In the last few posts (here, here and here) I have done on Global Warming I have been bombarded with a few lefties who display much of the same traits as this poor excuse for a writer, Ellen Goodman:
By every measure, the U N ‘s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raises the level of alarm. The fact of global warming is "unequivocal." The certainty of the human role is now somewhere over 90 percent. Which is about as certain as scientists ever get.
I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.
This is the crux of the Global Warming religion. You must, MUST, believe or you are doomed to damnation. Nevermind that the new report is cutting the "effects" of global warming by one half from the 2001 report, nevermind that, as Jonah Goldberg aluded to earlier, the goal post of what IS global warming keeps moving down the field, nevermind that many scientists dispute the alarmists and the religion of global warming. Nevermind all that. We must obey and believe or we are all Holocaust deniers.
What a disgusting religion to be a part of. Mark Kilmer:
Without viewing the related science, she has accepted the words of the bureaucrats who hyperbolize the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Because what they say frightens her, the "level of alarm" has been raised and she has concluded in her little, round head that "[t]he fact of global warming is ‘unequivocal.’" She’s scared; in fact, she seems to have wet herself and is now blaming the rest of us.
Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800 percent, by one estimate. How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800 percent is unknowable, but let’s stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity and that this warming is in fact indisputably bad (which is hardly obvious).
That’s still an amazing bargain. Life expectancies in the United States increased from about 47 years to about 77 years. Literacy, medicine, leisure and even, in many respects, the environment have improved mightily over the course of the 20th century, at least in the prosperous West.
Given the option of getting another 1,800 percent richer in exchange for another 0.7 degrees warmer, I’d take the heat in a heartbeat. Of course, warming might get more expensive for us (and we might get a lot richer than 1,800 percent too). There are tipping points in every sphere of life, and what cost us little in the 20th century could cost us enormously in the 21st — at least that’s what we’re told.
And boy, are we told. We’re (deceitfully) told polar bears are the canaries in the global coal mine. Al Gore even hosts an apocalyptic infomercial on the subject, complete with fancy renderings of New York City underwater.
Skeptics are heckled for calling attention to global warming scare tactics. But the simple fact is that activists need to hype the threat, and not just because that’s what the media demand of them. Their proposed remedies cost so much money — bidding starts at 1 percent of global GDP a year and rises quickly — they have to ratchet up the fear factor just to get the conversation started.
The costs are just too high for too little payoff. Even if the Kyoto Protocol were put into effect tomorrow — a total impossibility — we’d barely affect global warming. Jerry Mahlman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research speculated in Science magazine that “it might take another 30 Kyotos over the next century” to beat back global warming.
Thirty Kyotos! That’s going to be tough considering that China alone plans on building an additional 2,200 coal plants by 2030. Oh, but because China (like India) is exempt from Kyoto as a developing country, the West will just have to reduce its own emissions even more.
Now count me in the group that does NOT believe Global Warming is caused by humans. Thirty years from now we will have the same liberals, well the children and grand children of today’s liberals, crowing on and on about humans causing a global ice age because guess what? The globe will be cooling by .02 degree’s.
In the end all we have is a bunch of kids scaring themselves in the closet, as Richard S. Lindzen said recently on Larry King:
RICHARD S. LINDZEN, MIT PROFESSOR OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE: Well, I think my read on it is that there is a certain climate of fear, to quote Mike Creighton. You know, for instance, Nye was talking about fresh water perhaps shutting down the Gulf Stream.
But that isn’t what physical oceanographers think.
First of all, you know, we’ve measured the heat transport from the tropics to high latitudes. It’s almost all in the atmosphere. The Gulf Stream is mostly driven by wind. To shut it down, you’d have to stop the rotation of the Earth or shut off the wind.
And there’s a lot of confusion in this and, you know, at the heart of it, we’re talking of a few tenths of a degree change in temperature. None of it in the last eight years, by the way. And if we had warming, it should be accomplished by less storminess. But because the temperature itself is so unspectacular, we have developed all sorts of fear of prospect scenarios — of flooding, of plague, of increased storminess when the physics says we should see less.
I think it’s mainly just like little kids locking themselves in dark closets to see how much they can scare each other and themselves.
Even worse then a bunch of kids locking themselves in the closet we have a bunch of politicians and celebrities taking up the cause to serve their own arrogance and political careers. This is one reason why Chris Landsea resigned from the IPCC. The taking over of the global warming science by politics to be exact:
It is beyond me why my [IPCC] colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming
They pushed this agenda for politics, plain and simple. And they, along with the moronic Al Gore, are continuing to use the media and the even more moronic celebrities to push the even bigger agenda of the "doom" we will all surely suffer if global warming isn’t addressed.
Hype, hyperbole, and ignorance….thy name is the Global Warming Industry.
Other’s Blogging:
See author page
Why is it when we have a disagreement we attack the other side of the conversation and give them disparaging labels. The religion of global warming? Who is the god of global warming?
Do you really think those who believe in global warming are all idiots? Since Al Gore and all of the scientist are all “well educated”, is a college education something that turns the brain to mush and makes one utter terms of idiocy? These are the questions my friend, which you so intellectually, have come up with the answer. Maybe you are God?
Papers like this one below should get more exposure too but they don’t since they are “heresy” in the “religion” of global warming and the new wave of “faith based” science.
This poster shows that sea level rise has been fairly constant over the past century and has actually leveled off on the past 10 years or so:
Here is a link to a poster in PDF format that gives the gist of the conclusions reached in this research paper which can be purchased online. The abstract of the paper follows:
The graph in the PDF poster given in the first link shows what looks like a leveling off to slight drop in sea levels at the same time that “hockey stick” believes at the UN are projecting runaway rise.
Another article that is not likely to ever see the light of day in the “mainstream media” is this report from NASA.
A couple of key grafs:
Good resources Crosspatch.
But a warning: You will now be targeted by the Grand Inqisitor, perhaps with help from Roberty Byrd, the former Exalted Cyclops.
First, they will attack your understanding of the information.
Next, they will attack those who wrote the studies.
Third, they will bury you in tangential, often unrelated information to confuse you.
And should you dare to respond, every word you type will be parsed in a way that would make the master of “depends on the meaning of the word ‘is'” proud.
Global Warming is one area of discussion in which no dissenting research or opinions are permitted.
I just wish that Ellen Goodman viewed this obviously political movement with the same skepticism she applied to the pre-war intelligence on Iraq.
But of course her skepticism then, like her unquestioning acceptance now are all based on her ideological foundation.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi’s flying around in a plane ten times the size of the one Hastert (who weighed considerably more than Pelosi) flew.
The motive behind global warming fearmongering is POWER, not concern for the environment.
This article is worth a read too:
Cosmic rays blamed for global warming.
It is about a book due to be published this week that is the result of a 5 year research project. I can produce some other facts too such as a graphic showing solar activity as read from ice core proxies (basically, solar activity causes subtle changes in the relationship of various isotopes that make up water and trapped air inside polar ice) tracking almost perfectly with temperature proxy data.
Might also explain the “global warming” that is also currently taking place on other planets in the solar system besides earth too.