H 32°, L 7° | Tomorrow: 
H 17°, L 4°I found Jim Allard’s opinion column titled “Climate Crisis Prone to Misinformation” to be itself full of misinformation. While I admire Allard’s renunciation of current environmentalist ideology — one based on exaggeration and ignorance — the article relied on omitting many facts to make its case.
The article makes unsubstantiated claims like “Falling global temperatures … are no longer cooperating with global warming predictions.” In truth, average global temperatures obviously fluctuate from year to year, and the upward trend is only observable on a larger scale. Annual fluctuations are equivalent to noise present in any kind of scientific data. Furthermore, physicists have accepted the greenhouse effect since the mid-19th century. It’s not up for debate. Also obvious is the fact that the product of human activity has released greenhouse gases over time, affecting the earth’s climate to some extent. And as for “Climategate,” this kind of behavior on the part of scientists is nothing new. Reading Arthur Koestler’s “The Case of the Midwife Toad,” about a scientist who injected toads with ink to “prove” his incorrect theory, gives a much crueler example of a paradigm defense. Attacking a few messengers should not invalidate scientists’ message, especially when it is grounded in the reputable work of so many other researchers, dating back to the pre-Civil War era.
Allard’s coverage of fossil fuel emissions goes on to neglect the presence of other dangerous compounds, such as nitrites/nitrates and sulfites/sulfates, which cause other environmental problems. It is obtuse to suggest that opposition to fossil fuel emissions has only risen in recent years in response to hype created by Al Gore. Gore is but one catalyst to the present opposing force of these emissions.
I also question the article’s characterization of environmental policy as “wealth destroying.” Developing green energy will create many non-exportable jobs within the U.S. and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which will both benefit national security and keep American money within the United States. Research at institutions like the University of Wisconsin is centered on developing safer, cleaner and more efficient technologies. Should we stop this research and continue to depend on an outdated resource that will eventually become too expensive to extract?
Finally, the article suggests DDT was banned because of “junk science,” merely because it hasn’t been shown to harm humans. This is absurd as DDT endangered already scarce predatory birds by weakening their eggshells and causing stillbirths. Though DDT is still used to a restricted extent to control disease, part of its danger came from the manner in which it was indiscriminately sprayed due to a lack of knowledge of its effects.
While it is admirable to combat “doomsday predictions” and support dissenting opinions in the name of science, it is also important to acknowledge proven facts. Simply disregarding what has already been presented by scientific research and common sense to fit an agenda is irresponsible. “Climategate” showed, above all, that scientists are human and therefore subject to prejudices. What it did not do is more than make fossil fuels a viable permanent energy source and invalidate more than a century of research.
Nathan Schaefer
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DDT was used to great effect to combat malaria, after it was banned, untold numbers of people were exposed to malaria, all to save some bird eggs based on a crazy woman’s “science”. Funnily enough, DDT has been shown to have little to no effect on bird eggs. From www.junkscience.com: Rachel Carson sounded the initial alarm against DDT, but represented the science of DDT erroneously in her 1962 book Silent Spring. Carson wrote “Dr. DeWitt’s now classic experiments [on quail and pheasants] have now established the fact that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched.” DeWitt’s 1956 article (in Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry) actually yielded a very different conclusion. Quail were fed 200 parts per million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. DeWitt reports that 80% of their eggs hatched, compared with the “control”” birds which hatched 83.9% of their eggs. Carson also omitted mention of DeWitt’s report that “control” pheasants hatched only 57 percent of their eggs, while those that were fed high levels of DDT in all of their food for an entire year hatched more than 80% of their eggs.
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Note: the Case of the Midwife Toad reference was changed by the editors and not used how I intended it — it was a paradigm defense because Paul Kammerer challenged the Darwinian paradigm and one of his British opponents framed him by tampering with his Midwife Toad specimen. He was disgraced and committed suicide, but the modern field of epigenetics vindicates his research.
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“Developing green energy will” result in ‘mining’ the topsoil and increasing the price of food.
I think I heard something about riots in Mexico over the increase in corn prices - THANKS government subsidised ethanol!
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Yeah, spending billions to generate “green jobs” should flush the USA further down the drain:
If Spain�s experience is any guide, there are serious job losses from green stimulus measures like the ones contemplated in Obama�s plans. According to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid, For every new job sustained by subsidized renewable energy at least 2.2 are lost in other industries.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a2PHwqAs7BS0
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In addition, other researchers found that producing ethanol from corn could actually increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as farmers cleared more land to grow fuel crops. One such study found:
… that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%.
No matter how good your “green” intentions, you gotta watch out for those unintended consequences. See the new algae fuels study here and the corn study here.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/22/biofuels-and-more-unintended-c
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Why didn’t you address the “hiding the decline” issue? Aside from the climatologists attempt to silence contrary opinion, this was the worst part of Climategate.
Admittedly, the decline they were hiding was not a decline in global temperatures. The temperature has increased in recent decades.
The “decline” was actually found in their own climate models. As I’m sure you know, thermometers and climate data are a relatively new development. In order to determine temperatures for times that predate modern data sets, the climatologists developed proxies using sediments, ice core samples and tree ring data.
If you actually apply those same proxies to the modern era, within the last 30 years or so, the proxy data show that the temperature should actually be declining, not increasing.
The bottom line is that the models they used to estimate global temps prior to the modern era do not accurately predict the present increase in temperatures. Hence, hiding the decline.
The historic climate models are worthless.
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lets say for arguments sake that all the information about global warming is false. what bad can come out of the outcome? less consumption, increase efficiency, reduce pollutants, decrease dependence on foreign oil, create jobs, conserve oil. global warming or not, how are any of these things bad? if the earth’s temperature doesn’t go up, fine, but the pollution isn’t helping anything. so what the fuck’s the your point?
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You’re question amounts to: What’s wrong with less prosperity?
Production (and the resulting consumption) is good! Placing caps on energy production necessarily means a lower standard of living.
Increased efficiency, jobs, etc. requires freedom to produce, not restrictions on production and subsidies for unproductive “alternatives.”
Oil is the best source of energy we have. It’s not a dependency, it’s a wonderful, life-giving, discovery!
Reducing pollution is achieved by producing better, more efficient products and this requires freedom, not restrictions on production. The light bulb didn’t replace oil lamps because government placed restrictions on oil; it came about because entrepreneurs were free to develop something better.
If environmentalists really cared about better sources of energy they would campaign to remove restrictions on building nuclear power plants.
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oil is limited. why waste it? that’s why, like i said, we should conserve it, because it’s “wonderful and life-giving”. we need it for everything so using it when an alternative is available is wasteful. calling our use of oil “not a dependency” and then calling it “life-giving” is a contradiction.
creating efficient products, we agree on.
if people consume less that doesn’t mean they will just burn the money they would have spent. that money could be invested back into the economy.
calling the alternatives as unproductive is untrue. less productive yeah. but so what? it won’t solve every problem but if its an option that will help in the slightest and we don’t use it, thats just retarded.
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You’re free to invest in “alternatives” as you see fit and use or not use oil as much as you like. Just don’t prevent me from doing the same.
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why should anyone let you over use oil when the nation’s need is greater than your need
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The “nation” has no needs; only individuals have needs. Only individuals have rights, namely the right to acquire and use the material goods their lives depend on.
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who’s rights are being violated when someone commits treason? if the safety and strength of the nation depends on people rationing a commodity it will be done whether you like it or not.
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The rights of the individuals in that society.
A nation does not become strong by rationing, but by producing.
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so, in 100 or 200 years just produce more non-existent oil. shouldn’t be hard
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Actually, the energy from a pebble bed nuclear power plant located by the tar sands or a coal mine could easily produce synthetic oil or gasoline or whatever you like.
or maybe more oil will seep up from below:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/25/where-does-petroleum.html
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“the rights of the individuals in that society” so, in other words, the nation. we’re talking about the same thing. define it any way you want. your way doesn’t work.
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Too bad Barry HO is just a political hack instead of a real Greenie.
Putting Kennedy cronies on the review board for the Cape Wind project Kennedy opposed, as it would ruin his view, seems to be a strange move for a black Green president allegedly committed to alternative energy, don’t ya think? Just words - aka hot air, just not when it comes to wind turbines near the Kennedy compound. Change!
http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/01/messianic-cronyism-obama-not-parting-sea-for-cape-wind-project.html
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“lets say for arguments sake that all the information about global warming is false. what bad can come out of the outcome?….global warming or not, how are any of these things bad?”
less consumption, increased efficiency:
No, adherence to the false hypothesis of Man Made Global Warming creates more consumption and leads to very inefficient useage of critical resources. As an example, we are inefficiently wasting federal subsidies (read: our tax payer dollars) creating expensive “green bio fuels” like ethanol from food reserves. This consumes more resources and creates shortages in basic foods needed by low income families and nations. Driving up the costs of food and energy creates poverty. Wasting tax dollars on projects that drive up the cost of food and energy is profoundly stupid and indefensible. All of those things are BAD.
The false hypothesis of Man Made Global Warming is driving up consumption of food commodities, inefficiently using those resources and our tax payer dollars as well, to produce a more costly form of energy than oil, coal, or nuclear energy. In a food, energy, and capital investment hungry world, these resources must be better deployed.
That’s the f…ing point.
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yeah, the price of energy created by oil hasn’t gone up. why would finding alternatives help lower those costs? my mistake.
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Accord to this letter, scientific fraud is nothing new and just shows that “scientists are human.” This is an insult to the majority of reputable scientists who wouldn’t dream of acting like these climategate crooks.
Science is a process of reasoning, data analysis and proper method. An alleged scientific truth must be proven, not just accepted because someone called a “scientist” says it’s true.
In this case some of the top scientists, whose work is disproportionally influential in establishing currently accepted theories about climate change, have been found to be dishonest, ideologically motivated and fraudulent. The have acted, not as scientists, but as ideologically-driven criminals. This means their work can not be judged as science.
Also, this letter misrepresents the actual views put forth by the global warming establishment. No one is arguing about the greenhouse effect or whether humans have some effect on climate (at least locally). The “global warming” theory put forth in the last 30 years is that anthropgenic CO2 is a significant driver of climate, is causing historically unpresidented warming, and will have devistating consequences. This is what the fraudulent Mann hockey stick graph and “hide the decline” was trying to convience the “ignorant public” (in the words of one of these climate scientists, in his email) to accept.