timeimmortal

mike b writes in with his thoughts on the 31,000 scientists who recently put forth a petition rejecting the concept of anthropogenic global warming and urging the U.S. government not to adopt or ratify the Kyoto protocols or any agreement that is derivative thereof.

Simply put.

Why haven’t these scientists spoken up before? Because they quietly go about their day to day doing GOOD science. Good, refereed, peer-reviewed science. The Global warming people are shrill, loud, and misinformed….Earth History has demonstrated that neither climate nor sea level are constant, two important and completely erroneous precepts of the GW argument. Now we scientists are just fed up at the hot air.

I have to admit that I’ve always been skeptical when people raise alarms over the concept of climate change — given that I live in Alberta, I’m quite used to the idea, actually. The Earth’s climate is not a static thing, and it’s preposterous to argue against changes in it.

Now, the obvious rejoinder might be to point out that it’s not the fact that change happens, but the quality and nature of the changes that are happening that are the real issue for climate change alarmists.

Which would, I suppose, be a legitimate argument, if in fact there were real, demonstrably harmful shifts happening in Earth’s climate. There is not exactly a great body of evidence for this, and what little evidence may exist more or less vanishes with the observation that mike b makes above: when considered in the context of history, what changes have been observed are, in essence, normal. The Earth has had periods where its average temperature has been higher than it is now, and the Earth has also had periods where the average temperature has been lower than it is now.

Within recent history, the global average temperature is basically at where it was a decade ago, and that same average temperature is expected to drop. That drop will probably be followed, at some point, by a rise. That is because such a thing as the global average temperature, imprecise metric of the relative “health” of the ecosystem that it is in the first place, fluctuates over time. Climate does as well, and what fluctuations in climate have been perceived of late seem to be within normal parameters.

The alarmism over these apparent non-issues is not driven by good science as much as it is by groupthink and backslapping. Now other scientists, those not so interested in harvesting a few “green” dollars along the way methinks, are speaking out against the alarmism, and it’s a good thing.

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

The list of only those scientists whose (last) names begin with ‘K’ has 1,495 entries. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that is a bit more than half the number of scientists who produced the latest IPCC report, no? And there are twenty-five more letters in the alphabet.

Related: It’s U.S. data, but April 2008 was fully one degree (F) colder than average in America, which makes it the coldest April on record in the last 11 years.

It’s still funny…

Someone tell me — have the global warming alarmists jumped the shark yet?

Update: Yes, it has.

I mean, global average temperatures have more or less returned, here in 2008, to their 1998 levels, which means (in essence) that there has been no net global warming over the last decade.

And it seems that the latest predictions indicate that global temperature is expected to fall for at least another decade.

But don’t worry, O Reader. This all just underscores the dire threat that global warming presents to humanity, and we should all be very afraid. After ten years, temperatures will skyrocket! Carbon taxes! NOW!

It seems that Al Gore borrowed a sequence from the global warming propaganda flick movie The Day After Tomorrow for his own movie/presentation, . The sequence in particular was a “flyby” of ostensibly melting icecaps.

The woman in charge of CGI for The Day After Tomorrow evidently admitted that her department allowed Gore to use the sequence. Of course, one wonders why Gore needed to use it in the first place? Did the situation “on the ground” — i.e. in the real ice caps, not the CG ones — not reflect the picture of “reality” that Gore was attempting to paint?

Just in time for the commemoration of Lenin’s birthday Earth Day, the weather saw fit to furnish Edmonton with several inches of snow.

I love snow, and I certainly don’t mind the cold. Hey, it’s a part of life here in Alberta — when one lives this far north, one has to at least grant that such odd turns in the weather are possible. Yes, ten inches of snow and bitterly cold winds aren’t exactly what one expects from April weather. Equally, though, they aren’t unheard of.

Tomorrow, there is evidently supposed to be something at an Edmonton park — Hawrelak Park, I think — to do with Earth Day, and presumably that event will be a vehicle for people to discuss the imminent threat of global warming. If, that is, the event doesn’t get canceled on account of the weather.

Count Roland invokes Neil Postman’s classic work in his response to this article.

Neil Postman, in various books but especially Technopoly, makes a similar argument about technology and how it and ‘scientism‘ have become our civil Religion. One of my favourite anecdotes is the student who could not declare a room to be hot before consulting the thermostat.

Socrates said it 2500 years ago that writing would impoverish humanity, as it would lead to a weakening of memory. Maybe it has, but likely not since writing can help us discover and adapt beyond one man’s lifetime work. But the kernel of truth is that every technology we develop changes us, and not necessarily for the better. Our trust in technology and in ‘they’ is as irrational as the faith we hold, if secularist claims about religious faith are to be beleived (they are not), and more irrational than the actual faith claims and their rational justifications especially in light of the ends to which they are going. GPS may save time on a temporal shipment; our faith has the telos of our immortal souls and the eternal situation in which they end.

What is increasingly troubling is that the gap between those who know (in a full sense) the technology and those who use it is widening. For example, thirty years ago most men could fix their own cars — they were simple nough to understand — or at least know if the mechanic was being less than honest, but today most drivers can not fix many problems because cars have become more technical. Yet, we seem to be putting more trust in said technologies. Trusting more what one understands less of, as a society, is irrational insofar as it makes us more vulnerable to personal and corporate catastrophe — a broken car on a lonely highway in winter, a terrorist attack using a Tandy 3000 on our power network. That is the opposite thrust to what Christians strive to do — trust more as we understand more. Now, we can never fully understand God and a childlike (NOT childISH) faith is important, but a child’s most important question is ‘why?’ and we seek to find the answer to that question about God and about creation. Blind faith in what ‘they’ tell us is right is not mainstream Christianity. Mainstream Christianity is fides quearum intellectum — faith seeking understanding — and while we,in sin, can follow the wrong path, a sincere journey will eventually take us towards the Truth. Modern society’s faith in ‘they’ — usually scientists or media-political elites — is indicative of cult (in the contemporary sense) behaviour.

Chesterton was so right, but then again, aren’t we Christians just ignorant fools? Everyone is, but sometimes God graces us with wisdom — I suspect Chesterton would have told the two mothers to cut the child in half, too.

Roland hints at a rather curious thing — the underlying paganism in atheism (or, more broadly, secularism).

Even a cursory look at history should inform the reader that, for as long as humanity has had any semblance of society (even down to the tribal level), humanity has had Religion. The act of worshipping is an intrinsic aspect of human nature, and the philosophers of atheism have it exactly wrong. The question is not, as some might suppose, whether we shall worship; the question is what we shall worship.

For example, Daniel Dennett would ultimately suggest that we worship the meaty organ located an inch or two behind our eyes, and its capacity for reason and rational thought. Other secular categories of worship include the environment (through movements such as radical global warming/climate change alarmism) and animals (through movements such as PETA and other rabid animal rights organizations), the sexual organs and the sexual act, money, power, technology (which we are discussing here), and Barrack Hussein Obama. Most adherents of these movements and philosophies might not regard their participation in them as being an act of worship, but fundamentally that is what it distills down to, personal opinions nonwithstanding.

In other words: formal, ardently disbelieving atheism is but a temporary interlude between (in the West at least) Christianity and whatever religion will supplant Christianity, or between old Christianity and a new, resurgent Christianity.

Humanity’s reliance on — and increasing credulousness in the face of — technology, however, seems poised to continue and to worsen. Roland is exactly right in noting the widening gap between the typical user’s understanding of the complexity of a particular piece of technology and the actual complexity of that technology. Think for just a moment, O Reader, about the last time someone — if not yourself, mind — pointed at a computer tower and called the whole assembly a “hard drive.” That’s a tiny (if somewhat irksome, in my opinion) example, but illustrative all the same.

We trust too much in technology, while at the same time knowing less and less about the ins and outs of pieces thereof. That’s not a good — nor very Christian — position for us to be in.

Have a read and watch as a BBC story reporting that increases in global temperature had reversed, taking temperatures back to roughly 1998 levels, morphed into a story that foretold ominous increases in temperature.

The climate change activist who wrote to the article’s author is an interesting case. Pay special attention, O Reader, to the threat she makes to the columnist in her last message to him, by suggesting that she will strive to impugn his credibility. For bonus points, note and laugh at how she points to the oceans as heat sinks, when it has been discovered that oceanic temperatures have not changed at all in as long as we’ve been monitoring them*.

I actually take it as a good sign that proponents of global warming alarmism have to resort to bullying in circumstances like this. It means, I think, that they are beginning to feel a strain on their credibility, and that they are realizing that more and more people aren’t buying in to their lies.

* of course, the lack of a change is also a clear sign of the danger that global warming poses to us all, isn’t it, O Reader?

Al Gore confesses a financial motive is, at least in part, behind his passionate advocacy on global warming/climate change-related issues.

Anyone surprised?

Can we make up our minds already?

Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.

The World Meteorological Organization’s secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.

La Niná, eh? Surely this cooling trend has nothing at all to do with the fact that solar cycle 24 has only just started, meaning that we are still in a period of “solar minimum” — a minimum which has, historically, corresponded to periods of colder-than-average weather, including the Little Ice Age?

To be fair, this doesn’t make me question climate change per se…of course, the climate (being a non-static system) can be expected to change, and indeed it does. It does make me question the received wisdom of global warming alarmism, however. No net change in global temperature since 1998? Al Gore hadn’t even lost the election then!

Which leaves unanswered, I suppose, the question of why warming trends analogous to trends observed on Earth have been observed on other planets in the Solar System, most notably Mars. It also leaves unanswered, one must note, the question of why most of the observed global average temperature increases have been undone in recent months, corresponding to the observation that the Sun, having finished one sunspot cycle, has not begun another one (contrary to expectations).

The article’s headline is a bit misleading, methinks. The specific solar radiation under discussion is what are called cosmic rays, the really intense radiation that the Sun gives off. Most of that stuff gets blocked by the Earth’s magnetic field anyhow — one of those beautifully-designed things, you know? Of course, cosmic rays are not the only sort of radiation emitted by the Sun, and radiation in other parts of the spectrum can penetrate the magnetic field (ultraviolet radiation would be an easy example to point to here).

The fact is, we can be fairly certain that what solar radiation does penetrate the magnetic field must be responsible for warming the Earth, because we are fairly certain that were the Sun to suddenly stop emitting said radiation, the Earth would become a frozen wasteland. Whatever solar radiation gets through the magnetic field is responsible, in large measure, for the fact that the temperature in most places on the Earth’s surface is in a range that humans find liveable. It still seems reasonable, even in light of findings which suggest that Henrik Svensmark may have been wrong in his theories about cosmic rays, that variations in the Sun’s output in other spectra still do produce changes in the Earth’s climate and average temperature.

Especially, I note again, since similar trends have been observed on other orbital bodies in the Solar System which, last time I checked, were not home to advanced, industrialized societies.

I heard only a snippet of a report about this while away on vacation, because Grace’s grandparents only listen to the CBC (and nothing else), and the news was playing over breakfast most mornings. Predictably, Mothercorp had some dial-an-expert come on the program to claim that the “breaking off” of a huge iceberg from the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica was a sure-fire sign of the spreading influence of global warming-influenced climate change.

To his credit, the CBC reporter did mention (briefly) that parts of Antarctica seem to be cooling, while others seem to be warming — but any objectivity that statement might have given to the news piece as a whole evaporated (heh) when the dial-an-expert (sorry, I didn’t catch his name while I was passing the bacon) spoke up.

Predictably, though, this iceberg breaking off is not the harbinger of doom it was made out to be.

The full Wilkins 6,000 square mile ice shelf is just 0.39% of the current ice sheet (just 0.1% of the extent last September). Only a small portion of it between 1/10th-1/20th of Wilkins has separated so far, like an icicle falling off a snow and ice covered house. And this winter is coming on quickly. In fact the ice is returning so fast, it is running an amazing 60% ahead (4.0 vs 2.5 million square km extent) of last year when it set a new record. The ice extent is already approaching the second highest level for extent since the measurements began by satellite in 1979 and just a few days into the Southern Hemisphere winter and 6 months ahead of the peak. Wilkins like all the others that temporarily broke up will refreeze soon. We are very likely going to exceed last year’s record. Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also starting to disappear.

Ice shelves breaking off to form icebergs is a pretty common phenomenon, or so I’ve heard. It isn’t the climate that has changed in an extreme and dangerous way — what has changed thusly is our ability to look at the normal dynamics of our environment in a rational and calm manner.

I’ll be back late tomorrow, so regular posting will resume on Tuesday…most likely, and assuming I get enough rest. It’s been…a trip with ups and downs, to say the least, and I think both Grace and I are going to be glad to get back.

One thing struck me as rather funny this morning, however: yesterday was apparently when Earth Hour was supposed to happen. Grace’s family, however, wasn’t taking part in the “lights out” campaign to fight…climate change or global warming or whatever (as though turning the lights out for a single hour, even in several major cities, would do anything to stop a process driven, primarily, by an even more powerful light source that won’t be extinguished for…what?…billions of years yet?

Instead, the lot of us were partying it up on a docked boat, using a diesel generator to power the lights (and sound system) while we grilled nine racks of pork ribs and two beef tenderloins (as in, the whole loin) on a propane barbeque.

This family knows how to party.

At any rate, I haven’t checked to see if Ed Darrell or anyone else has sent any Reader Mail my way since I left Edmonton, and I won’t be checking until I get back to Edmonton. So if I haven’t yet answered something you’ve sent my way, O Reader, rest assured that I’ll get to it…in April.

And I’ll have an announcement to make as well.

Update: Welcome, Steynians! I’m back now — slacking is at an end.

That doesn’t stop reporters from trying to make the lack of facts seem like proof of the threat of climate change, however!

Mike Brock has an interesting analysis of changes in average global temperature relative to changes in solar activity. While a lot of people still attempt to downplay the role of the Sun in changes in Earth’s climate (sidetracking the discussion into things like CO2 and methane), the best evidence we have still seems to suggest, in no uncertain terms, that all the gases humanity can pump into the air count for almost nothing compared to the effect that the Sun has on Earth’s climate.

Indeed, since the ending of the last solar cycle, since which time no new sunspots — a good indicator of an active star — have been observed, the Earth’s global average temperature has reversed almost all of the 0.6 C rise above “average” that was observed at about this time last year.

That’s not to say that humanity should just pump industrial and agricultural emissions into the atmosphere all willy-nilly — that would be stupid, because some of those emissions have other harmful effects not related to global warming (although others are mostly harmless). We should do our best to curb the emission of substances which cause, for example, cancers or respiratory maladies. But there is no point in trying our damndest to break otherwise healthy, functioning Western economies in pursuit of a phantom goal of “reversing” a trend over which we have no control anyhow.

It might have seemed timely that in New York an array of leading climatologists and other experts should have gathered for the most high-powered international conference yet to question the “consensus” on global warming. After three days of what the chairman called “the kind of free-spirited debate that is virtually absent from the global warming alarmist camp”, the 500 delegates issued the Manhattan Declaration, stating that attempts by governments to reduce CO2 emissions would “markedly diminish further prosperity” while having “no appreciable impact” on the Earth’s warming.

This inevitably attracted the kind of hysterical abuse that has become so familiar from warmist fanatics, tellingly contrasting with the measured arguments put forward by the scientists present. One was Anthony Watts, the meteorologist who last year famously forced NASA’s Goddard Institute to correct a fundamental error in its data on US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s but the 1930s.

On his website, Watts Up With That, he is currently posting a corrected version of the global temperature graph, combining satellite and surface data from all four main official sources. A measure of his scrupulous reporting is that although this shows a recent dramatic dip in temperatures, he cautiously explains that it is not yet conclusive evidence that the world has entered a new cooling phase (as he points out, there was temporarily an even sharper drop after the “peak” El Niño year 1998).

But can we doubt that, if the data showed the opposite, the media would be rushing to report this as yet further “proof” that the planet is heating out of control? The fact is that, for all their caveats that this drop in temperatures can be explained by the cooling effect of La Niña, the official orthodoxy that “more CO2 means more warming” is facing its most serious challenge yet. In light of the colossal price we are all in so many ways being asked to pay for it, the data in coming years will be more than interesting.

One cannot, hopefully, have failed to notice that the climate change alarmism movement has become a moneymaking enterprise for some, while for others it has become a vehicle through which policies of massive state intervention in industry — that is, socialism — is demanded and advocated for. The science upon which the movement is based is shoddy and uncertain at best (if not outright an outright fallacy in many respects), and the outcomes of the changes that folks like Al Gore and David Suzuki are demanding would be crippling and disastrous.

It’s a good thing, then, that more and more evidence is now coming to light demonstrating just what kind of lies are being told to us, the Western public.