Tag Archives: Climate Change

Commentary

700 scientists dissent from global warming and 700 scientists dissent from Darwinism

3 Comments

The fact-free, less-morally-demanding religion of anthropogenic global warming is running into evidential problems. When I wrote about global warming before, I noted that the real goal of the AGW-crowd is to seize control of the free market and implement socialism. Well, we’re getting socialism from the erudite Teleprompter-Reader, but that doesn’t mean we’ll lose the debate.

Scientific Dissent from Global Warming:

MYTH: The latest scientific studies predict more warming (H/T Independent Women’s Forum)

“…You go from a cooling regime to a warming regime or a warming regime to a cooling regime. …we were able to explain all the fluctuations in the global temperature trend in the past century,” Tsonis said. “The research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001.”

“…if we don’t understand what is natural, I don’t think we can say much about what the humans are doing. …we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,” Tsonis said.

Tsonis said he thinks the current trend of steady or even cooling earth temps may last a couple of decades or until the next climate shift occurs.

MYTH: All the scientists agree that the recent warming period was man-made (H/T Club for Growth)

Fifty nine additional scientists from around the world have been added to the U.S. Senate Minority Report of dissenting scientists, pushing the total to over 700 skeptical international scientists… This updated report… includes yet another former UN IPCC scientist…

The over 700 dissenting scientists are now more than13 times the number of UN scientists(52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007Summary for Policymakers. The 59 additional scientists hail from all over the world, including Japan, Italy, UK, Czech Republic, the U.S. and many are affiliated with prestigious institutions including, NASA, U.S. Navy, U.S. Defense Department, Energy Department, U.S. Air Force, the Philosophical Society of Washington (the oldest scientific society in Washington), Princeton University, Tulane University, American University, Oregon State University, U.S. Naval Academy and EPA.

MYTH: Green jobs will boost the economy (H/T Independent Women’s Forum)

[Myth #2 of 7]: These green jobs studies mistake any position receiving a paycheck for a position creating value.  Simply hiring people to write and enforce regulations, fill-out forms, and process paperwork is not a recipe for creating wealth. Much of the promised boost in green employment turns out to be in non-productive – and expensive – positions that raise costs for consumers. These higher paying jobs that fail to create a more eco-friendly society dramatically skew the results in both number of green jobs created and salary levels of those jobs.

[Myth #4 of 7]: Green jobs estimates promise greatly expanded (and pleasant and well-paid) employment. This promise is false. The green jobs model is built on promoting inefficient use of labor. The studies favor technologies that employ large numbers of people rather than those technologies that use labor efficiently. In a competitive market, the factors of production, including labor, are paid for their productivity. By focusing on low productivity jobs, the green jobs literature dooms employees to low wages in a shrinking economy. The studies also generally ignore the millions of jobs that will be destroyed by the restrictions imposed by governments on disfavored products and technologies.

Andrew Chamberlain of the Tax Foundation calculates that the cost of the myth of global warming alarmism, which resulted in Obama’s cap-and-trade legislation, would be 144.8 Billion dollars, with an average annual household burden would be $1,218, which would be approximately 2% of the average household income.

John Lott has a post where he links to a UK Telegraph article on media bias that covered two scientific conferences, one pro-AGW and one against AGW, in two completely different ways. The headline is “Nobody listens to the real climate change experts “. Indeed.

Scientific Dissent from Darwinism:

MYTH: There are no reputable scientists who dispute Darwinian evolution

There are over 700 reputable scientists who dissent from Darwinism!(it was 700 as of February 8, 2007, the list has grown even bigger today)

Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture today [February 8, 2007] announced that over 700 scientists from around the world have now signed a statement expressing their skepticism about the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution. The statement, located online at www.dissentfromdarwin.org, reads: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

…”We know intuitively that Darwinism can accomplish some things, but not others,” added Egnor. “The question is what is that boundary? Does the information content in living things exceed that boundary? Darwinists have never faced those questions. They’ve never asked scientifically if random mutation and natural selection can generate the information content in living things.”

…The list of signatories includes member scientists from National Academies of Science in Russia, Czech Republic, Hungary, India (Hindustan), Nigeria, Poland, and the United States. Many of the signers are professors or researchers at major universities and international research institutions such as Cambridge University, Moscow State University, Chitose Institute of Science & Technology in Japan, Ben-Gurion University in Israel, MIT, The Smithsonian and Princeton.

Really, these two myths are two sides of the same coin. Global warming and Darwinism are examples of politics masquerading as science. We’ve seen this before in the myths of global cooling in the 1970s, the steady-state model of the universe and nuclear winter.

News

Al Gore refuses questions from reporters, refuses to debate skeptics

2 Comments

Now, if you guys have been on the blog, you know that a majority of stories here are going to be presented as issues to resolve between two oppsing forces, especially when it comes to spiritual issues. And that is because I believe that no one can convinced, by anyone, on any issue, until they hear both sides. But that is not the case with Al Gore.

Gateway Pundit links to this story from KNX:

Former Vice President Al Gore repeated his message that climate change is a planetary emergency at the WSJ’s Eco:nomics conference in California. …But don’t expect Mr. Gore to debate the merits of how best to tackle climate change anytime soon.

…he was challenged by Mr. Lomborg, the Danish skeptical environmentalist who thinks the world would be better off spending more money on health and education issues than curbing carbon emissions.

“I don’t mean to corner you, or maybe I do mean to corner you, but would you be willing to have a debate with me on that point?” asked the polo-shirt wearing Dane.

So Al Gore refused to debate Bjorn Lomborg. Must-see video is here:

Larry Elder links to this Boston Globe article that re-caps Al Gore’s impressive scientific credentials:

Gore’s undergraduate transcript from Harvard is riddled with C’s, including a C-minus in introductory economics, a D in one science course, and a C-plus in another… Moreover, Gore’s graduate school record – consistently glossed over by the press – is nothing short of shameful. In 1971, Gore enrolled in Vanderbilt Divinity School where, according to Bill Turque, author of “Inventing Al Gore,” he received F’s in five of the eight classes he took over the course of three semesters. Not surprisingly, Gore did not receive a degree from the divinity school. Nor did Gore graduate from Vanderbilt Law School, where he enrolled for a brief time and received his fair share of C’s.

Heck, all we have on our skeptical side are people like Richard S. Lindzen:

Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Lindzen received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, and he is a contributor to numerous scholarly volumes and the author of more than 200 articles in scientific journals. He is a member of the national Academy of Sciences and the Science and Economic Advisory Council of the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy.

And just look at the poor quality of his arguments. Al Gore could wipe the floor with Lindzen. Yeah. He really could.

UPDATE: Commenter ECM posted this link to a post on Watts Up With That? blog. Al Gore certainly seems to win a lot of awards, this one is for raising awareness about global warming. From the story: “Scripps Institution of Oceanography is awarding its first-even Roger Revelle Prize to former Vice President Al Gore… UCSD said Gore was selected for his efforts to raise awareness of global warming.”

News

Obama raises taxes on oil and gas to stop global warming

3 Comments

UPDATE: Welcome, visitors from the Cato Institute! Thanks for your link from here. New visitors, interested in economics make want to check out my posts on card check, the deficit, Stephen Harper, tax hikes for the rich, cap and trade, porkulus 1, porkulus 2, conscience rights,  school choice and the subprime crisis.

This Reuters article explains how Obama is going to attack energy producing oil and natural gas companies in order to save the planet from global warming. Here is the exact quotation from Reuters:

U.S. oil and natural gas producing companies should not receive federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks because their businesses contribute to global warming, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress on Wednesday.

In the same article, Senator John Cornyn explains the consequences of this policy:

Senator John Cornyn of Texas criticized the tax increases, saying they would hurt independent energy companies that provide a large share of U.S. oil and gas supplies.

“My view is that higher taxes on small and independent producers here in America will make us more dependent on imported oil and gas while we transition to cleaner energy alternatives, a goal we all share,” said Cornyn. “And it will also hurt job retention and job creation in the energy sector, which provides an awful lot of jobs in this country.”

Let me also note that consumers are going to pay the price for raising taxes, because energy producing companies are just going to raise their prices to pay for the tax increase. And if Obama either fixes prices or nationalizes the energy industries, (like he’s nationalized health care), then you can expect energy supply shortages.

When you raise taxes on the producers of a commodity, you get less of that commodity. When supply decreases and demand stays the same, you get a shortage. The price of that scarce commodity rises. If you respond to the rising prices by fixing the prices lower, you get line-ups outside of gas stations. This is what we saw in 1973 with price controls on gas.

Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute explains why price controls on oil and gas didn’t work in 1973:

Let’s begin with a review of what happened the last time Congress tried to protect consumers from “Big Oil.” When Richard Nixon enacted his strict retail price-control regime in 1971, service stations ran out of gas and motorists were forced to wait in staggeringly long lines to get what fuel remained. Burned by the fiasco, Congress adopted the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973 (EPAA), which essentially removed price controls from the pump and instead applied them upstream into the wholesale domestic oil market.

Indeed the gasoline lines and physical shortages disappeared, but the cap on profits from domestic oil production discouraged investment in new domestic supply, increased reliance on imported oil, and increased the upward pressure on world crude prices. The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (EPCA) tightened the wholesale oil price controls established in the EPAA and exacerbated the economic dislocations associated with it.

Read the whole article. As Santayana urged, we need to learn from history and from the mistakes of other socialist countries, so that we do not repeat their mistakes.

Now on to the secular religion of global warming. Gateway Pundit completely destroys the idea that the earth is even warming:

Arctic sea ice growth finished the year in 2008 at the same level as 1979.
The oceans have been cooling since 2003.
Sea ice is growing at the fastest pace on record.
Greenland’s glaciers are stabilizing.
There are growing fears of a coming freeze worse than the ice age.
Alaskan Sea Glaciers are advancing for the first time in 250 years.
And, for the second straight year the Earth is, in fact, cooling… not warming.

I stole this graphic from his post as well:

US Climate Map October 2007-November 2008

Warning! Now is a good time to stop reading, as I am about to become mean and snarky.

<snarky>So what we have here is a faith-based initiative introduced by Obama in order to appease his favored secular special interests groups, who  substitute recycling for the rigorous demands of traditional, reality-based religion and morality. Do we really need a religious nut in the White House catering to this crowd of anti-science fanatics? Should these dogmatic eco-fascist fundamentalists be influencing the policy of the most powerful nation on earth with their anti-reality delusions? Should we really be acting on the religious doctrines of non-scientists like Al Gore and his Big-Environmentalism-backed propaganda films, which are even now shown to our children in public schools as fact, fact, fact? What happened to the separation of church and state?</snarky>

For my Christian readers, Jay Richards of the Acton Institute did a great lecture on basic economics for Christians and another great lecture on what Christians should think about global warming.