Global Warming On It's Last Leg

I shouldn’t have to recap my personal commitment to seeing people be personal responsible environmentally (I know folks who believe in global warming and promote it in ignorance without being able to tell me which types of plastic should be recycled… or even how to quickly figure that out) but if I don’t start with this, then people will just think I am advocating for irresponsible living (which I am not.)

In the next couple of days the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public works will be presenting a report that sites 650 published scientists from over 2 dozen countries that voices significant objections to major aspects of the so-called “settled science” (previously marketed as scientific “consensus”) around Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW.) In 2007, the initial report included works and support from around 400 scientists and this new report includes additional peer-reviewed studies criticizing the climate science presented in the Nobel Peace Prize winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. In fact the Washington Post previously declared 2007 to be the year that Global Warming fear “bit the dust”, but that was followed with increasing intensity around the issue in terms of alarmist language from pro-IPCC report advocates calling any AGW-denial to be equal with holocaust-denial.

Ellen Goodman, in an op-ed article in the Boston Globe declared, “Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers…”

Not a short while ago some of the same scientists who contributed to the IPCC report presented new extremist reports about 2008 having the hottest October on record, but were later exposed for fraudulently using hotter September numbers in their October analysis. The fact remains that the last 18 months on planet earth have produced a new cooling trend. This is an undeniable fact, but at the same time the length of that trend is questioned: is it long enough, scientifically, to call it a trend? Geologist Dr. David Gee, the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress and author of over 130 peer reviewed papers, seems to think so asking, “For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?”

What seems more obvious is that scientists are jumping the wall from AGW science to the skeptical side based on their own analytical work. Atmospheric Physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh: “Many (scientists) are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.”

So, why would I care about this issue? In the words of the U.S. Senate Committee website, “progressive environmentalists believe climate fear promotion has co-opted the green movement.” In a nutshell, there are so many practical ways that people can try and do their personal part to invest in environmental responsibility. Instead, everyone is worried about a global implosion of our ecosystem due to “carbon” pollution. But is that really the issue we should be concerned with? Al Gore would have us believe it is. Other scientists like Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan, thinks AGW is a distraction with negative consequences as he explains, “CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another… Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so… Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.”

The fact remains that AGW has only one proposed solution to date: carbon taxes. That’s right. We can tax our planet into “safe carbon levels” according to this great cloud of AGW expert witnesses that defined the IPCC “settled science.” Logically one might ask, “Who are these experts?” and as a result you might remember the IPCC (and, again, Al Gore) claiming something like 2,500 of the world best scientific minds. What they don’t tell you is that while many reports from many sources (easily 2,500 authors) may have gone into the bibliography of the IPCC report, only 51 scientists signed off on the report’s conclusions. Let me type that again…. NOT 2,500…. 51!

Let’s do some quick math together. This initial scientific report that debates the validity of AGW scientific conclusions had 400 published scientists signing off, and this updated report shows signatures from 650 scientists. With the IPCC “settled science”-consensus report on AGW having 51 names, and this new report containing 650 names, the new report dwarfs “consensus” by a factor of 12! To put that in Global Warming terms, if a Toyota Prius can hold 5 adults, then the AGW group fits into 10 Pruis cars. That is a fairly long processional drive to the world’s global warming funeral. At the same time, the anti-AGW group currently occupies 130 Prius automobiles. The important thing to understand is that those 130 cars are equally concerned with the health of the environment and want to take back the green movement, focusing on waste management, food creation and storage to fight starvation, recycling, cleaner water, and personal and corporate responsibility in ways that matter more than “carbon” taxation.

A friend recently asked me, “If we remain skeptical and AWG continues to the point that we are doomed, how did being skeptical help us?” After much thought, I would have to reply with a question: Since the IPCC report (and the more important social milestone of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth”) what have these award-winning AGW-“scientists” (understand that of all of the individuals who collectively won the Nobel Piece Prize, not a single one was a geologist) proposed that we could do, outside of pay new carbon taxes or invest in non-regulated green-power (which isn’t a viable solution for most people), to solve the situation? Why are taxes really the answer? Would the world not be in a better place ecologically if we focused on more practical non-AGW science where there seems to be more real consensus?

I think what the average person looses in the hype of AGW are timeframes. It took a generation to supposedly ramp up the carbon problem (understand that AGW has been proposed and rejected since the 1960s and only now does it seem to have momentum.) It took the industrial revolution to be exact. Do we have the time to get real consensus, or should we just buy into this and accept carbon taxes as the answer (again, it is the only answer proposed)? The fact is that geologic-ecological-atmospheric science is seldom a sprint more than it’s cycles are like a long distance run. We won’t likely kill ourselves to take a less alarmist look at the science and then support a real agenda for improvement. And if carbon taxes are a part of a solution, then we should have a better understanding of what those tax dollar would be spent on to better the situation (i.e. I get it that on one hand the tax is a punishment for exceeding carbon limits in a given nation. But on the other hand, the UN is establishing a carbon credit trading market where largely industrial countries like America can buy carbon credits from less industrialized nations like Chad, but what is to ensure us that Chad doesn’t then industrialize in the wrong manner and continue the problem?)