Global warming deniers’ numbers increasing faster than global temperature
May 20th, 2008, 10:31 am · 20 Comments · posted by Mark Landsbaum
A mere 31,000 scientists have announced their opposition to global warming alarmism. Among them are climatologists, many with Ph.D.s in the science of climate. Go here for a breakdown on specialties and credentials.
That’s not exactly the kooks and flat-earthers Mr. Gore and his ilk claim are the only opposition to their global warming extremism.
Longtime meteorologist Mike Fairbourne says alarmists practice “squishy science” when tying human activity to global warming.
The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine appeared before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Monday to announce collection of 31,000 scientists’s signatures – including Fairbourne’s. The signers agree human impact on global warming is much exaggerated.
“Do we need to be wise stewards? Absolutely,” Fairbourne said. “Do we have to pin everything that happens on global warming? No, we need to have cooler heads.”
The petition says there’s no convincing evidence of manmade catastrophe and alarmists plans to fix what isn’t broken will have the opposite effect, harming the environment. Read the petition here:
“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto … and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
“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.
“Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
As for melting polar ice caps, according to Fairbourne there are “other things going on — ocean currents, changes in salinity — other things not related to carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere.”
May 20th, 2008 at 11:48 am
In another of his endless posts on this subject, Mr. Landsbaum refers to the grbage in, garbage out syndrome. Yet he fails to recognize that the concept applies to him as well. I’ve posted enough times for those who read here to know I don’t claim to have chapter and verse on the science here, or a firmly held opinion (neither of which impediments are suffered by Mr. Landsbaum, who will shriek about global warming’s falsity until the rising sea level drowns him, I think).
The “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine” - sounds impressive doesn’t it. Google it. It’s not affiliated with any university, as the name implies. It’s located in a warehouse in Cave Junction, Oregon (I love that name), a small town in the Siskiyous, and consists of six guys and some associated independent contractors. Its publications include “Nuclear War Survival Skills” and various other survivalist tracts on such topics as civil defense, the construction of steel blast doors, and other niceties. I think I know why they live in the Siskiyous . . .
Oh, and Mike Fairbourne is a TV weatherman from Minneapolis. I’m thinking of asking George Fishbeck to respond . . .
This follows Mr. Landsbaum citation to a purported Nobel Prize winner, his becoming enamored with the “Deniers” book, which as I’ve noted before is put out by a well known partisan think tank in Canada and published by a house that also offers books teling us how well the war in Iraq is going and how great Joe McCarthy was. Mr. Landsbaum prefers not to address these problems with the sources he cites for his strident claims about the falsity of the climate change theory - he’s never addressed them when they’ve been pointed out. That, it seems, is an ad hominem attack. Oh well.
So I’ll just ask again: does anybody ever check this stuff?? Is the goal here to get people laughing so hard the coffee squirts out their noses? If it’s really to conduct an advocacy campaign against the climate change theory, or even to start a serious conversation on the subject, I’d suggest a few improvements in methodology might be in order.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Oh no! There’s a new defection to the Goreites! The Newtster himself, former Speaker Gingrich, appears in a full-age ad with the antichrist herself, the incumbent speaker, promoting steps to reduce androgenic global climate change!
Quick, Mr. Landsbaum: Get on the horn to Exxon Mobil and get them to buy a few hundred more “scientists”!
May 20th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Is Orange Punch now a global warming blog? Does the Register have a blog oriented towards current events. I liked the fact that Orange Puch generally covered more topics than Red County. But now that it is a global warming blog, I need to go somewhere else.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
From the Scientific American in 2005:
Scientific American took a sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
In 2005 in the Hawaii Reporter, Todd Shelly wrote:
“ In less than 10 minutes of casual scanning, I found duplicate names (Did two Joe R. Eaglemans and two David Tompkins sign the petition, or were some individuals counted twice?), single names without even an initial (Biolchini), corporate names (Graybeal & Sayre, Inc. How does a business sign a petition?), and an apparently phony single name (Redwine, Ph.D.). These examples underscore a major weakness of the list: there is no way to check the authenticity of the names. Names are given, but no identifying information (e.g., institutional affiliation) is provided. Why the lack of transparency?”
May 20th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Don’t go Andy. We’d miss you. Besides, is 3 out of the last 11 blogs disproportionate, considering the scope of the scam?
You may feel differently when gasoline goes to $5 a gallon, employers are forced to lay off people, companies close and even your personal habits are regulated and personal indulgences rationed in order to combat alleged global warming.
Meeting the 80-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would require this country to return to something that looks like 1900 all over again.
If that comes to pass, a few folks may wonder why we didn’t pay more attention than merely devoting a measly 27percent of our blogs.
At your service in Christ . . .
Mark Landsbaum
May 20th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
You may feel differently when gasoline goes to $5 a gallon, employers are forced to lay off people, companies close and even your personal habits are regulated and personal indulgences rationed in order to combat alleged global warming.
And what would the impacts be if gas hits that price without all the emission standards you rail against in your paranoia?
In your service for the people…
OC Dem
May 20th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Mark,
I suppose that since I have concerns over peak oil production, I feel that if there was a global warming issue that it will largely take care of itself. But given that I don’t think there is a global warming issue then the amount of attention I want to give to the issue is even more diminished.
I will keep reading. Have their been any good “War on Drugs” posts? Given all the violence in Mexico, and the gang activity here, that is something I really care about.
Best regards,
Andy
May 20th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Thanks Andy. Always good to hear from you. Pass on your request to Alan. That’s his specialty.
The global warming “crisis” will indeed take care of itself. The question is how much damage will our well-intentioned public servants do to the rest of us until then tilting at their windmills?
At your service in Christ . . .
Mark Landsbaum
May 20th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Wow, all the paranoia and doomsaying comes to the fore in Mr. Landsbaum’s last comment there.
So now the rise in gas prices is due to “global warming alarmists”?? I’d suggest that greedy oil producing countries, speculators riding a bubble the likes of which they could only formerly dream about, worldwide political instability largely traceable to the war in Iraq, and the rise of new industrial societies in China and elsewhere are more to blame, but I seem to lack Mr. Landsbaum’s unique perspective on our problems.
PS - if you don’t think the oil speculators are driving us (no pun intended) to $5 gas as soon as they can, with the oil companies tut-tutting piously while raking in their profits, then I have land to sell you in the Everglades.
Then we get to the requisite Cassandra predictions of economic collapse and crushed freedom ar the hands of the evil environmentalists. It’s all so tiresome - I thought we’d heard the last of this sort of argument when fluoridation went off the radar screens (boy was that an evil one - look how much less free we are because of that . . . wait a minute . . . ).
Anyone who thinks that whatever changes might occur when and if this country begins to address this issue concretely will be solely bad changes has a fundamental (and essentially Luddite)misunderstanding of the process of change itself. Any decent entrepreneur will tell you that there’s a gold mine of new business niches out there - things we can imagine now and things some guy smarter (and soon to be richer) than me will think of tomorrow. This is the same Cassandra wail we’ve heard since the dawn of the clean air movement forty plus years ago. I still await the demise of capitalism from that evil plot, though I admit I no longer wait up nights.
Finally, as to the complaint about this blog’s obsession with this issue, I’d suggest Mr. Landsbaum look at the history of his own postings - their number, their stridency, their overwhelming sameness. Then he should look up the term “monomania.” Maybe, eventually, it’ll click.
May 20th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
rlh,
Lower economic growth and less freedoms are a natural result of more environmental regulations. What brand of weed are you smoking that makes you think otherwise?
And how disingenuous of you to bring up the term Luddite when in fact, many of the environmentalists long for us to live like Indians.
AGW is more about reducing the global disparity of jobs and wealth.
From http://www.sierraclub.org/international/bali.pdf:
“Per Capita Emissions and Global Equity.
Recognition of the variations in per capita emis-
sions across and within countries, and making
global equity a primary factor in pursuing a fair
and effective response to global warming. “
May 20th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
And the destruction of the American economy that has occurred because of environmental regulation is what, exactly? Are we different than 1965? Sure. Are we reduced to preindustrial status?
Luddites feared change for its own sake. I duggest you share exactly the same sort of fear - irrational, clinging to whatever shred you might think supports your fear, however dubious its source, and endlessly repeating the mantra that the wolf is at the door. Your characterizarion of environmentalists as “wanting us to live like Indians” is so laughably obtuse that it needs no further rebuttal.
Your use of the term “economic” reveals the limits of your vision. Tell me, please, how much clean air is worth? Quantify it, put it on a company’s bottom line, in its list of assets or liabilities. It doesn’t lend itself to that sort of analysis. Neither do such concepts as not defrauding shareholders (see the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as examples of regulation in those fields). Only by regulation do such matters become economically quantifiable, and so capable of being addressed by business in a rational way - that is to say, through the process of evaluating risk and reward. Is this less freedom, as you state? It can be regarded that way, but only if your vision is so narrow as not to see the benefiots that acrue to the larger, non-economically quantifiable society of which business is only a part. Being part of that larger society requires concessions from the notion of absolute individual (or corporate) freedom. The Framers understood this, and bound infividual and state rights about with all sorts of limits and qualifiers. the issue isn’t whether freedom is or ought to be absolute - it never has been, and unless society completely atomizes and becomes the proverbial jungle it never will. The issue is where to properly draw the line on acceptable limits to that freedom.
This is no different than with any other right we possess. Is freedom of religion absolute? In that case someobdy’s going to re-start a human sacrifice cult. Is our right to bear arms limitless? If so, why can’t I buy myself a hydrogen bomb - my neighbors worry me.
The free market is kept free, free from its own natuiral overextensions and tendency to eat itself alive, by government regulation. that saves it from its own worst excesses. Like all the freedoms noted above, it’s not absolute. Nothing is. That’s the American genius, and something that your slavish devotion to absolute libertarianism fails to comprehand.
Your world is far, far too small.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Mark, I found your blog searching through the internet. Good stuff. I wish we’d see our politicians get behind nuclear power and coal liquification to end our reliance on importing oil from “crazy” foreign countries. (In addition to drilling in ANWR and other places in the US).
I’d like the air to be cleaner, and more nuclear power would allow us to reduce our burning of coal and natural gas for electricity. Doesn’t burning coal for electricity itself cause 40% of the carbon emissions? And the stuff is just plain dirty. Nuclear would be much cleaner and practical. We could then use the coal for synthetic fuels.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Greenhouse gases absorb radiant heat from the earth’s surface and keep it warm. Except for the minuscule contribution of radioactive decay, all of this heat came from the sun and all must be radiated from the planet for it to retain its average temperature. Climatologists are good at measuring temperature and wind and determining how energy moves about the planet. Apparently, however, their training does not include knowledge of the mechanism by which greenhouse gases absorb radiant heat. This lack of relevant training has contributed to the Global Warming Mistake. With adequate training they would be aware of the science that all of the radiant heat from the earth’s surface that is going to be absorbed by greenhouse gases gets absorbed close to the ground (half within less than 24 meters) and is carried up by convection currents to where it ultimately gets radiated to space. The average global temperature is modulated by convection currents. The convection is negligibly influenced by the amount of carbon dioxide. The only effect of doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide is that the radiant heat from the surface would be absorbed a few feet closer to the ground. Human activity that puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere never has and never will have any influence on global climate. Any activity to limit atmospheric carbon dioxide is a total waste.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Muckdog, I’ve been mentioning this for a few weeks but Mr. Landsbaum seems too preoccupied with his own opinions to address it:
A new form of nuclear power plant apparently is getting a lot of attnetion from even the most normally anti-nuke environmentalists. It’s called a pea bed reactor. The concept is that you encapsulate bits of radioactivce fuel in graphite (”peas”) and simply pile them up together to start a reaction. Heat transfer or some mechanism I don’t claim to understand then drive turbines, and you get electricity. There are two huge advantages here: first is that the reactor doesn’t require the mammoth piping that today’s reactors do - piping that’s a major cost and complexity factor in their construction and maintenance. The second and most important, of course, is the built in defense against a meltdown: in case of emergency, scatter peas. Separating the fuel shuts down the reaction.
I’d very much like to hear more about this, what its practicality might be, as well as the potential downsides (if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t, and we bought too quickly and unthinkingly into nuclear in the past to make the same mistake again). If we can use nuclear reactions to make electricity without having to worry about a new Chernobyl, go for it. Clean and safely generated energy is, or ought to be, everybody’s goal, and this soubnds like a real contender to my layman’s ears.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
rlh: Good paying manufacturing jobs that have been moved to other countries. Under Kyoto and the recent polar bear decision (once it’s adjusted by a court decision) the pace of manufacturing jobs leaving will increase.
Luddites also long for the day when life was simpler, hence the longing to live like indians that many environmentalists have. Their irrational, clinging to the past shread of a simple life is fine as long as it doesn’t impact me. Obtuse??? Read the following quote:
From the “Whole Earth Catalog”: “We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion — guilt-free — guilt-free at last!”
Not to mention a few months ago on NPR an environmentalist said that we should explore living like the Amish people do because they use far less resources and have a simple life.
Perfectly clean air is not worth living like Indians. I’d rather see people have good paying jobs and have to live with a little pollution.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Ah yes the Whole Earth catalog - that fountainhead of environmental wisdom. And what were they tryinbg to do in that catalog - perhaps, um, sell something?? And NPR is a real source for the pulse of environmentalism, isn’t it? Do you reallky believe your cliches? I suppose I could quote from the Exxon annual report if I wanted to in rebuttal, but I don’t use readily partisan and laughable sources. Nobel Peace Prize anyone?
As for jobs moving, you again apply simplistic causal connections to complex problems in order to supprt a weak argument. Do you really think those jobs moved overseas just because of environmental regulations? That land in Florida remains available to you, if you do. A whole welter of factors have contributed to the loss (or rather say shift) of America’s jobs over the past generation - increased foreign competition and globalization, corporate profit motives that would rather pay Indonesians 30 cents a day to make Nikes (for example) than pay American workers a decent wage, the rise of third world industrialization (China etc.), the decay of our own factory infrastructure due to corporations’ failure to keep up and innovate (think: steel and automobile manufacturing), and if i had the time I’m sure i could list others that don’t come to mind off the top of my head. But no, they don’t matter - it’s the damn greens’ fault, theirs and only theirs.
Luddites feared change, as I said. So, it seems, do you - or rather change is the product of an evil environmentalist UN liberal plot to reduce us all to serfdom.
We are, alas, long past the point of living in a pristine world. We passed that point thousands of years ago. Go to the Middle East and look at how the land of milk and honey has become a wasteland from millenia of reckless overuse. Our task, as moral human beings, and (if you choose to think in such terms) as assigned to us in Genesis, is to be the good stewards of our inheritance, to hand it on to our successors as intact as possible. Just as we don;t spend the nest egg so we can bequeath it to ur kids, maybe we should stop being blithe to the consequences of our environmental actions and think of the future.
Too bad that offends you.
May 21st, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Rih,
The ad hominems are getting old. I imagine a good chunk of the public thinks the word is pig latin but educated people are not fooled.
I for one believe the endless ad hominem attacks by the warmists is a sign of their ever growing weakness in the debate. They have long since run out of falsifiable hypotheses and now can only attack the man instead of the argument.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:17 am
as some of the more level-headed of your commentators note, this story is bunk. Worse, it’s dangerous. Read the Knight Science Tracker follow up, for example, that shows this petition is old news and bad news.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:05 am
As the OISM statement co-signed by 31,000+ scientists states, more carbon dioxide is not bad; it is beneficial.
That is a fact:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/Slides/img24.html
Those who claim that carbon is evil should remember that they are made of carbon. By their argument, they are intrinsically evil.
This explains why the climate deceivers think the way they do:
“People with a sense of fulfillment think the world is good, while the frustrated blame the world for their failure.”
~~ Eric Hoffer