Environmentalism-Climate change

I have posted many times about my skepticism of the hyped man-made global warming (AGW) claims. One of my posts about the connection of the sun and other natural phenomena to climate change managed to become the topic of discussion in a couple of publications and in various internet postings among the global warming crowd. My skepticism is not to be seen as an outright denial of the possibility, just doubts that even the likelihood has been shown at this point. My approach can be summarized with a series of questions:

1. What evidence is there of any global warming (as compared to local warming here and there)?

2. How has that evidence been obtained (changes in the measures or in the conditions under which the measurements were procured; satellite measurements of exactly what; computer models based on what)?

3. If there is global warming, how much is there?

4. How much of this is due to natural cycles (short-term in decades; medium-term in centuries; long-term) possibly connected to identifiable natural events (sun spots, cosmic rays, ocean current temperatures, volcanoes that actually are more likely to produce cooling)?

5. If it is significant, how much of this could plausibly be controlled by changes in human habits?

6. What damage would such global warming do, in contrast to the benefits to be gained from less global cold (Bjorn Lomborg’s rational analysis)?

7. Continuing with Lomborg, what would be the cost of reducing such warming compared to adjusting to it (still considering the benefits that might come with global warming)?

8. What would be the best strategy for achieving those reductions or adjustments, government controls or private innovations?

This is not the approach of a flat-earther, as AGW proponents often like to portray those who question what the media and the scientists feeding at the government grant trough have loudly hyped as “settled science.” I am not a scientist, and I rely on scientists to provide the answers. But I also know history, and I have lived long enough to learn a thing or two about human nature. I know, then, that scientists are not superior human beings free from the baser urges, and I know that science can be (and has been and is still) manipulated towards a politically-correct and economically-advantageous end. The more a supposedly value-free scientific idea is hysterically propounded and skeptics told not to question it, the less it sounds like science and the more it sounds suspiciously like dogma.

With that all in mind, I have been intensely gratified by the recent events that have shattered the wall that AGW defenders built around an increasingly corrupted academic-scientific-media-governmental “climate change” complex, something far more dangerous to liberty and prosperity than the old military-industrial complex of Leftist paranoia. The reluctant Joshua whose horn brought down that wall is none other than Professor Philip Jones, the man at the center of “Climategate.”

This is the extremely revealing interview Jones gave the BBC recently.

This Wall Street Journal article describes some of the unfortunate sequence of events that have shaken the enviros: “First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.” The “environmental pressure group” is the World Wildlife Fund, which is at the bottom of many questionable studies and publications that have been lapped up by the enviro-political fusion that pervades the UN and many national and transnational organizations. Other environmental “disasters” supposedly connected to global warming that aren’t turning out are disappearing Arctic ice, melting Antarctic ice shelves, and increasingly violent hurricanes.

RIght Side News has a thorough analysis of the interview. Some of the conclusions:

Nonetheless, in the interview Jones:

1. admitted that he did not believe that “the debate on climate change is over” and that he didn’t “believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this;”
2. admitted that there was no statistically significant difference between rates of warming from 1860-1880 and 1910-1940 and the rate from 1975-1998, though he and other DAGW believers had for years said the rate in the last period was unprecedented and therefore couldn’t be natural but must be manmade;
3. admitted that there has been no statistically significant warming for the last 15 years;
4. admitted that natural influences could have contributed to the 1975-1998 warming (significantly mentioning only the sun and volcanoes–the latter a brief cooling factor–and completely omitting reference to ocean circulations…which have been demonstrated to have strong effect on global temperature);
5. admitted that the Medieval Warm Period might well have been as warm as the Current Warm Period (1975-present), or warmer, and that if it was “then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented.”

In short, he is repudiating, qualifying, or throwing doubts on just about everything that he and his allies have declared to be unassailable truth and settled science for the last decade and more. That would be the same settled science that was used to push Cap-and-Tax legislation by the Obama administration and the jobs-killing emissions limits law in California.

Via Mark Steyn comes news from Dr. Phil Jones, the climatologist at the center of the missing climate warming data controversy. He recently stepped down as the director of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, the body that has been most influential for the report by the UN’s climate change panel and for the research that the global warmmongers use to try to silence any skeptics.

Jones is the creator of the “hockey stick” graph that purported to show that there had been virtually no climate change in human history, until the last decade or so. Even the slightest application of common sense to such a claim should have exposed its fantastic dimension, given the fossil record (plant, animal, and geologic) and what we know even from recorded history. For that matter, one need only read the oscillating editorials of the New York Times over the past century to realize the periods of warming and cooling.

Michael Crichton dismantled the hockey stick theory in 2004 in State of Fear, yet the warmmongering continued with increased intensity. Any questioning of the orthodoxy was met with furious assaults on the skeptic’s credibility and even his sanity. Calls were made to silence such skeptics. Indeed, it was proposed by some of the more exuberant believers that such speech be criminalized. The ground was prepared for increasing government control over resources and people’s productive activities, with the goal of wealth transfers from some “wealthy” countries to some “poor” countries, but more important still, of such wealth transfers from workers and taxpayers in “wealthy” countries to the non-productive political classes in those countries and to various transnational political elites. In California, the governor, always in sync with the “green jobs” marketers seeking to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense for unprofitable activities and with the celebutards of the entertainment industry (another group that could not survive without taxpayer subsidies the governor assiduously promotes), induced the happily compliant left-wing Democratic legislature to adopt a jobs-suppressing bill to limit carbon emissions to prevent “runaway global warming.”

With “Climategate,” the “lost” data, the “unrecoverable” computer codes, the tree ring controversy, the Himalayan glacier controversy, the corruptions of research and personnel, the evidence against global warming, the doctrinaire tone of a priesthood of an ersatz religion, all blasted away at the foundation that is the edifice of the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) syndicate. Now comes Professor Jones with some stunning admissions/revisions. Apparently the only clear evidence of a hockey stick are the piles of papers rising in his office. As far as unprecedented global warming, there were two other periods similar to the supposed current one, both of which could be explained by natural causes, from 1910-1940 and from 1975 to 1998. Of course, in between was the period that scientists at the time (including some current global warmmongers) screeched was the beginning of an inevitable ice age.

As an aside, does anyone notice that these periods are roughly thirty years in duration, with the next warming oscillation likely, then, to begin around 2030? If you have followed the news, various scientists have recently talked about how global warming might not resume until 2030; others say that the reduction of Arctic Ice might not resume until 2030. Coincidence? I think not.

Professor Jones now agrees that there has been no statistical global warming since 1995, something that Mark Steyn and other skeptics have been reporting about for several years. He also agrees that there may have been other periods of warmer climate, such as the Medieval Warm Period, though he claims the data have not been analyzed fully. As Steyn notes, there we all thought that the data had all been peer-reviewed.

Lord Monckton, an English politician and policy advisor has been heavily involved in questioning the climate warming data (or lack thereof). I have linked to his articles before. He weighs in on Philip Jones’s reassessments and on the cabal to keep invonvenient truths about the lack of recent warming from the public.

The Copenhagen “climate conference” or, in deference to our president and his success there, the “Hopenchangen” conference, is mercifully over with a satisfying level of acrimony and accusations of cheating and cabals all around. An at least temporary respite in the war of eco-elites against the human race. One of the seminal propaganda pieces in the eco-radicals’ efforts to justify lower standards of living for the non-elites through hoped-for imposition of a one-world socialist caliphate founded on the pseudo-religion of Anthropogenic Global Warming was Michael Mann’s ”hockey stick graph.” This purported to show relatively flat temperatures since, well, Adam and Eve, or, for scientific types, the beginning of the cosmically huge sequence of events of infinitesimally small likelihood each that mark the history of Gaia. In other words, for as long as climate “scientists” could decipher from tree ring samples from four lonely Siberian trees.

The hockey stick graph not only flies in the face of observed reality but the historical record of mankind. Moreover, it was criticized soon after its appearance by Michael Crichton in “State of Fear.” When Canadian mathematician Stephen McIntyre asked for the data to support the graph, Mann tried to prevent him from getting the data, such as it was. Today, the graph has come in for such ridicule that it is essentially useless as evidence for anything but fraudulent science. Especially in light of the emails and the computer code uncovered from the “researchers” at the University of East Anglia, AGW, renamed climate change by some more opportunistic alarmists, is now a prime example of ideological dogma masquerading as (politicized) science.

Iowahawk, well known to his many followers as creator of first-rate broad satire from a conservative perspective, departs from his usual fare. Instead, he serves a straight-up recipe of do-it-yourself climate change science so that you, too, can develop your own hockey stick graph.

It would be a crime against the nature of things if one were to relegate Iowahawk’s talent to producing serious scientific analysis. To right the imbalance, here is a more impressionistic examination of climate science, climate scientists, and environmentalist protesters, all ingredients in one vast clown show orchestrated by the impresario, Al Gore.

For the occasion, it’s appropriate to make it a double feature, with Iowahawk’s presentation of research into the behavior and social interactions of the species ”climate researcher” at the University of East Anglia:

“During the upcoming research season, this hive alone will produce over 6 million metric tons of grant-sustaining climate data guano, but until recently little was known about the elusive genus of homo scientifica living inside. Where do they come from? What strange force draws them here year after year? In order to unravel the mystery, Iowahawk Geographic documentary filmmaker David Burge undertook a painstaking one-week project to finally capture the climate researchers in their native habitat.

“In this exclusive footage, Burge warily approaches the hive’s security drone, disguising himself as a smelly graduate student. Burge has theorized that as a member of the lowest stratum in the hive’s social system, the drone likely enjoys partying. He reaches into his backpack and offers the drone a pint of Guinness and a small bag of weed in exchange for the hive’s internal security tapes and email files. Success.”

In the words of a Kazakh reporter visiting the U.S., “Great success!”

Three contemporaneous headlines on Google News. Is it only me, or is there some incongruity here?

China: Climate talks yielded ‘positive’ results (to reduce carbon emissions to combat global warming).
Snow socks Eastern states, halts travel (and may curb holiday shopping, to the detriment of the economy).
Eurostar trains suspended as cold weather continues (ports closed; trains stranded; chaos on roads). Closed for a third day now.

UPDATE: And another one: Washington area digs out from record-setting snowfall (most one-day total in 70 years)

The guru of global climate science, Albert Gore, asserts some astonishing facts about geothermal energy production and the temperature of the Earth’s interior. Either that, or he doesn’t know what he is talking about. If his numbers, that the Earth’s core is at several million degrees, are correct, global warming is far worse even right now than anyone has believed. In fact, we’d be the Sun, not Earth. Sure wouldn’t want the rest of global warming “evidence” to be as weak as what Gore says here. That would be a very inconvenient truth.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air asks what happened to ice-free Arctic summers? Last year’s dire predictions of such a boon to navigation by 2013 have been put off by unexpected global cooling for—two or three decades. It almost makes one question the accuracy of climate change models on which trillion dollar consequences for the economy, such as cap-and-trade and other growth busting taxes and regulations, are predicated.

Or a geographic fluke? Or due not to warming but to recent cooling? Or, as with so much about the climate, who knows?

The “consensus” has been that global warming will increase desertification and generally reduce rainfall. Except when those storms happen, in which case they will be particularly severe. But now comes evidence that the Southern Sahara has seen increased rainfall over several years, so that the desert is retreating. The response is that perhaps global warming will make deserts wetter. On one level that would make sense, but it would also suggest a self-regulating mechanism. Moderately increased cloud cover might cool the Earth.

The Sahara has been more like a savannah at various times in the not-too-distant past, so the change may be part of longer cycles. But it does suggest, yet again, the unknowns about the nature, scope, and effects of climate change. And it shows the risk from profound economic decisions based on dubious computer models proposed by actors with clear political agendas.

I recently linked to the debate in the Australian Senate about anthropogenic global warming and their version of cap-and-trade energy taxes that would restrict economic growth. Climate change skeptics there came accompanied by scientists to refute the “consensus” about global warming, with the result that Australia averted the noose of energy taxes that would strangle economic growth. One of the scientists on whose work the dissenters relied is Ian Plimer, an earth scientist at the University of Adelaide. He has a new book, Heaven and Earth, that, from the description of it by a global warming advocate, looks like a powerful refutation of the man-made global warming hysteria. I plan to take a look at it myself. Here is an article that reviews the recent history of Australian climate politics and quotes from the review by the global warming advocate:

He describes Plimer, correctly, as “one of Australia’s foremost Earth scientists,” and praised the book as “brilliantly argued” and “the product of 40 years’ research and breadth of scholarship.”…”Heaven and Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.”

One wishes that American global warming advocates were as professional in their evaluation of their critics’ work. Given the research and data that went into writing the book, Professor Plimer cannot be blithely dismissed as a non-scientist (or “wrong science”-scientist) know-nothing by those critics whose wont it is to do just that to those who offer dissent from global warming orthodoxy.

This is an interview with Ian Plimer. He addresses the interaction between CO2 and climate change and concludes that the former does not drive the latter. He concludes that from the climate change and the CO2 patterns that have existed in Earth’s past. BTW, it is that history that has always given me pause about the alleged huge effect of human activity on climate change. He blames the current orthodoxy on government funding of science. As my students know, I have pointed out for years how government funding distorts freedom of scientific speech and the free market of ideas by crowding out conflicting research. The examples go well beyond fostering just climate change orthodoxy. He addresses the inadequacy of the computer models that have failed to predict recent climate changes and that cannot come close to evaluating the complexity of climate. He points out the religious dimension of belief in anthropogenic global warming for its advocates:

“Environmentalism has many of the hallmarks of failed European socialism and Western (failed) Christianity. It has a holy book which few have read (IPCC reports), has prophets (Gore) who cannot be challenged, relies on dogma, ignores contrary evidence, has armies of wide-eyed missionaries who have no knowledge of the holy book or the structure of religion; imposes guilt, has a catastrophist view of the planet, and seeks indulgences.

“In modern urban environments where people have no connection with nature, they often search for a spiritual meaning to life and environmentalism gives this to them with little trouble—i.e., they do not have to study for decades, they need no knowledge, they can indulge in symbolism, can worship nature yet have no contact with nature.”

Here is Plimer’s take on the folly of cap-and-trade energy taxes:

“Cap-and-trade legislation in the US will seriously add costs to the wealth-generating enterprises of agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and energy generation. By contrast, the more draconian legislation in Australia will send many productive enterprises broke. The end result is that efficient, low-polluting, low-cost enterprises will be shifted to either the Third World or to subsidized economies (i.e., Europe). In effect, the proposed legislation is a massive transfer of hard-earned wealth and employment from countries with a responsible ethical, corporate, and regulatory regime to unregulated jurisdictions.”

His advice to citizens? “Continually pester your politicians, make radio/TV/newspaper comment, write letters to the editor and start a groundswell of opinion. This needs to start like a guerilla war in rural, smokestack, and mining areas and to be brought into the cities, where there are queues lining up to make a fortune on cap-and-trade activities. A tax on thin air is what we are begin asked to approve.”

Pester your politicians? We know how well such exercise of participatory democracy has gone over with the elites (the Democratic Party politicians, the Obama administration, the media) in connection with Obamacare. If people take this to heart, we could be in for a wonderful time of civic participation. 

HT: Marcela Pena

As the House does the bidding of the Obama administration to be the only country that imposes economically crippling environmental restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, comes this very convincing, though at times challenging to read scientific paper debunking the evidence of global warming caused y increased CO2 concentrations. Rather, the correlation that exists is caused by the reverse, global warming leads to increased CO2, over long cycles. In the short term, CO2 levels do not correspond to warming or cooling trends that last a few decades only.

More likely explanations for generational global warming and cooling? Ocean oscillations, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and sunspot activity that influences the number of cosmic rays that hit the Earth, which affects the formation of clouds.

I recently had a discussion with a good-natured liberal believer in the media version of Obama’s plan to deal with human-caused global warming. I tried to explain to him some of the problems with the argument, but he was convinced by what he thought was the wholesale scientific consensus in favor of Gore’s warning on Earth’s warming. I hope he reads this article from The Wall Street Journal about the evidence of change on climate change. The scientific consensus, if it ever existed, does so no more.

Hence, in further erosion of the centuries-old freedom of scientific inquiry in the West, the government has increasingly resorted to the suppression of evidence or statements unfavorable to its preferred case. The latest scandal of this typeis the EPA’s suppression of formal comments by one of its veteran scientists, Alan Carlin, that are critical of the EPA report on the danger of greenhouse gases that was significant for the government’s efforts to adopt cap-and-trade and other economically costly and environmentally dubious policies. For those so inclined, here is a copy of Mr. Carlin’s lengthy comments.

Meanwhile, Antarctic ice grows at record pace, even as only alarmist stories about the collapse of an ice shelf (which juts asymmetrically into comparatively warmer water) make it into the media. This article is a year old, but conditions have not changed, with continuing record ice growth.

Probably the most radical of the anthropogenic global warming alarmists is James Hanson, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He has a millennialist view of the impact of global warming, and he leverages that apocalyptic vision into an intolerance of dissent and those he deems guilty of the sin of causing that warming:

“He also conducted a media tour that included calling for the CEOs of fossil fuel companies, including ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy, to be put on trial for ‘high crimes against humanity and nature.’”

He has had considerable political success due in significant part to the patronage of Al Gore (for, one suspects, the latter’s financial reasons) and Barack Obama (for, one suspects, the latter’s political reasons). But his climate science is less solid than his climate religion, as the dissenting voices of climatologists make clear. One reason I am so skeptical of global warming claims (other than the historic pattern of warming and cooling on Earth and other planets) is the fact that data have been doctored (Hanson indeed advocated the “Big Lie” as a necessary way to get people’s attention), and that the models he uses have not been able to replicate the actual climate changes that have occurred. I am heartened by the fact that there are people much more qualified than I who are skeptical of the data. methodology, and conclusions underlying the politically-driven global warming agenda.

Continuing with the theme of skepticism about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, a few additional posts:

This article reveals that solar winds are at a 50-year low. Some climate scientists believe that the subsidence of such winds increases the volume of cosmic rays that strike Earth, which then causes increased cloud cover and cooling. The change in solar winds (and sunspots) has coincided with a drop in Earth’s temperature over the last several years. Fear is that this will continue and lead to prolonged global cooling.

This article reviews the geopolitics of global warming and considers the economic lunacy at the core of Western governments’ environmentalist-driven policies (if those governments actually plan to live up to those commitments, something the Europeans failed to do regarding their obligations under the Kyoto Accords).

“Now for the other planet, the one the rest of us live on. Here all the accepted measures of global temperatures show that their trend has been downwards since 2002, declining at a rate that averages to about 0.25 degree per decade. Yet such a fall was predicted by none of those 25 computer models on which the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the rest of the Great and the Good rely for their theory of runaway global warming. Their computers are programmed to assume that as CO2 goes up, temperatures inevitably follow. But the graph below, where the variation of global temperatures from a 30-year mean is plotted against CO2 levels, shows the two lines clearly diverging, contrary to the theory. In this century, temperatures have fallen as CO2 has risen.

“Furthermore, the Arctic ice has failed to disappear, as can be seen from the Crysophere Today website: it is now not far off its 30-year mean. Al Gore’s polar bears have failed to drown. The ice in the Antarctic is actually way above its 30-year average.”

Hmm.

This article by a leading Australian climate scientist challenges the claim that increased atmospheric carbon leads to a greenhouse effect and causes global warming. He once believed that, but changed his mind when no scientific evidence for that hypothesis was discovered.

“But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming.”

Hmm.

This article examines the lack of evidence between global warming and hurricane frequency or intensity. Indeed, there is some suggestion that warming would reduce storm intensity, though the evidence is inconclusive. In addition to the studies cited in the link, it actually makes sense that warming, which is most likely to occur in temperate latitudes and at higher atmospheric levels (as well as during the night and in winter, i.e., a general tempering of extremes) will reduce temperature differentials between regions and within air masses that help produce violent storms.

This article demonstrates the link between sunspot activity and climate on Earth. The recent unusual warming period of the 1990s coincided with sunspot activity that was at a 1000-year high. Since then, sunspots have diminished (and sometimes disappeared) and the Earth has cooled.

“The last time the sun was this quiet for an extended period was between 1645 and 1715, a period astronomers call the “Maunder Minimum”. During those 70 years, the face of the Sun was nearly blank of sunspots, or solar storms, and broke away from its normal 11-year cycle. At the same time, Europe was dealing with extreme cold and the Thames River in London froze solid. They even held winter fairs on the ice. Glaciers also advanced in the Alps and the northern sea ice expanded. By the early 19th Century, for reasons no one understands, the sun returned to its familiar 11-year sunspot cycle and things began to slowly warm up on the planet.”

At least some scientists are concerned that this marks the beginning of a longer cold cycle for the sun, though others see this as just part of the regular 11-year solar cycle.

This article presents similar observations about sunspots and climate from a Harvard astrophysicist. Even if sunspot activity returns and global temperatures increase from their current lows, this should tell us that the .1% variations in solar energy output have far more effect on Earth’s climate than soccer moms driving SUVs. A rational thinker would understand that, especially if he or she has some understanding of the limits of human influence. But the global warming boosters have this unbounded hubris that it is humans who control nature, and that human activity can terminally despoil the planet as well as cause its salvation. Conservatives tend to be more skeptical of such claims.

The Obama administration is hard at work raising the cost of living for Americans, and concomitantly reducing the standard of living, through the imposition of energy taxes in the form of mandated reductions in CO2 emissions managed through a pseudo-free market cap-and-trade system. Not coincidentally, this will transfer vast sums of money from productive Americans to the political class to fund their pet projects to tell people how to live their lives. The feds are lagging behind the progressive California administration of Arnold Schwarzenegger, which has decided that the bankrupt state’s budget and unemployment problems can be solved by imposing on business the costs of its own regulatory regime to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (which will have a giant impact on the environment compared to, say, the emissions from China and India).

I have long been a skeptic about the claims of global warming advocates about the existence, scope, causes, and effects of global warming. I am not a scientist, but I look at the history of climate change, the existence of climate change on other planets, the relatively puny effect of people on the planet, compared to the sun and other natural forces (just think of the effect on the ”ozone hole”—BTW whatever happened to that?—of a single sizable volcanic eruption compared to all human industrial activity), and the self-interest of global warming advocates, such as those seeking government funding to study potential “disasters.” Also, I lived through the intense disaster-mongering in the 1970s about global cooling and the “coming ice age.” I have been following this issue for some years and have collected numerous articles from and about scientists who question one or the other aspects of the global warming meme. The Canadian National Post ran a great series called “The Deniers” about such scientists, parts of which series have been collected into a book. As I have posted before, I do not deny the possibility of anthropogenic global warming. But I am skeptical about the desirability of imposing tremendous costs on standards of living and individual freedom in the cause of something so speculative. According to public opinion surveys, the American public also is becoming more skeptical about global warming claims. The public policies that are being enacted more and more look like self-interested private policies for the beneficiaries of political jostling.

Toward that end, here is an article showing the back and forth of scientists and journalists over global warming and cooling over the last century. It is amusing and well worth reading to get a sense of the uncertainty of climate prediction. No wonder that we now hear about the more ambiguous and protean “global climate change.” That helps avoid having to replace the bumperstickers and slogans every few years. It also helps to keep this in mind when listening to hucksters such as Al Gore whose financial interest in the cap-and-trade market sheds light on his position as global warming alarmist.

Given that temperatures have dropped over the last ten years, and sunspot activity is at dangerously low level, scientists are beginning once more to be concerned about global cooling. This posting from Hot Air’s Green Room has some great links to other articles than the ones I have linked to here. My favorite is this video made during the last “global warming scare” cycle sandwiched between two “global cooling scare” cycles. Note the similarities of the arguments to Arnold, Obama, Al Gore, and other global warming alarmists.

With surveys showing increasing skepticism among Americans about anthropogenic global warming, there now appears a troubling memo by the Office of Management and Budget about the EPA’s assertion that CO2 emissions from human activity are causing dangerous global warming. Not only did the EPA’s finding of harm rest on questionable evidence, according to OMB, but the EPA failed to account for the harm to the economy from regulation of CO2 and the potential benefits from global warming, if any occurs. We’ll see whether this gets the same kind of coverage in the media that Al Gore alarm-fests get.

This would be ironic, if true. It isn’t CO2 emissions that might contribute to global warming, but the West’s attempt to clean up sulfur emissions from the air. Apparently, sulfur emissions become aerosols that reflect sunlight and cool the earth. On the other side, soot-based aerosols trap sunlight, hence volcanic eruptions can contribute to global warming. The article suggests that one reason for the recent cooling is that the Chinese are using so much of their sulfurous coal, so that the sulfates are producing the cooling. Indeed, President Obama’s science adviser has suggested that artificial cooling of the atmosphere by injecting sulfur particulates into the atmosphere might be the way to slow down any global warming.

I’m a bit skeptical about this claim, interesting and ironic though it may be. Doesn’t coal also produce a comparatively high amount of soot? I also still believe that it is the sun that’s driving the warming and cooling cycles we have observed.

For all the environmentalist showboaters who fight global warming by turning their lights off for an hour to show the terrible impact of humans on that delicate Planet Earth, here’s a conservative response. IMAO celebrates “human achievement.” Even better are the comments to the post from some genuine conservative anarchist types.

Plus an innovative proposal from actor Ed Norton, the Earth Hour U.S. Ambassador, via Scrappleface.

This is a quite respectful article in the New York Times (!) about a skeptic of global-warming-caused Armageddon. To make sure that the readership of the Times might actually read the piece, the author emphasizes that the skeptic, physicist Freeman Dyson, supports Obama, has an Obama sticker on his car, loathes George W. Bush, and demonstrated against the Iraq War. I’ll give him those because still, as the article notes, the global warming fanatics have heaped personal invective on him and claimed that he has gone senile.

As I have posted before, there are many reasons to be skeptical. Dyson’s point is that he agrees that man-made global warming exists, but at a far lower magnitude than critics claim, and with beneficial net effects for humanity. He considers Al Gore a hustler, and NASA’s James Hanson a purveyor of flawed science trying to prove too much.

I have frequently opined that the heated and uncompromising responses of global warming supporters to any and all who question any tenet of their hypothesis rests on an incuriosity that is startling in scientists. One is inevitably led to conclude that climate change is not a scientific theory or even hypothesis, but a dogma. Indeed, given its prominence in a broader back-to-nature environmentalism, it profoundly resembles nothing more than a religious belief system. Dissenters are not merely questioning a scientific proposition, but a cosmology for those who prefer a secularized religion to the real thing. Hence, they must be attacked and diminished in their persons. Their jobs may be threatened. Their publications will be rejected. Government funds dry up for their research. Their very sanity must be challenged, as, predictably, has happened with Freeman Dyson when he “came out” of the closet.

Any “science” need not fear challenge or questions. That used to be the hallmark of rigorous scientific inquiry. One of the reasons I am such a skeptic is the reaction of the proponents, a reaction that seems born of fear and a desire to protect political and financial turf. If global warming alarmism is correct (and, from all that I as a layman can tell, the facts are against that on a number of levels), its backers are their own worst enemies.

Via Powerline comes more information about the increasing evidence of a global cooling trend and about the lack of enthusiasm of much of Europe, along with China, India, and others, to curb “global warming-producing” emissions. They even provide a graph with long-term temperature data. The linked article provides additional detailed information.

Mark Steyn comments about the difficulties that might arise in a period of prolonged cooling. He notes, “Sure, millions would die, but they’d be mostly whiners and EU nanny-state types.”

More global not-warming news. Meanwhile, California is gearing up for the first of many costly measures to combat global warming. The state must be doing so well with its budget deficit and its unemployment rate that it can afford these additional anti-business and anti-growth costs. Or maybe not.

On the other hand, those righteous and environmentally and socially superior Europeans seem to be having second thoughts. It is dawning on them that environmental restrictions have costs and should be shelved or ignored while the economy is in a downturn. Actually, that’s nothing new. The Europeans have been cheating and gaming the system for years. They liked to berate President Bush and the Americans over the Kyoto accords, but they themselves conveniently ignored those restrictions and timetables or set the levels at baselines that gave them plenty of leeway to maintain polluting industries.

Now, there is even talk of free emission rights for coal plants in Europe. During the campaign The One and Number Two rejected the building of coal-fired utilities and generally disparaged the coal industry. But the article holds out hope that, once in office, they, too, will come to their senses about economically stultifying and wasteful emissions restrictions. That leaves only California and Governor Ahh-nolt in environmental la-la-land.