Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Editorial: Global warming 'consensus' a fiction
Skeptics from a range of scientific disciplines get louder in their opposition to doomsday claims
An Orange County Register editorial
Global warming hype peaked in 2007 with calls for vast increases in government control to stifle industrial growth, eliminate fossil fuels and impose new carbon taxes.
We were told desperate measures are needed because there's a scientific "consensus" that man-made greenhouse gases are increasing dangerously. Former Vice President Al Gore claimed there's no legitimate objection to the catastrophes he and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict.
All this received much media coverage and support from politicians and government bureaucrats, who stand to gain control if we heed their warnings. The problem is, there's noscientific consensus for doomsday claims, let alone that drastic remedies are needed.
Growing numbers of global warming science skeptics are making their opposition known. They include experts in climatology, oceanography, geology, biology, environmental sciences and physics, among others. They are affiliated with prestigious institutions worldwide, including Harvard, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, MIT, the International Arctic Research Center, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and many others. Many shared a portion of IPCC's 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (co-won with Mr. Gore), and others have won previous Nobel Prizes for their research.
A U.S. Senate report accumulated more than 400 of their views to refute Mr. Gore's claim of "consensus."
For example, physics professor emeritus Dr. Howard Hayden of the University of Connecticut said, "You think SUVs are the cause of glaciers shrinking? … Don't believe what you hear out of Hollywood and Washington, D.C. … [C]limate history proves that Gore has the relationship between carbon dioxide concentration and global warming backward. A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not cause the Earth to be warmer. Instead, a warmer Earth causes the higher carbon dioxide levels."
Climatologist Robert Durrenberger, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, said, "because of all the misinformation that Gore and his army have been spreading about climate change I have decided that real climatologists should try to help the public understand the nature of the problem."
Read the consensus-refuting comments of these scientists online at www.epw.senate.gov (click on U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007).
As Swedish geologist Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, professor emeritus at Stockholm University, wrote, "Newspapers should think about the damage they are doing to many persons, particularly young kids, by spreading the exaggerated views of a human impact on climate …. As far as I can see the IPCC 'Global Temperature' is wrong. Temperature is fluctuating but it is still most places cooler than in the 1930s and 1940s … it will take about 800 years before the water level has increased by one" meter.