Clearing the air on fossil fuels: Here is the rest of the story

Commentary by James Shott

A few years ago Hal Willis, a scientist from the University of California, Santa Barbara, resigned from the American Physical Society after 67 years as a member, citing the global warming/climate change issue and the blind allegiance to global warming theory by so many of the Society’s members, as well as the organization’s failure to challenge these members in the name of true scientific investigation, and citing trillions of dollars of research funding as a major reason the practice of true science on climate change has been replaced by ideological advocacy.

Of the climate change issue Willis said, “It is the greatest pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a scientist.” His position has support from other scientists, among them Dr. Ivar Giaever, a 1973 Nobel Prize-Winner for physics.

Giaever joined more than 70 Nobel Science Laureates in signing an open letter in October of 2008 expressing strong support for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, who had said “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” Seven years later he believes Obama’s warning was a “ridiculous statement.” He told a Nobel forum last July, “I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem.”

Dr. Richard Lindzen is emeritus professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT. Citing the growing shrillness of the cries about “global warming” during his 30 years there, during which time he says “the climate has changed remarkably little,” he notes that the less the climate changes, the louder the warnings of climate catastrophe become.

In a recent video presentation by Prager University, he said that participants in the climate change debate fall into one of three groups.

Group One, he says, is associated with the scientific part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Working Group 1), and are scientists that generally believe recent climate change is due to burning fossil fuels, which releases CO2 (carbon dioxide) and might eventually dangerously harm the planet.

Group Two is made up of scientists who, like Lindzen, don’t see the problem identified by Group One as an especially serious one. They say there are many reasons why the climate changes – the sun, clouds, oceans, the orbital variations of the Earth, as well as a myriad of other inputs, none of which are fully understood.

Group Three is made up of politicians, environmentalists and the media. Climate alarmism provides politicians money and power and environmentalists also get money as well as confirmation of their religious zealotry for the environment, while the issue satisfies the media’s need for a cause to support, money and headlines. Said Lindzen, “Doomsday scenarios sell.”

From the climate alarmists’ point of view, virtually every problem on Earth stems from climate change, as Lindzen said, “everything from acne to the Syrian civil war.”

The Director of the Center for Industrial Progress, and author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein, shows us in a Prager University video presentation that contains thorough sourcing for his assertions that burning fossil fuels has improved the lives of millions in the developed world by helping solve their biggest environmental challenges, purified their water and air, made their cities and homes more sanitary and kept them safe from potential catastrophic climate change.

Could we have built reservoirs, purification plants, and laid networks of pipes to bring clean water to homes without fossil fuels, he asks? Fossil fuels can do the same for those in the developing world, if the powers that be will allow it. More fossil fuel use equals more clean water, he said.

He further shows that despite an increase in fossil fuel use from 1.5 billion tons in 1970 to around 2.0 billion tons in 2010, emissions dropped from about 300 million tons to about 150 million tons during the same period. This resulted from using anti-pollution technology powered by … fossil fuels.

If CO2 emissions cause harmful changes in the environment, and if emissions have increased, then more people must be suffering “climate-related deaths,” due to things like droughts, floods, storms and extreme temperatures. But no, Epstein said. “In the last eighty years, as CO2 emissions have rapidly escalated, the annual rate of climate-related deaths worldwide has rapidly declined – by 98 percent.”

“In sum,” Epstein said, “fossil fuels don’t take a naturally safe environment and make it dangerous; they empower us to take a naturally dangerous environment and make it cleaner and safer.”

A large segment of the public has bought into the “we are killing our environment” idea put forth by the climate alarmists, and now meekly accept it when the United Nations and their own government advocate harmful solutions to climate change, ignoring the mounting pile of contrary data. Consequently, the economic damage done to regions of the U.S. and the thousands of American workers put on the unemployment line by the foolish policies of the Obama administration basically are accepted as necessary.

A strong case has been made that fossil fuels aren’t significantly harmful, and that they have been and will be extraordinarily helpful to the people of the world, if only we will listen.

Cross-posted from Observations

Climate change: What 150 years of global warming has done to Earth

As we celebrated the beginning of spring last week, then had our hopes for an end to winter weather dashed by forecasts of snow this week, a new report on global warming/climate change came out.

This report tells us that while the last 16 years where no additional warming of the climate were recorded, the previous 150 years where warming did occur are more important. It also explained what that century and a half of warming has meant for life on the Earth.

Since 1970 environment watchers have made quite a few predictions of dire consequences to the planet caused by the activities of humans that have thrown the environment into chaos, among which are:

• By 1980 all of the important animal life in the sea will be extinct. 
• By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.
• The world will be eleven degrees colder by the year 2000.
• By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by half.
• A general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.
• Within a few years children just aren't going to know what snow is. Snowfall will be a very rare and exciting event.

Fortunately, none of those predictions has come true, but what has 150 years of warming done to the humans whose dangerous activities are said to be causing it?

Well, according to a report from the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) by H. Sterling Burnett, this warming has been beneficial, not dangerous.

Over the last 150 years the Earth has warmed an average of 0.8 degrees Celsius, according to economist Richard Tol, an increase that has had a positive impact on the world’s economy. Dr. Tol, who holds doctorates in economics and environmental economics, and teaches at the University of Sussex and Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, says further that an additional rise of 2.2 degrees in temperature would continue to yield substantial benefits until at least 2080.

Mr. Burnett cites data from Dr. Tol showing that climate change has added 1.4 percent to global economic output over the last century, a figure that should rise to 1.5 percent by 2025. The increase in CO2 added 0.8 percent to GDP due to the boost it produced in agricultural production, and the warmer temperatures reduced the demand for heating, adding another 0.4 percent to GDP.

“With higher CO2 levels, plants thrive and become more efficient in their use of water,” the NCPA report states. “And because most of the warming has reduced low nighttime temperatures, the globe has seen fewer growth-stunting frost events, as well as longer growing seasons.”

Citing information from agronomist and geographer Craig Idso, the Stuart report asserts that improved plant growth over a 50-year period starting in 1961 totaled $3.2 trillion, and from today through 2050 increased CO2 will add $9.8 trillion to crop production.

And the greatest benefits in improved agricultural production have occurred in Africa, with one-third of that continent’s countries growing at 6 percent, and the poverty line dropping from 51 percent to 39 percent.

At the same time as this very positive information materializes, an assistant philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology has advocated putting some of those who oppose the manmade climate change theory in jail.

Lawrence Torcello’s stepping-off point came after an earthquake in Italy where six Italian scientists and a defense minister were subsequently sentenced to six years in prison because the official didn’t adequately warn the public following several minor tremors of the possibility, or likelihood, of a full-scale quake, which did occur, and the scientists failed to correct the official’s error.

“When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on,” says the philosophy professor. “With such high stakes, an organized campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent.”

It’s quite a stretch to equate people failing to provide information about a likely imminent event with people who financially support the contrarian view of a popular but unproven scientific theory, the contrarian view of which is itself strongly supported by scientists.

Further thwarting the Torcello plan is the indisputable fact that the time between tremors and the earthquake they foreshadowed was a matter of hours, where any harm that might come to humans from opposing the radical prescriptions to combat climate change is years or decades in the future.

Applying the professor’s goofy idea to those who financially supported opposition to the dire predictions listed previously, we might have dozens in prison for being correct.

Liberals seem always to prefer shutting down dissent rather than having civil and productive discussions about the different ideas. This happens for two reasons. First, they are unable to disprove the opposing position with actual facts, and second, their arrogance compels in them the belief that they are always right, and that justifies them using any means necessary to implement their radical and dangerous agenda.

Reality deniers are a stubborn lot; hold their beliefs no matter what

Commentary by James Shott

The number of notable people who behave as if they are endowed with special insight about the environment is an interesting element in the ongoing saga.

The most recent example of this is Secretary of State John Kerry, who fell off the diplomatic wagon and insulted millions of Americans he represents to the world who don’t agree with his narrow view of environmental issues by calling them members of the Flat Earth Society.

Arrogance of this magnitude from a public employee is not unheard of, but arrogance wasn’t Mr. Kerry’s only sin. He expressed the asinine belief that climate change is “the world's largest weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even, the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”

Tell that to the victims and their families of true terrorism, like the 9-11 attacks and in the Boston Marathon bombing.

President Barack Obama also asserts with absolute certainty that global warming/climate change is “settled science.”

Misters Obama and Kerry are no better than the rest of us non-scientists: they have chosen to believe one side of the argument about global warming, now renamed “climate change,” since the catastrophic warming trend we were warned about ad infinitum unexpectedly disappeared.

Some might expect that President Obama is better informed than everyone else. However, given the number of rather important events that he said he learned about from the media – the IRS abuse of non-profit applicants, the capture of the Boston Marathon bomber – he probably gets his environmental news there, like the rest of us.

But Mr. Kerry’s madness and Mr. Obama’s misplaced certainty aside, real scientists understand and will tell you that science is never settled. There may be general acceptance of a particular theory, but the possibility that someone will come across something that disproves an existing theory always exists.

On that subject Charles Krauthammer – who as a medical doctor has much deeper understanding of the scientific method than either Mr. Obama or Mr. Kerry – offers this example: “Newton’s laws were considered settled for 200 years until a patent clerk [Albert Einstein] in Switzerland turned them over with a single paper in 1903 — and that was pretty settled science. The idea that this is all settled is absurd.”

Saying that science is settled is simply a way to try to suffocate dissent, says columnist George Will. “When a politician, on a subject implicating science – hard science, economic science, social science – says the debate is over, you may be sure of two things: the debate is raging, and he is losing it.”

When scientists say science is settled, they are guilty of the same sin as journalists often are: allowing their political ideology to overpower their integrity and displace professional principles. And scientists often have the added motivation of filthy lucre: federal money to fund their research, totaling $68 billion from 2008 to 2012.

There are lots of scientists, climate scientists and others, who disagree with the manmade climate change theory, but that’s something Mr. Obama won’t learn from the media, because most of the agenda media don’t report much on topics that don’t fit their leftist ideals, like man-caused climate change.

Reality deniers ignore inconvenient evidence and cling to their views. Evidence like the email scandal from November 2009, where emails between International Panel on Climate Change participants suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of information, organized resistance to disclosure, data manipulation, and private admissions of flaws in their public claims, were exposed. A second round of email revelations occurred in 2011.

And the “hockey stick” graph created in 1998 purporting to show a dramatic increase in global temperatures in the 20th century, and was a major piece of evidence supporting manmade global warming. It was created by Penn State University’s Dr. Michael Mann.

The theory has come under suspicion for data manipulation. It is a complex story, but here’s a brief version: The graph relied heavily upon data taken from 252 trees on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. It used data from 12 trees that showed a warming trend, while a subset of 34 different trees showed no significant warming. Further, temperatures in the Middle Ages were missing from the Mann data. So, even if there was warming, temperatures from hundreds of years before the industrial revolution were warmer than those in the 20th century.

As a result, several individuals and publications challenged the veracity of the research, and Dr. Mann sued a number of his detractors for libel. However, it appears that the suits will not go forward because Dr. Mann refuses to release the details of his research, which is necessary for him to show the defendants actually defamed him.

These things cry out for attention, but are instead explained away.

Many people don’t know much about science, a point proven by a National Science Foundation study, which shows that one in four Americans believes the sun orbits the Earth, rather than the other way around.

So, many Americans trust scientists and elected officials to tell them the truth about important matters, and when they manipulate data, or sell a particular concept as “settled science,” many believe them anyway.

Cross-posted from Observations

INCOMING!

INCOMING!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

We have seen the action movies about huge fiery asteroids hurtling toward and slamming into earth.  We have sat, glued to our seats,  as action heroes such as Bruce Willis, and even Clint Eastwood, save earth from certain destruction.

My friend Zeb, when told of the current threat, said:  "This ain't no movie!"  Zeb's right.  This not a movie, at all.  It is, apparently, the real thing.

The official name of this flying rock is "asteroid 2012 DA14."  It is expected to reach us by next February (2013).

At the moment DA14 is expected to just barely skim by the earth closer, even, that some of our satellites hanging in geosynchronous orbit above us right now.

The problem is, as I understand it, there is almost no room for error in calculations -- and -- there are a number of things which could affect the path of the asteroid -- any one of which COULD cause it to drop closer to earth's surface, or even smack us with a direct hit.    

Thanks to the folks in Washington, who continued to milk NASA's budget, over the past couple of decades, or so, we haven't a chance of building a "spaceship" to go out and confront the asteroid and destroy it.  So, in effect, we people of earth are, indeed, a sitting duck.  The experts tell us it would take at least two years to build a ship and we have less that one year before the asteroid either hits us or skims by so close it will make our hair stand on end.

DA14 is estimated to be some 60 meters across.  That would translate to somewhere just under 200 feet in diameter.  Should it collide with earth it would have the power of a rather large thermonuclear bomb.

NASA expert Dr. David Dunham is reported to have said:  " There is a possibility the asteroid will collide with Earth, but further calculation is required to estimate the potential threat and work out how to avert possible disaster ... ."  He went on to say:  "“The Earth’s gravitational field will alter the asteroid’s path significantly. Further scrupulous calculation is required to estimate the threat of collision,” said Dr. Dunham. (as transcribed by Russia’s Izvestia.) “The asteroid may break into dozens of small pieces, or several large lumps may split from it and burn up in the atmosphere. The type of the asteroid and its mineral structure can be determined by spectral analysis. This will help predict its behavior in the atmosphere and what should be done to prevent the potential threat,”(SOURCE:   http://rt.com/news/paint-asteroid-earth-nasa-767/ )

Well. THAT just makes feel sooo much better.

Turns out ... there is very little we can do, not only because it is so late, but because it will be so close to earth.

Now we learn that this asteroid has been orbiting the earth for at least three years.  Some reports say it has actually crossed the path of the earth a number of times.  So ... where is all the fancy equipment we all saw in the movies that detect such threats from space --  and even more important -- where are the plans to deal with a threat like asteroid 2012 DA14?

There is no equipment -- at least not like we saw from Hollywood.  And there are no plans.  Well, that's not quite true.  There are plans -- still on the drawing boards.

OK.  So what if we get lucky ... again ... and this thing just whizzes on by without creaming us.  Great, huh?  Yeah, but it will come screaming back in 2056.  Of course, that will my grandkids problem then.

Two things I wonder about:  How much damage will it cause if it collides with earth -- and at the risk of crying over spilt milk --- why the heck didn't our brainiac scientists see this thing coming before now?

"But if the entire asteroid is to crash into the planet, the impact will be as hard as in the Tunguska blast, which in 1908 knocked down trees over a total area of 2,150 sq km (830 sq miles) in Siberia."  (Source: http://rt.com/news/paint-asteroid-earth-nasa-767/  ) 

Want a  geographical reference?  OK.  Rhode Island is 1213 square miles in size. ( The county in which I reside is 954 square miles)

But why didn't our scientists, astronomers and such, see this hunk of galactic rock and identify the threat much earlier?  Now, I could offer a rambling pseudo-scientific answer that might be comforting to you, but it would be a total lie because, frankly,  I haven't a clue!

You may recall the US military actually shot down a piece of some sort of obsolete space lab, which was reported to be a falling threat (with a dangerous cargo aboard) to earthlings just a few years ago -- and they did it with existing technology... and possibly a bit of pure luck.  Could we not take a shot at it with the same weapon?  Again, I don't have a clue.

The worst of it, at least for your's truly, is feeling like the proverbial "sitting duck."  I don't like it ... at all.    

Please don't give me the "c'est la vie" response.  I suspect that is partly to blame for our being a target in the galactic shooting gallery.  I mean -- this is NOT an uncommon occurrence.  Strip all the water and foliage off our little planet and it has the appearance of a golf ball.  No.  Its not like we didn't know there was/is a chance we will be struck with another chunk of planetary debris from Mother Nature's slingshot.       

Well, maybe I'm upset for nothing.  According to the experts on the ancient Mayans and their astronomical expertise with calendars (as well as their advanced ability to predict the future) the end of the world is currently scheduled for December 21st of 2012, anyway. 

So what's to worry about, huh?  Nothing, I suppose, so long as it was not the SAME scientists who interpreted the Mayan calendar who also decided Asteroid2012 DA14 was not going to be a problem for earth.

GEEZ!

J. D. Longstreet

The weak “climate change” hypothesis gets two more serious blows

Commentary by James H. Shott

More bad news for environmental alarmists came last week when 16 more well known and well respected scientists signed on to a Wall Street Journal article titled “No Need to Panic About Global Warming: There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy,” adding their names to a large and growing list of scientists opposing manmade climate change dogma.

From the article:

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

Despite a long and arduous campaign to persuade the world that “greenhouse” gases and increasing amounts of carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, and in the face of heavy pressure from their colleagues to jump on that bandwagon, more and more scientists agree with Dr. Giaever that stubborn scientific facts argue against the alarmists’ position.

The climate change argument, originally called “manmade global warming” until that title fell into disrepute when recent years have been cooler rather than warmer, has suffered credibility problems in recent years. Perhaps frustrated that many people, including many scientists, did not get all sweaty over the idea that mankind is killing our world with pollution-causing fossil fuels and excessive bovine flatulence, the climate change alarmists resorted to data manipulation and outright fraud to promote their version of “The Sky is Falling.”

The idea that climate change endangers the environment benefits a special few, but it does great harm to many. Funding for research – totaling tens of billions of dollars over the last two decades – is aggressively sought after among researchers in academia and elsewhere. Indeed, without billions in research funding many professors would be forced back into classrooms all across the country, putting hundreds of graduate assistants and doctoral students out of work.

Misplaced fears of climate catastrophe have unleashed horrors on the populace, which as a result has been condemned to burn gasoline polluted with ethanol, the manufacture of which has diverted countless tons of corn out of the food chain, raising food prices, and to replace perfectly good incandescent light bulbs with something called CFLs, a replacement bulb that puts users at risk of mercury poisoning, and requires a HazMat team to dispose of the things. And it allows true believers like Barack Obama to throw away millions of taxpayer dollars on boondoggles like the Solyndra loan, and on ideologically pleasing, but expensive and inefficient hybrid autos, like the Chevy Volt.

An excellent summary of the current mania is contained in this statement by Dr. Richard Lindzen, an MIT Atmospheric Sciences professor, a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and also a former lead author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.” Dr. Lindzen is one of the 16 signatories to the  Journal article.

No doubt some readers will dispute the professor’s position—despite his experience, training and expertise—but that does nothing to lessen the impact of his words and the truth they represent.

Back in the summer of 2006, fully 74 percent of participants in a Pew Research poll thought global warming was a serious problem, while 24 percent thought it was not a serious problem. Last November those numbers were 65 percent and 33 percent, showing that despite the one-sided coverage of this argument, the people are turning away from global warming/climate change as a serious threat. The pro-climate change side lost 12 percent, while the anti-climate change faction gained 29 percent.

More interesting, however, is this from the Daily Mail of London online last weekend: “The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.”

A real crisis may be on the horizon. It is fair to wonder how these climate change scientists will react to this, a real episode of climate change, one that is not caused by humans. Maybe they will determine that we really need fossil fuels, after all, to combat global cooling.

Drill, baby, drill.

 

Cross-posted from Observations

Science under the microscope: Unprofessional behavior raises questions

Commentary by James H. Shott


Most people do not recognize the name Peter Duesberg. They don't know that he is a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, or that he was the first scientist to isolate the human cancer gene in 1970 through his work on retroviruses, and that he mapped the genetic structure of those viruses, resulting in his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. Dr. Duesberg is also the recipient of a seven-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Yet, despite these impressive accomplishments and sterling credentials he is looked down upon by some of his peers because, as it turns out, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) — known as the “AIDS virus” — is a retrovirus, a subject about which Prof. Duesberg is an authority, and based upon his knowledge of retroviruses Prof. Duesberg concluded that HIV, does not cause AIDS.

Despite his background and accomplishments, his research and scientific opinion on HIV are given no credibility among the HIV = AIDS faction of scientists, and instead he is vilified and punished.

The purpose here is not to defend Prof. Duesberg's theory about HIV/AIDS — readers can investigate that on their own and draw their own conclusions, or not, as they choose. The purpose is to call attention to the decidedly unscientific behavior on the part of those scientists who believe the AIDS orthodoxy, and who demean and vilify a highly qualified peer who disagrees with a popular theory.

Science is supposed to be a logical, methodical search for truth; it involves advancing hypotheses and testing and retesting them, disproving those that can be disproved, and allowing those that can't be disproved to stand until a better hypothesis comes along. It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved, and there is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory.

The noted chemist and winner of multiple Nobel Prizes, Linus Pauling, said that “science is the search for truth — it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others.”

Yet, instead of engaging in scientific debate with Prof. Duesberg and disproving his hypothesis in a scientific fashion, the HIV = AIDS establishment responded by cutting off his research funding and making him a villain. Why?

Well, there is a lot of money in AIDS research and treatment. Since the mid-1980s the federal government has spent more than $20 billion in the U.S. for those purposes. If Peter Duesberg's theory is valid or cannot be disproved, it could upset the apple cart for a lot of people who have gotten comfortable in their lucrative work, so comfortable that perhaps they no longer care about objective truth.

If this situation sounds familiar it is because it is very similar to what happens to scientists with the temerity to challenge the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory, more recently referred to merely as “climate change,” now enjoying wide acceptance, but which also has been exposed as involving much less than honorable, objective science.

The Wall Street Journal noted back in 2006 that “Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled … Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.”

Those who do not toe the alarmist line are not only punished, marginalized, and ridiculed; they are even threatened with jail in some cases. Jail? Really? As Sarah Palin would say: “you betcha.”

In 2007 the following headline appeared in Agence France Press “Failure to tackle climate peril 'criminally irresponsible,' IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) told,” a sentiment attributed to Yvo de Boer, UN Environmental Programme head.

Like AIDS research and treatment, AGW attracts an enormous bundle of research and subsidy funding.

In 2007 $50 billion of taxpayer money went to global warming advocates, while just $19 million went to skeptics — a more than 2,500-to-1 funding imbalance in favor of the AGW advocates — according to information provided on the Senate Environment and Public Works Web page. Did the appeal of filthy lucre spawn the fraud, deceit, and error-ridden research that alarmists used to build support for dangerous, expensive and unnecessary changes to our way of life?

We have come to expect this sort of dishonesty and tawdry behavior from politicians. But science is supposed be above such desperate and corrupt conduct. Like journalism — another profession we depend on for honesty and truth that has lost credibility in recent years — science is fast becoming an area where theories will be taken with the same grain of salt as a Barack Obama campaign promise.

The ethical collapse of important professions like journalism, climate science and medical research parallels the collapse of our once-resilient society, one that developed through, independence, individualism and personal integrity. As our society sheds its standards, gives up individualism for dependence, and devolves into socialism, our once-ethical professions get taken down with it.

Cross-posted from Observations

It has been a challenging year for Global Warming/Climate Change

Commentary by James H. Shott

The recent epidemic of snow, ice and cold temperatures has given rise to lots of joking about global warming, such as, “How’s that global warming working out for you?” and “we have 10 inches of global warming on the ground.” The Associated Press noted on Saturday, “Forget red and blue - color America white. There was snow on the ground in 49 states Friday. Hawaii was the holdout.”

The story went on to quote David Robinson, head of the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University, that on Friday morning “67.1 percent of the U.S. had snow on the ground, with the average depth a healthy 8 inches. Normally, about 40 or 50 percent of the U.S. has snow cover this time of year.”

Everyone who has ever looked into it knows that the Earth goes through alternate cycles of warming and cooling that last thousands of years, and shorter cycles of warming and cooling within the longer cycles.

The global warming/climate change advocates (warmists) believe human activity since the onset of the Industrial Age is producing rising global temperatures. Skeptics point to other reasons for the increase, such as normal cyclical change and changes in Sun activity, among other reasons, and note that for the last several years there has actually been a cooling trend.

Warmists, however, behave as if the question is finally and unquestionably resolved, claiming there is a “consensus” and saying that it is “settled science.”

GreenFacts.org’s glossary says this about consensus: “The Scientific Consensus represents the position generally agreed upon at a given time by most scientists specialized in a given field. Scientific Consensus does NOT mean that:

• all scientist[s] are unanimous: disagreements may occur and can be necessary for science to progress,
• the position is definitive: the consensus can evolve with the results from further research and contrary opinions.

Therefore, Scientific Consensus is NOT a synonym of ‘Certain Truth.’"

NASA’s Home Page informs us that: “It may surprise many people that science -- the de facto source of dependable knowledge about the natural world -- cannot deliver an unqualified, unanimous answer about something as important as climate change.”

The idea that consensus does not equal certain truth – indeed, that in science certain truth does not exist because of the possibility of new information being discovered – is a major feature of the scientific method.

The University of Rochchester Physics Department defines the scientific method as “the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.

Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory. As a famous scientist once said, ‘Smart people (like smart lawyers) can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view.’ … It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved. There is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory. "

The certainty with which warmists dismiss skeptical views of their pet theory seems to run counter to the spirit of scientific investigation.

Worse, warmists’ attitude toward and treatment of skeptics are clearly non-scientific. They include ridicule, intimidation of skeptical colleagues, personal destruction and calls for legal prosecution, all because they disagree on a scientific theory.

Worse, yet, is that in an effort to perpetuate their alarmist scenarios, some warmists have resorted to deceit and outright fraud at Penn State University and England’s University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU).

The UK Telegraph reports that “perhaps the most damaging revelations … are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.”

A hacker broke into computers at the CRU, releasing 61 megabytes of confidential emails and documents onto the Internet. Knowing what these documents and emails contain, it is clear why the CRU scientists are upset that their duplicity has become public, a scandal some believe could be the greatest in modern science. These documents and emails involve some of the most prominent scientists advocating anthropogenic global warming theory and suggest conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organized resistance to disclosure, efforts to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process, manipulation of data, and private admissions of flaws in their public claims.

We can justifiably ask, “If man’s activities truly cause the Earth to warm, why do they need to deceive the public?” What do they fear from being honest?

As the science of global warming crumbles, the reaction of warmists to the revelations is interesting. The scientists say these revelations are a petty issue, while the policymakers go merrily on as if man-caused warming is settled science and everything is just hunky-dory.

All of this supports the idea that “saving the Earth from humans” is more about an ideology turned into a religion than about a real threat to the environment.