Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

Now here is a great way to end 2007 - today, on December 20, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a report titled: "Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007" - Merry Christmas! You can find the complete report here: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb. It is well worth the time to read. For a brief preview, following is the introduction to their report:

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists. In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics "appear to be expanding rather than shrinking." Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears "bite the dust." (LINK) In addition, many scientists who are also progressive environmentalists believe climate fear promotion has "co-opted" the green movement. (LINK)

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.

Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated.

"Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media," Paldor wrote. [Note: See also July 2007 Senate report detailing how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation - LINK ]

Scientists from Around the World Dissent

This new report details how teams of international scientists are dissenting from the UN IPCC's view of climate science. In such nations as Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Russia, New Zealand and France, nations, scientists banded together in 2007 to oppose climate alarmism. In addition, over 100 prominent international scientists sent an open letter in December 2007 to the UN stating attempts to control climate were "futile." (LINK)

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, recently converted from a believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. Patterson noted that the notion of a "consensus" of scientists aligned with the UN IPCC or former Vice President Al Gore is false. "I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority."

This new committee report, a first of its kind, comes after the UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri implied that there were only “about a dozen" skeptical scientists left in the world. (LINK) Former Vice President Gore has claimed that scientists skeptical of climate change are akin to "flat Earth society members" and similar in number to those who "believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona." (LINK) & (LINK)

The distinguished scientists featured in this new report are experts in diverse fields, including: climatology; oceanography; geology; biology; glaciology; biogeography; meteorology; oceanography; economics; chemistry; mathematics; environmental sciences; engineering; physics and paleoclimatology. Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Gore.

Additionally, these scientists hail from prestigious institutions worldwide, including: Harvard University; NASA; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the UN IPCC; the Danish National Space Center; U.S. Department of Energy; Princeton University; the Environmental Protection Agency; University of Pennsylvania; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the International Arctic Research Centre; the Pasteur Institute in Paris; the Belgian Weather Institute; Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; the University of Helsinki; the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., France, and Russia; the University of Pretoria; University of Notre Dame; Stockholm University; University of Melbourne; University of Columbia; the World Federation of Scientists; and the University of London.

The voices of many of these hundreds of scientists serve as a direct challenge to the often media-hyped "consensus" that the debate is "settled."

A May 2007 Senate report detailed scientists who had recently converted from believers in man-made global warming to skepticism. [See May 15, 2007 report: Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics: Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research - (LINK) ]

The report counters the claims made by the promoters of man-made global warming fears that the number of skeptical scientists is dwindling.

(The attached photo is of an interesting arch up on Canaan Mountain. See: http://www.powerletters.blogspot.com/)

Pope Criticizes Global Warming Prophets

The Daily Mail reports that Pope Benedict: “has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.” (See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=501316.)

His remarks will be made in his annual message for World Peace Day on January 1, but they were released as delegates from all over the world convened on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali for UN climate change talks, the Daily Mail explains. (Aside: By the way, I'm not a Catholic, but the Pope’s right. Proposed Global Warming solutions sometimes cause more harm than good. What’s more, sometimes the proposed ‘solutions’ aren’t solutions at all. For example, Bali is currently deforesting their island in order to create more farmland on which to grow their “green” bio-fuels from castor oil plants.)

Pope Benedict also believes that “fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.”

“Efforts to protect the environment should seek ‘agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances’,” according to the Pope.

In the message entitled “The Human Family, A Community of Peace” the Pope says:

“Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow. It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.

“If the protection of the environment involves costs, they should be justly distributed, taking due account of the different levels of development of various countries and the need for solidarity with future generations.

“Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken.”

The evangelical environmental movement, which is just as dogmatic in its assumptions as any religion, is merely another manifestation of neo-paganism. They worship the earth and demand sacrifice from one and all to sate their greed.

The Pope also said that the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind. And it's certainly very true that current “global warming” policies hurt the very poor, as “sustainable development” often means cutting off any ability for poorer, less developed nations to economically progress, and thus they stay mired in third-world conditions. The Pope could also be concerned for a possible culling of the human population programs as well. Obviously these tenuous global warming theory and its proposed solutions have a definite anti-human slant.

The Pope isn’t the first Catholic leader to take on this new pagan religion. In October, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, caused an outcry when he noted that the atmospheric temperature of Mars had risen by 0.5 degrees Celsius. “The industrial-military complex up on Mars can't be blamed for that,” he said in a criticism of Australian scientists who had claimed that carbon emissions would force temperatures on earth to rise by almost five degrees by 2070 unless drastic solutions were enforced.

Letter to the St. George Spectrum

On November 27 our local newspaper, the St. George Spectrum, ran a column titled: “Let’s get started building alternative energy infrastructure” (see: http://www.thespectrum.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071127/OPINION/711270316/1014/OPINION) which I found to be so naive in its acceptance of the most outrageous alarmist exagerations and simplistic in its approach to solving a complex problem (energy supply and global climate change) that I just had to sit down and write the following response to that column. I was not able to pare my response down to a mere 200 words, so my response didn’t qualify as a “letter to the editor.” But since the column itself ran 501 words, I cut my response down to a comparable bare-bones 500 words. You'll note that there wasn’t space in 500 words to cite all my sources, but I invite you to explore the reading lists, articles, and links found in the previous entries on this very same web log. Plus, I've added a couple of graphics to this entry that I wasn't able to include in my submission to the newspaper (if you click on the graphic, you can see it full-sized.) Anyway, following is my submission to the newspaper, which has not yet been published (and who knows if it ever will be?):

In the November 27 column, Art Porter spoke of the IPCC study as if the results united scientists in consensus that man’s emissions of CO2 were causing catastrophic global warming and natural disasters. The fact is, the study’s results support no such conclusions, something easily verified from reading the studies readily available, rather than accepting sensationalistic headlines.

Read the IPCC study itself (written by scientists,) and not the “Summary for Policy Makers” (written by politicians,) and you will find that scientists agree on only three points: the global mean temperature has probably increased in the past century, CO2 is one of the greenhouse gases, and mankind emits CO2. However, only a minority of the world’s scientists believe that man’s emissions of CO2 have affected the global temperature and that the increase in temperature could cause global problems. The majority understand that:

1. The mean temperature of the whole solar system is increasing due to solar radiation.
2. CO2 is a trace gas in our atmosphere (0.038%,) less than 5% of which is manmade.
3. Water vapor is 97% of the green house gases in our atmosphere and is left out of the global climate models, which is why the weatherman’s predictions are barely valid for today, never mind in 100 years.

4. The Earth isn’t nearly as warm now as it was in medieval times, when Vikings farmed Greenland.

Unfortunately the unfounded fear of global warming has resulted in the propagation of a non-solution: the premature imposition of alternative energy. Alternative energy technologies should be developed – as the market demands. Sadly, alternative energy technology companies are impatient with our market system and are pressuring governments to fund the early adoption of their products.

Politicians realize that outright funding would increase taxes, and cost them their jobs. So their new strategy is to force utilities to adopt expensive technologies and pass these costs on to the public. Alternative energy currently costs twenty times per kilowatt what clean coal power costs.

So, why would much of the electrical industry embrace the myth of man-made Global Warming? Pure self interest. These corporations are allowed a fixed profit on approved expenses. A mandated “renewable energy portfolio” is a huge expense on which to charge their rate of return. In this scenario alternative technology manufacturers win, politicians win, investor owned utilities win, but rate payers (you and me) lose, and we lose big.

Further, diverting funds into alternative energy technology reduces the resources available to solve real environmental problems, such as unfiltered emissions from coal-fired power plants in China, India, and Brazil; deforestation, which causes localized droughts, erosion, and flooding; over pumping of aquifers, resulting in droughts and contamination of water supplies; and unchecked urban sprawl, which increases fossil fuel consumption and vehicular emissions.

Wasting our limited resources and money on a non-solution to a non-problem is not only foolish, it’s immoral. CO2 is not a legitimate threat and we need to get off this bandwagon and deal with the real problems in our world.

Global Warming: "The Greatest Scam in History"

OK, if you think that a mere electrical engineer such as myself can’t know anything about Global Warming, in spite of all the books, reports, and research that I’ve studied (you can find my reading lists below), how do you feel about the founder of the Weather Channel, a meteorologist with 55 years of experience in the field? Below is what he’s recently written on the subject, reprinted with his permission. You can also find his comments, along with links to his research (copied below for your convenience), posted on his blog at: http://www.kusi.com/home/11131801.html. Enjoy:

COMMENTS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

By John Coleman

jcoleman@kusi.com

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM.

Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data back in the late 1990's to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental wacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda.

Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.

However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you "believe in." It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won't believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I suspect you might like to say to me, "John, look the research that supports the case for global warming was done by research scientists; people with PH D's in Meteorology. They are employed by major universities and important research institutions. Their work has been reviewed by other scientists with PH D's. They have to know a lot more about it than you do. Come on, John, get with it. The experts say our pollution has created an strong and increasing greenhouse effect and a rapid, out of control global warming is underway that will sky rocket temperatures, destroy agriculture, melt the ice caps, flood the coastlines and end life as we know it. How can you dissent from this crisis? You must be a bit nutty.

Allow me, please, to explain how I think this all came about. Our universities have become somewhat isolated from the rest of us. There is a culture and attitudes and values and pressures on campus that are very different. I know this group well. My father and my older brother were both PHD-University types. I was raised in the university culture. Any person who spends a decade at a university obtaining a PHD in Meteorology and become a research scientist, more likely than not, becomes a part of that single minded culture. They all look askance at the rest of us, certain of their superiority. They respect government and disrespect business, particularly big business. They are environmentalists above all else.

And, there is something else. These scientists know that if they do research and results are in no way alarming, their research will gather dust on the shelf and their research careers will languish. But if they do research that sounds alarms, they will become well known and respected and receive scholarly awards and, very importantly, more research dollars will come flooding their way.

So when these researchers did climate change studies in the late 90's they were eager to produce findings that would be important and be widely noticed and trigger more research funding. It was easy for them to manipulate the data to come up with the results they wanted to make headlines and at the same time drive their environmental agendas. Then their like minded PHD colleagues reviewed their work and hastened to endorse it without question.

There were a few who didn't fit the mold. They did ask questions and raised objections. They did research with contradictory results. The environmental elitists berated them brushed their studies aside.

I have learned since the Ice Age is coming scare in the 1970's to always be a skeptic about research. In the case of global warming, I didn't accept media accounts. Instead I read dozens of the scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct when I assure you there is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. It is all a scam, the result of bad science.

I am not alone in this assessment. There are hundreds of other meteorologists, many of them PH D's, who are as certain as I am that this global warming frenzy is based on bad science and is not valid.

I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped.

The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway.

I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.

Some people may want to see the research behind my dismissive attitude about Global Warming. If you want to wade through scientific jargon, here are some relevant websites:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NRCreport.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NAS.M&M.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM03.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/Climate_L.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM-W05-background.pdf

http://www.icecap.us/

The Canadian Broadcasting Company's Cable News Network produced an excellent documentary on Global Warming. It is titled "Doomsday Called Off ". Here are the YouTube URLs to watch it in five parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Professor Bob Carter delivered a 35 minute lecture on global warming. If you are in an academic mood, it is excellent. It was recorded and posted in four parts on Youtube. Here are the links:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Al “Milli Vanilli” Gore

When Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 12, 2007 for his promotion of his new religion of man-made Global Warming, I was reminded of the time when Milli Vanilli was awarded the Grammy for Best New Artist back in 1990. For those of you who don’t remember Milli Vanilli, they were a group who had five insipid songs that were popular back in 1989-1990, and, as it was later revealed, were fronted by two male models from Germany who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket and so had to lip synch to the songs actually being performed in the background by others. Of course, we didn’t know that they were frauds back in 1990, we just knew that the music was terrible. My disappointment when they won the Grammy award was only offset later when it was revealed that they were just pretty faces and that the bad music was someone else’s fault and that they had to return the award. Well! There appeared to be some justice in the universe after all.

But now Al Gore is the pretty face that has hijacked the work of a bunch of homely scientists who worked behind the scenes on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) Worse, he’s not only stolen the credit for their work, he’s also distorted the results of their studies to the point of being unrecognizable, causing many of those same scientists to request that their names be removed from the report.

Nearly every single point that Al “Milli Vanilli” Gore makes in his book and movie is contradicted by the science in the report made by the IPCC (NOT in the Summary for Policy Makers, which was written by politicians and NOT the scientists):

1. CO2 is that dirty smoke pouring out of chimneys? Nope – CO2 is an invisible gas that is at worst plant food.
2. Global warming is causing the glaciers to recede? Nope – a drop in ambient moisture is causing some glaciers to recede in the Northern Hemisphere.
3. Global warming will cause drinking water to be in short supply for 40% of the world? Nope – in most of the world, drinking water comes from melting snow and the annual average snowfall has been increasing.
4. Our summer temperatures are higher now than ever before in the history of the world? Nope – our summers are not as warm as they were during the medieval times.
5. An increase of CO2 in our atmosphere is causing the atmosphere to trap more heat? Nope – the relation is the opposite – the increase in global temperatures is causing the oceans to release more CO2 into the atmosphere.
6. Global warming is causing more frequent and more violent hurricanes? Nope – as the average global temperature increases, decreasing the temperature differential between the arctic and the tropic, hurricanes will decrease in frequency and ferocity.
7. Global warming causes more frequent and more violent tornados? Nope – the same goes for tornados as goes for hurricanes. Besides which, the frequency of strong tornados has decreased since 1940.
8. Global warming has caused droughts in Africa and North America? Nope – local consumption of water from local lakes and over pumping of aquifers has, on a localized basis, caused some droughts.
9. Man-made Global Warming has caused the polar ice caps to melt? Nope – natural variations in the earth’s temperature cycle are variously causing the Artic to warm and then cool. Greenland, for example, is cooler today than during the Viking times when they settled there, grew crops, and named it “Greenland.”
10. Polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to Global Warming? Nope – populations of polar bears are presently increasing, and they didn’t go extinct during the medieval warming period between the Ice Age and the Little Ice Age in the 1800’s.
11. Global warming is harming populations of birds and bugs? Nope – all populations of birds and bugs and crops and people are thriving in a slightly warmer environment.
12. Malaria is migrating north and increasing due to Global Warming? Nope – mosquitoes that carry malaria have no problem in the cold north, as evidenced by the malaria epidemics in Russia and Alaska during the 1800’s; malaria is presently increasing around the world due to the decrease in the application of effective pesticides like DDT.
13. The Antarctic ice shelf is melting? Nope – when studied as a whole, the ice shelf in Antarctica is increasing.
14. Global warming will cause the sea levels to rise 20 feet, wiping out all coastal areas? Nope – the IPCC predicts that the sea could rise a maximum of 4 inches, but probably something less, and that is due to shifting tectonic plates.
15. If the US would adopt the Kyoto Protocol, Global Warming could be averted? Nope – if the US Congress ratified the Kyoto treaty, signed by President Clinton in the late 90’s, world-wide emissions would only increase as the US shut down our power plants and factories and they moved to China, India, and Brazil, which are exempted from the Kyoto treaty, and which emit far worse gases than CO2 (NOx and Sox – the cause of acid rain.)
16. If the European Union can adopt the Kyoto Protocol, why can’t the US? Actually, since ratifying the Kyoto Treaty, the European Union’s emissions have only increased, and more dramatically than those in the US. They have only been able to “meet” their emissions targets by taking retroactive credit for Great Britain’s switch from old coal fired power plants BEFORE signing the treaty.
17. We can switch to non-emitting power sources economically? Nope – the lowest, pie-in-the-sky estimates for the cost of abandoning our clean coal fired power, which include the presumption of new inventions in the future, is $2,000,000,000,000 per year – 17% of our GDP.

And finally, why do these weathermen think they can predict the average Earth’s temperature to within 1° 100 years into the future, when they aren’t that accurate on this week’s predictions? Plus, if this 1° increase were so terrible, why are Americans migrating by the thousands from the Great White North down to the Sun Belts in Florida, California, Arizona, and St. George, Utah? Let’s see Al “Milli Vanilli” Gore tackle that one! The answer is, he can’t. And I’m looking forward to the day that he has to return his Nobel Peace Price in shame and slink off to be ridiculed in the history books.

Governor Huntsman’s Californication with Arnold

The Utah Governor’s “Blue Ribbon Advisory Committee (BRAC) on Climate Change” wants to enact California-style legislation here in Utah, supposedly to combat “Global Warming,” which has been calculated to cost every household in the state about $32,000, but with no discernable improvement in the air quality what-so-ever. And who wants an electrical power system like California anyway? This very Labor Day the electrical distribution system in Southern California failed them and left them without air conditioning during a heat wave (see: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/weather/09/03/heat.wave.ap/index.html.) Plus I happen to have inside information that the only reason Southern California’s electrical transmission system didn’t melt down was because their distribution system went down first - it was the weakest link.

Further, the average residential rate in California is $0.14/kWh vs. the average in Utah which is $0.08/kWh vs. my co-op, Dixie Escalante, which is $0.05/kWh. So you can see why I’m so against adopting ANYTHING that California is doing in the field of electricity – they obviously don’t know what they’re doing. I am convinced that Governor Arnold is peddling his failed energy policies to Utah so that the whole state of Utah will also become un-competitive, so that California’s industries will stop migrating to Utah. The sad thing is that our naive governor has bought Arnold’s bill of goods, hook line and sinker. Of course no one on the Governor’s hand-picked Blue Ribbon Committee knows anything about the science of the issue – they’ve taken what they’ve been spoon-fed wholly on faith – the group is largely comprised of miscellaneous mayors or special interest group activists. The whole lot have based their fear and panic on a regurgitation of a summary of the UN-funded IPCC study that is terribly flawed and outright wrong (the “summary” was written by anti-American politicians and not by the scientists and does not accurately reflect the findings of the study at all) and so have decided to sacrifice 15% of our economy to this imaginary monster. What a bunch of morons – the politicians, I mean, not the special interest groups’ lobbyists – I’m impressed that these lobbyists seem to have convinced the politicians that man-made CO2 is affecting the climate and so need to buy their products. They must have hired that smooth-talking guy from the movie: Thank You For Smoking.

Anyway, I don’t claim to be an expert in climatology, but I am a licensed professional electrical engineer and have bothered to read a lot of background material on this subject, including the scientific chapters of UN study itself, three books (so far,) and a ton of related scientific studies that are freely available on the internet. Of course, the science is practically superfluous in this case since the BRAC is loaded (17 out of 20) with members who have already decided that their mission in life is to subsidize the solar panel and windmill industry by doubling everyone’s electricity bills, so we definitely have an uphill battle ahead of us. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Stabbing Mother Earth in the Back

Back in the 70’s when I was a kid growing up in Lukachukai, Arizona, in the very heart of the Navajo Reservation, my Navajo classmates (in their more militant moments) would criticize the white man’s agriculture processes. They would say that to plow the ground was to stab Mother Earth in the back. Even as a kid I knew that that notion was ridiculous – totally lacking in scale. Even back then I knew that a plow in the ground was no more than combing the hair of Mother Earth, and I said as much to my unreceptive classmates. Now that we’re in the 21st century nearly 40 years later, and with the power of the internet, I can put a pencil to this problem: a simple on-line search quickly finds that the earth has a diameter of 7926 miles (at the equator), or 41,849,280 feet; a plow is 8 to 12 inches long, so call it one foot, which means that the plow is only penetrating 0.0000024% of Mother Earth’s back – really just a very light back scratch.

Now fast forward to 2007: as an adult I see the same ignorance of scale of the earth and its atmosphere among the politicians and media of the developed world, including the United States. These poor uninformed alarmists think that our manmade CO2 emissions are affecting our climate – maybe they’re confused by the thick smog that they can see in their cities, largely emanating from automobiles’ unfiltered exhaust pipes, as opposed to the invisible and harmless breath that we all exhale. Either way, they certainly don’t understand anything about the relative scale involved when discussing CO2 and the atmosphere. The earth’s atmosphere, which by the way is what distinguishes God’s Green Earth from uninhabitable Mars, is primarily made up of Nitrogen (78%), Oxygen (21%), and Argon (1%.) CO2, the next most common gas, makes up only 0.038% of the atmosphere. Of that, man has contributed about 3%. Hmm… 3% of 0.038% - that sounds a lot like your chances of winning the lottery – essentially zero. Anyway, the rest of the CO2 in the atmosphere (97%) comes from natural sources, primarily that big mass of water that we call the ocean, which releases CO2 when it heats up and absorbs it back when it cools. So, even if we were to reduce mankind’s CO2 emissions to zero, which would require the elimination of all electricity production, transportation, and even our collective exhalations, we still would not be able to affect the earth’s temperature that one measly degree over the course of the next century for which the religion of Global Warming is renting their garments.

All of which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be good stewards of Mother Earth – we absolutely should. Genesis 1:26 tells us: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth…” I believe that when God gave Man dominion “over all the earth” he also gave us the obligation to be responsible stewards, and we still have that responsibility today. I believe that we should maximize the use of our natural resources and keep our environment clean. We did the right thing when we eliminated the real pollutants, SO2 (smog) and NOx, from the electric power generation process here in America – good for us. And by the way, producing harmless CO2 rather than SO2 as an output of generating electricity only shows how efficient and clean our generation process has really gotten. I’m also glad we switched to unleaded gasoline and required catalytic converters on our cars here in America – we all breathe easier because of it. During the 70’s we all “pitched in” and picked up the trash along our highways, making them look decent again. It was the right thing to do. You only have to look at horrific quality of the environment in China, India, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, or Latin America to really appreciate how much we’ve improved the environment in the United States of America since I was a kid the 60’s.

So with all of these huge strides in fixing our environment, why is it that we’re paying any attention to the well funded and very vocal cabal of politicians and media that want to steal our time and money and throw them to the manufacturers of windmills and solar panels under the guise of solving a non-existent problem? How stupid are we? Especially when we have REAL problems that require our time and money. For example, why are NONE of the politicians or media trying to solve our crippling debt problem? How is it possible that in the space of my lifetime we’ve gone from being the world’s biggest creditor to the world’s biggest debtor? How long will it be before China cuts off our allowance and leaves us to stew in the sweltering dark like California on Labor Day? How about we devote a little time and money to our debt problem?! Debt reduction may not be as sexy as Global Warming, but it has real tangible benefits and consequences.

Letter to BRAC

Ten years ago I worked on a rural electrification project in Bangladesh, funded by USAID, which was called Rural Power for Poverty Reduction (RPPR.) This was a fairly comprehensive project, with several technical components that covered a range of needs in delivering electricity to that developing nation – distribution, generation, and renewable energy – each with its own appropriate place and cost. Now you should understand that I’m an electrical engineer with a specialty in the transmission and distribution of electrical power, on which I’ve largely focused during my twenty-year career; I can model, analyze, plan, and design transmission and distribution lines, and then I can specify the materials and even get those lines built if needed. But, for this broader project in Bangladesh, we also had short-term specialists for the generation (Jim) and for the renewable energy (Andrew) components. The specialists set up the programs in their area of expertise, while briefly in-country, and I learned from them and then carried the projects forward in their absence (being the resident advisor.)

At one point in my 2-1/2 years as the Engineering and Operations Advisor in Bangladesh, Jim and Andrew were in-country at the same time – occupying desks in my office – and somehow the topic of conversation turned to Global Warming. Andrew was for it, Jim was against it. To my uninformed ears, they both sounded very knowledgeable on the subject, both tossing conflicting data and theories back and forth. Their argument was with each other and not aimed at me, so I was as ignorant on the subject at the end of the debate as before – all I knew is that the jury was apparently still out on the matter and that some day I would have to revisit this topic, get informed as to the facts, and decide what was truly correct.

Now, ten years later, Utah Governor Jon Huntsman has formed a Blue Ribbon Advisory Council (BRAC) on Climate Change and has tasked them to study the science of Global Warming and recommend pertinent policies, as needed, to address the issue. What this lame committee has done so far is to ignore the available science and instead lap up the flawed “conventional wisdom” on the subject and then recommend the acceptance of California’s onerous CO2 emission laws and propose to impose what is called a “Renewable Portfolio Standard” (RPS = a law mandating that electric utilities buy a significant percentage of their electricity from expensive but “renewable” power sources, like solar or wind, but NOT hydro.) Given that these policies have already been determined to double everyone’s electricity rates, the Utah Rural Electric Association asked me to comment on the imposition of a Renewable Portfolio Standard in Utah. Following is what I wrote to the BRAC on that subject:

There are several significant points to seriously consider when discussing something as expensive and unnecessary as mandating a Renewable Portfolio Standard:

1. The first ten to twenty points of contention are cost, cost, cost, etc. For example, a solar power system costs a minimum of $10/watt, and probably something more like $14/watt when you consider the cost of installation, while a natural gas generator costs a maximum of $1/watt, which cost goes down considerably as you increase the size to something over 10MW. The members of our cooperative simply can't afford to and won't stand for increasing their power costs by some twenty times more than what they are today and any politician or bureaucrat that thinks otherwise should start looking for a real job.

2. After you get past the mountain of additional costs, then it's no molehill when you start to surmount the issue of what renewable resources are physically available. Here in Sunny Southern Utah we certainly have plenty of sunshine, but that's only during the daytime and sometimes people like to use electricity at night. In fact, fully half of our annual peaks in power consumption happen after dark. And while you can store energy temporarily in batteries, neither lead/acid nor nickel/cadmium are renewable resources. Plus, there is no generation quality wind resource available in Southern Utah – even in Hurricane where the wind seems to be always blowing. Dixie did a study in connection with the State energy office 5 years ago by installing three wind meters at three different sites and found that the wind in the area was not steady enough to produce efficient power. And the very same people who are pushing this renewable energy agenda are undoubtedly the same group who complain about the hydro-electric dams (like Glen Canyon) that we already have, so they're not going to let us build more (even if there were another Glen Canyon to dam.) And certainly they can’t seriously propose that our members, which include a significant amount of retirees on fixed incomes, be forced to pay extra to import our energy from some other state when we have perfectly good clean coal right here in Utah.

3. Each of the co-ops in Utah already has a significant percentage of renewable energy in our portfolios with our hydropower allocations from Colorado River Storage Project. The co-ops as a whole purchase 100 out of 800 MW’s of renewable hydro energy already, which is a significant amount.

4. Dixie, and the other members of Deseret, are already offering “green” power as an option to members who choose to pay a premium to participate. Under our “Green Way” program members can elect to purchase blocks of “green” power and the extra dollars collected go toward the development of renewable resources.

5. Dixie, and the other members of Deseret, is already offering a Net Metering tariff to allow any of our members to install their own renewable energy sources and then net out their own power usage (even allowing them to sell us energy off-peak, when the value is low, and take it back out on-peak, when the value is significantly higher.)

6. If the State of Utah were serious in their promotion of renewable energy, they should put their money where their mouth is and raise income taxes so they can offer some substantial Tax Credits and Rebates that encourage home and business owners to install renewable energy generation sources. Utah has in the past offered a paltry $2000 tax credit toward the installation of a solar home system, which covered about 2-3% of the cost of installation. They should consider something more aggressive, like in the state of New Jersey where they offer up to $4.40/watt (over 30% of the total cost.) Obviously a program like this would cost real money, which would require real tax revenue increases, and would likely cost the sitting governor and legislature their jobs, but at least they'd be promoting the renewable energy program honestly.

7. Another sign that the state government were serious about developing renewable energy would be to devote some significant amount of money to research and development of new, improved, more efficient, and more economical technologies. Of course, research and development are not cheap and would come with the same financial and political costs associated with increasing taxes and spending as in item #6 above.

8. Ultimately, since Dixie and the other members of Deseret are member owned and democratically controlled cooperatives, the membership should be allowed to vote to determine if they really want to pay significantly higher electricity rates in order to pay for some “renewable” component in their energy portfolio in addition to their hydropower purchases. Of course, we already offer that option to the small minority that flunked math class (see #4 above.)

Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns on this topic.

Sincerely,

Colin W. Jack, P.E.

Global Warming is a Big Fat Lie

Many specialty manufacturers, special interest groups, politicians, and members of the media are perpetrating the biggest scandalous lie on the people of this earth since Galileo was muzzled by the Inquisition for stating the fact that the Earth orbited the Sun and wasn't really the center of the universe - that man's carbon dioxide emissions are causing catastrophic Global Warming and that we must annihilate mankind or at least return to the stone age to set things right. As a technically oriented individual I'm astounded that we've taken something that should be, on the whole, based in science and removed it to a completely political realm. The more that I study this issue the more angry I get - I can't believe that we're all just going along dumbly like sheep to the abattoir. We've been told that there is a "consensus" among the scientists that man-made Global Warming is a fact and we're just willing to take that at face value, just like the people in Galileo's time. Of course, those with a vested interest in perpetrating this heinous crime are just as potent and dangerous as was the Inquisition in Galileo's time, but that's still no excuse for our laziness. The worst thing about wasting our money and time on this subject is that we're limiting the intellectual and financial resources that we could be spending to solve REAL problems. Anyway, the purpose of this blog is to share digestible bits and pieces of my research as I go along. I've already spent months digesting every book, research paper, movie, and Internet site on this subject that I could find - on BOTH sides, I might add. I've also moved the following two posts over from my other blog in which I tend to write about our family travels around the world - I thought they'd be more at home here.

The High Priests of Doomsday

Back on December 14, 2001, I was working on a rural electrification project in Guatemala when I got to view a near total solar eclipse - I made a pin hole projector and everything (see the attached photo.) It was amazing to me to hear and see the local news on the radio and TV assuring the people that it was only a natural phenomenon and not the end of the world*. It seemed to me that the modern Mayas weren't that far removed from the ancient Mayas that were portrayed in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, where the poor peasants had their hearts ripped out as they were sacrificed by the decadent power-grabbing priests, right in front of the stoned-out-of-their-minds royalty, playing on the people's and leaders' ignorance of natural phenomena, like solar eclipses, making everyone think that what they were doing was controlling the weather. Of course, we modern Americans are no better - we've crowned Al Gore and the other alarmists of "man-caused Global Warming" as our high priests and are offering up our economy as a sacrifice (they want $2T/yr = 15% of our 2006 GDP!) in an attempt to change the natural phenomenon of global warming. What a bunch of nimrods we are becoming.

And since the scientific community has been marginalized out of the current "debate" on man's contribution to Global Climate Change, and since it is no longer acceptable for anyone to express a viewpoint on the subject that doesn't coincide with our priest's, it is imperative that we all do a little of our own homework on this topic so that we can try to shift the public opinion back to something a little more based on science rather than superstition. Toward that end, following are a few recommended readings on global climate change, for your personal edification:

1. Shattered Consensus, The True State of Global Warming by Patrick J. Michaels


2. MYTHS, LIES, AND DOWNRIGHT STUPIDITY: GET OUT THE SHOVEL -- WHY EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG by John Stossel. Note: You can read the pertinent chapter on-line at: http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3061015&page=1


3. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) by Christopher C. Horner


4. Energy & the Environment: Myths & Facts by Max Schulz


5. Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Separating Scientific Fact from Personal Opinion prepared by Sherwood B. Idso and Craig D. Idso


6. The Blue Dog Coalition, Energy Principles, 110th Congress


7. Petition Project – Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide by Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon and Zachary W. Robinson


8. Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal by Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Craig Idso, Sherwood Idso and David R. Legates


9. Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties by Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood B. Idso, Kirill Ya. Kondratyev and Eric S. Posmentier


10. Climate change: Conflict of observational science, theory and politics by Lee C. Gerhard


11. Issues in the Current State of Climate Science, A Guide for Policy Makers and Opinion Leaders


12. Variations in CO2 Growth Rate Associated with Solar Activity by Dr. Theodor Landscheidt


13. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis - Technical Summary, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change


14. Hug and Barrett versus IPCC by Heinz Hug and Jack Barrett


15. Winning the Energy Endgame: Oil, Gas Electricity, and Climate by Amory B. Lovins


16. Climate Connections: The failure to include many factors in climatology by Dr. Tim Ball


17. Samuelson: The Dilemma of Global Warming vs. Economic Growth by Robert J. Samuelson


18. Economic Climate Changes by Marlo Lewis


19. The gods are laughing by Tom Harris


20. Hockey Stick, 1999-2005, R.I.P.


21. Global Warming Bombshell by Richard Muller


22. Written Testimony of John R. Christy, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, 2 May, 2001


23. There is No ‘Consensus’ on Global Warming


24. Decoding Climate Politics by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.


25. Get Your Priorities Right, The Weekend Interview with Bjorn Lomborg by Kimberley A. Strassel


26. Climate of Fear by Richard Lindzen


27. A Global Warming Worksheet by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.


28. Pork, the New Green Meat by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.


29. Highly Over-Hyped – Greenland’s and Antarctica’s Impacts on Sea Level by Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso


30. Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Generation of Electric Power in the United States report jointly prepared in July 2000 by the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency
    

* Excerpt from my journal 12/14/01: "Our afternoon was broken up a bit as we went outside to observe the solar eclipse. I showed the guys how to make a pin-hole projector to view the eclipse -- they were impressed. They always attribute technical proficiency to my being a "Gringo" -- like when I showed them how to set the clock in the truck, run the remote control on the air conditioner, etc. Juan Jose tried to improve my eclipse projector and when it didn't work they all laughed at him for trying to be a Gringo. Speaking of laughing, we also watched local TV coverage of the eclipse and just had to chuckle when the local scientists had to reassure the local citizens that this is only a natural phenomenon and not the end of the world. The news said that the best view of this eclipse was in Costa Rica -- Jorge Mario suggested we walk around the block to their embassy to watch it there."

Real Science is Inconvenient to Politicians

If any of you have seen the pseudo-scientific movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and/or have been made to worry about man’s contribution to “Global Warming,” you should definitely invest some time and effort and read the information from the following links - cooler minds definitely need to prevail at this time. I have to add that, as an engineer who has dedicated his life to the practical application of science to making the world a better place to live via rural electrification, I am shocked and appalled at the lack of rigorous science that has been applied to this issue vs. the incredible quantity of funds (yours and mine) that have been thrown at it. This whole "debate" reminds me of the time a couple of years ago when my 7th grader confidently told me that "scientists" were very interested to see what was going to happen on May 5, 2005 because the date was going to be 5/5/5!? The level of science that the majority of our politicians, celebrities, and media have applied to the subject of Global Warming is of about the same caliber as that 7th graders' friends'. I’m so disillusioned at the fact that our present and past governments have been equally lazy in evaluating and deriving solutions to this issue as they have been to the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea that I'm looking for a whole new political home and am voting "None of the above" until I find one. I guess it’s no wonder that our currency is at a new low on the world market and still falling. Shame on us all for being so lazy.

I. BBC Documentary on Climate Change -- if you only have time to review one thing, you should spend 1 hour and 13 minutes seeing this documentary aired recently in Great Britain by the BBC: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3028847519933351566
II. A Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism -- compiled by the staff of the U.S. Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, led by U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Good summary of many scientific points. Full report: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=56dd129d-e40a-4bad-abd9-68c808e8809e
III. Unmasking “An Inconvenient Truth” - Much of Al Gore’s evidence for his claims lacks credibility when examined without the emotive baggage of impending disaster, blame and simplistic political solutions.: http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070330_kininmonth.pdf
IV. A Science-Based Rebuttal to the Testimony of Al Gore before the U.S. EPW Committee -- a longer read but a powerful summary of most of the relevant science that soundly debunks much of what Gore is selling these days. http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070522_isdo.pdf V. EPRI Study on Costs Of California's Climate Change Policies: http://www.westernroundtable.com/air/EPRI_Report_Summary.doc
VI. Memorandum by Professor Richard S Lindzen, MIT, to the British Parliament -- Dr. Lindzen is one of of the world's most preeminent climate experts. He is the Alfred P Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Physics at MIT. If you only read one piece on the science of climate change, this is the one I would read: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/5012506.htm
VII. Op-Ed by Professor Lindzen (Newsweek) -- a shorter version of Professor Lindzen's main scientific points: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek/
VIII. MIT Study On Costs of Cap-and-Trade Proposals -- something you should definitely review. A good summary of the report is here: http://www.westernroundtable.com/air/MIT_ANALYSIS.pdf
The full report is here: http://www.westernroundtable.com/air/MIT_captrade_study.pdf
IX. George Will's Column on Climate Change -- if you like George, you must read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/11/AR2007041102109.html
X. Quash silencing of global-warming skeptics By Walter Williams -- "Suppression of ideas is far more dangerous to our civilization than man-made global warming — real or imagined. Given the horrible history of brutal attempts to silence people who have different ideas or dissent from the conventional wisdom, those of us in the academic and scientific communities ought to openly repudiate and condemn the efforts to silence global warming skeptics." http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,695198704,00.html
XI. Op-Ed by Czech President Vaclav Klaus -- a very powerful and moving piece. Excerpt: "As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism.... The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment.... The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature." Full story: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9deb730a-19ca-11dc-99c5-000b5df10621.html
XII. Following is a brief, point by point discussion of the movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", written by an engineering colleague, a must-read for those of you who have actually seen the movie:
1. The film’s portrayal of the temperature for the past few thousand years attempted to make it seem like the medieval warming period was less warm than today. That is not true – it was as warm or warmer then than now according to glacial records. If you freeze frame the film at the point where he shows the temperature plot for the last 1000 years (this is near the beginning of the film) you can see he is pulling a graphical slight-of-hand by plotting two sets of data on top of each other for the very last part of that graph and only one set of data for the rest of the graph. For the movie theater viewer that only gets to quickly see this graph they won’t notice that trick. But look carefully - that last part in red that rises up is really a plot of land based temperature measurements (from actual thermometers). Look under that you see glacial core readings – he’s not telling the audience that – and the two types of readings are very difficult to calibrate together. Look at only the glacial part of the curve and suddenly you see that medieval period was actually warmer than now! How about that!!!!!! In the glacial records he (Al Gore) explains the relationship between CO2 and temperature backwards. CO2 is the dependent variable, not temperature, as he describes– so as the temperature rises the CO2 increases. This is because as the ocean gets warmer CO2 gas that’s dissolved in the ocean comes out of solution and goes into the air. When it cools, CO2 goes back into the water. His relationship between CO2 and temperature and a main pillar of his argument is totally flawed and BACKWARDS!
2. Not once did he mention that CO2 is only a tiny portion of the greenhouse effect on earth and water vapor is 95% of the greenhouse effect. Not once did he mention that humans annual output of CO2 is only about 4-5% of the total produced in the world (if even that) and that natural emissions are the other 95%. Depending on how you do the calculation, man-made CO2 is as little as 0.25% of the total greenhouse effect. Many scientists are now leaning toward the 0.25% figure but nearly all will agree it’s no more than 2%. The rest of the effect is all natural!!!!!!
3. He (Al Gore) did not mention that Mount Kilimanjaro glaciers are receding due to decreasing precipitation - not due to increasing temperatures as he implies. This is verified by NASA satellite data.
4. Not once did he mention that the sun has radiation output cycles that impact the climate and could play by far the dominant role in climate. Climate models often cited don’t even take such solar changes into account. He failed to mention how well temperature data lines up with solar activity proxies.
5. He showed photos of glaciers receding in spots all over the world. But he failed to show corresponding photos of places where glaciers are documented to be increasing in other parts of the world!!!! He also failed to mention that in many areas where he shows receding glaciers, the rate of de-glaciation is slowing down dramatically (not increasing) during the last half of the 20th century.
6. He claimed that the Artic sea ice cover is rapidly receding, but he failed to mention that this has happened before as part of climatic cycles in just the past few hundred years and is nothing unusual and did not lead to runaway temperature effects in the past.
7. He failed to mention that part of the land based temperature data are subject to urban heat island effects and also impacted by recent reductions in smog and aerosols caused by the clean air act and other factors – which means more sun is getting to urban areas heating them up. He failed to mention that in most rural areas the land based readings and satellite data show very little (if any) global warming.
8. When he said the US was the largest emitter of CO2 it was a hugely simplistic calculation based on fossil fuel consumption that did not take into account carbon sequestration effects due to landfills, wood use in houses and furniture, or discarded plastics, food, etc. Calculations also don’t factor the huge amounts of reforestation in the US during the last 50 years of the 20th century. Factoring these effects the US may be a much lower emitter of CO2 than portrayed by him.
9. He talked about ice sheets receding and breaking away in the Antarctic Peninsula but failed to mention that many climatologists have attributed this to localized ocean effects of a cyclical nature and that overall ice cover in and around Antarctica is actually increasing not decreasing! Ice breaking away in the Artic and Antarctic is a normal process. What do you think sank the Titanic 95 years ago?
10. He claimed that people have abandoned “island nations” due to rising sea levels caused by global warming but failed to mention that sea level has been rising steadily for thousands of years. Islands gradually sinking beneath the sea are nothing new. In many areas subsidence or shifts in land elevation due to tectonic activity, water tables, and other geologic factors exceed by a factor of 5 or more the rate of ocean level changes.
11. He made Republicans look stupid by showing an out of context clip of Ronald Reagan claiming that smog was caused by trees and natural processes. But he failed to mention that Reagan said this in the context that trees were responsible for part of our smog levels in the southeast (not all) and that cleaning up emissions of tailpipes beyond a certain point has no further benefit since trees are always creating a “background level” of natural smog pollution. Numerous peer reviewed scientific studies have now conclusively shown his statement to be factually correct (so those people that laughed at him in the 1980’s look like fools now).
12. He talked about how a NASA scientist and others have been censored by the Bush Administration about global warming. The recent published analysis showed that the NASA scientist in question was censored ONLY 1 out of 1400 times. The NASA scientist mentioned was shown to have been allowed 1400 press interviews to spout apocalyptic views without any sort of censorship and only 1 opportunity turned down by his supervisors!!!! This is, of course, the one instance he complains and whines about. It’s even worse than this; that NASA scientist was allowed the 1400 press interviews even though the comments he made were known to be extreme and at the fringe of alarmist scientific thought on the effects of global warming. In my opinion, he probably should have been fired for insubordination!!!!!!!
13. He talked about how essentially all developed foreign countries have better car emission regulations than us. This is simply not true. Perhaps some have better mileage requirements, but for the real pollutants that matter (NOx, SOx, particulates, etc. and not CO2) the US has better regulations for those real pollutants than other countries (including most of Europe which is heavily dependent on diesel cars that would not pass US regulations – did you know that?).
14. He talked about a 928 to 0 score for a study of peer reviewed articles and scientific papers on global warming that supported the contention that global warming was due to anthropogenic causes. That claim made in his film is false! It turns out that only a very small fraction of those 928 papers in that study directly and fully supported the claim of anthropogenic global warming. Just as many of them were against the claim. Many in the study simply were not even of an applicable topic to either support or not support the claim of human global warming. It was just a big distorted trick to make it appear that a huge base of peer reviewed research supported the claim.
I could probably come up with another 50 items. But that is enough!