Climate changes - A Short Exploration of Agenda Driven "Science"

For the past two or three years the media and a number of politicians have been doomsday prophesying the imminent danger we face from global warming. Now we're being told to expect global cooling? COME ON!

Anyone who reads my work knows that I'm not sold on this notion of "man-made global warming." Do I believe we need to hold people and industry accountable to make sure that they aren't poisoning the ground, water, and air with their wastes? Yes. Do I believe that we should be good stewards of the natural resources that we have? Yes. Do I believe that mankind, short of total and complete nuclear holocaust, can devastate the planet? No, and I'm not so sure that even nuclear war would obliterate the world. Life as we know it, perhaps, but Planet Earth, Mother Terra, would continue.

I digress.

Al Gore was recently given a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on making people aware of man-made global warming. There are articles upon articles about the consequences of the warming of the planet, everything from an increase in the number of teen marriages and pregnancies to a decline in the number of teen marriages and pregnancies, rises in the populations of polar bears to declining populations of polar bears, the list is incredible of people saying that the same things will or won't happen because of global warming. I said at the time and I still maintain that Gore is a charlatan out for nothing more than staying in the limelight and fattening his own wallet.

And now we're faced with another immanent and pending problem. That's right, folks, Global Cooling is coming soon to a city near you.

Though arguments presently rage over the issue of climate change, only one side is getting the lion’s share of the publicity. The global warmists win hands down on that score. The realists’ argument is plainly not fashionable. It does not win votes, it does not win business and it’s certainly not appealing to the mass media!

That the Earth’s climate is undergoing change is without question. As to its reasons, and its history, they are the nubs of the arguments posed by both the short-term pro-global warming pundits and those who take a longer view.

Believe it or not, in the not-too-distant future, this Earth is in for a big freeze—guaranteed! But it will not be due to any of the long-term cyclical changes that periodically contribute to either a rise or fall in the Earth’s temperature. This freeze will, indeed, be brought on by the hand of man! More of that later.

Take away the intense politics surrounding the global warming debate, take away the self-interest groups, business interests, legal, bureaucratic and mass media influences that all seek to make a buck out of driving public hysteria over the fads and fashions of the age, and pure science—given the history of cyclical changes in the Earth’s temperatures—reveals that man has little influence on the overall surface temperature of the Earth. Man’s influence on temperature is localized at best.

Ok, let's all let out a huge collective sigh of "oh crap."

No, really, take a moment and let's all let out a collective sigh.

Ready?

"Oh, crap."

Okay.

Let's try to look at this objectively, putting aside our political leanings for just a bit and going back to our earth science classes back in the days before political correctness invaded the classrooms. Let's go back to science classes that were actually based on, you know, science. In the early days of our planet, it was a huge molten ball of lava spinning around the sun and cooling over a period of several million years, forming the earth's crust. Eon's passed, and due largely to volcanic activity, our atmosphere was formed. More eon's pass, and life begins, very small life first, moving on to bigger and bigger life, all this time, it's still HOT on Planet Earth, third rock from the Sun. More time passes, there are dinosaurs walking on the face of the Earth, big old lizards like brontosaurus, t-rex, velociraptor, triceratops, so on and so forth. Still a very, very hot climate. Somewhere along the way, a meteor lands in the Gulf of Mexico, possibly the cause of the decline of the dinosaur. Time passes more, there are ice ages, followed by more warm periods, more cooling periods, man arrives on the planet at some point during these transitions, and lo and behold, the Earth continues to warm and cool through the millennia, both before and after the arrival of humanity.

And now, several thousand years after the advent of civilization, we, mankind, are trying to take credit for something that we cannot do: control the weather.

Politics and science, real science, lie at odds with each other in their purpose and intent. Science answering to politicians creates skewed results in order to justify a continuation of funding for research.

Pure science is no longer there, unless you look to young children with their chemistry sets, magnifying glasses, microscopes, and glass slides, and foaming volcano experiments. Science today has become so entrenched in playing politics that it's no longer an unbiased, analytical process. The research process has become so dependent upon government and industrial funding that scientists are often left at the mercy of political or commercial agenda and real findings are not presented in their final reports.

Even medical examiners are now being ordered by judges to withhold findings in their autopsies. This trend is even shown in food research. Several years back, everyone was told about the cholesterol content of eggs. It reached a point where egg sales were taking a tremendous hit, and low and behold there was a campaign presented to show the benefits of eating eggs. Eggs were popular again. We've also been told about how introducing oatmeal into our diets can decrease cholesterol. There is also research that shows that it may not be the wonder food that it was promised to be.

And now we're faced with the prospect of global cooling. Global warming was just getting warmed up as an industry, but now we're told that global cooling is the real threat to our existence as a species. Perhaps, however, there is another culprit lurking in the shadows that threatens us. Perhaps there is something lurking out there that hasn't been addressed because we're too busy listening to one side say one thing and then the other side says something else. Perhaps, possibly, the real culprit is junk science that is being spoon fed to the world under the guise of actual research, junk science that exists for the sole purpose of feeding political agendas and keeping the populace of the world in a state of confusion so that they don't know what to believe.

Is it possible that we, as a society of humanity as a whole, can reach a point where we can demand that the scientific community be given leeway to actually discover things rather than to bombard us with contradictions?

Contradictions can not exist. Neither can a falsehood in the light of fact.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man


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400 Scientists Dispute Man Made Global Warming Claims

400 Scientists Dispute Man Made Global Warming Claims

Let me start with what caught my eye first.

The over 400 skeptical scientists featured in this new report outnumber by nearly eight times the number of scientists who participated in the 2007 UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers. The notion of “hundreds” or “thousands” of UN scientists agreeing to a scientific statement does not hold up to scrutiny. (See report debunking “consensus” LINK) Recent research by Australian climate data analyst Dr. John McLean revealed that the IPCC’s peer-review process for the Summary for Policymakers leaves much to be desired. (LINK)

52 scientists participated in the UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers, stating that there was a "consensus" that determined that global warming was man made and yet 400 scientists disagree.

This was just released from the U.S. Senate Committee Environment and Public Works.

This blockbuster Senate report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. This new “consensus busters” report is poised to redefine the debate.

It gets worse, or better, depending on your beliefs.

Any time anyone affiliated with the government tells you "the debate is over," hang on to your wallet. Taxes (i.e, theft of your money by your government) are about to be imposed.

One of the first things they teach you in science classes is that there is no such thing as something being proven as a fact. There are only hypotheses that have been tested and stand as the basis of what we know unless and until they are disproved.

What we DO know, from the data and evidence collected, is what I have been harping on and saying and spouting for longer ago than I wish to remember. The Earth goes through periods of warming and cooling. There are times when it is WARMER (such as when T-Rex and the gang roamed the Earth) and times when it is COOLER (this would be the time period that Ug the caveman lived with his wife Ugli, and he spent the day hunting woolly mammoths so that she could cook a mammoth steak for dinner and make woolly mammoth clothes for the Uglings).

Warm periods...and COLD periods...

Right now we're between two cold periods, so that would lead us where, by using logic as our guide in developing a rational argument that isn't based on political hype and media hysteria? Yes, Johnny, that would lead us into a WARM period.

I theorized long ago while sitting in philosophy class in college (and probably concentrating more on the hot little brunette behind me than on the lecture, but that's just my mind rambling so let's just pretend I didn't mention that) that everything in the Universe operates on frequency ranges (as a telecommunications contractor, frequency is something I deal with from time to time). It hit me like a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky. My professor could tell I had had an epiphany, evidently, because he looked at me with this rather odd smile on his face that said "you've just stumbled on to one of the great truths of the Universe." I'm still waiting for someone with a bit more mathematical skill (OK, a lot more mathematical skill) to validate my hypothesis, but that was the thought that sprang into my mind.

Let me explain in a little more coherent way. Suppose you drew a straight line and then superimposed a sine wave over the line. It would look something like this:



Now, at the top of the wave, you could put "hot period," and at the bottom part of the wave, you could put "cold period," adjust the wavelength to represent the correct number of years, and voila, you have a frequency chart showing the Earth going through cycles of global warming and global cooling. As you look over the number of CENTURIES involved in the global cycles of warming and cooling, it would be logical to conclude that Man has made about as much difference on the temperature of Planet Earth as dinosaur farts did. In fact, I'm not the only one who thinks this way:

The bottom line is this: If you want to do something real about Global Warming, let's begin with removing politics from science. We can't continue to demand that scientists produce something by specific deadlines in order to justify their research. When we put that kind of political pressure on our scientists, we wind up with information that is geared toward telling the politicians what they want to hear rather than allowing the data and research to bear the true fruit of what the evidence shows. We wind up with scam artists like Al Gore preaching gloom and doom to us in order to have us buy "carbon credits" so that he can make a profit from it when people go out and buy trees from the companies he and other doomsday prophets are invested in.

Is this a politically correct way of thinking? No. It's a realistic way of thinking. Political correctness is an indoctrination into thinking like a group of people want you to think, rather than using your own rational mind to come to a conclusion based upon fact rather than feeling. If you think I'm wrong about how politics influences science, I'm going to leave you with this little reminder from Newsweek about global COOLING from 1975:

The Cooling World
Newsweek, April 28, 1975

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

Feel free to use your own minds to think about this, rationally. Just remember, as you do, that 400 scientists have come out denouncing Al Gore's 52 scientists and their "Inconvenient Truth."

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man


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"why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings"

I have long maintained that reporters and news journalists should do one thing: present information without putting their opinions into it.

All too often, in my opinion, news journalists and reporters allow their own personal biases and their egos to creep into their writing or reporting, using their medium to sway public opinion.

Swaying opinion is not the job of the media.

The job of the media is to report the facts as they become available.

How many people out there realize, just for instance, that the Spanish-American War at the turn of the twentieth century was media driven? The New York Journal created the war with their "reporting" and sent our nation into war with the Kingdom of Spain.

Have things really changed so much over the past century? It doesn't seem to be the case. "Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it." We are a nation doomed. Why? Because we still allow ourselves to fall victim to "yellow journalism."

Isn't it HOT outside today? I was just outside a bit ago and saw a dog looking at a cat WISHING it was cool enough that he could chase it. Anywhere you go in the continental United States today you'll find one common thing going on: it's damned hot outside. The news is FULL of stories about the heat, about global warming, about the high temperatures, so forth and so on.

Global warming.

I'm going to let you all in on a little secret, something that you may not realize because the media CERTAINLY seems to have overlooked it. Ready? This is startling and may shock you, so brace yourself. It's AUGUST. It's the middle of SUMMER. OF COURSE it's going to be hot. I hear people my age saying all the time "I don't remember it being this damned hot when I was younger." Of course you don't, when you were younger you could handle the heat better and didn't give two hoots in hell whether it was hot or not you were going to do what you were going to do and that was that.

But the media and certain of our politicians are in a virtual FEEDING frenzy trying to convince you that YOU are the reason that things are getting hotter.

Now, before you start rolling your eyes at me, I will confess that I do believe that there is such a thing as global warming. I also believe in another concept called global cooling. Why? Ask any GOOD geologist or paleontologist and he'll tell you why. The Earth goes through cycles of heating and cooling. Let me give you two PRIME examples, and I'll put them into concepts that the general public can relate to.

Remember the Jurassic Park movies? Scientists had used genetic engineering to recreate dinosaurs. Do dinosaurs live where it's cool? No, so the dinosaurs had to be created on islands along the equator. The equator is the middle of the earth, from north to south, and the place where the planet is closest to the sun. Why did they choose the equator? Why not, oh, say, the Everglades? The southern tip of Florida, hot as it is in the summer, is not close enough to the temperature of the earth at the time OF the dinosaurs.

Remember the movie Ice Age? My kids loved that movie. Ask yourself this, though. Can you imagine saber tooth tigers or wooly mammoths vacationing in Hawaii? Cancun? I don't think so. Why? Too damned hot. They were creatures best fitted for cold weather.

Periods of global warming, periods of global cooling. How many of you know that Mars is undergoing global warming as well? Both Earth and Mars are coming out of ice ages, ours being what is called a "little ice age."

We, humans, have less impact on this than the alarmists would have you believe, and any time something comes out contrary to what the left wishes to spoon feed you, it's attacked.

From Newsweek: (Via memeorandum)

Greenhouse Simplicities

By Robert J. Samuelson
Newsweek

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week's NEWSWEEK cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It's an object lesson of how viewing the world as "good guys vs. bad guys" can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story. Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.

If you missed NEWSWEEK's story, here's the gist. A "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change." This "denial machine" has obstructed action against global warming and is still "running at full throttle." The story's thrust: discredit the "denial machine," and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.

So Samuelson knows better than scientists.

Right.

HE ADMITS BIAS in the opening statement of his article. That is a presentation of the facts?

Here is a bit FROM that "misleading" article.

The Truth About Denial

Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine

By Sharon Begley
Newsweek

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."

Honestly I fail to see what Samuelson is whining about in his article. It seems to me that the original article was written with enough leftist slant that nothing further needed to be said to claim the opposite of what the article seems, at first glance, to discuss.

Yellow journalism at it's finest, I tell you. I'm sure Al Gore is sitting somewhere in one of his big ass houses, riding in an SUV, or flying around in a private jet somewhere feeling very proud indeed.

We're an arrogant lot, and sometimes we have to have that pointed out to us. We may take offense at it when it happens, but by God that doesn't make it any less true. Here's one such instance of it being pointed out. I happen to very much agree.

Mark Steyn: Warm-mongers and cheeseburger imperialists

MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist

Something rather odd happened the other day. If you go to NASA's Web site and look at the "U.S. surface air temperature" rankings for the lower 48 states, you might notice that something has changed.

Then again, you might not. They're not issuing any press releases about it. But they have quietly revised their All-Time Hit Parade for U.S. temperatures. The "hottest year on record" is no longer 1998, but 1934. Another alleged swelterer, the year 2001, has now dropped out of the Top 10 altogether, and most of the rest of the 21st century – 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 – plummeted even lower down the Hot 100. In fact, every supposedly hot year from the Nineties and this decade has had its temperature rating reduced. Four of America's Top 10 hottest years turn out to be from the 1930s, that notorious decade when we all drove around in huge SUVs with the air-conditioning on full-blast. If climate change is, as Al Gore says, the most important issue anyone's ever faced in the history of anything ever, then Franklin Roosevelt didn't have a word to say about it.

And yet we survived.

So why is 1998 no longer America's record-breaker? Because a very diligent fellow named Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.com labored long and hard to prove there was a bug in NASA's handling of the raw data. He then notified the scientists responsible and received an acknowledgment that the mistake was an "oversight" that would be corrected in the next "data refresh." The reply was almost as cool as the revised chart listings.

[...]

As Pogo said, way back in the 1971 Earth Day edition of a then-famous comic strip, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Even when we don't do anything: In the post-imperial age, powerful nations no longer have to invade and kill. Simply by driving a Chevy Suburban, we can make the oceans rise and wipe the distant Maldive Islands off the face of the Earth. This is a kind of malignant narcissism so ingrained it's now taught in our grade schools. Which may be why, even when the New Republic's diarist goes to Iraq and meets the real enemy, he still assumes it's us.

Having said all of that, I'll say this, leaving this posting with the source of my title for this piece. Lewis Carroll was an amazing wordsmith, and could show us through his writings how words can be used to manipulate, to compel, and to convince. If you remember reading Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, or watching the Disneyized version Alice in Wonderland, you'll immediately recognize the source of my title for today. If not, for the sheer amusement of reading the works of one of the great masters, I'm including The Walrus and the Carpenter:

The Walrus and The Carpenter

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.


The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead--
There were no birds to fly.


The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"


"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.


"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."


The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.


But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.


Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.


"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."


"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.


"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."


"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?

"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"


"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"


"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.


"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

Don't be oysters, people.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man

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