http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressreleases/climateupdate.htm
Climate Change Update
Senate Floor Statement by
U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe(R-Okla)
January 4, 2005
As I said on the Senate floor on July 28, 2003, "much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science." I called the threat of catastrophic global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," a statement that, to put it mildly, was not viewed kindly by environmental extremists and their elitist organizations. I also pointed out, in a lengthy committee report, that those same environmental extremists exploit the issue for fundraising purposes, raking in millions of dollars, even using federal taxpayer dollars to finance their campaigns.
For these groups, the issue of catastrophic global warming is not just a favored fundraising tool. In truth, it's more fundamental than that. Put simply, man-induced global warming is an article of religious faith. Therefore contending that its central tenets are flawed is, to them, heresy of the most despicable kind. Furthermore, scientists who challenge its tenets are attacked, sometimes personally, for blindly ignoring the so-called "scientific consensus." But that's not all: because of their skeptical views, they are contemptuously dismissed for being "out of the mainstream." This is, it seems to me, highly ironic: aren't scientists supposed to be non-conforming and question consensus? Nevertheless, it's not hard to read between the lines: "skeptic" and "out of the mainstream" are thinly veiled code phrases, meaning anyone who doubts alarmist orthodoxy is, in short, a quack.
I have insisted all along that the climate change debate should be based on fundamental principles of science, not religion. Ultimately, I hope, it will be decided by hard facts and data-and by serious scientists committed to the principles of sound science. Instead of censoring skeptical viewpoints, as my alarmist friends favor, these scientists must be heard, and I will do my part to make sure that they are heard.
Since my detailed climate change speech in 2003, the so-called "skeptics" continue to speak out. What they are saying, and what they are showing, is devastating to the alarmists. They have amassed additional scientific evidence convincingly refuting the alarmists' most cherished assumptions and beliefs. New evidence has emerged that further undermines their conclusions, most notably those of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-one of the major pillars of authority cited by extremists and climate alarmists.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/25/more-on-the-hurricane-hysteria/
Our hurricane dialog never seems to end, and hardly a week goes by without another article appearing in a major journal on the subject of global warming and hurricane activity. In recent weeks, two more major articles have been published adding to the overwhelming evidence that the hurricane – global warming link cannot be supported on theoretical or empirical grounds. These two articles represent more nails for the coffin containing the popularized link between global warming and hurricanes!...
Despite the evidence that we have presented over and over, thousands of websites continue to lead us to believe that global warming will increase hurricane frequency and intensity. As we all know, any intense hurricane appearing anywhere on the planet is viewed as further evidence of our impact on the climate system. All self-respecting documentaries on global warming present the destruction caused by Katrina, link the intensity of the storm to warm sea surface temperatures, and then blame greenhouse gas emissions (particularly from the United States) on the entire mess. Al Gore’s blockbuster film was all over this one – the poster for the movie even shows a hurricane pattern in the emission from a smokestack!
Of course, the many in the global warming crowd would argue that storms are becoming more intense, and maybe not more numerous. Well, Englehart et al. present a plot (Figure 2) with maximum wind speeds and minimum sea level pressures. Sorry to disappoint, but there are no upward trends in the data, and if we really want to pour salt in the wounds, the maximum wind speed plot shows a bit of a downward trend!
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/global-warming-mostly-hot-air/
The past few months have not been good to the still-infant discipline of climate change alarmism — that strange amalgam of pseudo-science, crystal ball gazing, and mass hysteria that was formerly known as global warming alarmism until it became apparent a few years back that the globe had in fact stopped warming, and the alarmists decided that the term “climate change” was a more effective way of describing what the rest of us call “weather.”
For around a decade now — since around the time, coincidentally, that the warming stopped — the alarmists have had things pretty much their own way, dominating the debate with ever more dramatic predictions of impending doom as man-made CO2 emissions heat up the planet, and managing for the best part to keep a lid on dissent, thanks to an unlikely, and decidedly unholy, alliance of organizations and individuals with a vested interest in upping the fear factor.
This alliance includes politicians who see climate change as a new way of persuading citizens to give them more power; corporations who play on our concern and guilt to sell us anything from eco-friendly washing powder to flex-fuel SUVs; scientists keen to get their hands on a share of the $5 billion handed out by governments and NGOs each year for climate change research; and the legions of bureaucrats employed to draw up regulations and run the globe-trotting climate conference circus.
Then there’s the lavishly funded environmental lobby; socialists who see climate change as their last, best hope of undermining free-market democracies and cutting the United States down to size; and a media which understands that “World Ends Tomorrow” stories get more viewers than “Everything Likely to Be Just Fine” stories, and whose members tend to side with the leftist, anti-American crowd.
Given such an array of talents and interests it’s a wonder any of us are still allowed to drive a car, fly in a plane, or light a barbecue. And indeed the alarmist movement has come worryingly close to achieving critical mass. Its apotheosis probably came around a couple of years ago, when Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was doing the rounds, and you couldn’t open a magazine or turn on the TV without seeing photos of polar bears “stranded” on ice flows, CG renderings of famous landmarks under 30 feet of water, or interviews in which Al’s celebrity eco-buddies promised to take a long, hard look at their Learjet usage.
Not that there weren’t dissenting voices. A sizable minority of scientists has for years been disputing the basic science behind climate change alarmism (you can find a list of 400 leading “skeptics” here), arguing that the relatively small amount of warming (less than a degree Celsius) observed in the 20th century was well within the natural range of variation in the Earth’s temperature, and questioning the assumption that human activity was to blame. Climate is always changing, they pointed out, and there’s no such thing as an “ideal” temperature for the planet.
They also noted that other planets in our solar system had been experiencing similar warming, notably Mars — despite the fact that, while NASA has succeeded in sending a couple of robot probes to the red planet, they have yet to land an SUV there. Back on Earth, they presented evidence that temperature drove CO2 emissions, and not the other way round. They suggested that natural factors, such as solar activity or the oceans, might play a role in regulating the climate, and that a couple of degrees of warming would anyway have net benefits for most countries.
And even if the warming was man-made, the skeptics argued, the measures the alarmists claimed were necessary to stop the warming would have greater economic and social costs than those that would be incurred by simply adapting to changes in climate — a particularly sensible course of action in the event that the warming did turn out to be natural — while waiting for market forces to make low-carbon technologies viable. Most significantly, the skeptics pointed out that the increase in global temperatures appeared to have stopped around 1998, despite the fact that CO2 output had continued rising.
But despite persuasive evidence that the Earth’s climate was not following the alarmist script, and that proposals to “combat” the hypothetical problems were ill thought out to say the least, the skeptics have struggled to make their voices heard outside the skeptic blogs, websites, and think tanks. They’ve had their reputations rubbished, funding withheld, and been likened to Holocaust deniers. A writer for an environmentalist website famously suggested that “we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg.”....
Maybe the current cooling will continue, maybe it won’t — unlike the alarmists, skeptics don’t claim to be able to see 100 years into the future. If the planet does continue to warm slightly, the billions that the alarmists want to spend in a futile bid to prevent it would be better spent tackling the real problems facing the world right now, as Bjorn Lomborg has so eloquently argued. (Imagine how many vaccination and water treatment programs Gore’s $300 million vanity fund would pay for in Africa.) And if the cooling continues, our descendants could find themselves heading for another ice age — and, ironically, desperately searching for ways to warm the planet.
Too many interested parties have too much invested in climate change alarmism to admit that the game is up just yet, but sooner or later their position is going to become untenable. And when it does, while acknowledging that many people embraced climate change alarmism for genuine reasons, we’ll have to decide what to do with those who knew or suspected their claims had no substance, but pressed on out of a desire to get rich or impose their ideologies on others.
Nuremberg-style trials anyone?
All might have been lost, but that was not the way it felt that magic day, as she loaded up the dray with the pickings from the garden. Water had always been a problem in this area, and on her tiny farm, and she was immensely proud of the fruits she loaded into the basket, the biggest, best carrots she had ever grown, an enormous pumpkin, lots of chokos. The family she was visiting had so many children that anything she brought would disappear in a flash. Most proud of all, the cakes, three of them in all, wrapped in tea towels, still warm from the oven. They even made her hungry, they smelled so delicious.
There had been no children, after Frank had left for the war and never came home, and although she longed for them sadly all her life instead she had become the village's most popular aunt, and children were always clambering around her house looking for a biscuit. It was a small place, and she knew what everybody was up to. Not that she was a gossip, it was just nice to know. And what made her most proud was the way some of the young men would visit her when they came back to visit after moving into town, the way they would sit on her veranda and drink cold cordial, sweat prickling on their handsome faces, and they would tell her everything.
Oh how they reminded her of Frank, although they mustn't know that. Many of them treated her like the grandmother they never had, some of the families having moved here for the wool boom and a long way away from their relatives. She made a natural grandmotherly figure, and she didn't disillusion them. It would never occur to any of these young men, as they poured out their stories about girlfriends and jobs and one, once, even talked about his dreams of going to university. As if such a wildly grandiose scheme was ever really possible.
But she had listened to him as she had listened to the others, and one day he had disappeared to Sydney never to be heard of again. Mostly the young men who weren't suited to the farms went to Gunnedah to work in the shops; while others went droving up in the Northern Territory. But she was here, she remained here forever. And when her body died, on that last traumatic day, her spirit settled into this place, and then almost died of neglect. A crotchety old man she had never liked owned it for decades, but never lived there. He rented out her beloved home to a series of ratbags, all of whom neglected the place.
There was no one alive now who knew her in her corporeal form. Her name was never mentioned. The tennis court just up from the house; where the sound of the ladies playing would drift down every Thursday, when they all gathered. She too had played, in those long distressing years when she had waited for Frank and he had never come. When she had wanted to keep herself nice, for him. For his appetites, his lusts, the sweat on his handsome face.
But the years had passed and she had stacked on the weight and she hadn't danced or played tennis any more; she had settled into her grandmotherly role and desire had slipped away. And the thing that had meant the most to her was the house, the best house in the village. It might have been humble to the city folk, but it was a mansion to her, and it was all that Frank had left her. After the war there was a tiny trickle of a pension, a war widow's pension, but it was never enough to make ends meet and she busied herself with her own independence, making jams and cakes to sell at the monthly stall, to give away to friends.
And every summer as she sat on the veranda, the smell of cooking permeating the house, she dreamed so often of what it would have been like to have him here, for them to have grown old together, their great love. They had known each other forever, even in kindergarten, when the other kids had sent them up for being beaus, for holding hands at an age when boys were meant to be yuk. He had always adored her, he made that clear, she was the only one for him. And that day when he told her he was going off to war, her heart sank with fear and despair. Please don't go, she had begged and cried. And he had patted her affectionately and told her, he had to go, for his country, for everybody, it was the right thing to do. How handsome, incredibly handsome, he had looked that day, in the uniform she had ironed and re-ironed so carefully. And he had kissed her and waved; and her heart had broken. She had never seen him again.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/global-warming-mostly-hot-air/
We currently have a policy that CO2 is a major player in causing global warming. There have been several recent news stories showing that this is another myth made up by Al Gore. Another major event the warming alarmists use is that the ice cap is melting and thus our world is coming to an end.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center has reported that Artic ice is 1 million kilometers more than last year. We have had many stories pointing out that the South Pole has had more ice the past several years and many countries in South America have been experiencing unusual cold temps. We also know the worldwide temps stopped increasing in 2007.
Click to learn more...
You can read all the time reports on the dire condition of the ice cap and high temps even though the evidence is against these writers. Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot, then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None.
The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon.
http://www.newstatesman.com/scitech/2007/12/global-warming-temperature
Global warming stopped? Surely not. What heresy is this? Haven’t we been told that the science of global warming is settled beyond doubt and that all that’s left to the so-called sceptics is the odd errant glacier that refuses to melt?
Aren’t we told that if we don’t act now rising temperatures will render most of the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within our lifetimes? But as we digest these apocalyptic comments, read the recent IPCC’s Synthesis report that says climate change could become irreversible. Witness the drama at Bali as news emerges that something is not quite right in the global warming camp.
With only few days remaining in 2007, the indications are the global temperature for this year is the same as that for 2006 – there has been no warming over the 12 months.
But is this just a blip in the ever upward trend you may ask? No.
The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/27/2315518.htm?section=world
US presidential hopeful Barack Obama has left London and is heading home after a high-profile world tour aimed at cementing his foreign policy credentials in the run-up to the November election.
The Democratic Party senator's chartered plane took off from London after a day of meetings, notably with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and British Opposition leader David Cameron.
Senator Obama, who is ahead of his Republican Party rival John McCain in the opinion polls, told a news conference outside Mr Brown's 10 Downing Street residence that the trip was not a premature victory tour and he even expected a hit on his popularity.
I have managed to lose my DCU60 which enables pictures to be taken off the phone so apologies for the drop in quality of pictures. I'm trawling through ones that haven't been used. The silhouette is Amos the photographer.
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