Archive for the ‘Environmentalism’ Category
The Capital Times recently published a very understated article titled Is Warming Our Fault? in whichUW-Madison professor emeritus Reid Bryon, known as the father of scientific climatology, expressed his controversial thoughts on the scientific validity of currently “popular” theories on global warming.
There is no question the Earth has been warming; it is coming out of the “Little Ice Age.” However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide.
We’ve been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It’s been warming up for a long time. The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down, so it is getting warmer.
Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny. It’s like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It’s just a total misplacement of emphasis. It really isn’t science because there’s no really good scientific evidence.
Professor Bryson was the founding chairman of the Institute for Environmental Studies, now known as the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. What does Professor Bryson say about the “scientists” pushing the current global warming scare?
There is a lot of money to be made in this. If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can’t get grants unless you say, ‘Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide … ” There is very little truth to what is being said and an awful lot of religion. It’s almost a religion. Where you have to believe in anthropogenic (or man-made) global warming or else you are nuts.
Bryson reserved his harshest criticism for Al Gore’s recent eco-farce, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Don’t make me throw up. It is not science. It is not true.
You can’t get much more clear than that.
The Canadian National Post has just published an excellent article titled Read the Sunspots, by R. Timothy Patterson. Dr. Patterson is a professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre at Carleton University.
Patterson is one of a growing number of scientists who want to put the “science” back into “Earth Science.” As such, he is at odds with politicians like Al Gore who treat Earth Science more as a religion than a scientific endeavor.
The article documents the correlation between climate change and solar activity. As we all know, the Sun is the most significant factor which effects the Earths climate. Moreover, Dr. Patterson warns that we could soon be in for a major risk of global cooling:
Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada.
The article contains a very useful list of links to similar scholarly articles on the environment which have been published by the National Post. The entire series is highly recommended.
For those not familiar with Vaclav Claus, he is not only a respected economist and professor, he is also the current President of the Czech Republic. Claus has never been afraid to speak the truth, and now he had identified his greatest opponent since the fall of global communism — radical environmentalists.
Claus has written an op-ed piece for the Financial Times titled Freedom, Not Climate, Is At Risk. In the article, Claus takes a hard line against these pseudo-scientific enemies of human progress.
As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.
The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.
The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.
The entire article is well worth reading, and forwarding to your friends.
The NOAA Satellite and Information Service publishes an enormous variety of interesting data.
Of special interest today is the United States Climate Summary for February 2007. It seems that February 2007 was the coldest February since 1994 and the 34th coldest February on record.
As Al Gore seems to be making a lot of money from selling “carbon offsets” to wealthy maroons, I feel that I should sue him. Al promised me global warming and he failed to deliver.
In this country, verbal contracts are enforceable in court and I feel that Al and I had a verbal contract. Al told me that if I didn’t sell my SUV and buy a hybrid car, the ice caps would melt and turn the entire planet into WaterWorld. Al’s even doing his part in helping to heat up this cold rock, by spending $30,000/yr to heat, cool, and light up his mansion. That’s more money than many Americans take home each year.
Al probably doesn’t even care that sea ice has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean since 1978. He’s happily making money selling his Global Warming schitck. He’ll stop laughing when I sue him for everything he’s got and he really is forced to cut his energy consumption.
Maybe I’ll even get that shyster John Edwards to represent me in court. His frivilous and scientifically unsound lawsuits have raised the costs of medical care for every American family. This sort of case sounds like it’s right up his alley.