Civil Defense Perspectives September 2011, Vol. 27 No. 6
Data should have killed the anthropogenic catastrophic global warming hypothesis, along with many other radical environmentalist policies, but lies have powerful protectors—including recipients of more than $32.5 billion in federal funding for climate studies between 1989 and 2009, plus $79 billion more for climate change technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks for “green energy” (PFW-Tucson, September 2011).The BEST Study
Published shortly before the 2011 climate summit in Durban, South Africa (coincidentally?), the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project shows a 1.6 °F temperature rise between 1950 (a record-cold year) and 2000. Its director, reputed skeptic Richard Muller, stated that the study “proved that you shouldn’t be a skeptic, at least not any longer.” The Washington Post wrote that the BEST study had “settled the climate change debate” and that any remaining skeptic was a “cynical fraud.”
Prof. Muller himself, however, as Dr. Fred Singer points out, emphasizes that the BEST data are only from land (30% of earth’s surface), and from poorly distributed sites mostly in the U.S. and western Europe. He admits that 70% of the U.S. stations are poorly sited, and others are probably worse. Furthermore, he disclaims knowledge of the cause of the warming.
The second named author of the BEST papers, Judith Curry, chairman of the Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said her colleagues appear to be trying to “hide the decline” in an affair comparable to the Climategate scandal (Mail on Sunday 10/30/11).
“There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,” she said. Note that the BEST graph stops in 2000.
BEST and the WP present a graph with a compressed 200-year x-axis, and a stretched y-axis to accentuate differences. Plotting monthly data from BEST’s own archives for 2001–2010 gives “a statistically perfect straight line of zero gradient,” writes David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (CCNet Special 10/30/11). Muller states that the lack of recent warming might be from a change in ocean oscillations. If so, then in another phase these oscillations would intensify the warming—yet the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has dismissed ocean oscillations as a possible cause of warming (The Week That Was 11/5/11, see www.sepp.org).
Climategate II
Another leak of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia shows that the “team” largely responsible for preparing the IPCC report was very aware that the warming of the troposphere above the tropics—the distinct human fingerprint—was not occurring as predicted by models. Ben Santer et al. apparently tried to cover up the disparity by expanding error bars of measurements (TWTW 11/26/11).
Some 5,300 emails were released this time, and reportedly there are more than 200,000 encrypted behind a very difficult-to-crack code (ibid.).
Dr. Singer suggests it is a good time to re-read John Brignell’s 2009 essay, www.numberwatch.co.uk/lying.htm:
How We Know They Are Lying
For help in distinguishing those who are deliberately lying from those who are merely deluded, Brignell quotes fictional detective M. Maigret: “The clever ones always leave a clue.”
“We can identify the ‘scientists’ who habitually lie by the fact that they produce, on time, results that are never unexpected and always conform to the establishment-sponsored theory,” writes Brignell. “Real science is never that predictable.”
Until recent times, there was no circumstance in science in which a deliberate falsehood was acceptable. That has changed with the rise of authoritarian government and monopoly of funding—and the global warming religion. The clues include:
Secrecy. British “researchers” refused to yield up their calculations to scrutiny on the grounds that “you only want to criticize.” Albert Einstein, in contrast, passed his results onto Eddington so that a critical test could be devised.
Rewriting the past. Astute observers noticed that historical temperatures were changing, almost always upward.
Ratchet reporting (overplaying heat waves, barely mentioning record cold) and outright censorship.
Mass Killing
The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is reportedly being implemented through brute force.
In Honduras, 23 farmers were allegedly murdered when they tried to recover land they claimed had been illegally sold to palm oil plantations to obtain carbon credits to use in the ETS. Several members of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) executive board reported feeling “personally distressed,” but since the deaths occurred after the stakeholder consultations had been held, they were powerless to block project registrations. An EU official said that including human rights abuses in CDM assessments would be “very difficult.”
“If this really is a direct consequence of Europe’s climate policies then I would like to send my sincere apologies to the people of Honduras,” said Bas Eikhout, a Green member of the European parliament (MEP) (CCNet 10/2/11).
In Uganda, armed troops killed children and burned houses to the ground in the process of seizing land for reforestation. Troops were acting on behalf of New Forests Company, a British carbon trading company backed by the World Bank. The government and company said “the settlers were illegal and evicted for good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.” Some 20,000 people have been “resettled”—in a “peaceful, voluntary” way (NY Times 9/23/11).
Harder to count are the lives and opportunities lost because of the soft tyranny of the regulatory regime being imposed throughout the world, based on pseudo-scientific fraud.
The Undead Persist
“Failures of climate models have failed to kill climate alarmism,” writes Howard Hayden. “Like Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, the ‘climate change’ scare sucks the blood out of civilization, and like Count Dracula, ‘climate theory’ is undead because it does not exist” (The Energy Advocate, October 2011).
Historical Precedent
“James Hansen, notorious among global warming critics as a ruthless fudger of data,” writes Brignell, “blew the gaff in the euphoria of the Green takeover in the USA, by admitting that the main issue was the redistribution of wealth.”
Dr. Lawrence Huntoon writes that we should pause to remember the 78th anniversary of the Holodomor, the Soviet-imposed famine of 1932-1933. “In the ‘occupy’ movement of the time, the Bolsheviks, including Stalin, declared that they were going to take from the rich, and by the way kill them, so that wealth could be redistributed to create a workers’ paradise.”
On August 7, 1932, the Law of Spikelets declared that food was “socialist property.” Peasants caught eating food were deemed guilty of theft of socialist property and were subject to the death penalty. Starvation was used as a weapon of mass destruction against Ukrainians who wanted to preserve their national identity. “They threw food in the ocean, but wouldn’t give it to the people,” writes Jay Tokasz (Buffalo News 11/20/11).
Among the famine deniers were French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot and British journalist Walter Duranty, who was Moscow bureau chief for the NY Times. In 2003, the Pulitzer Prize Board decided not to revoke Duranty’s 1932 Pulitzer Prize, stating that there was no “clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception,” and the specific articles submitted for the prize were not about the famine. Duranty had traveled the countryside and was a first-hand witness to the atrocities that claimed 10 million human victims.
Poor People Starved to Grow Auto Fuel
This year, for the first time, American farmers will harvest more corn for ethanol than for feed. In Europe, 50% of rapeseed production is going into biofuel, along with 18% of the world’s sugar. While an increase in the price of food is an annoyance in the U.S., in places where people spend 80% of their income on food, hundreds of millions go hungry. And some revolt.
“What we call today the Arab Spring really started as a protest against ever-increasing food prices,” stated Nestlé’s CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe (WSJ 9/3/11).
Politicians claim they want to replace 20% of the energy market through the food market. The energy market, however, is 20 times the size of the food market, in terms of calories, stated Brabeck-Lemanthe (ibid.).
Allocating several thousand hectares of land in Swaziland to ethanol production while the country was in the grip of a famine was called a “crime against humanity” (CCNet 9/23/11).
Bird Deaths
In North Dakota, 28 dead migratory birds were found near waste oil lagoons. Continental Resources is accused of violating the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act because it killed one Phoebe’s Say, a crime punishable by a $15,000 fine and up to 6 months in prison. Some 440,000 birds are killed each year by wind turbines, but there have been no federal prosecutions (WSJ 9/29/11).
Near Pittsburgh, 35 wind turbines have to be shut down at night because an endangered bat was found dead near one of them. The mode of death is most likely encountering an air pressure drop that causes the lungs to explode. When hibernation season starts, turbines may begin to turn again (AP 10/18/11).
Heating Versus Eating
In London, more than one in four people are struggling to pay their energy costs as prices rise and the fuel poverty allowance is cut. Between 2004 and 2009, domestic energy prices increased by more than 75%, and gas prices by more than 122%. “For a lot of pensioners, you either heat or you eat,” said George Durack of the Islington Pensioners’ Forum. “Elderly people could die if something is not done” (CCNet 9/20/11).
Green Subsidies a “Disgrace”
While the British government is committed to a target of generating 15% of its energy from renewable sources (an increase from 6.6% now), Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, articulated what many ordinary people think about wind farms: He called them a “disgrace.” More valuable than the inefficient, unreliable power the turbines generate are the Renewable Obligations Certificates that wind farm speculators can sell (CCNet 11/21/11).
Europe’s “unsustainable and chaotic green energy policy” is a lose-lose proposition for all except financial players, writes Andrew McKillop (CCNet 9/20/11). Owing to lack of distribution capability, wind power is already overcapacity at times of peak output, and the excess must simply be shed or wasted.
Corruption and Hidden Agendas
It appears that the BBC “has relentlessly promoted the global warming orthodoxy as a pressure group in its own right,” writes Christopher Booker (Sunday Telegraph 11/20/11). Among the sources of improper sponsorship is Envirotrade, which is cashing in on selling “carbon offsets.”
Climategate II emails show Hockey Stick inventor Michael Mann casting about for ways to smear Steve McIntyre (WSJ 11/28/11). Meanwhile, it is revealed that alarmist-in-chief James Hansen “forgot” to report $1.6 million in outside income, as required by government contracts (http://tinyurl.com/7xcvdxy).
A scathing exposé reveals that the IPCC has pervasive ties with green activists, and that its supposedly authoritative work relies to a large extent on graduate students with little experience in their field. In her book The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, Canadian freelancer Donna Lafromboise documents how the “reviewers” of the IPCC report are blocked, ignored, or even threatened if they ask for data to back up a claim. An audit of the 2007 IPCC report found that one-third of the 18,531 citations were from non-peer-reviewed literature, including activist reports and even press releases.
Aborting Jobs
The discovery of some 200 trillion cu ft of shale gas beneath northwest England is being greeted with—dismay. Cheap, abundant gas threatens the frail, heavily subsidized “green” energy sector—and “carbon dioxide goals.” England may follow the French in banning the use of hydraulic fracturing (“frocking”). This would abort a Canadian or North Dakota style “jobs gusher” that could create new opportunities or prevent the loss of energy-intensive industries. Rio Tinto Alcan is closing its Northumberland plant, and steel giant Tata says new investment is threatened by “green” policies (Energy Tribune 11/23/11).