By Frank J. Tamel
Throughout history people, for various reasons, have perpetrated scientific hoaxes on the public. Here are a few examples: Piltdown Man — In 1912 Charles Dawson “discovered” the Piltdown fossils, a skull and jawbone that appeared to be half-man half-ape, in Sussex, England. They were hailed as the evolutionary “missing link” between apes and humans. 40 years later the fossil was exposed as a fake. In fact, the skull was constructed from a medieval human cranium attached to the jaw of an orangutan.The Cardiff Giant — A ten-foot “petrified man” was dug up on a small farm in Cardiff, New York, in October 1869. The “Cardiff Giant” became a huge news story and many Americans traveled to see it. It was revealed as the creation of New Yorker George Hull, who had paid for it to be carved out of stone.The Spaghetti Tree — In 1957, the BBC show Panorama broadcast a program about the spaghetti tree in Switzerland. It showed a family harvesting pasta that hung from the branches of the tree. After watching the program, hundreds of people phoned in asking how they could grow their own tree. It was revealed as an April Fools joke.The Sokal Hoax — In 1996, American physicist Alan Sokal submitted a paper loaded with nonsensical jargon to the journal Social Text, in which he argued that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. When the journal published it, Sokal revealed that the paper was in fact a spoof. The Secret of Immortality — Johann Heinrich Cohausen, an 18th-century physician, wrote a treatise on the prolongation of life, entitled Hermippus redivivus. Among other secrets of longevity it claimed that life could be prolonged by taking an elixir produced by collecting the breath of young women in bottles. Cohausen admitted that it was a satire. Man-made Global Warming — In 2007 former Vice President Al Gore addressed Congress telling lawmakers that they need to adopt an immediate freeze on greenhouse gases in order to fight global warming. According to Gore, the star of the film An Inconvenient Truth, the science is settled. Carbon-dioxide emissions from cars, power plants, buildings and other sources are heating the Earth’s atmosphere. If left unchecked, global warming could lead to a drastic change in the weather, sea levels and other aspects of the environment. These are the conclusions of a vast majority of scientists who study the issue.But are they real scientific conclusions, or a hoax perpetrated on an unwary and poorly informed public? Recently someone hacked into the Emails of the world’s top global warming proponents. Those Emails and other documents revealed that these grifters have been fabricating climate change data for years and using deception to hide any facts that might contradict their trumped up findings.There are three primary revelations in the leaked Emails that could shed the light of truth on their deception: First is the realization that leaders in the climate change field have been discussing how they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.They have devised every possible excuse for concealing the data on which their findings were based, including the claim that much of the data had simply gotten “lost.” Some of the Emails advised scientists to delete large chunks of data. It is a felony to delete information after a freedom of information request has been issued.The second revelation found within the leaked documents is that scientists have been manipulating data through their computer programs to point to their predetermined conclusion and manipulating global temperature data to show a large spike in warming.Third is the way in which these flimflam artists have conspired to silence any member of the scientific community that questions their findings or their methodsIn light of these incredible revelations, it becomes evident that the snake oil salesmen have been working overtime, not on behalf true scientific inquiry, but rather on behalf of a different cause; that of total domination of the world economy and the enslavement of humanity.
The former Chancellor Lord Lawson of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, called for an independent inquiry into the skulduggery revealed by the Email leaks: “Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.” Any and all legislation that limits access to fossil fuels and raises the cost of energy to combat a nonexistent global warming agenda must be stopped. Cap and Trade legislation cannot be allowed to move forward in Congress. Any treaty that comes out of the Copenhagen summit must not be ratified. Anyone who intentionally perpetrates the global warming hoax on the American people should be thoroughly discredited and thrown in jail. You too, Al.
Tag: News
Gore flees in panic from Chicago book signing
Not since Henry Kissinger fled a team of LaRouche organizers, in the back of a delivery truck in New York City’s Central Park in the early 1980s, has an obese fascist moved so fast to escape an angry crowd, as Al Gore did today in Chicago. Appearing at a bookstore in the downtown Loop, Gore was confronted by a team of demonstrators from a grass roots group called “We Are Change,” as he was signing his latest fascist screed on the global warming swindle. Gore bolted from the bookstore, raced down an alley, jumped into a waiting car, and tried to speed off, with protesters chasing after him and banging on the car. Midwest LYM organizers, who were also on the scene to confront the global warming swindler, provided an eyewitness account of Fat Albert’s flight of fear. Make no mistake about it. This little encounter is typical of the kinds of things going on all over the country, as the fascists who brought you the near-destruction of the United States and an onrushing global Dark Age, are no longer walking the streets, smug in the belief that they are literally getting away with murder. The mass strike dynamic is playing out in thousands of ways, every day, and the recent revelations about the “smoking gun” emails from the East Anglia University global warming propaganda center, have made Al Gore’s life a little more miserable. As Percy Shelley wrote in “The Mask of Anarchy,” “We are many, they are few.”Source H/T: IceAgeNow
'Cap and Trade Is Dead'
Wall Street Journal
So declares Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, taking a few minutes away from a Thanksgiving retreat with his family. “Ninety-five percent of the nails were in the coffin prior to this week. Now they are all in.” If any politician might be qualified to offer last rites, it would be Mr. Inhofe. The top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee has spent the past decade in the thick of Washington’s climate fight. He’s seen the back of three cap-and-trade bills, rode herd on an overweening Environmental Protection Agency, and steadfastly insisted that global researchers were “cooking” the science behind man-made global warming. This week he’s looking prescient. The more than 3,000 emails and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have found their way to the Internet have blown the lid off the “science” of manmade global warming. CRU is a nerve center for many of those researchers who have authored the United Nations’ global warming reports and fueled the political movement to regulate carbon. Their correspondence show a claque of scientists massaging data to make it fit their theories, squelching scientists who disagreed, punishing academic journals that didn’t toe the apocalyptic line, and hiding their work from public view. “It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow,” glumly wrote George Monbiot, a U.K. writer who has been among the fiercest warming alarmists. The documents “could scarcely be more damaging.” And that’s from a believer. This scandal has real implications. Mr. Inhofe notes that international and U.S. efforts to regulate carbon were already on the ropes. The growing fear of Democrats and environmentalists is that the CRU uproar will prove a tipping point, and mark a permanent end to those ambitions. Internationally, world leaders finally acknowledged that the recession has sapped them of their political power to impose devastating new carbon-restrictions. China and India are clear they won’t join the West in an economic suicide pact. Next month’s summit in Copenhagen is a bust. Instead of producing legally binding agreements, it will be dogged by queries about the legitimacy of the scientists who wrote the reports that form its basis. The next opportunity to get international agreement is in Mexico City, 2010—a U.S. election year. Democrats were already publicly acknowledging there will be no domestic climate legislation in 2009 and privately acknowledging their great unease at passing a huge energy tax on Americans headed for a midterm vote. Add to that the CRU scandal, which pivots the focus to potential fraud. Republicans are launching investigations, and the pressure is building on Democrats to hold hearings, since climate scientists were funded with U.S. taxpayer dollars. Mr. Inhofe’s office this week sent letters to federal agencies and outside scientists warning them not to delete their own CRU-related emails and documents, which may also be subject to Freedom of Information requests. Polls show a public already losing belief in the theory of man-made global warming, and skeptics are now on the offense. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell argues this scandal gives added cover to Blue Dogs and other Democrats who were already reluctant to buck the public’s will and vote for climate legislation. And with Republicans set to pick up seats, Mr. Ebell adds, “By 2011 there will hopefully be even fewer members who support this. We may be close to having it permanently stymied.” Continued U.S. failure to act makes an international agreement to replace Kyoto (which expires in 2012) a harder sell. There’s still the EPA, which is preparing an “endangerment finding” that would allow it to regulate carbon on the grounds it is a danger to public health. It is here the emails might have the most direct effect. The agency has said repeatedly that it based its finding on the U.N. science—which is now at issue. The scandal puts new pressure on the EPA to accede to growing demands to make public the scientific basis of its actions. Mr. Inhofe goes so far as to suggest that the agency might not now issue the finding. “The president knows how punitive this will be; he’s never wanted to do it through [the EPA] because that’s all on him.” The EPA was already out on a legal limb with its finding, and Mr. Inhofe argues that if it does go ahead, the CRU disclosure guarantees court limbo. “The way the far left used to stop us is to file lawsuits and stall and stall. We’ll do the same thing.” Still, if this Democratic Washington has demonstrated anything, it’s that ideology often trumps common sense. Egged on by the left, dug in to their position, Democrats might plow ahead. They’d be better off acknowledging that the only “consensus” right now is that the world needs to start over on climate “science.” Write to kim@wsj.comSource
Climategate merchandise: WEAR THE DECLINE
By Tim Blair
“What really annoys me about this whole thing,” comments Chilly in Connecticut, “is that it’s been out there for 24 hours already, and I still can’t find anyplace to buy a Hide the Decline t-shirt.” You can now, Chilly:
Also available: mugs, bags, aprons and so on. This could lead to a whole line of fashionable denialist – or correctivist – wear. Meanwhile, here’s a leftist’s view of the CRU email scandal:
If this is revealed to be motivated by a wish to derail political action at Copenhagen or what may come after, those responsible have committed crimes against humanity.
An insider may face the firing squad … when solar rifles are invented. UPDATE. Waaah! Waaaaaah! Raymond T. Pierrehumbert is one upset academic:
This is a criminal act of vandalism and of harassment of a group of scientists that are only going about their business doing science. It represents a whole new escalation in the war on climate scientists who are only trying to get at the truth … This illegal act of cyber-terrorism against a climate scientist (and I don’t think that’s too strong a word) is ominous and frightening. What next? Deliberate monkeying with data on servers? Insertion of bugs into climate models? Or at the next level, since the forces of darkness have moved to illegal operations, will we all have to get bodyguards to do climate science?
He says “deliberate monkeying with data” as though it’s a bad thing. Keep on hiding the decline, Raymond. UPDATE II. Graham Readfearn provides “some perspective and context on this story” by using the word “illegal” four times. I prefer the term “civil disobedience”. UPDATE III. Previously from Andrew Revkin, whose NYT blog published Pierrehumbert’s exquisite howl:
The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.
A new slogan for the NYT: “All the news that is intended for the public eye.” Michael Goldfarb responds: “Of course, when the choice is between publishing classified information that might endanger the lives of U.S. troops in the field or intelligence programs vital to national security, that information is published without hesitation …” Another reason Revkin would prefer that the emails remain concealed: Revkin’s friendly missives are among them. Michael Mann calls him “Andy”. UPDATE IV. Paul Connor, currently starving himself because he thinks the weather is wrong, says breaking laws is just fine, especially when climate matters are involved. So our whistle-blower is off the hook.
Statistics con the final nail in Rudd’s climate change coffin
‘Until last week, Bernard Madoff was considered biggest fraud in world history’ — now it’s ClimateGate
By Piers Akerman
UNTIL last Friday, Wall Street’s scammer Bernard Madoff was considered the biggest fraud in world history, having taken his greedy clients for an estimated $US64.8 billion. Madoff’s fraud has been put in the shade however by the extraordinary web of scandal which has been revealed by leaked emails from the Hadley Centre (University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit) over the last few days, which certainly appear to demonstrate that a group of the most prominent scientists advising the United Nations on global warming have systematically manipulated data to support their argument that global warming is both genuine and caused by humans. Apart from a weak claim the leaked material was “out of context”, there was no denial of the authenticity of the 3000-plus documents and 61 megabites of hacked data and emails put on the net on the weekend. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has called climate change the greatest moral issue facing the world, would be wise to withdraw the ETS Bill before the Senate or risk looking an even greater idiot if the emails can’t be refuted. He will be shown to have recklessly endangered the national economy by relying on falsified data to run his fear and smear campaign against credible critics and make his extravagant claims of global disaster. Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull also should draw breath and consider the basis of his support for the ETS as the rest of the world looks into Climategate and considers how the UN was able to bankroll what appears a rogue group of climate scientists hell-bent on justifying their claims with dodgy data. Recently, Britain’s new high commissioner to Australia, the politico Baroness Valerie Amos, introduced herself to Canberra with an address at the National Press Club at which she lectured Australians over their growing reluctance to embrace the accepted wisdom on global warming. “I have been surprised that the science itself is being questioned,” she said. “These are things where there have been debates over a long period of time in other countries and where we have reached conclusions and moved on. “In the UK, there is a degree of political consensus about what in broad terms needs to be done. There is a lot of debate about how we do it. You would certainly not see on a daily basis . . . the kind of negative reporting that you have here,” she thundered. As the baroness now wipes egg from her face, she might think it is a pity there was not more negative reporting earlier in the UK, and she and her Labor government would not look as stupid as they do now. Baroness Amos might tell Australia what her prime minister, Gordon Brown, plans to do about this scandal. A full investigation is clearly needed, but after that what? As those involved have not denied the evidence presented in the leaked emails, and presuming they would have, if they could have, shown they did not falsify and manipulate data to satisfy what is now a political agenda, their scientific reputations must remain under a cloud. Rudd Labor’s propaganda machine is in overdrive presenting doomsday scenarios which now appear to be totally baseless. It would be an absolute folly for the Copenhagen meeting to continue before there are answers to all the questions raised by Climategate, and an even greater foolishness for the Opposition to back the Government’s ETS, based as it is on manipulated data. Rudd recently claimed that those who don’t agree with the global warming theory were “deniers”, but it now seems they were just people who weren’t ready to be easily fooled.
Source ht: Climate Depot
WarmerGate: Lord Lawson calls for inquiry into global warming data 'manipulation'
Lord Lawson, the former UK chancellor, has called for an independent inquiry into claims that leading climate change scientists manipulated data to strengthen the case for man-made global warming.
By Matthew Moore
Thousands of emails and documents stolen from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and posted online indicate that researchers massaged figures to mask the fact that world temperatures have been declining in recent years. This morning Lord Lawson, who has reinvented himself as a prominent climate change sceptic since leaving front line politics, demanded that the apparent deception be fully investigated. He claimed that the credibility of the university’s world-renowned Climatic Research Unit – and British science – were under threat. “They should set up a public inquiry under someone who is totally respected and get to the truth,” he told the BBC Radio Four Today programme. “If there’s an explanation for what’s going on they can make that explanation.” Around 1,000 emails and 3,000 documents were stolen from UEA computers by hackers last week and uploaded on to a Russian server before circulating on websites run by climate change sceptics. Some of the correspondence indicates that the manipulation of data was widespread among global warming researchers. One of the emails under scrutiny, written by Phil Jones, the centre’s director, in 1999, reads: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” Prof Jones has insisted that he used the word “trick” to mean a “clever thing to do”, rather than to indicate deception. He has denied manipulating data. Another scientist whose name appears in the documents accused the hackers of attempting to undermine the drive for a global consensus at next month’s Copenhagen summit. Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research accused climate change sceptics of cherry-picking the documents and taking them out of context. Meanwhile, hopes that a legally binding treaty on cutting emissions will be agreed at Copenhagen have been boosted by the news that more than 60 world leaders plan to attend. Last week Lord Lawson, who served as chancellor for six years under Margaret Thatcher, told The Daily Telegraph that he planned to establish a think tank to challenge the consensus that drastic action is needed to combat global warming.
Related Article: Climate scientists accused of ‘manipulating data’
Whistler set to smash November snowfall record
By Randy Shore, Vancouver Sun
Whistler Blackcomb ski resort is only centimetres away from breaking the record for recorded snowfall in November with 12 days still to go in the month.
The measured snowfall as of Wednesday morning was 362 centimetres, about double the average for the month (148 cm) and just one or two days of snow away from the record of 416 cm.
The Whistler Mountain forecast for Wednesday night and Thursday morning predicted 30 to 40 cm of snow in the alpine with mountaintop winds gusting to 110 km/h.
Though Blackcomb remains closed, Whistler Mountain opened Nov. 14, nearly two weeks before the official opening date of Nov. 26. Mid-mountain runs and lifts are operating daily, but blizzard conditions have prevented operations crews from even entering the alpine area, let alone preparing it for skiing, said Whistler Blackcomb spokeswoman Tabetha Boot.
“We will go over the record, probably by quite a bit,” said Boot. “The mid-mountain area is marked and we sweep and check that daily, especially when there is heavy snow.”
The challenge of the alpine is getting into the alpine,” she said. “We’ve had such blizzard-like conditions that ops crews haven’t physically been able to get there.”
It will take several days to mark boundaries, dig out buried lifts and complete avalanche mitigation after the current cycle of heavy snow eases before the area will be open for guests.
“We restrict access to the alpine during periods of intense snowfall,” said Whistler Mountain avalanche forecaster Anton Horvath. “Heavy accumulations create a bigger volume of snow that could be entrained in an avalanche, so they will be bigger and run farther.”
Making the area safe for skiers involves a combination of hurling explosives from helicopters, compression tests to detect weakness and ski testing, Horvath said.
“Usually we can do that in half a day,” he said. But the balance of the work – marking hazards and boundaries and digging out equipment – will take a couple of days of good weather to complete.
The Whistler Village Gondola, Franz’s chair, Big Red Express and Emerald Express are operational. The Creekside Gondola and Garbanzo Express lift are scheduled to open for this weekend.
Plenty of avid skiers are already getting some early turns in, according to a release from Whistler Blackcomb.
“I’ve skied here for over 15 years and I’ve never seen this much snow so early in a season, it seems like every day’s snowfall is topping the last,” said Stephen Butt, communications coordinator and voice of the Snow Phone for Whistler Blackcomb . “We have already received one third of our average annual snowfall for the entire season and it’s only four days into the season, it’s unbelievable!”
rshore@vancouversun.com
Source
Stop promoting the global warming myth
Incredibly, there are still pundits like Ann McFeatters promoting the human-caused, carbon dioxide-caused, global warming myth. They demand governmental action to limit human carbon dioxide emissions. Why? Some are just naive. Some are self-anointed environmentalists like Al Gore, taking financial or political positions that will keep them employed or fabulously wealthy if carbon dioxide emissions are politically controlled. Scientific conclusions are not determined by vague, political claims of scientific consensus, but by hard, reproducible facts. Saying most scientists agree that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions affect global temperatures is simply pre-empting honest analyses. Many scientists and hard data suggest the earth may actually be cooling, as was generally accepted just 30 years ago. There is no scientific evidence that human activity produces carbon dioxide emissions sufficient to affect global temperatures. Water vapor is by far the predominant greenhouse gas. Atmospheric water vapor concentration ranges up to 4 percent, lower at the poles. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from all sources is only 0.038 percent. Human contribution to this clearly is insignificant in affecting global temperature. When a political, quasi-scientific organization like the Environmental Protection Agency promotes man-caused global warming, it’s responding to political pressure, not giving scientific analysis. Organizations, including NASA, have been caught replacing October data with September data to create the illusion of warming. Temperature measuring stations have been positioned near air-conditioner units to falsify data. Claims of scientific evidence are bogus unless supported by incontrovertible analysis. The term “global warming” is being replaced by “climate change.” Why? Because even politicians know data from the past decade suggests the earth is cooling. However, dishonest politicians and scientists have political and financial interest in promoting the myth. Let’s stop blindly accepting their propaganda as reality and look at facts. Feel free to think! Marvin P. Mathiak Knoxville
Gore offers you a choice between life and death
About “Our Choice”
By Tom Nelson
On a page by itself, we find this inside the front cover of Al Gore’s latest climate fraud promotion book:
I’m offering you the choice of life or death. You can choose either blessings or curses.
–Deuteronomy Chapter 30, Verse 19
Let’s imagine that a Republican former vice president (say Dan Quayle or Dick Cheney) authored a similar book telling us that apocalypse was at hand unless we shoveled massive amounts of public money toward companies they’ve heavily invested in. Let’s say the Republican-authored book also prominently featured the Bible verse above, suggesting that Quayle or Cheney was offering the reader the choice between life of death.
In the scenario above, would the mainstream media give Quayle or Cheney with the same respect and free book promotion airtime that Gore has received in recent weeks?
Amazon.com: Our Choice: Review by Al Gore’s business partner John Doerr
My daughter said “Dad, your generation created this problem. You’d better fix it.” Our Choice is the Field Guide to fixing the climate crisis, a set of solutions worthy of your consideration.
Read this book. If you must, burn (and sequester) the others. And recycle the rest!
When mankind confronts and conquers the climate crisis it will be because one man made Our Choice clear.
2007: YouTube – John Doerr cries
At the end of the Kleiner Perkins partner’s presentation at TED, about the perils of climate change, he chokes up.
Update: Also see Gore’s alarmist book cover here.
Confoundingly, the climate isn't sticking to the script
Vancouver Sun
In describing the book Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, by James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore, Stephen Hume disseminates the idea that a conspiracy of special interests has waged a PR campaign against scientific claims of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming. My first reaction was, “He must be joking.” Never in history has a scientific subject received such favourable acceptance from the media. Indeed, AGW skeptics are regarded as crackpots and “deniers.”The problem with AGW is that the climate isn’t sticking to the script laid out by the models prepared by global-warming enthusiasts. The Earth is getting colder, not warmer.This is not data from some PR arm of the oil industry but from the four agencies that track global temperatures: the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, the Christy Group at the University of Alabama and Remote Sensing Systems in California. All agree that the Earth’s temperature cooled in 2007 by 0.7 degrees C., the fastest drop on record. There has been no warming for the last nine years.To characterize legitimate scientists who don’t blindly accept global warming as gospel as perpetrators of a PR campaign does a grave disservice to honest debate.For more technical information on solar activity, check out the website http://wattsupwiththat.com. And, for great insight into how global cooling can be significantly more dangerous to humans than global warming, I recommend the book Cool It, by Bjorn Lomborg.Dick DraperWhistler