon rain forests because of lack of precipitation. Needless to add, no Amazon rain forest expert could be trusted to back this claim. They depended on a report by a freelance journalist and activist, instead, and now it has blown up in their faces. There’s plenty more in this sordid tale. For one thing, there is no scientific consensus at all that man-made CO2 emissions cause global warming, as claimed by the IPCC. In a recent paper, Lord Monckton of Brenchley, who has worked extensively on climate change models, argues: ‘There is no scientific consensus on how much the world has warmed or will warm; how much of the warming is natural; how much impact greenhouse gases have had or will have on temperature; how sea level, storms, droughts, floods, flora, and fauna will respond to warmer temperature; what mitigative steps—if any—we should take; whether (if at all) such steps would have sufficient (or any) climatic effect; or even whether we should take any steps at all.’ An investigation by Dr Benny Peiser, director, Global Warming Policy Foundation, has revealed that only 13 of the 1,117, or a mere 1 per cent of the scientific papers crosschecked by him, explicitly endorse the consensus as defined by the IPCC. Thus the very basis of the claim of consensus on global warming is false. And so deeply entrenched is the global warming lobby, the prestigious journal Science did not publish a letter that Dr Peiser wrote pointing out the lack of consensus. Speaking to Open, says Dr Peiser, “The IPCC process by which it arrives at its conclusions lacks balance, transparency and due diligence. It is controlled by a tightly knit group of individuals who are completely convinced that they are right. As a result, conflicting data and evidence, even if published in peer-reviewed journals, are regularly ignored, while exaggerated claims, even if contentious or not peer-reviewed, are often highlighted in IPCC reports. Not surprisingly, the IPCC has lost a lot of credibility in recent years. It is also losing the trust of more and more governments who are no longer following its advice. Until it agrees to undergo a root and branch reform, it will continue to haemorrhage credibility and trust. The time has come for a complete overhaul of its structure and workings.” Another fraud is in the very chart central to Pachauri’s speech at the Copenhagen summit. As Lord Monckton has pointed out, ‘The graph is bogus not only because it relies on made-up data from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, but also because it is overlain by four separate trendlines, each with a start-date carefully selected to give the entirely false impression that the rate of warming over the past 150 years has itself been accelerating, especially between 1975 and 1998. The truth, however—neatly obscured by an ingenious rescaling of the graph and the superimposition of the four bogus trend lines on it—is that from 1860 to 1880 and again from 1910 to 1940 the warming rate was exactly the same as the warming rate from 1975 to 1998.’
PACHAURI’S WRONG NUMBERS
This chart, tracking mean global temperature over the past 150 years, was central to the presentation that IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri made at the Copenhagen environment summit. Many scientists believe that the graph is fraudulent. First, there are strong allegations that the data, collected from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, is a tissue of lies. Plus, as British climate change expert Lord Christopher Monckton puts it: “(The main graph, in darker blue) is overlain by four separate lines, each carefully selected to give the entirely false im•pression that the rate of warming over the past 150 years has itself been accelerating, especially between 1975 and 1998. The truth, however… is that from 1860 to 1880 and again from 1910 to 1940, the warming rate was exactly the same as the warming rate from 1975 to 1998.” In other words, the graph has been drawn with a motive to prove one’s point, and not to show the truth. Thus the earth has warmed at this rate at least twice in the last 100 years and no major catastrophe has occurred. What is more, the earth has cooled after that warming. Why is the IPCC not willing to explore this startling point? Another total lie has been that the Sunderbans in Bangladesh are sinking on account of the rise in sea level. The IPCC claimed that one-fifth of Bangladesh will be under water by 2050. Well, it turns out this is an absurd, unscientific and outrageous claim. According to scientists at the Centre for Environmental and Geographical Information Services (Cegis) in Dhaka, its surface area appears to be growing by 20 sq km annually. Cegis has based its results on more than 30 years of satellite imagery. IPCC has not retracted this claim. As far as they are concerned, Bangladesh is a goner by 2050, submerged forever in the Bay of Bengal.
THE COOKIE CRUMBLES
The fallout of Climategate is slowly but surely unfolding right where it hurts a large number of special interests—in the field of business. Yes, the carbon trading business is now in the line of fire. Under a cap-and-trade system, a government authority first sets a limit on emissions, deciding how much pollution will be allowed in all. Next, companies are issued credits, essentially licences to pollute, based on how large they are, and what industries they work in. If a company comes in below its cap, it has extra credits which it may trade with other companies, globally. Post Climategate, this worldwide trade, estimated at about $30 billion in 2006, is finding few takers. It is under attack following the renewed uncertainty over the role of human-generated CO2 in global warming. In the US, which never adopted any of this to begin with, there is a serious move now to finish off the cap-and-trade regime globally. It’s a revolt of sorts. Six leading Democrats in the US Congress have joined hands with many Republicans to urge the Obama Administration to back off from the regime. The collapse of the international market for carbon credits, a direct fallout of Climategate, has already sent shudders down many spines in parts of the world that were looking forward to making gains from it. It was big business, after all, and Indian businesses were eyeing it as well. In fact, Indian firms were expected to trade some $1 billion worth of carbon credits this year, and with the market going poof, they stand to lose quite some money (notional or otherwise). Besides the commercial aspect, there is also the issue of wider public credibility. There have been signs of scepticism all along. In a 2009 Gallup poll, a record number of people—41 per cent—elected to say that global warming was an exaggerated threat. This slackening of public support is in sync with a coordinated political movement that is seeking to re-examine the entire issue of global warming from scratch. The movement is led by increasingly vocal Republicans in the US Senate and packs considerable political power. Pachauri’s position is also becoming increasingly untenable with demands for his resignation becoming louder by the day. In an interview to Open, Pat Michaels of the Cato Institute, a noted US think-tank, who has followed the debate for years, says, “Dr Pachauri should resign because he has a consistent record of mixing his political views with climate science, because of his intolerance of legitimate scientific views that he does not agree with, because of his disparagement of India’s glacier scientists as practising ‘voodoo science’, and because of his incomprehension of the serious nature of what was in the East Anglia emails.” Richard North, the professor who brought to light the financial irregularities in a write-up co-authored with Christopher Booker, has also said in a TV interview that, “If Dr Pachauri does not resign voluntarily, he will be forced to do so.”
GLOBAL STORMING AHEAD
The world awaits answers, based not on writings of sundry freelance journalists and non-experts, but on actual verifiable data on whether the globe is warming at all, and if so by how much. Only then can policy options be calibrated. As things stand, there is little doubt that the IPCC will need to be reconstituted with a limited mandate. This mess needs investigation and questions need to be answered as to why absurd claims were taken as gospel truth. The future of everything we know as ‘normal’ depends on this. The real danger is that the general public is now weary of the whole thing, a little tired of the debate, and may not really care for the truth, convenient or otherwise.Source by Ninad D. Sheth
The Intergovernmental Perjury over Climate Catastrophe (ctd)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is seeing its reputation disappear faster than a fish down a polar bear’s gullet. Christopher Booker reports in the Sunday Telegraph that, following the IPCC’s grovelling admission that its 2007 statement that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 had no scientific basis and that its inclusion in the report reflected a ‘poor application’ of IPCC procedures, more has come to light about the bogus ‘research’ on which the IPCC based this claim – which came from a report in New Scientist which was in turn merely drawn from a phone interview with a little-known Indian scientist, and that scientist’s links with the IPCC’s chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri:
…the scientist from whom this claim originated, Dr Syed Hasnain, has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based company of which Dr Pachauri is director-general. Furthermore, the claim – now disowned by Dr Pachauri as chairman of the IPCC – has helped TERI to win a substantial share of a $500,000 grant from one of America’s leading charities, along with a share in a three million euro research study funded by the EU. At the same time, Dr Pachauri has personally been drawn into a major row with the Indian government, previously among his leading supporters, after he described as ‘voodoo science’ an official report by the country’s leading glaciologist, Dr Vijay Raina, which dismissed Dr Hasnain’s claims as baseless. Now that the IPCC has disowned the prediction made by his employee, Dr Pachauri has been castigated by India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, and called on by Dr Raina to apologise for his ‘voodoo science’ charge. At a stormy Delhi press conference on Thursday, Dr Pachauri was asked whether he intended to resign as chairman of the IPCC – on whose behalf he collected a Nobel Peace Prize two years ago, alongside Al Gore – but he refused to answer questions on this fast-escalating row.
Meanwhile, in the Mail on Sunday David Rose reveals that the co-ordinating lead author of the IPCC report chapter which contained this falsehood about the vanishing Himalayan glaciers, Dr Murari Lal, has admitted that he was well aware that this statement was not backed up by peer-reviewed research but included it anyway purely to put political pressure on world leaders. He said:
It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.
The fact that it was totally untrue appears to have been irrelevant. Also yesterday, the Sunday Times revealed yet another false claim by the IPCC which has now bitten the dust. This was the claim that man-made global warming was linked to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods:
It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny – and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report’s own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough. The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month’s Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions. Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change minister, has suggested British and overseas floods – such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 – could be linked to global warming. Barack Obama, the US president, said last autumn: ‘More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.’ Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen ‘must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm’.
This claim was exploded in a 2006 study by disaster impact expert Robin Muir-Wood, who found that the link between man-made global warming and increases in climatic storms didn’t stand up. The IPCC actually incorporated part of his study into its own report – but quoted it selectively to produce the opposite conclusion. The IPCC also failed to reveal in advance of the Copenhagen summit that the non-peer reviewed paper on which its claim of the link had been based had issued a caveat when it was finally published in 2008, which stated:
We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.
Such selectivity and distortion by the IPCC challenge the excuse for its behaviour now being trotted out that errors are bound to creep into such a voluminous body of work from time to time. These are not errors made in good faith. These are falsehoods resulting from a mindset which ruthlessly makes use of any claims that back up AGW theory – with any frailties or contradictions in the evidence deliberately concealed. The Global Warming Policy Foundation reports that the suggestion that the Himalayan glaciers falsehood was an uncharacteristic mistake is not borne out by the evidence, which reveals that doubts and questions are routinely ignored in the IPCC’s review process. But of course. Facts cannot be allowed to get in the way of the theory. Thus the IPCC, the ‘scientific’ body whose apocalyptic predictions of planetary doom have driven the politics of the entire western world off the rails. Who can possibly take this body — or anyone who has supported it and promoted its falsehoods as unchallengeable truths — seriously ever again?Source by Melanie Phillips
The fastest ever collapse of any modern political movement
The latest links from Climate Depot via Marc Morano:
Flashback 2008: Scientist: ‘Global warming’ is sub-prime science, sub-prime economics, and sub-prime politics, and it could well go down with the sub-prime mortgage’ Paper: UN climate chief Pachauri used ‘bogus’ climate claims ‘to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds’ UN IPCC Exposed: ‘Dozens’ of instances where WWF reports have been cited as the sole authority for contentious claims, including one about coastal developments in Latin America’ Obama must call out the UN IPCC to keep his inaugural pledge to ‘restore science to its rightful place’ Australian Herald Sun: ‘Could the Nobel Prize be withdrawn’ from UN IPCC? ‘Al Gore needs to be leading this charge (for Pachauri’s resignation) in the US. Where is he, and why is he silent?’ Na na na hey hey hey goodbye! Pew Survey: Global warming ranks dead last as concern for Americans — 21 out of 21 – ‘Global warming ranks at the bottom of the public’s list of priorities; just 28% consider this a top priority, the lowest measure for any issue tested in the survey’ ‘Pachauri must resign’ Calls for Pachauri to resign: ‘His position is becoming more and more untenable by the day…UN IPCC ‘will continue to leach credibility while he remains in charge’ Flashback 2006: Morano Debates Pachauri at UN Conference in Kenya — Calls UN an ‘echo chamber’ where ‘dissent was being suppressed and demonized’ Houston Chronicle Credits Climate Depot with Warming Movements Collapse!: Morano debating Scientists is ‘just a wipeout’ — ‘It’s an NFL team playing a high school team’ UN Climate Con is Ending! Shock Revelation: UN scientist admits fake data was used in IPCC report ‘purely to put political pressure on world leaders’ – UN IPCC Scientist: Phony glacier claim designed to ‘impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action’ – UK Mail – Jan. 24, 2009 UK Guardian: Global Warming Bubble Bursts: ‘Banks are pulling out of the carbon-offsetting market’ Flashback: 2009: Paper: ‘Don’t let Climategate melt down your portfolio…don’t get stuck with investments tied to global warming’ Flashback 2009: Carbon Bubble Fears! Asian Development Bank warns failure to ‘reach climate deal could lead to a collapse of carbon market’ ‘And now for UN’s Amazongate’: ‘Made false predictions’ on Amazon rainforest, referenced non-peer-reviewed paper produced by WWF Paging George Orwell: Stern Review ‘mysteriously changed’ – Prof. Pielke, Jr.: ‘As much as 40% of the Stern Review projections for the global costs of unmitigated climate change derive from its misuse of (extreme weather paper)’ The IPCC scandal: the African data was sexed up, too China surprises summit — Declares it has ‘open mind’ about global warming: ‘Alternative view that climate change is caused by cyclical trends in nature’ Global Warming ‘is rapidly morphing into the greatest scandal in the history of science since the belief in a flat earth’
Via email
As Global Warming Movement Collapses, Activists Already 'Test-Marketing' the Next Eco-Fear
By Marc Morano
Climate Depot Editorial As the man-made global warming fear movement collapses and the climate establishment lay in a Climategate ridden tatters, many are asking what next? (For latest on climate movement’s demise go to www.ClimateDepot.com)
As man-made global warming fears enter the ashbin of history, what will environmentalists, UN activists and politicians do to fill the void of a failed eco-scare?
Well, wonder no more….
Some forward thinking green activists and even the UN climate Chief have already taken up the task of test-marketing the next eco-scares to replace man-made global warming.
One of the most prominent eco-scares now being quietly promoted behind man-made climate fears is the allegedly “growing” nitrous oxide (a.k.a. “laughing gas”) threat to the planet. See: Time for next eco-scare already?! ‘Earth’s growing nitrogen threat’: ‘It helps feed a hungry world, but it’s worse than CO2’The Christian Science Monitor – January 12, 2010 – Excerpt: Nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide – considered the leading cause of climate change – and the third most threatening greenhouse gas overall. As man-made climate fears subside and the scientific, economic, cultural and political case evaporates for climate change “action,” expect more and more green activists to take up the mantle for “laughing gas” as a possible replacement eco-scare.
See also: Laughing Gas Knocks Out CO2 – By Doug Hoffman – Oct. 30, 2009 – Excerpt: “In the face of ever mounting evidence that CO2 is incapable of causing the level of global devastation prophesied by climate change catastrophists a new villain is being sought. The leading candidate is nitrous oxide (N2O), better known as laughing gas. A report in Science claims that N2O emissions are currently the single most important cause of ozone depletion and are expected to remain so throughout the 21st century. The IPCC rates N2O as 310 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 on a 100 year time scale. Is this a greenhouse gas bait and switch, or are the global warming alarmists trying to up the ante.”
Still can’t picture former Vice President Al Gore touting the “laughing gas” crisis as the “moral” challenge of our time in a Oscar-winning documentary? Not to worry, there are many more eco-scares currently being test-marketed.
Gore’s own producer of “An Inconvenient Truth” — Hollywood eco-activist Laurie David — is already test-marketing another eco-scare with potential promise.
“One Word: Plastics.” Yes, just 43 years after the 1967 film “The Graduate”, “plastics” just may be the future! See: AGW RIP? Is It Time for Next Eco-Scare Already? Gore’s producer Laure David touts plastic crisis: ‘Plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming’ – July 31, 2009
“The rapid rise in global plastic production is leading to a rise in plastic pollution and its devastating effects on our oceans and our lives.,” Laurie David wrote on July 31, 2009. Selected Excerpts From David’s blog post: “This insidious invasion of the biosphere by our plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming. Our bodies have evolved to handle carbon dioxide, the nemesis of global warming, indeed, we exhale it with every breath. Plastic, though present in the biosphere from the nano scale on up, is too stable a molecule for any organism to fully assimilate or biodegrade. So we have a situation in which a vector for a suite of devastating chemicals, chemicals implicated in many modern diseases, is now invading the ocean, our bodies and indeed, the entire biosphere. The prognosis for improvement in this situation is grim.”
Still not convinced of either “laughing gas” or “plastics” as the next dominant eco-scare? Don’t worry, we are just getting started. Just how widespread is the test marketing of a new eco-scare to replace the flailing global warming movement? It now has the attention of the beleaguered head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri.
In a remarkable posting on his personal blog, Pachauri openly admitted that man-made global warming was not even the biggest eco-issue! See: Et tu? Head of UN IPCC Pachauri Now throwing global warming under the bus?! There is a ‘larger problem’ than climate fears?! – November 23, 2009
Pachauri wrote on November 23, 2009: “The question is whether the additional time that the world would now have to arrive at an agreement at the next Conference of the Parties in Mexico will give us time and space to look at the larger problem of unsustainable development, of which climate change is at best a symptom. Human society cannot continue to ignore the vital dependence that exists between human welfare and the health of our natural resources.” The UK Green Party and a UN advisor are already concocting yet another potential new eco-scare that may be an easy transition from failed global warming fears. See: UK Green Party: ‘There exists a more serious crisis than the ‘CO2 crisis’: the oxygen levels are dropping and the human activity has decreased them by 1/3 or ½ – By Peter Tatchell of the UK Green party – UK Guardian – August 13, 2008
Excerpt: “In the view of Professor Ervin Laszlo, the drop in atmospheric oxygen has potentially serious consequences. A UN advisor who has been a professor of philosophy and systems sciences, Laszlo writes: Evidence from prehistoric times indicates that the oxygen content of pristine nature was above the 21% of total volume that it is today. It has decreased in recent times due mainly to the burning of coal in the middle of the last century. Currently the oxygen content of the Earth’s atmosphere dips to 19% over impacted areas, and it is down to 12 to 17% over the major cities. At these levels it is difficult for people to get sufficient oxygen to maintain bodily health: it takes a proper intake of oxygen to keep body cells and organs, and the entire immune system, functioning at full efficiency. At the levels we have reached today cancers and other degenerative diseases are likely to develop. And at 6 to 7% life can no longer be sustained.”
Wow. Imagine scaring school children with suffocation due to our modern way of life! Documentaries, text books and Hollywood could really instill fear in the kids and adults with scary predictions of Mom and Dad choking to death due to a lack of oxygen created by evil modern society. Mom and Dad turning blue and suffering fatal convulsions sure beats the emotional imagery of a Polar Bear drowning or a building be flooded to due to rising seas. Keep your eye on this one, it just may get some traction.
Ok. Let’s assume now that one of the above or yet another not ready for prime time eco-fear catches on, how would the environmental activists go about selling this eco-scare to the public?
For an answer, let’s review a few of the failed eco-alarms of the past 40 years.
The Global Cooling Scare of 1970’s offers vital clues about how the “search-and-replace” tactics are utilized by eco-fear promoters. See: 1974 CIA report on Global Cooling: ‘Embarrassing reading’: ‘All AGW scares are a search-and-replace job from ‘cooling’ to ‘warming’ – Dec. 3, 2009 & Climate Depot’s Factsheet on 1970s Coming ‘Ice Age’ Claims – Oct. 6, 2009
Ever wonder how Gore and the UN would hype a “tipping point” for various new eco-scares? Newsweek Magazine first used the climate “tipping point” argument in 1975 to urge action to prevent man-made global cooling. Newsweek wrote April 28, 1975 article: “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”
Yes, quite literally “a search-and-replace job from cooling to warming.” Also See: Not again! Another 10-year climate ‘tipping point’ warning issued — Despite fact that UN began 10-Year ‘Climate Tipping Point’ in 1989! Climate Depot Factsheet on Inconvenient History of Global Warming ‘Tipping Points’ — Earth ‘Serially Doomed’ – Nov. 15, 2009
Overpopulation Fears Overpopulation fears have jumped all over the place in recent years. See: Grist Mag. Going Down: Is too few people the new ‘population problem?’ – December 14, 2005 and Could Overpopulation Save The Earth From Global Warming? June 15, 2009. Overpopulation fears can be played any which way advocates would like. Even the guru of overpopulation fears eventually admitted his silliness. See: An Admission finally! ‘The Population Bomb’s’ Paul Ehrlich: ‘I wish I’d taken more math in high school and college. That would have been useful’ – ‘If he were writing ‘The Population Bomb’ now, he’d be more careful about predictions’ – Oct. 8, 2009 – Also see: Climate Depot’s Overpopulation factsheet – August 21, 2009
Amazon Rainforest Scare The allegedly disappearing rainforest scare was the environmental issue du jour in the 1980’s and 1990’s, long before climate fears took center stage. In fact, In 2000, Climate Depot’s Executive Editor Marc Morano was producer and correspondent for a documentary debunking the myths about the rainforests. Morano’s “Amazon Rainforest: Clear-Cutting the Myths” was greeted with massive controversy. But, just nine years later, the rainforest scare was kaput.
See: Jan. 30, 2009: New York Times: ‘Galloping jungle’: Farmlands revert back to nature as saving the rainforests becomes ‘less urgent’ – ‘For every acre of rainforest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing’
NYT Excerpt: Here, and in other tropical countries around the world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing’s – and much larger swaths of farmland – are reverting back to nature, as people abandon their land and move to the cities in search of better livings. These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest – an iconic environmental cause – may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster. “There is far more forest here than there was 30 years ago,” said Ms. Ortega de Wing, 64, who remembers fields of mango trees and banana plants.
Also see: ‘Save the trees’ more political myth than environmental truth – Jan. 2009
Old eco-scares don’t die, they just fade away. The failed rainforest scare inspired this 2009 satire of the death of global warming movement. Spoof: NYT in 2019: Scientists Now Say Global Warming Fears Fading Away – Claim There Never Was Warming Consensus – By Marc Morano
Other eco-scares that did not pan out include the 1970 and 8190’s baseless scares about resource scarcity and predictions of famine. (Excerpt: The ultimate embarrassment for the Malthusians was when Paul Ehrlich bet Julian Simon $1,000 in 1980 that five resources (of Ehrlich’s choosing) would be more expensive in 10 years. Ehrlich lost: 10 years later every one of the resources had declined in price by an average of 40 percent.) Plus other eco-scares like “ocean acidification” and others too numerous to mention.
It will be a compelling battle to try and replace the mother of all eco-scares — man-made global warming — but Climate Depot is confident that one of these test-marketed new eco-issues will catch on and you may soon see massive denials from environmentalists and UN officials that claims of a man-made global warming crisis never really existed (echoing the claims that there was no widespread concern about global cooling in the 1970’s) See: Spoof: NYT in 2019: Scientists Now Say Global Warming Fears Fading Away – Claim There Never Was Warming Consensus – By Marc Morano
Already we have some of the most insulting attempts to shift the focus away from the “warming” aspect of “global warming.”
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) — in true “Climate Astrology” fashion — dismissed the lack of global warming on March 4, 2009 by declaring: “Climate change is not just about temperatures going up. It’s also about volatility.”
Not to be outdone, Sen. Stabenow followed up her climate analysis with this claim about touchy-feely warming: “Global warming creates volatility and I feel it when I’m flying. The storms are more volatile,” Sen. Stabenow explained in August 11, 2009.
No wonder, climate fear promoters are now openly demanding exaggeration and wishing for death and destruction to convince the public of man-made climate fears. “You have to find ways to exaggerate the threat,” Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Thomas Schelling said in a July 14, 2009 interview with The Atlantic.
Lest there be any doubt that desperation time has set in for the promoters of man-made climate fears, Schelling removed it.
Schelling continued: “I sometimes wish that we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening — you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth — that would get people very concerned about climate change.”
Let’s get this straight. A prominent promoter of man-made global warming is now openly wishing for death and destruction of Americans in order to convince them that man-made global warming is a threat? Climate Depot encourages Schelling and Sen. Stabenow to continue their utter climate silliness. Quite simply, alarmism leads to skepticism. No wonder more ‘More Americans believe in haunted houses than man-made global warming’.
In the end, science rules the day.
Related Links: Climategate Prompts UN scientists turn on each other – Nov. 27, 2009) Oct 2009: Losing Their Religion: 2009 officially declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears
Via email
VIDEO: Activist Claims Haiti Earthquake 'Caused by Global Warming'
I knew it was coming! You knew it was coming! Many of us predicted this would happen, and sure enough here we have the actor slash activist Danny Glover telling us that the Haiti earthquake was a direct result of global warming and the Copenhagen failure! How can anyone take these psycho environmental activists seriously anymore? This is ridiculous. But you gotta love the fact the video has over 100,000 views and a rating of only one star. You just made yourself look like the total fool you are, Danny. 😉
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. 
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. 
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
'Climate science' is an oxymoron. Time for Zero Tolerance of Green agendas
Wow! That Copenhagen package really worked. Global warming has been dramatically reversed. In fact, if Al Gore could see his way to turning the heat back up just a little, most of us would be deeply appreciative… “Climate science” is the oxymoron of the century. There is not a city, town or hamlet in the country that has had its weather conditions correctly forecast, over periods as short as 12 hours, during the past week. This is the “exceptionally mild winter” that the climate change buffoons warned us would occur as a consequence of global warming. Their credibility is 20 degrees below zero. Yet nothing shames them, nothing persuades them to come out of the bunker with their hands high and “fess up”. Patronisingly fobbing off the public with fabricated excuses has become second nature to them. Latterly they have been concocting alibis about the Gulf Stream to explain Britain’s Arctic conditions. Uh-huh? Is it the Gulf Stream that has frozen the Vistula and given Poland a temperature of –25C? Is it the Gulf Stream that has caused the worst blizzards in Beijing since 1951? The entire Northern Hemisphere is frozen. The world looks like a Christmas pudding with icing on the top. That is completely normal, part of the random climate fluctuations with which our ancestors were familiar. Yet fraudulent scientists have gained millions of pounds by taking selective samples of natural climate change, whipping up a Grande Peur and using it to advance the cause of world government, state control and fiscal despoliation of citizens. 2010 should be the year when all that ends. It is time for Zero Tolerance of AGW fraudsters and their political masters. It is time to say: Green taxes? We won’t pay them.
Nor will we vote for or permit to remain in office any politician or party that supports the AGW fraud. This year is one of those rare occasions when we have an opportunity to punish and control our political masters – provided Britons have the will to break with the two-party system. Due to the rise of smaller parties – itself the consequence of the misgovernment of the Lab/Lib/Con consensus – it is a buyer’s market. The rule of thumb should be: any party that supports the global warming scam is ineligible for our votes. It doesn’t matter how ingrained one’s loyalty may once have been to one of the “major” parties, the time has come to impose the popular will on politicians who have learned, since the abolition of capital punishment in 1965, that by forming an anti-democratic consensus they can dictate to the public. The coming general election is going to be an intelligence test. If people realise that voting for the slightly less objectionable choice gets them nowhere, that by holding out for what they really want they can actually obtain it, then we may be able to liberate ourselves from the tree-hugging New/Blue Labour consensus. If we fail to rise to that challenge we shall forfeit the right to complain about five more years of PC oppression. That is the answer: Zero Tolerance of “Green” agendas.Source by Gerald Warner