The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. – Stephen Hawking
Posted by Tina
Man made global warming, or climate change as its now being called, seems to have moved to the background as gasoline prices, economic woes, and elections drive the news but never fear, the global warming movement is still with us. Proponents of climate change are continuously working in the background with plans to save our world. Some of these changes are needed and wanted. Relying less on foreign fuel by finding alternatives is one example. Other changes may not be as necessary as we are being told but they are going to cost taxpayers an arm and a leg and they will most likely restrict or limit our choices if implemented. It would be wise to make sure that the things we do change are backed by sound science and logic rather than by emotional appeal and unproven theories. The success of the green movement thus far ensures that we will have change whether we want it or not. The reason? Dissenting views are not widely reported and even when they are the subject matter is difficult for the average person to understand or defend.
A number of articles that suggest extreme caution on this issue have come out of Canada and the United Kingdom where green pressures and tax policies have already taken root. One such article, Yes, global warming is just propaganda, by Nigel Calder makes the following claim:
* Most readers don’t want endless scare stories about climatic doom, accompanied by authoritarian lectures about their carbon footprints. They’re hungry for a variety of opinions. *** Unfortunately only 1% of the huge number of articles on climate change in the posh London newspapers deviate from the official line of the Intergovernmental Panel. That’s not my reckoning. It comes from researchers at Oxford University who complain about the more balanced reporting in the not-so-posh papers, with a deviancy rate of 23%. They say it has ‘skewed public understanding of human contributions to climate change’. In other words, kindly abandon the journalistic principle that different points of views should be heard on controversial matters, or else a lot of dreadful people out there (you or me) may not truly believe that climate change is their fault. *
Have we been exposed to a variety of opinion on this issue or have we been showered with a one sided, one size fits all perspective? Mr. Calder takes this question a step further and suggests that the green movement has engaged in an all out propaganda campaign assisted by the media. His insight is based in knowledge gleaned from his father who served as a propagandist in WWII. According to Calder techniques being used include scare tactics, exaggerating small facts, and hushing objections or disagreement. The following are examples from his article:
>* Last year you were told shock, horror! — that Arctic sea ice was at its lowest extent since satellite measurements began. What went unreported was that Antarctic sea ice was simultaneously at a record high. The collusion of my fellow journalists in the deception is disturbing. Although the big freeze in Antarctica was plainly announced in a press release from the US weather bureau, NOAA, not a single newspaper in North America or Europe carried this unfavourable story. *** One big lie about climate change is that man-made global warming is proven scientifically. Not so. On the contrary, any objective physicist would say that the evidence is strongly against it. The very mechanism for the supposed greenhouse warming, reinforced by that extra CO2, requires tropical air temperatures to rise faster at high altitudes (6 miles above the ground) than they do lower down. Weather balloons that routinely carry thermometers to those heights and beyond have shown no such trend over recent decades. *
Mr Calder isnt the only one questioning climate change theory as reported by Investors Business Daily:
* Not every scientist is part of Al Gore’s mythical “consensus.” Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV the sun. *** Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles. *** To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better “eyes” with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth’s climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined. *** And they’re worried about global cooling, not warming. *
Another article features research involving ice core samples in Western Canadian fjords:
“The sun appears to drive climate change.” themediadesk.com
* A Canadian SCIENTIST did serious research into the history of global climate change. He used Science, not consensus, to come to the conclusion that the climate has changed before, and it will change again, and people have very little to say about it. *** My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords… Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years’ worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. *** Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a “time series analysis” on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year “Schwabe” sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%… Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing. *** In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun’s 75-90-year “Gleissberg Cycle,” the 200-500-year “Suess Cycle” and the 1,100-1,500-year “Bond Cycle.” The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun’s brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly. *
A series of articles called, The Deniers: The National Post’s series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science. Feature a variety of topics related to warming science and theory. The following are excerpts from one. (Follow this link and you will also find the links to the other articles.)
Read the sunspots, by R. Timothy Patterson Financial Post
* Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that “the science is settled.” At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C. *** The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn’t seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don’t question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of “stopping global climate change.” *** Liberal MP Ralph Goodale’s June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have “a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world,” would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade. *** Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. *** Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long “Younger Dryas” cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade — 100 times faster than the past century’s 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists. *** Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet. *
Im not a scientist. I have very little background to help me decide which scientists findings are the more compelling. Im happy, in fact to leaving science to the scientists, although I do want and expect honesty. The thing that bothers me about the climate change debate is that most of the hubbub has little to do with science which can be debated at length without conclusion. What bothers me is the politics and the high pressure sales job that seems to be going on. It concerns me that we are making big decisions about tax structures, changes in fuels and transportation, changes in how we build our homes and where, how we light and heat our homes and even what we eat. Global initiatives and taxes are being proposed and adopted and all of these decisions are based on information that is in dispute and is driven by what appears to me to be a movement that has more interst in the legislation and tax agreements than it has in the science. Does any of this bother anyone else?