On the Media's ability to learn from history:
On the graphs showing exponential temperature growth:Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age.
From the late 1920’s until the 1960’s they warned of global warming. From the 1950’s until the 1970’s they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.
The “hockey stick” was completely and thoroughly broken once and for all in 2006. Several years ago, two Canadian researchers tore apart the statistical foundation for the hockey stick. In 2006, both the National Academy of Sciences and an independent researcher further refuted the foundation of the “hockey stick.” http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697On the definition of "Doom":
It is very simplistic to feign horror and say the one degree Fahrenheit temperature increase during the 20th century means we are all doomed. First of all, the one degree Fahrenheit rise coincided with the greatest advancement of living standards, life expectancy, food production and human health in the history of our planet. So it is hard to argue that the global warming we experienced in the 20th century was somehow negative or part of a catastrophic trend.On computer models as "truth":
Earlier this year, the director of the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks Alaska, testified to Congress that highly publicized climate models showing a disappearing Arctic were nothing more than “science fiction.” In fact, after years of hearing about the computer generated scary scenarios about the future of our planet, I now believe that the greatest climate threat we face may be coming from alarmist computer models.On the veracity of Enviro-predictions:
The history of the modern environmental movement is chock full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future. The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict.On the Kyoto "Solution":
The alarmists freely concede that the Kyoto Protocol, even if fully ratified and complied with, would not have any meaningful impact on global temperatures. And keep in mind that Kyoto is not even close to being complied with by many of the nations that ratified it, including 13 of the EU-15 nations that are not going to meet their emission reduction promises.
Many of the nations that ratified Kyoto are now realizing what I have been saying all along: The Kyoto Protocol is a lot of economic pain for no climate gain.
On environmentalists' concern for the world's empoverished people:
The Kyoto Protocol’s post 2012 agenda which mandates that the developing world be subjected to restrictions on greenhouse gases could have the potential to severely restrict development in regions of the world like Africa, Asia and South America -- where some of the Earth’s most energy-deprived people currently reside.
Expanding basic necessities like running water and electricity in the developing world are seen by many in the green movement as a threat to the planet’s health that must be avoided. Energy poverty equals a life of back-breaking poverty and premature death.
If we allow scientifically unfounded fears of global warming to influence policy makers to restrict future energy production and the creation of basic infrastructure in the developing world -- billions of people will continue to suffer.
On the real agenda:
French President Jacques Chirac provided the key clue as to why so many in the international community still revere the Kyoto Protocol, who in 2000 said Kyoto represents “the first component of an authentic global governance.”
On Time Magazine's "Expertise":
“[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right… weathermen have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.” Before you think that this is just another example of the media promoting Vice President Gore’s movie, you need to know that the quote I just read you from Time Magazine was not a recent quote; it was from January 2, 1939. Yes, in 1939. Nine years before Vice President Gore was born and over three decades before Time Magazine began hyping a coming ice age and almost five decades before they returned to hyping global warming. On lies of omission: On February 19th of this year, CBS News’s “60 Minutes” produced a segment on the North Pole. The segment was a completely one-sided report, alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/16/60minutes/main1323169.shtml It even featured correspondent Scott Pelley claiming that the ice in Greenland was melting so fast, that he barely got off an ice-berg before it collapsed into the water. “60 Minutes” failed to inform its viewers that a 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showing that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice and mass and that according to scientists, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today. On lies of omission (2): Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen’s huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation. http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speechID=6 On Al Gore's Inconvenient Truths: On June 27, the Associated Press ran an article by Seth Borenstein that boldly declared “Scientists give two thumbs up to Gore's movie.” The article quoted only five scientists praising Gore’s science, despite AP’s having contacted over 100 scientists. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-06-27-inconvenient-truth-reviews_x.htm The fact that over 80% of the scientists contacted by the AP had not even seen the movie or that many scientists have harshly criticized the science presented by Gore did not dissuade the news outlet one bit from its mission to promote Gore’s brand of climate alarmism. http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257909 On the (disapointing) scientific objectivity of the Discovery Channel: In July, the Discovery Channel presented a documentary on global warming narrated by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw. The program presented only those views of scientists promoting the idea that humans are destroying the Earth’s climate. http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=258659 You don’t have to take my word for the program’s overwhelming bias; a Bloomberg News TV review noted “You'll find more dissent at a North Korean political rally than in this program” because of its lack of scientific objectivity. On who's spending the most propoganda dollars: On "Scientific Consensus": Continuing with our media analysis: On July 24, 2006 The Los Angeles Times featured an op-ed by Naomi Oreskes, a social scientist at the University of California San Diego and the author of a 2004 Science Magazine study. Oreskes insisted that a review of 928 scientific papers showed there was 100% consensus that global warming was not caused by natural climate variations. This study was also featured in former Vice President Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=259323 However, the analysis in Science Magazine excluded nearly 11,000 studies or more than 90 percent of the papers dealing with global warming, according to a critique by British social scientist Benny Peiser. Peiser also pointed out that less than two percent of the climate studies in the survey actually endorsed the so-called “consensus view” that human activity is driving global warming and some of the studies actually opposed that view. On dead polar bears:The “60 Minutes” segment made no mention of [NASA scientist and alarmist James] Hansen’s partisan ties to former Democrat Vice President Al Gore or Hansen’s receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. There was also no mention of Hansen’s subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf
The fact remains that political campaign funding by environmental groups to promote climate and environmental alarmism dwarfs spending by the fossil fuel industry by a three-to-one ratio. Environmental special interests, through their 527s, spent over $19 million compared to the $7 million that Oil and Gas spent through PACs in the 2004 election cycle.
Finally, a September 15, 2006 Reuters News article claimed that polar bears in the Arctic are threatened with extinction by global warming.***
What was missing from this Reuters news article was the fact that according to biologists who study the animals, polar bears are doing quite well. Biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut, a territory of Canada, refuted these claims in May when he noted that, “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.”
The media endlessly hypes studies that purportedly show that global warming could increase mosquito populations, malaria, West Nile Virus, heat waves and hurricanes, threaten the oceans, damage coral reefs, boost poison ivy growth, damage vineyards, and global food crops, to name just a few of the global warming linked calamities. Oddly, according to the media reports, warmer temperatures almost never seem to have any positive effects on plant or animal life or food production. Fortunately, the media’s addiction to so-called ‘climate porn’ has failed to seduce many Americans. According to a July Pew Research Center Poll, the American public is split about evenly between those who say global warming is due to human activity versus those who believe it’s from natural factors or not happening at all. In addition, an August Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe global warming is naturally occurring is on the rise. Yes -- it appears that alarmism has led to skepticism. The American people know when their intelligence is being insulted. They know when they are being used and when they are being duped by the hysterical left.
2 comments:
No - it says outright that the purported consequences of the climate change (change fully acknowledged to be occuring) have been exagerated, lied about, and used as the basis for costly and useless legislation. It does not say that current climate changes are nothing more than media sensationalism and leftist propoganda, it says (not implies) that the predicted catastrophes - reported as fact - are. And I think that is beyond dispute.
Nothing you've clarified runs counter to the Senator's claims, with the possible exception fo the "science fiction" quote-or-paraphrase question. He says not that Arctic conditions are not warmer than average, but that they are cooler or similar to conditions that existed in the '30s - before Karl Rove started issuing Suburbans to Red Staters. And the Greenland evidence refutes contentions that the ice changes there are either catastophic OR are being caused by artificial means.
Nowhere does Inhofe say that we haven't had a warm century - in fact, he points to it as a probably good thing by pointing out that during this period of warming we have seen tremendous gains in human health, food production, etc.
It is a Sacred Cow amongst the left that any environmental change from what existed in whatever year they turned 10 years old is per se bad, that global warming is due solely to Republicans in SUVs, that it is necessarily catastophic, and that it is a moral imperative to pass feel good laws like Kyoto whether they do anything or not. The Senator's speech correctly butchers those Cows, without saying that the climate is anything other than what it is - a dynamic force about which we have a lot left to learn, but that we can rest assured isn't going to reduce us all to "a few breeding pairs at the poles" (as Al Gore predicted) any time soon. And that is most definitely NOT nonsense.
Man - always bustin' my [chops].
Al Gore did indeed make such an utterance, as quoted in this unintentionally hilarious Roger Ebert review of "An Inconvenient Truth." No wonder Gore got worse grades than Bush in college...
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