Almost Embarrassing

In trying to chase a story about a talk given in Pueblo West, about 45 miles from here, I had to follow it literally around the world from blog to blog. One of the blogs that I stopped by was called Blowing Our Tax Dollars on Wind Farms. Now, that is a title one could grow to love. I digress.

It is my view that if people start paying attention to the real facts about global warming, they will be less willing to be piped by our local pied pipers, Mark Udall and Bill Ritter, into a bitter ocean, a bitter future of an intentionally depressed economy.

I finally found the original article, printed of course in the Pueblo Chieftain.

The hype surrounding the issue of global warming is a bunch of hot air, a retired physics professor told members of Rotary Club 43 on Monday.

"Global warming is not a problem," Howard C. Hayden said. "Go find something useful to do."

Hayden is an emeritus professor of physics from the University of Connecticut and now resides in Pueblo West.

and...

"Yes, the polar ice caps are shrinking . . . on Mars," he said, "On Mars, the ice caps are melting and small hills are disappearing."

Hayden added that there is warming occurring on Jupiter, Saturn and Triton.

Of course the Big Blue Lie Machine that is Colorado Media Matters put its nose into the article:

However, the Chieftain did not note the scientific consensus that rising global temperatures are not part of a natural cycle and that climate change is being caused primarily by human activity...

The article did not note that former Vice President Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change." It also failed to point out that organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the IPCC share the consensus view that, as stated in a June 2006 NAS report, "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming" of the planet.

The word consensus is being misused by the left to stampede the public into actions that are not in its interest for the purpose of taking political power. The word "consensus" is defined as "general agreement." There is far too much disagreement to use that word.

Professor Hayden put it eloquently when he told the likes of Media Matters, Mark Udall, and Bill Ritter that they should "go find something useful to do."

The Gazette Isn't Cowed

On Tuesday, we reported on what we thought was the "dumbest quote ever" by a politician who is actively seeking office. It came from Mark Udall's campaign site:

I believe that it is time for universal acknowledgment of what is already the scientific and public consensus-global climate change is occurring and human activity is a primary contributor to that change. The problem presents a major environmental challenge that requires an immediate response from our state and national government.

The scientific and physical evidence of global climate change is overwhelming. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global sea level."

Today, The Gazette not only did not bow to Mark Udall's superior wisdom, it called that "wisdom" into question with a long editorial debunking global warming (read the comments, too):

Growing numbers of global warming science skeptics are making their opposition known. They include experts in climatology, oceanography, geology, biology, environmental sciences and physics, among others. Contrary to alarmist claims, they’re not on the payrolls of the big oil companies. They are affiliated with prestigious institutions worldwide, including Harvard, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, MIT, the International Arctic Research Center, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and many others. Many shared a portion of IPCC’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (cowon with Gore), and others have won previous Nobel Prizes for their research.

A U.S. Senate report accumulated more than 400 of their views to refute Gore’s claim of “consensus.”

For example, physics professor emeritus Dr. Howard Hayden of the University of Connecticut said, “You think SUVs are the cause of glaciers shrinking? . . . Don’t believe what you hear out of Hollywood and Washington, D.C. . . . [C]limate history proves that Gore has the relationship between carbon dioxide concentration and global warming backward. A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not cause the Earth to be warmer. Instead, a warmer Earth causes the higher carbon dioxide levels.”

Dumbest Quote Ever?

Not all that long ago, the scientific consensus in astronomy was that the universe was in a steady state - that it had no beginning and would have no end. The few who postulated the big bang theory were derided. Indeed, the "big bang" name was hung on the theory as a form of derision.

Two things have happened to destroy "steady state" as a viable theory. The first was the discovery by Edwin Hubble (for whom the telescope is named) that the universe was expanding. The second was the discovery of residual cosmic background radiation from the big bang.

Global warming is nothing more than a theory, and given that the geologic record suggests that we are between ice ages, it isn't all that sound as a theory. Human causation is also a theory, a theory that completely ignores the dramatic changes in the global temperature 10,000 years ago to end the last ice age. Man could not have been a cause of that period of warming.

Now comes Mark Udall with what may be the dumbest quote from a politician who is actively seeking office ever:

I believe that it is time for universal acknowledgment of what is already the scientific and public consensus-global climate change is occurring and human activity is a primary contributor to that change. The problem presents a major environmental challenge that requires an immediate response from our state and national government.

The scientific and physical evidence of global climate change is overwhelming. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global sea level."

The two men who discovered the cosmic background radiation that supported the big bang theory were both awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics. That is a science prize. Al Gore got a political version of the Nobel Prize because the science, despite the propaganda from the environmental extremists like Mark Udall, does not support the hypothesis or the hype.

Keep in mind that Mark Udall chairs a subcommittee dealing with NASA. He, above all others, should be open to revisions in scientific theory. He clearly is not, and says so:

I believe that it is time for universal acknowledgment of what is already the scientific and public consensus...

A Nobel Prize "Co-Winner" Speaks Out

Best Destiny has an excellent essay on John R Christy, and we suggest readers who are not mind numbed by environmentalist propaganda read it. Of course, Mark Udall, who many think believes he is a high priest of environmentalism and thus is entitled to his own facts will want to skip both the Best Destiny and the Christy WSJ article, "My Nobel Moment." Christy writes:

I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time...

Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"

We recently wrote about the high relative costs of wind power, but Rossputin put our essay to shame when he published an item which illuminates the costs of ethanol. We are spending $128 Billion to avoid importing 2.3 billion in oil.

Christy notes:

My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."

Topic of the Day: Forest Fires-Part 1

Last night, 60 minutes had a story about the rise in intensity of forest fires in the US in the last decade. Missing from the story was any mention of the part that the Sierra Club and other organizations that claim to be interested in the environment have played in this disaster.

No mention was made of any of those organization's efforts to convert as many acres of forest as possible to roadless wilderness where fire fighting and insect mitigation are difficult to impossible.

No mention was made of the part politicians like Mark Udall have played in an effort to ensure that the forest service can not easily approve thinning even in areas that can be managed. His support, along with Diana DeGette, and John Salazar of roadless wilderness areas that can't be managed in any way wasn't mentioned, either.

In short, unlike most stories where 60 minutes is quick to assign blame, these forest fires are a natural phenomena that can be blamed on "global warming." The environmentalist extremists are blameless.

The largest fire this year was 600,000 acres. That is 1000 square miles. Another this year was 500,000 acres. Fires of 200,000 acres, once rare, are now commonplace.

If "global warming" is causing these fires and greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are causing global warming, one wonders why 60 minutes couldn't make the connection between the megatons of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere by these fires and the environmentalist extremist communities' refusal to allow reasonable forest management.

60 minutes did report one fact that was new to this author: Half of the area burned was so badly damaged that it won't be reforested in the foreseeable future. That will have a serious impact on water supplies.

Nice Job, Mark! Keep those campaign checks coming from the Sierra Club and its allies.

Burning Heretics at the Stake

For those interested in science, the History Channel had a very enlightening show tonight on the geologic history of the Earth called "How the Earth Was Made"

It made the case that most climate change is the result of plate tectonics, with an occasional meteor thrown in (pun intended). The position of the continents either facilitate the flow of warm water to the poles or block it. When that flow is blocked, ice ages occur.

For two million years, the Earth has been in an alternating period of ice ages. 10,000 years ago, the area that is now New York City was buried under a glacier that was hundreds of feet thick. Civilization arose after temperatures moderated in the period following that ice age.

In its last minutes, the show made the point that it isn't unreasonable to expect that a similar ice age could occur within 15,000 years, and if that happened, "global warming" might delay it by 200 years at most. New York City could once again expect to be buried under ice.

Except for that one comment, the show didn't touch on the current environmental debate. It shouldn't be controversial to most watchers, assuming it is good geology.

We currently have a bunch of politicians led by Mark Udall and financed by the Sierra Club driving science and the economy based on the premise that climate is dictated solely by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

One is reminded that the Catholic Church once taught that the Earth was the center of the universe. When a famous astronomer suggested that the Sun might be the center of the universe instead, he was placed under house arrest for 11 years. The more usual punishment at the time for less famous heretics was to be burned at the stake, so he got lucky.

A Congress dominated by Mark Udall and other like minded group thinkers won't try to burn scientists who don't accept an atmospheric cause for global warming at the stake. It will merely defund them.

But, isn't that pretty much the same thing, professionally speaking?

Annoy Mark Udall and the Sierra Club today. THINK.