Quote of the Day: The Global Warming Theory has Failed. Money, Politics and Ideology have Replaced Science

In celebration of Earth Day, the Weather Channel founder John Coleman vented: (source USA Today/ht zero hedge)

The environmentalists, bureaucrats and politicians who make up the U.N.’s climate panel recruit scientists to research the climate issue. And they place only those who will produce the desired results. Money, politics and ideology have replaced science.

U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres has called for a “centralized transformation” that is “going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different” to combat the alleged global warming threat. How many Americans are looking forward to the U.N. transforming their lives?

Another U.N. official has admitted that the U.N. seeks to “redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.” The former head of the U.N. climate panel also recently declared that global warming “is my religion.”

When all the scare talk is pushed aside, it is the science that should be the basis for the debate. And the hard cold truth is that the basic theory has failed. Many notable scientists reject man-made global warming fears. And several of them, including a Nobel Prize winner, are in the new Climate Hustle movie. The film is an informative and even humorous new feature length movie that is the ultimate answer to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. It will be shown one day only in theaters nationwide on May 2.

As a skeptic of man-made global warming, I love our environment as much as anyone. I share the deepest commitment to protecting our planet for our children and grandchildren. However, I desperately want to get politics out of the climate debate. The Paris climate agreement is all about empowering the U.N. and has nothing to do with the climate.

Pentagon’s climate warnings in 2003 turns out to be a bogus

The seemingly unusual heat in the Philippine capital, which has already claimed some lives, has prompted the government to issue warnings on the increasing risks of heat stroke.

And I’ve seen post hoc based comments associating high temperatures to “global warming”. This is a sign of how the public has been hardwired or brainwashed to view temperature changes as "global warming".

Unfortunately, the public doesn't realize it that the dogma of man made global warming continues to take a beating. 

The Washington Times points to a study commissioned by the Pentagon over a decade ago, which warned of the potential havoc that the world was faced from global warming. The prediction turned out to be blatantly inaccurate.

Here is the intro (ht Gary North)

Yet the 2003 report, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” is credited with kick-starting the movement that, to this day and perhaps with more vigor than ever, links climate change to national security.

The report also became gospel to climate change doomsayers, who predicted pervasive and more intense hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts.

The release of this report is what likely sparked the ‘modern era’ of security interest in climate affairs,” said Jeff Kueter, president of the George C. Marshall Institute, a nonprofit that examines scientific issues that affect public policy.

“It was widely publicized and very much a tool of the political battles over climate raging at the time,” said Mr. Kueter, who sees as “tenuous” a link between U.S. security and climate change.

Prediction versus reality

Under the section “Warming up to 2010,” here are some of the report’s key scenarios, compared with what has transpired:

• By 2005, “more severe storms and typhoons bring about higher storm surges and floods.”

Today: The most recent U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said it has “low confidence” of an increase in hurricanes or tornadoes. The U.S. is likely experiencing fewer tornadoes compared with 50 years ago, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This year’s tornado season was historically low.

The U.N. report said: “No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricane counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.”

In December, Roger Pielke, a scientist who has conducted extensive analysis of storm history, told a Senate panel: “There exists exceedingly little scientific support for claims found in the media and political debate that hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts have increased in frequency or intensity on climate timescales either in the United States or globally.”

The U.S. has not experienced a major hurricane in nearly 10 years.

• Global temperatures will increase by 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit per decade and, in some areas, 0.5 degrees per year.

Today: Scientists skeptical of man-made climate change say satellite data show there has been no increase in 17 years. The Environmental Protection Agency, a strong climate change advocate, puts the decade increase at 0.3 degrees.

• There will be more floods, making coastal cities such as The Hague “unlivable” by 2007.

Today: The Hague is still livable.

The United Nations said this year: “There continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.”

• “Floating ice in the northern polar seas is mostly gone during the summer by 2010.”

Today: Arctic sea ice remains. Warming in the polar region has reduced the ice extent, from 2.8 million square miles at its yearly summer minimum in 1979, when satellite measuring began, to 2.1 million square miles in 2013, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

• Sacramento River levees will fail, creating “an inland sea” in California that “disrupts the aqueduct system transporting water.”

Today: There are no inland seas in California.

Oh Professor North also provides as a link where 31,487 scientists from all over the US signed a petition (via PetitionProject.org) stating that…

“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.”

The religion of climate change has been about promoting environmental scare stories to justify funding from the government, aimed at providing “scientific basis” for the political social engineer’s vision of expanding control over society...Or more economic and political repression in the name of environmentalism.

At the end of the day, these scare stories—backing populist politics—turn out to be a myth.

The Foundations of Man Made Global Warming are Crumbling as More Scientists Defect

Cracks in the pedestal of anthropogenic global warming have increasingly become evident.

The former leader of global warming alarmism, James Lovelock continues to pound against the green advocacy.

Writes Austrian economist Gary North at the Tea Party Economist: (bold mine)

Green guru and geophysicist James Lovelock, considered one of the pioneering scientists of the 20th century, has officially turned his back on man-made global warming claims and the green movement’s focus on renewable energy. Lovelock conceived the Gaia theory back in the 1970s, describing the Earth’s biosphere as “an active, adaptive control system able to maintain the earth in homeostasis.”

In an April 3, 2014 BBC TV interview, Lovelock has come out swinging at his fellow environmentalists, accusing the new UN IPCC global warming report of plagiarizing his now retracted climate claims from his 2006 book ‘The Revenge of Gaia.’

“The last IPCC report is very similar to the (now retracted) statements I made in my book about 8 years ago, called The Revenge of Gaia. It’s almost as if they’ve copied it,” Lovelock told BBC Newsnight television program on April 3.

BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman noted to Lovelock during the April 3 program:  ”Sure. But you then, after publishing these apocalyptic predictions, you then retracted them.”

The newly skeptical Lovelock responded: ”Well, that’s my privilege. You see, I’m an independent scientist. I’m not funded by some government department or commercial body or anything like that. If I make a mistake, then I can go public with it. And you have to, because it is only by making mistakes that you can move ahead.”

Lovelock dismissed the entire basis for global warming concerns in his BBC television interview. “Take this climate matter everybody is thinking about. They all talk, they pass laws, they do things, as if they knew what was happening. I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess. And a whole group of them meet together and encourage each other’s guesses,” Lovelock explained.

I have earlier posted James Lovelock’s proselytism here and his continued bashing of the environmental politics of global warming here.

And Mr. Lovelock has now been joined by Dr. Richard Tol, a former lead author for the IPCC.

Writes the New American: (bold mine)

Professor Richard Tol, a prominent climate researcher from Sussex University and a coordinating lead author of an important chapter of the IPCC report has also drawn negative attention to climate frenzy — in more ways than one. First of all, he has embarrassed the UN/IPCC by refusing to sign the report, which he says is an “alarmist” concoction of “scare stories.” However, perhaps even more damning than his original criticism of the report are his subsequent claims that climate change mafia have retaliated against him with smears aimed at destroying his professional reputation and credibility.

But even then, politicians keep drumming up the global warming bogeyman. Nevertheless more scientists have reportedly been defecting

Again from the New American

To that end, they are ramping up the dire climate forecasts, even as more and more scientists jump off of the global warming bandwagon and leading alarmists admit there is no evidence of global warming over the past seventeen years.

However, even many of the veteran AGW activists are acknowledging that their fellow alarmists have cried wolf too often, and that the new wave of fright peddling is failing. In an April 3 Bloomberg News column entitled, “Scare Tactics Fail Climate Scientists, and Everyone Else,” AGW advocate Clive Crook asks: “Why aren't climate scientists winning the argument on climate policy? It sure isn't for lack of effort.”

“I take seriously the harms that man-made climate change might cause,” says Crook. “Action does make sense: It's a question of insuring against risk…. But this cause isn't advanced by exaggerating what is known in order to scare people into action, nor by denouncing everybody who disagrees with such proposals as evil or idiotic.”

Well the increasing revelation of the “emperor has no clothes” in the environmental politics of global warming reminds me of the great libertarian Henry Louis Mencken (From HL Mencken’s 1918 book In Defense of Women)

Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. They are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury. Here the effect of civilization has been to reduce the noblest of the arts, once the repository of an exalted etiquette and the chosen avocation of the very best men of the race, to the level of a riot of peasants…

A politician normally prospers under democracy, not in proportion as his principles are sound and his honour incorruptible, but in proportion as she excels in the manufacture of sonorous phrases, and the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defences against them. Our politics thus degenerates into a mere pursuit of hobgoblins…

Chart of the Day: The Bursting of the Renewable Energy Bubble

Environmental politics expressed through “manmade global warming” or now revamped as “climate change” has basically the same intent: promote political favored energy, as well as, establish social controls to supposedly protect the climate.

Yet the public hardly realizes that when government intervenes the result has always been the same: imbalances emerge and the laws of economics ventilated through markets will correct them.  This is simply the law of unintended consequence.

The renewable energy industry, which has been the principal beneficiary from climate change policies, have been thrashed by marketplace. Moreover politicization has led to unethical practices or has exposed cronyism such as the Solyndra scandal.

The chart above consisting of the market cap of the 30 of the world’s largest renewable energy companies has plummeted by more than 90% since the 2008 peak. 

From oversupply or to a build up of high capacity, to high energy prices, to the realization of fiscal realities and the European debt crisis, and to the stalemate in global climate negotiations, as explained by the Washington Times (chart also from them, hat tip AEI’s Mark Perry), has brought such politically hyped-to-the-firmament expectations back to earth.

Such outcome has been diametric to the largely free market based Shale gas revolution.

Bottom line: the market eventually explodes the illusions brought upon by politically inflated bubbles.

Chart of the Day: Global Warming Stopped 16 Years Ago

From the Daily Mail (hat tip Bob Wenzel)

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.

Global Warming in the Perspective of Social Science

Politics has mainly been about arousing emotions. In the debate over global warming, arguments have essentially been reduced to either black and white, or either “you are for are against us” (False choice).

Never mind if previous predictions has always failed due to misdiagnosis arising from blind spot-illusory superiority cognitive biases or the overestimation of one's assumptions (knowledge problem).

Professor Steve Horwitz puts the global warming-climate change issue into perspective with 8 highly relevant questions (from thefreemanonline.org) [Italics bold original]

1. Is the planet getting warmer?

2. If it’s getting warmer, is that warming caused by humans? Obviously this is a big question because if warming is not human-caused, then it’s not clear how much we can do to reduce it. What we might do about the consequences, however, remains an open question.

3. If it’s getting warmer, by what magnitude? If the magnitude is large, then there’s one set of implications. But if it’s small, then, as we’ll see, it might not be worth responding to. This is a good example of a scientific question with large implications for policy.

Matters of Science

All these questions are presumably matters of science. In principle we ought to be able to answer them using the tools of science, even if they are complex issues that involve competing interpretations and methods. Let’s assume the planet is in fact warming and that humans are the reason.

4. What are the costs of global warming? This question is frequently asked and answered.

5. What are the benefits of global warming? This question needs to be asked as well, as global warming might bring currently arctic areas into a more temperate climate that would enable them to become sources of food. Plus, a warmer planet might decrease the demand for fossil fuels for heating homes and businesses in those formerly colder places.

6. Do the benefits outweigh the costs or do the costs outweigh the benefits? This is also not frequently asked. Obviously, if the benefits outweigh the costs, then we shouldn’t be worrying about global warming. Two other points are worth considering. First, the benefits and costs are not questions of scientific fact because how we do the accounting depends on all kinds of value-laden questions. But that doesn’t mean the cost-benefit comparison isn’t important. Second, this question might depend greatly on the answers to the scientific questions above. In other words: All questions of public policy are ones that require both facts and values to answer. One cannot go directly from science to policy without asking the kinds of questions I’ve raised here.

7. If the costs outweigh the benefits, what sorts of policies are appropriate? There are many too many questions here to deal with in detail, but it should be noted that disagreements over what sorts of policies would best deal with the net costs of global warming are, again, matters of both fact and value, or science and social science.

8. What are the costs of the policies designed to reduce the costs of global warming? This question is not asked nearly enough. Even if we design policies on the blackboard that seem to mitigate the effects of global warming, we have to consider, first, whether those policies are even likely to be passed by politicians as we know them, and second, whether the policies might have associated costs that outweigh their benefits with respect to global warming. So if in our attempt to reduce the effects of global warming we slow economic growth so far as to impoverish more people, or we give powers to governments that are likely to be used in ways having little to do with global warming, we have to consider those results in the total costs and benefits of using policy to combat global warming. This is a question of social science that is no less important than the scientific questions I began with.

I could add more, but this is sufficient to make my key points.

Professor Horwitz’s striking conclusions:

First, it is perfectly possible to accept the science of global warming but reject the policies most often put forward to combat it. One can think humans are causing the planet to warm but logically and humanely conclude that we should do nothing about it.

Second, people who take that position and back it up with good arguments should not be called “deniers.” They are not denying the science; they are questioning its implications. In fact, those who think they can go directly from science to policy are, as it turns out, engaged in denial – denial of the relevance of social science.

Global warming-climate change is as much about economics or social sciences than just an issue of environmental science. Don’t be misled.

Former Climate Change Alarmist James Lovelock Blasts the Green “Religion”

James Lovelock, a famed godfather of global warming and a former “alarmist” whom has recanted his position turns the table to lambast the Green “religion”

The Toronto Sun does a synopsis of a Lovelock interview…

(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal.

As Lovelock observes, “Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it … Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.” (Kandeh Yumkella, co-head of a major United Nations program on sustainable energy, made similar arguments last week at a UN environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, advocating the development of conventional and unconventional natural gas resources as a way to reduce deforestation and save millions of lives in the Third World.)

(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.

“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed. “I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use … The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.”

(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.

As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”

(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”

It's nice to hear people humbly admit the fact that we can't know everything, especially not from the false assumptions of math 'models'.

Yet the politics of climate change is like inflationism, they are surreptitiously designed to promote the stakeholdings of special interest groups, through fascist or socialist policies in the guise, and mantra, of saving “earth”.

Lies that have been said so often and believed by many is still a lie.

As the father of modern psychology William James warned,

There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it

US Spent $72 Billion for Climate Change Since 2008

Writes Professor Gary North at the LewRockwell.com,

Remember when global warming was called global warming? You know: back in 2001, before a decade elapsed in which there was no measurable global warming.

It’s not called global warming any longer. That was just too embarrassing, because there hasn’t any global warming for a decade. This stable temperature has taken place, despite the fact that worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide are higher.

“In light of the 2010 data, global carbon dioxide emissions have risen by fully a third since the year 2001, yet global temperatureshave not risen during the past decade. Global warming activists argue that carbon dioxide emissions are the sole or primary factor in global temperature changes, yet global temperatures show no change despite a 33% increase in global carbon dioxide emissions.”

So, the anti-warmers changed tactics. They invented a new threat: climate change.

Mankind is responsible for climate change, we are told. Therefore, the U.S. government is required to spend money to combat it, all over the world. It has no jurisdiction outside the United States, but that has not dimmed the hopes and plans of warmers

The U.S. government has spent over $72 billion to combat climate change since 2008.

This has failed. The climate keeps changing. Sometimes it’s warmer. Sometimes it’s cooler. It it refuses to cease changing.

This means that taxpayers must still be compelled by the government to do their fair share.

This means $72 billion down the sinkhole (wasted productive capital), $72 billion added burden for US taxpayers, and $72 billion subsidies for the benefit of Obama’s green energy cronies.

Abetted by the constant barrage of propaganda by mainstream media aimed at convincing the median voter, vested interest groups, who benefit from political privileges, have been screaming for more.

Climate Change Alarmist James Lovelock Admits Mistake

One of the intellectual pillars of climate change alarmism admits that his predictions have failed.

The MSNBC.com reports (my tip of the hat to libertarian colleague Patrick Ella)

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.

He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”…

Mr. Lovelock acknowledges that his models didn’t work and that environmentalists have been overestimating on their understanding of nature.

More from the same article…

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future…

His admission…

“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.

'I made a mistake'

As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.

Just say what government wants and funding will follow. This epitomizes the politics of climate change.

At least Mr. Lovelock has been forthright enough to face up with reality. Although like doomsday diviner Harold Camping whose controversial forecasts in 2011 failed to materialize, Mr. Lovelock seems locked into a defensive posture to protect his work by pushing his forecasts to the indeterminate future.

Only when the tide goes out, said Warren Buffett, do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

Apparently the anthropomorphic climate change dogma has been swimming naked.

The Politics of Climate Change

Analyst Martin Spring gives a concise but trenchant description or explanation of the politics of climate change.

Writes Mr. Spring (bold emphasis added)

Following the resignation of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Glaever from the American Physical Society because of its insistence that the evidence of human-caused global warming is “incontrovertible,” 16 eminent scientists have published an attack on “the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something be done to stop global warming.”

They say that’s “not true.” Indeed, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers disagree, recognizing that there is much contrary evidence.

Such “heretics” are persecuted, one example being the campaign to fire Dr Chris de Freitas, editor of the journal Climate Change, for daring to publish a peer-reviewed, factually-correct article that recent warming has not been unusual in the context of what happened over the past thousand years.

Many young scientists say they have serious doubts about the global-warming message, but “they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted – or worse.”

The reason such savage efforts are taken to suppress contrary opinion and inconvenient facts is that “alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow.

“Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet.”

The scientists argue that even if one accepts the “inflated climate forecasts,” aggressive policies to control emissions of greenhouse gases are not justified economically.

“A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls.

“This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world. And it is likely that more CO2, and the modest warming that may come with it, will be an overall benefit to the planet.”

The anthropomorphic global warming or climate change dogma has mostly been about the expansion of political power or control over the marketplace (via mass indoctrination and propaganda through government influenced institutions and media outfits), crony capitalism and covert socialism.

CBS News: US Taxpayers Taking a Hit on Green-Renewable Energy Firms

Political supported green renewable energy companies have been sinking US taxpayer funds.


(hat tip: Mark Perry)

From CBS

It's been four months since the FBI raided bankrupt Solyndra. It received a half-billion in tax dollars and became a political lightning rod, with Republicans claiming it was a politically motivated investment.

CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES' subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra.

Others are also struggling with potential problems. Nevada Geothermal -- a home state project personally endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- warns of multiple potential defaults in new SEC filings reviewed by CBS News. It was already having trouble paying the bills when it received $98.5 million in Energy Department loan guarantees.

SunPower landed a deal linked to a $1.2 billion loan guarantee last fall, after a French oil company took it over. On its last financial statement, SunPower owed more than it was worth. On its last financial statement, SunPower owed more than it was worth. SunPower's role is to design, build and initially operate and maintain the California Valley Solar Ranch Project that's the subject of the loan guarantee.

First Solar was the biggest S&P 500 loser in 2011 and its CEO was cut loose - even as taxpayers were forced to back a whopping $3 billion in company loans.

Nobody from the Energy Department would agree to an interview. Last November at a hearing on Solyndra, Energy Secretary Steven Chu strongly defended the government's attempts to bolster America's clean energy prospects. "In the coming decades, the clean energy sector is expected to grow by hundreds of billions of dollars," Chu said. "We are in a fierce global race to capture this market."

Economist Morici says even somebody as smart as Secretary Chu -- an award-winning scientist -- shouldn't be playing "venture capitalist" with tax dollars. "Tasking a Nobel Prize mathematician to make investments for the U.S. government is like asking the manager of the New York Yankees to be general in charge of America's troops in Afghanistan," Morici said. "It's that absurd."

My comment:

This represents the political economy of anthropomorphic climate change. Argue about the validity of global warming then divert taxpayers money on money losing projects that benefits only politically allied cronies and their political wards.

This is further proof that even with subsidized money, green or renewable energy can hardly take off simply because consumers don't see them as reliable alternatives (in spite of the global warming bugaboo).

This also proves that government picking out of 'winners' is no guarantee of success.

Even more, the issue of moral hazard applies as cronies are hardly motivated to see the success of these companies since they know government will absorb the losses on their behalf and even perhaps knew or anticipated that these companies would eventually fail, hence, became milking cows.

And corruption will signify another aspect here, since public-private partnerships naturally leads to the prioritization of the whims of the political masters rather than of consumers.

Also one can pretend to know about the future (as the energy secretary) when we really don't.

End of the day what is unsustainable won't last. What is a fraud or unnatural will be exposed for what they are. That's how events have been playing out as shown above.

Chart of the Day: Debt Causes Global Warming

Below is an example of how mathematical correlations (via models) can be used to manipulate public’s opinion on social issues as global warming.

The graphs show that temperature anomaly has higher correlation with debt than with carbon concentrations where a deduction can be made to say that debt may have caused global warming.

Or that maybe the faithful will suggest that ‘consumerism’ via debt has led to increased carbon emissions. But this would signify as speculative baloney.

Zero Hedge nails it… (bold emphasis mine)

since global leverage (via Debt-to-GDP) has a greater correlation to the "Temperature Anomaly" aka Global Warming, at 0.79, than CO₂ concentration, at 0.69, it is obvious that global warming is purely a function of ever increasing leverage, and not, as is widely accepted by various ecological consultancies, carbon dioxide concentration. And now you see how easy it is to make idiotic, and totally spurious statements (which however serve as fodder for even more idiotic peer-reviewed white papers and journal submissions this keeping lots of people employed while contributing absolutely nothing to society), which given enough time, will become religion to a new breed of shamans once the old ones are forcibly kicked out of their comfortable corner offices.

Amen.

As previously argued, the public hardly questions or applies critical thinking to the methods used to derive at conclusions and simply take whatever is fed to them 'hook, line and sinker'.

Many reasons for the popular appeal: many are overwhelmed or intimidated by the facade of science and math, many use maths or science as social signaling or for social status and many are allured by the appeal to the majority or etc... Yet unknowingly, this makes them very vulnerable to manipulations by politicians and their followers.

Hurricanes are Not Linked to Global Warming

A popular myth exposed.

From John Ransom

One of the of the most popularized predicted effects of global warming from the models given us by the climate change clowns, increased hurricane and tropical storm activity, has recently been shown to be without merit according to the science and operations officer of the National Hurricane Center, Dr. Chris Landsea.

In a work published in late November and carefully labeled an “opinion” piece on the site for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - which is quick to distance itself from the conclusions reached by Landsea, who makes very clear that he subscribes to the theory man of man-made global warming- concludes that “the overall impact of global warming on hurricanes is currently negligible and likely to remain quite tiny even a century from now.”

In the rarefied atmosphere of climate politics this is enough to get you labled as a "climate skeptic," perhaps enough to get you excommunicated as a "climate denier." Landsea resigned from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2005 because he felt it had become politicized and was ignoring the science.

Yet somehow he remains the leading hurricane expert in the US, despite his "shoddy" science.

Landsea attacked three specific datasets that are often used by global warming alarmists to show that the warming of the earth will have terrible consequences for human-kind: 1) the frequency of storms; 2) the intensity of storms and; 3) the economic damage of storms.

Read the rest here.

Heard at a discussion last night, “We cannot predict the impact of hurricanes but we can predict global warming because of melting ice caps”

Woa. So aside from the post hoc fallacy, such a comment implies that storms are not part of, or are isolated from, the atmosphere or weather. This just goes to show how environmentalism, thanks to complicit mainstream media, has mangled people’s logic and transformed the public’s mentality into a political religion.

Global Warming Debate: Sea levels aren't rising dangerously

Popular ‘media’ hysteria on climate change have principally been based from math derived models.

Yet in contravention of the establishment consensus, an expert based on extensive field observation claims that ‘sea levels are not rising dangerously’.

From the Spectator.co.uk,

This week's Spectator cover star Nils-Axel Mörner brings some good news to a world otherwise mired in misery: sea levels are not rising dangerously – and haven't been for at least 300 years. To many readers this may come as a surprise. After all, are not rising sea levels – caused, we are given to understand, by melting glaciers and shrinking polar ice – one of the main planks of the IPCC's argument that we need to act now to 'combat climate change'?

But where the IPCC's sea level figures are based on computer 'projections', questionable measurements and arbitrary adjustments, Mörner's are based on extensive field observations. His most recent trip to Goa in India last month – just like his previous expeditions to Bangladesh and the Maldives – has only served to confirm his long-held view that reports of the world's imminent inundation have been greatly exaggerated for ends that have more to do with political activism than science.

Mörner's views have not endeared him to environmental campaigners or the IPCC establishment. A few years ago, when I mentioned his name in a public debate with George Monbiot, I vividly remember an audible hissing from sections of the audience as if I'd invoked the equivalent of Lord Voldemort.

The problem for Mörner's detractors is that, eccentric and outspoken Swedish count though he no doubt is, he also happens to be the world's pre-eminent expert on sea levels. Besides being responsible for dozens of peer-reviewed papers on the subject, he was also chairman of INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution. This means that his findings can not easily be dismissed as those of a raving 'climate change denier'.’

I’d be very cautious about heeding populist or the mainstream’s claims when much of them seem to be communism/socialism garbed in environmental mores.

Quote of the Day: The Fading Religion of Global Warming

From Michael Barone (hat tip Matt Ridley)

All the trappings of religion are there. Original sin: Mankind is responsible for these prophesied disasters, especially those slobs who live on suburban cul-de-sacs and drive their SUVs to strip malls and tacky chain restaurants.

The need for atonement and repentance: We must impose a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, which will increase the cost of everything and stunt economic growth.

Ritual, from the annual Earth Day to weekly recycling.

Indulgences, like those Martin Luther railed against: private jet-fliers like Al Gore and sitcom heiress Laurie David can buy carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon-emitting sins.

Corporate elitists, like General Electric's Jeff Immelt, profess to share this faith, just as cynical Venetian merchants and prim Victorian bankers gave lip service to the religious enthusiasms of their days. Bad for business not to. And if you're clever, you can figure out how to make money off it.

Believers in this religion have flocked to conferences in Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto and Copenhagen, just as Catholic bishops flocked to councils in Constance, Ferrara and Trent, to codify dogma and set new rules.

But like the Millerites, the global warming clergy has preached apocalyptic doom -- and is now facing an increasingly skeptical public. The idea that we can be so completely certain of climate change 70 to 90 years hence that we must inflict serious economic damage on ourselves in the meantime seems increasingly absurd.

If carbon emissions were the only thing affecting climate, the global-warming alarmists would be right. But it's obvious that climate is affected by many things, many not yet fully understood, and implausible that SUVs will affect it more than variations in the enormous energy produced by the sun.

Hoaxes will eventually get exposed for what they truly are.

What Are The Odds On The Next Big Volcanic Eruption?

Here is the Economist on the odds of volcanic eruption.


According to the Economist,

``ASH propelled into the atmosphere by the eruption of a volcano in Iceland led to cancelled flights and closed airspace in Britain, Ireland, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland on Thursday April 15th. Eyjafjallajokull blasted clouds of ash several miles into the atmosphere on Wednesday night, which drifted south-east on the wind. Volcanic ash does not mix well with jet engines, hence the disruption. In addition to surprising airlines, Eyjafjallajokull caught bookmakers unawares. Paddy Power, an Irish bookie, had the odds on it erupting at 28-1. The odds are much shorter on other volcanoes around the world losing their lids."

Some thoughts to ponder on:

-Philippine Mayon volcano is out of the list, does this mean the eruption risks have diminished, even when it accounted for a minor eruption in 2009?

-has the recent spate of earthquakes from Haiti, to Chile, to Indonesia and China been related to volcanic activities?

-so what is the relevance of climate change to the gamut of earthquakes and volcanic activities?

The Imploding 'Man Made' Global Warming Bubble In The US

In the US, the global warming paranoia or bubble seems to be imploding. And like any social fads, bubbles eventually unravel and fade.

This from Gallup,


``The last two years have marked a general reversal in the trend of Americans' attitudes about global warming. Most Gallup measures up to 2008 had shown increasing concern over global warming on the part of the average American, in line with what one might have expected given the high level of publicity on the topic. Former Vice President Al Gore had been particularly prominent in this regard, with the publication of his bestselling book, "An Inconvenient Truth," an Academy Award-winning documentary movie focusing on his global warming awareness campaign, and Gore's receipt of a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

``But the public opinion tide turned in 2009, when several Gallup measures showed a slight retreat in public concern about global warming. This year, the downturn is even more pronounced."

The accompanying charts...

shows how American sentiment towards global warming appear as...

collapsing!!!

For us, climate change is a real phenomenon. It's plainly the work of mother nature than from the activities of people, the latter of which constitutes only a fraction of influence on nature.

Common sense tells us that if we can't predict earthquakes what more for us to presume the accuracy of gloom and doom predictions or the alleged adverse consequences from "carbon emissions", years ahead.

People's belief in the gospel of model derived scientific analysis had been unwarranted; if quant models failed to predict the latest financial catastrophe, and was believed to have exacerbated the crisis, how much more should we come to believe that people's presumed actions (based on models) are far potent than the influences of mother nature?

Obviously, anything unsustainable won't last.

And with climategate or the revelation where mainstream scientists had been unmasked or exposed to have 'manipulated, suppressed and or distorted' data just to be able come up with conclusion that weather changes was due to anthropogenic reasons, the mainstream scientific model has been under siege.

Gallup adds, ``Some of the shifts in Americans' views may reflect real-world events, including the publicity surrounding allegations of scientific fraud relating to global warming evidence, and -- perhaps in some parts of the country -- a reflection of the record-breaking snow and cold temperatures of this past winter. Additionally, evidence from last year showed that the issue of global warming was becoming heavily partisan in nature, and it may be that the continuing doubts about global warming put forth by conservatives and others are having an effect."

So partisan politics and empirical evidences have been mainly responsible for this change in sentiment.

Of course what's not been said is that partisan politics is the attempt to pin the blame on people actions for changes in weather so as to justify measures to control or regulate people's behavior (euphemistically called socialism).

In the Philippines, media remains reticent about the global warming bubble. That's because it seems fun to live in a fantasyworld in the belief that a political superman would come and save the day from the villains (markets) or mother nature.

Climate Change: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Generation

Sir Ernest John Pickstone Benn once said, ``Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy."

Since the environmental science issue of climate change or man made "anthropogenic" global warming has been transposed into political policies, like any politicized issues-deception and skulduggery have been used to promote vested interests.

Christopher Booker at the Telegraph presents a neat summary of how politics has transformed the global warming episode as the "greatest scientific scandal of our generation" to quote Professor Mark Perry.

(bold highlight mine, sub titles in blue font mine)

``There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That ), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws."

1. Data Suppression

``They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

``This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

``But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide?"

2. Data Manipulation

``The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

``In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

``What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results."

3. Censorship

``The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports."

Read the rest of the article here.

The diagram below, from Professor Richard Lindzen shows how science have been parlayed into politics...

Read the Professor Lindzen's Global Warming power point presentation here (Hat Tip Stephan Kinsella/Mises Blog)

Dr. Tim Ball On Climategate

In Exposing The Fraud Behind Man Made Global Warming? [Climategate], we showed how hackers managed to infiltrate into the computers files of climatologist researchers and expose the alleged manipulation of data to present proof of that global warming is man made.

The corberttreports interviews retired climatologist Dr. Tim Ball on this expose. According to Dr. Ball "the manipulation of records on this level... you have to think it has to be criminal somewhere."



University of Michigan's Professor Mark Perry (source of video) offers additional links on this

CLIMATE BOMBSHELL: Hacker leaks thousands of emails showing conspiracy to "hide" the real data on manmade climate change

The Death Blow to Climate Science

And of course, Wikipedia already has a webpage: Climatic Research Unit e-mail Hacking Incident

Exposing The Fraud Behind Man Made Global Warming?

Computer hackers confer some benefit to the society after all.

Some recently hacked into the computers of climate research scientists and surreptitiously obtained a wealth of information: scientific evidences in support of anthropogenic (man caused) global warming were allegedly manufactured, if not tweaked to produce man made global warming!

This from the New York Times, ``Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.[bold emphasis added]

``The e-mail messages, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments — in some cases derisive — about specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years."

According to Telegraph's James Delingpole, (blue bold highlights mine, black bold original)

``When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

Mr. Delingpole's points to several issues...[bold highlights original]

``But if genuine, they suggest dubious practices such as:

Manipulation of evidence:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

Suppression of evidence:

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists:

Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.

Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):

……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back….

You can read the rest of the article here.

Bishop Hill has a collection of sensitive communications here.

This just goes to show how closet communists or socialists have been using the environment as cover or as camouflaged platform to advance their political agenda. It isn't the environment that truly matters but absolute societal (the political economy) control by would be dictators or tyrants. They'd like to bring us back to the hunter gatherer age!

To quote Professor George Reisman, ``the intellectuals have chosen to foist the doctrine of environmentalism on the world, as a last-ditch effort to destroy capitalism and save socialism."

It's a conspiracy, if not a bubble, that appears to be falling apart.