Gerry Charlotte Phelps

Iran's "Good Will" Let Surge Succeed - Pelosi

Here's the link to the video.  2 minutes.  http://stuckon-stupid.com/2008/05/30/nancy-pelosi-credits-the-goodwill-of-the-iranians-for-the-success-of-the-surge-in-iraq/

(Hat Tip to stuckonstupid.com)

Demographic Winter Coming - More Babies Needed!

                                (Image from trendwatching.com)

Worried about too many people breathing and eating burgers, messing up the environment?  That puts the focus in the wrong place, as Robert Knight outlines here.  Instead of worrying about too many people, we need to be worrying about two few people.  "Demographic Winter" is coming, and is much scarier than alarmist environmental worries.  The really frightening future is a human race that is rapidly depopulating. 

A new documentary, Demographic Winter, provides the grim facts behind the worldwide trend away from having children.

• 70 countries, including virtually all of Europe, are now below replacement birth-rate levels.
• Russia’s current population of 140 million will decline to 70 million by 2045 if current trends continue. The economic and political consequences would be staggering.
• The money boom triggered by the Baby Boom is about to run its course in the United States, as the Boomers make less, spend less and retire, drawing on the taxed earnings of a shrinking population of economic producers.
• In Germany, in 2006, in one province alone, 220 schools were padlocked for lack of pupils.
• Japan’s population reduction is so severe that the country is virtually shutting itself down, with labor shortages and plants closing.

Now, if you buy into the global warming theory, this may seem all to the good, since each human is a detriment. As the Manhattan Institute’s Kay Hymowitz notes in Demographic Winter

A lot of people I’ve talked to about this say, “Isn’t it great if the birthrate is going down, because, after all, that’s fewer carbon footprints and less stress on Mother Earth.” They’re not thinking about how much their own care is going to cost when they get older.

And it will be costly. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are speeding toward a crash against a fiscal roadblock:  the number of workers to pay for it is shrinking. Not only are we creating fewer kids, but more of the ones we do create are being born out of wedlock, which increases the likelihood that they will themselves be less self-sufficient.

Here are some of the scientists, economists, sociologists, psychologists and other experts featured in Demographic Winter:

Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker, Rutgers marriage expert David Popenoe, Harvard’s Nicholas Eberstadt, New America Foundation’s Phil Longman, Family Research Council’s Patrick Fagan, Norval Glenn of the University of Texas, and many others, provide data that show the decline of the two-parent family is at the heart of human decline—globally. And it won’t necessarily help the environment.

Oddly, having fewer kids also puts strains on the environment:

Dr. Jianguo Liu, director of sustainability at Michigan State University, notes that “global households are increasing more than the number of people” and thus using more resources. Because of divorce and the rise in single-person households, in 2005 alone in the United States, people used an extra 600 billion gallons of water and 73 billion kilowatts of electricity.

So the nuclear family is actually the most environmentally-friendly way to house people!

Yet the family is under assault by a constant media drumbeat about alternative lifestyles, the illusory “benefits” of the sexual revolution, and the costs of having children.

Environmental groups are saying:

Stop reproducing! Heck, stop marrying! (Unless you’re gay!) Fewer marriages mean fewer children using fewer resources. We get not only a greener earth, but the end of any pesky sexual “norm.”

Meanwhile, young men are increasingly pulling back from marriage and children.

In 1970, 69 percent of 25-year-old and 85 percent of 30-year-old white men were married; in 2000, only 33 percent and 58 percent were, respectively. And the percentage of young guys tying the knot is declining as you read this. Census Bureau data show that the median age of marriage among men rose from 26.8 in 2000 to 27.5 in 2006—a dramatic demographic shift for such a short time period.  (From http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_single_young_men.html)

As an economist, I am aware that people are assets to an economy when they are workers.  Working people add to the prosperity of workers and non-workers alike, because of the high productivity rates per worker in developed economies.  But there is such a thing as a "working age" - roughly 18-65.  When that population falls in relation to those 65 and older, it becomes a "graying" population.  That is when we are in big trouble! 

The only way to have more workers is to have more children.  We also know from many studies that children who do not live with both a mother and a father, married and living in the same house, have more problems and lead less-productive lives as an adult. 

So that means the way out of the coming "Demographic Winter" is more marriages, earlier in life, with more children in them, and marriages that last.  That, and not dubious environmental alarms, is where our greatest focus should be.

Making All The Difference

                                        (Image from pro.corbis.com)

From The FAX of Life by Rubel Shelly, at www.rubelshelly.com.

Jack lets us send "The FAX of Life" to him each week. Just over a year ago now, he shared a wonderful story with me and vouched for its details.

The story begins with a nine-year-old boy who was being raised by a single mother. He never met his father, but his hard-working mother put in 72 hours lots of weeks just to make ends meet. He had a sister two years older than himself, and they worked a garden to raise vegetables to eat and to sell.

There was some help from the state welfare agencies. A free-lunch program at school helped feed him and his sister. And the little family felt blessed when they were able to move into a nicer house in a better neighborhood.

Across the street from the new house lived a kind Christian lady. She was not particularly noteworthy. She didn't teach Sunday School. Her own husband wasn't a Christian, and their children followed their dad's lead and were pretty indifferent to faith. On a given Saturday, however, she saw the little boy and his sister playing in the yard. She asked if they would like to go with her to Sunday School the next day. As much from curiosity as anything else, they decided to go. And their exhausted mother gave permission. It would give her a bit of a break.

With whatever flaws there may have been in that little church, it opened up a whole new world to those two children. For the first time ever, they heard names such as Noah and Moses. They read Scripture and learned the story of Jesus of Nazareth. They saw people who cared about each other and whose lives were somehow different. It made an impression. They accepted Christ in that little community of faith. They were baptized there. They grew up there.

College, time in the U.S. Army, marriage, children - all these came in time to that little boy. Success in business has allowed him to bless many good works with generous gifts. He has been a faithful teacher and occasional preacher of the Good News. He has even had opportunities to teach in several foreign countries. He and his wife have taken in a number of foster children. Some of the more recent ones have been unwed mothers. Shades of his own childhood!

But Jack told me the story with less concern about the little boy who became a godly man than to speak of that woman across the street from a family without a father. She noticed and cared. Without benefit of psychology or training in Christian ministry, she did something that most of us might have thought was inconsequential. She cared enough to invite them to Sunday School. There they found their real father - the Father of their Spirits, who gave them a new life.

Jack knows the details of the story well, for he was that little boy. And he loves to tell the story of Kathleen Callen's invitation to Sunday School that day. He hopes that it might encourage someone else to do something, say something, or give something that could make a difference in another person's life.

Things that look small are often the things that make all the difference.

The Original Warming "Denier" - Into the Cold

MIT Meteorology Professor Richard Lindzen

By Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, February 2, 2007 at http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=63ab844f-8c55-4059-9ad8-89de085af353&k=0

(For readers who are in a hurry, key statements have been bolded for rapid scanning of this article.)

Most scientists who are labelled as "deniers" for their views on global warming don't embrace this role. They cringe at the thought of disagreeing with colleagues who think that the science is settled, they do their best to avoid making waves, and they fear being marginalized as cranks who disagree with the scientific consensus. Dr. Richard Lindzen is an exception.

Dr. Lindzen is one of the original deniers -- among the first to criticize the scientific bureaucracy, and scientists themselves, for claims about global warming that he views as unfounded and alarmist. While he does not welcome the role he's acquired, he also does not shrink from it. Dr. Lindzen takes his protests about the abuse of science to the public, to the press, and to government.

His detractors can't dismiss him as a crank from the fringe...Dr. Lindzen is...one of the most distinguished climate scientists in the world: a past professor at the University of Chicago and Harvard, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a lead author in a landmark report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the very organization that established global warming as an issue of paramount importance.

Dr. Lindzen is proud of his contribution, and that of his colleagues, to the IPCC chapter they worked on. His pride in this work matches his dismay at seeing it misrepresented. "Almost all reading and coverage of the IPCC is restricted to the highly publicized Summaries for Policymakers which are written by representatives from governments, NGOs and business; the full reports, written by participating scientists, are largely ignored," he told the United States Senate committee on environment and public works in 2001. These unscientific summaries, often written to further political or business agendas, then become the basis of public understanding.

As an example, Dr. Lindzen provided the committee with the summary that was created for Chapter 7, which he worked on. "Understanding of climate processes and their incorporation in climate models have improved, including water vapour, sea-ice dynamics, and ocean heat transport," the summary stated, creating the impression that the climate models were reliable. The actual report by the scientists indicated just the opposite. Dr. Lindzen testified that the scientists had "found numerous problems with model treatments -- including those of clouds and water vapor."

When the IPCC was stung by criticism that the summaries were being written with little or no input by the scientists themselves, the IPCC had a subset of the scientists review a subsequent draft summary -- an improvement in the process. Except that the final version, when later released at a Shanghai press conference, had surprising changes to the draft that scientists had seen.

The version that emerged from Shanghai concludes, "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." Yet the draft was rife with qualifiers making it clear the science was very much in doubt because "the accuracy of these estimates continues to be limited by uncertainties in estimates of internal variability, natural and anthropogenic forcing, and the climate response to external forcing."

The summaries' distortion of the IPCC chapters compounds another distortion that occurred in the very writing of the scientific chapters themselves. Dr. Lindzen's description of the conditions under which the climate scientists worked conjures up a scene worthy of a totalitarian state: "throughout the drafting sessions, IPCC 'coordinators' would go around insisting that criticism of models be toned down, and that 'motherhood' statements be inserted to the effect that models might still be correct despite the cited faults. Refusals were occasionally met with ad hominem attacks. I personally witnessed coauthors forced to assert their 'green' credentials in defense of their statements."

To better understand the issue of climate change, including the controversies over the IPCC summary documents, the White House asked the National Academy of Sciences, the country's premier scientific organization, to assemble a panel on climate change. The 11 members of the panel, which included Richard Lindzen, concluded that the science is far from settled: "Because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward)."

The press's spin on the NAS report? CNN, in language typical of other reportage, stated that it represented "a unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse, and is due to man. There is no wiggle room."

Despite such obtuseness Lindzen fights on, defending the science at what is undoubtedly a very considerable personal cost. Those who toe the party line are publicly praised and have grants ladled out to them from a funding pot that overflows with US$1.7-billion per year in the U.S. alone. As Lindzen wrote earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal, "there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis." (All bolding added.)

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation. Email: Lawrence Solomon@nextcity.com.

And who is Richard Lindzen?  Here are excerpts from his CV (Curriculum Vitae.)

Richard Lindzen received his PhD in applied mathematics in 1964 from Harvard University. A professor of meteorology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. He is also a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Prof. Lindzen is a recipient of the AMS's Meisinger, and Charney Awards, and AGU's Macelwane Medal. He is author or coauthor of over 200 scholarly papers and books.

Where Is God In Wartime?

                                     (Image from Pulitzer.org)

At Breakpoint toay, from "Faith Under Fire" by Chuck Colson, here .

How do soldiers keep their faith in God’s goodness amidst all the horrors of battle?  Soldiers have ssked that question since the American Revolution.  It occupies their thoughts and often seeps into the letters they write.

Among the letters Andrew Carroll collected in Grace Under Fire, is one from Private Walter Bromwich, who wrote:

“How can there be fairness in one man being maimed for life, suffering agonies, and another killed instantaneously, while I get out of it safe?” Bromwich asked his pastor back in Pennsylvania. “What I would like to believe,” Bromwich wrote, “is that God is in this war, not as a spectator, but backing up everything that is good in us. I don’t know whether God goes forth with armies, but I do know that He is in lots of our men or they would not do what they do.”

Private First Class William Kiessel, poised to invade France, wrote to friends not to pray for his safety, because:

“...safety isn’t the ultimate goal. True exemplary conduct is.” And he added, “What is important is that whatever does happen to me I will do absolutely nothing that will shame my character or my God.”

Lieutenant Colonel Scott Barnes, a doctor who treated hundreds of wounded patients in Iraq, offered an answer to that question in an email home to family and friends.

“Some of my colleagues have wondered out loud,” he wrote, “how there can be a God with all of this suffering. I just remind them that He might just be right in some of our hands and working right beside us.

“Where is God? He is in the O.R. guiding the hands of the surgeons, He is in the will of the sergeants helping organize a blood drive as only they can, He is in the hearts of the soldiers who immediately rolled up their sleeves to give what they had to save a dying brother whom they don’t even know”—or even a captured enemy.

Letters like these renewed Carroll’s own faith in God.

“They showed me that even in the bleakest of circumstances, with God’s help, we can...endure any hardship. Because of Him, we are never alone.”

Chuck Colson ends by saying:

Where is Christ during the horrors of war today? He’s on the Cross.

We at home are deeply grateful to you and we are proud of your service to our nation and our God as you defend the innocent. And I encourage you to remember the words found in Deuteronomy: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified . . . for the Lord your God goes with you, he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

May God bless and keep you, and protect you and your families.

All That Love Can Give

                    (Image from farm2.static.flicker.com)

This is from Richard Fernandez, the "Wretchard" of the famed "Belmont Club, here.  A Harvard-trained Filipino, he speaks eloquently of the his childhood memories of the fabled Filipino heroes who fought back against the Japanese occupation of the Phillipines during WWII:

I thought they would never die; that through some mysterious process sheer bravery would save them from old age and death.

As I child I sat listening to my parent's family friends tell of the ones who didn't make it. Of the guerrilla Captain from Calumpit. A Japanese ratissage had hauled up all the men in town on the bridge. They were lined up on the bridge where a hooded informer led a Japanese officer to the only man he knew for certain to be in the guerillas -- the Captain.

A Nipponese officer asked him to identify his men. He refused. The Japanese officer flicked off his ear with a sword. The Captain stood straighter. And the inquisition went on until he fell to his knees, every part of him that could be sliced off, gone. And then the Japanese officer shot him through the head.

I asked our family friend if the Captain had revealed the names of his men. "No," he said, "and he could have shifted the whole questioning to his second in command -- his Lieutenant. But he didn't."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Because I was the Lieutenant. I stood next to him in that line. And he never said a word."

I knew then that I would never be as brave as that unnamed Captain whose identity is lost to posterity, save through the memory of a child, as he writes decades later.

And as they began to pass, I realized that the tears at the funerals were in part for ourselves. We were weeping for ourselves. While they lived we felt safe in their fading shadows. And the tears were for a day when we knew we would be alone, orphaned in our patch of history.

Then no longer could the Captain on the bridge come to strengthen us in our dreams. They say that no man comes into his inheritance until he possesses it himself.

We have been given all that love can give. The rest is up to us.

The Mansions of the Lord - On Memorial Day

What do we owe to our armed forces, past and present?  We set aside at least one day, Memorial Day, to thank them, and to remember and pray for them and their dear ones. 

In their honor, here is the poignant music, "Mansions of the Lord," used at the Reagan memorial service.  Another version to honor our armed forces is here. 

Words and music by Randall Wallace.  (Hat Tip to the Belmont Club here.)   

"The Mansions of the Lord"

To fallen soldiers let us sing
where no rockets fly nor bullets wing
Our broken brothers let us bring
to the mansions of the Lord

No more bleeding no more fight
No prayers pleading through the night
just divine embrace, eternal light
in the mansions of the Lord

Where no mothers cry and no children weep
We will stand and guard tho the angels sleep
All through the ages safely keep the mansions of the Lord

Warming "Denier" - Lead Polar Scientist

    (Image from Newsimg.bbc.co.uk)

Professor Duncan Wingham at work, beside EU's Cryosat Satellite which he proposed, designed to focus on polar ice melting and on data to test and quantify global warming predictions.

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Dr. Wingham's Cryosat  Satellite

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"Polar Scientists On Thin Ice"

by Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, February 2, 2007, at http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=b228f4b0-a869-4f85-ba08-902b95c45dcf&k=0

A great melt is on in Antarctica. Its northern peninsula -- a jut of land extending to about 1,200 kilometres from Chile -- has seen a drastic increase in temperature, a thinning of ice sheets and, most alarmingly, a collapse of ice shelves. The Larsen A ice shelf, 1,600 square kilometres in size, fell off in 1995. The Wilkins ice shelf, 1,100 square kilometres, fell off in 1998 and the Larsen B, 13,500 square kilometres, dropped off in 2002. Meanwhile, the northern Antarctic Peninsula's temperatures have soared by six degrees celsius in the last 50 years.

Antarctica represents the greatest threat to the globe from global warming, bar none. If Antarctica's ice melts, the world's oceans will rise, flooding low-lying lands where much of the world's population lives. Not only would their mass migration spawn hardships for the individual families retreating from the rising waters, the world would also be losing fertile deltas that feed tens of millions of people. This chilling scenario understandably sends shudders through concerned citizens around the world, and steels the resolve of those determined to stop the cataclysm of global warming.

But much confounding evidence exists. As one example, at the South Pole, where the U.S. decades ago established a station, temperatures have actually fallen since 1957. Neither is Antarctica's advance or retreat a new question raised by the spectre of global warming: This is the oldest scientific question of all about the Antarctic ice sheet.

Enter Duncan Wingham, Professor of Climate Physics at University College London and Director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. Dr. Wingham has been pursuing this polar puzzle for much of his professional life and, but for an accident in space, he might have had the answer at hand by now.

Dr. Wingham is Principal Scientist of the European Space Agency's CryoSat Satellite Mission, a $130-million project designed to map changes in the depth of ice using ultra-precise instrumentation. Sadly for Dr. Wingham and for science as a whole, CryoSat fell into the Arctic Ocean after its launch in October, 2005, when a rocket launcher malfunctioned. Dr Wingham will now need to wait until 2009 before CryoSat-2, CryoSat's even more precise successor, can launch and begin relaying the data that should conclusively determine whether Antarctica's ice sheets are thinning or not. Apart from satellite technology, no known way exists to reliably determine changes in mass over a vast and essentially unexplorable continent covered in ice several kilometres thick.

But CryoSat was not the only satellite available to polar scientists. Dr. Wingham has been collecting satellite data for years, and arriving at startling conclusions. Early last year at a European Union Space Conference in Brussels, for example, Dr. Wingham revealed that data from a European Space Agency satellite showed Antarctic thinning was no more common than thickening, and concluded that the spectacular collapse of the ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula was much more likely to have followed natural current fluctuations than global warming.

"The Antarctic Peninsula is exceptional because it juts out so far north," Dr. Wingham told the press at the time. As well, scientists have been drawn to the peninsula because it is relatively accessible and its climate is moderate, allowing it to be more easily studied than the harsh interior of the continent. Because many scientists have been preoccupied with what was, in effect, the tip of the iceberg, they missed the mass of evidence that lay beneath the surface.

"One cannot be certain, because packets of heat in the atmosphere do not come conveniently labelled 'the contribution of anthropogenic warming,' " Dr. Wingham elaborated, but the evidence is not "favourable to the notion we are seeing the results of global warming".

Last summer, Dr. Wingham and three colleagues published an article in the journal of the Royal Society that casts further doubt on the notion that global warming is adversely affecting Antarctica. By studying satellite data from 1992 to 2003 that surveyed 85% of the East Antarctic ice sheet and 51% of the West Antarctic ice sheet (72% of the ice sheet covering the entire land mass), they discovered that the Antarctic ice sheet is growing at the rate of 5 millimetres per year (plus or minus 1 mm per year). That makes Antarctica a sink, not a source, of ocean water. According to their best estimates, Antarctica will "lower [authors' italics] global sea levels by 0.08 mm" per year.

If these findings are validated in future by CryoSat-2 and other developments that are able to assess the 28% of Antarctica not yet surveyed, the low-lying areas of the world will have weathered the worst of the global warming predictions: The populations of these areas -- in Bangladesh, in the Maldives, and elsewhere -- will have found that, if anything, they can look forward to a future with more nutrient-rich seacoast, not less.

And who is  Professor Duncan Wingham?  Here is his CV (Curriculum Vitae).

Duncan Wingham was educated at Leeds and Bath Universities where he gained a B.Sc. and PhD. in Physics. He was appointed to a chair in the Department of Space and Climate Physics in 1996, and to head of the Department of Earth Sciences in October, 2005. Prof. Wingham is a member of the National Environmental Research Council's Science and Technology Board and Earth Observation Experts Group. He is a director of the NERC Centre for Polar Observation & Modelling and principal scientist of the European Space Agency CryoSat Satellite Mission, the first ESA Earth Sciences satellite selected through open, scientific competition.

Want to Help World's Poor? Support Free Trade!

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   (Image from newsimg.bbc.co.uk)

The numbers are in.  Income is up for the poor of the world!  Poor countries are getting richer.  Why?  Rich countries have lowered some barriers to free trade.  But most of all, many poor countries have also lowered barriers to free trade and made their own economies more free.  Such countries have gotten measurably richer, and so have their ordinary people, here.  "The gap between the per-capita income of have-not nations and that of the developed world is narrowing."

What stands out is that this narrowing of the income-gap did not come about through charitable giving, either by government or private charities, as important as that is.  Rather, it came about through the growth of free trade and of economic freedom in the countries that gained income.  The ranking of countries is here.

This comes from the "2007 Index of Economic Freedom".  ($24.95, available at 1-800-975-8625)

What does this mean for people who want to help the world's poor?  Not to stop charitable giving, but to become an avid supporter of free trade, here and abroad.  Also, becoming a strong supporter of increased economic freedom, which poor countries must have to benefit from more free trade. 

What does that show that we need to do?  Rich Americans need to support the lowering of trade barriers between the U.S. and all other countries.  American industries will argue that it will hurt them and cost jobs.  But the American economy as a whole always benefits when barriers to free trade are taken down. 

Labor leaders will argue against the exporting or "outsourcing" of American jobs.  But the numbers show that the more jobs we outsource, the more jobs we create here at home.  And they are not low-paying jobs either, in the net, as wages and personal income continue to rise in the U.S. no matter how many jobs we outsource!

After all, what helps poor people the most?  Hand-outs or jobs?  Charity or work opportunities?  When we send them jobs and opportunities to start their own small businesses, that helps them more than any hand-outs ever could.  Not only can we afford it: we even benefit at the same time.

When a poor country is being robbed blind by a thieving dictator, a big part of any charity we send the poor of that country will end up in the hands and the bank of the dictator instead.  But when we sometimes help a country break free of a dictator, that can help its poor more than any charity.

We need to re-think what it means to help the poor of the earth.  The fact is, the free-trade public policies we support can help them even more than our kind-hearted and very important charitable giving.

Warming "Denier" - Statistical Advisor to Congress

Dr. Ed Wegman at work, with prize-winning graduate student Carey Priebe, who is now a Johns Hopkins University professor.

                       (Image from galaxy.gmu.edu)

"Statistics Needed"

by Lawrence Solomon, National Post, February 2, 2007, at http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0

In the global warming debate, there are essentially two broad camps. One believes that the science is settled, that global warming is serious and man-made, and that urgent action must be taken to mitigate or prevent a future calamity. The other believes that the science is far from settled, that precious little is known about global warming or its likely effects, and that prudence dictates more research and caution before intervening massively in the economy.

The "science is settled" camp, much the larger of the two, includes many eminent scientists with impressive credentials. But just who are the global warming skeptics who question the studies from the great majority of climate scientists and what are their motives?

Many in the "science is settled" camp claim that the skeptics are untrustworthy -- that they are either cranks or otherwise at the periphery of their profession, or that they are in the pockets of Exxon or other corporate interests. The skeptics are increasingly being called Deniers, a term used by analogy to the Holocaust, to convey the catastrophe that could befall mankind if action is not taken. Increasingly, too, the press is taking up the Denier theme, convincing the public that the global-warming debate is over.

In this, the first of a series, I examine The Deniers, starting with Edward Wegman. Dr. Wegman is a professor at the Center for Computational Statistics at George Mason University, chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and board member of the American Statistical Association. Few statisticians in the world have CVs to rival his (excerpts appear below).

Wegman became involved in the global-warming debate after the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives asked him to assess one of the hottest debates in the global-warming controversy: the statistical validity of work by Michael Mann. You may not have heard of Mann or read Mann's study but you have often heard its famous conclusion: that the temperature increases that we have been experiencing are "likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years" and that the "1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year" of the millennium. You may have also heard of Mann's hockey-stick shaped graph, which showed relatively stable temperatures over most of the last millennium (the hockey stick's long handle), followed by a sharp increase (the hockey stick's blade) this century.

Mann's findings were arguably the single most influential study in swaying the public debate, and in 2001 they became the official view of the International Panel for Climate Change, the UN body that is organizing the worldwide effort to combat global warming. But Mann's work also had its critics, particularly two Canadians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who published peer-reviewed critiques of their own.

Wegman accepted the energy and commerce committee's assignment, and agreed to assess the Mann controversy pro bono. He conducted his third-party review by assembling an expert panel of statisticians, who also agreed to work pro bono. Wegman also consulted outside statisticians, including the Board of the American Statistical Association. At its conclusion, the Wegman review entirely vindicated the Canadian critics and repudiated Mann's work.

"Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported," Wegman stated, adding that "The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable." When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.

Wegman found that Mann made a basic error that "may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians." Instead, this small group of climate scientists were working on their own, largely in isolation, and without the academic scrutiny needed to ferret out false assumptions.

Worse, the problem also applied more generally, to the broader climate-change and meteorological community, which also relied on statistical techniques in their studies. "[I]f statistical methods are being used, then statisticians ought to be funded partners engaged in the research to insure as best we possibly can that the best quality science is being done," Wegman recommended, noting that "there are a host of fundamental statistical questions that beg answers in understanding climate dynamics."

In other words, Wegman believes that much of the climate science that has been done should be taken with a grain of salt -- although the studies may have been peer reviewed, the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics. Past studies, he believes, should be reassessed by competent statisticians and in future, the climate science world should do better at incorporating statistical know-how.

One place to start is with the American Meteorological Society, which has a committee on probability and statistics. "I believe it is amazing for a committee whose focus is on statistics and probability that of the nine members only two are also members of the American Statistical Association, the premier statistical association in the United States, and one of those is a recent PhD with an assistant-professor appointment in a medical school." As an example of the statistical barrenness of the climate-change world, Wegman cited the American Meteorological Association's 2006 Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences, where only eight presenters out of 62 were members of the American Statistical Association.

While Wegman's advice -- to use trained statisticians in studies reliant on statistics -- may seem too obvious to need stating, the "science is settled" camp resists it. Mann's hockey-stick graph may be wrong, many experts now acknowledge, but they assert that he nevertheless came to the right conclusion.

To which Wegman, and doubtless others who want more rigourous science, shake their heads in disbelief. As Wegman summed it up to the energy and commerce committee in later testimony: "I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science." With bad science, only true believers can assert that they nevertheless obtained the right answer.

(All bolding added.)

- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute, a division of Energy Probe Research Foundation.  LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com.

And who is Edward J. Wegman and what are his scientific credentials?  Here are excerpts from his CV (Curriculum Vitae):

Edward Wegman received his Ph.D. degree in mathematical statistics from the University of Iowa. In 1978, he went to the Office of Naval Research, where he headed the Mathematical Sciences Division with responsibility Navy-wide for basic research programs. He coined the phrase computational statistics, and developed a high-profile research area around this concept, which focused on techniques and methodologies that could not be achieved without the capabilities of modern computing resources and led to a revolution in contemporary statistical graphics. Dr. Wegman was the original program director of the basic research program in Ultra High Speed Computing at the Strategic Defense Initiative's Innovative Science and Technology Office. He has served as editor or associate editor of numerous prestigious journals and has published more than 160 papers and eight books.

Getting Rid of Christians in Myanmar

                                   (Image from economist.com)

(From Chuck Colson's Breakpoint today, at www.breakpoint.org:)

The news from Myanmar/Burma keeps getting worse.  As of May 11, nearly 300,000 were dead or missing.  The UN said 1.2 - 1.9 million were struggling to survive after the storm.

But the conduct of the Burmese junta is even more appalling.  It actively hinders relief operations.  After it seized food aid last week, the UN had to stop sending it.

...a week after the cyclone, the junta was still refusing to let relief workers into the country, insisting that countries send only supplies and not personnel. 

The junta eventually relented, but only after stamping their own names on the boxes, and not soon enough to prevent a catastrophe.

Their intransigence may have already doomed a generation of Burmese children, according to international aid agencies. They warned of epidemics of “apocalyptic proportions.” The death toll from the epidemics and starvation could exceed the death toll from the storm itself.

The junta does not value the lives of its people.

Burma's Christians know this better than anyone.  The junta has used...

...ethnic cleansing of Christian minority groups, destruction of villages, forced conversions and even rape and murder...“to create a uniform society in which the race and language is Burmese and the only accepted religion is Buddhism.”  (bolding added)

The mainstream media has mostly ignored this story.  Most Westerners do not even know that Burma has a substantial Christian population.

We ought to be at the forefront of alleviating the suffering of the Burmese people.

But at the same time, we ought to point out to the world that while cyclones do not discriminate between Buddhists and Christians, this junta does.

And our nation ought to be mobilizing world opinion to bring down this oppressive regime.

Warming "Denier" - Top Warming Scientist

Richard S.J. Tol (left) at work

(Image from cesifo-group.de)

"Warming Is Real - And Has Benefits"

by Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, 2-2-07, at tp://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1d78fc67-3784-4542-a07c-e7eeec46d1fc&k=0

(This is one of the articles I referred to in my post, "Additional Anti-Warming Documentation" below.  I thought it would save you time to make it available here.)

One month ago (this was written in Feb. 2007), the world heard that global warming could lead to a global catastrophe "on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century." This assessment, from Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, made banner headlines and led prominent leaders such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair to urge immediate action to stem global warming.

It also led some prominent environmentalists to denounce Sir Nicholas for what they deemed an outrageous study bereft of credibility. None of the environmentalists issued a stronger denunciation, or has better environmental credentials, than Richard S.J. Tol.

Tol is a Denier, to use the terminology of the "science-is-settled" camp in the increasingly polarized global warming debate. Like many other Deniers, Tol doesn't think the evidence is in on global warming and its effects, he doesn't think there's reason to rush to action, and he doesn't think that crash programs to curb global warming are called for.

Also like many other Deniers, he doesn't fit the stereotype that those who use the epithet imagine. Anything but.

Tol is no fringe outsider to the scientific debate. He is at the centre of the academic investigation of global warming, a central figure in the scientific establishment that has been developing the models and the knowledge to understand the global warming phenomenon. At the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, considered by most the authoritative body in the field, Tol is involved as an author in all three of its Working Groups. He is also an author and editor of the United Nations Handbook on Methods for Climate Change Impact Assessment and Adaptation Strategies. He is also a mover and shaker in the prestigious European Climate Forum. He takes global warming seriously and has dedicated his professional life to making a contribution for the better in climate policy and related fields.

Because of his immense reputation, the Stern report itself relied on Tol's work in coming to its conclusions. But Sir Nicholas twisted Tol's work out of shape to arrive at unsupportable conclusions.

As one example, Sir Nicholas plucked a figure ($29 per ton of carbon dioxide) from a range that Tol prepared describing the possible costs of CO2 emissions, without divulging that in the very same study Tol concluded that the actual costs "are likely to be substantially smaller" than $14 per ton of CO2. Likewise, in an assessment of the potential consequences of rising sea levels, Sir Nicholas quoted a study co-authored by Tol that referred to the "millions at risk," ignoring that the same study then suggested greatly reduced consequences for those millions due to the ability of humans to adapt to change.

Throughout his report, in fact, Sir Nicholas not only assumed worst possible cases, he also assumed that humans are passive creatures, devoid of ingenuity, who would be helpless victims to changes in the world around them. Such assumptions underpinned Sir Nicholas's claim that "the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever," and led Tol to view Sir Nicholas's conclusions as "preposterous." Tol's conclusion: "The Stern review can therefore be dismissed as alarmist and incompetent."

Tol and Sir Nicholas are worlds apart, and not just because of Sir Nicholas's recklessness with the facts. Where Sir Nicholas paints an altogether bleak picture, Tol's is far more nuanced: Global warming creates benefits as well as harms, he explains, and in the short term, the benefits are especially pronounced.

More important, Tol is a student of human innovation and adaptation. As a native of the Netherlands, he is intimately familiar with dikes and other low-cost adaptive technologies, and the ability of humans in meeting challenges in their environment. To assume that humans in the future would not use their ingenuity and resourcefulness in sensible ways defies the history of mankind and ultimately serves no one.

Yes, global warming is real, he believes, and yes, measures to mitigate it should be taken. But unlike the advocates who believe that the science is settled, and the global warning debate is over, Tol thinks that much research needs to be done before we know how best to respond.

"There is no risk of damage [from global warming] that would force us to act injudiciously," he explains. "We've got enough time to look for the economically most effective options, rather than dash into 'actionism,' which then becomes very expensive."

- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.

And who is Richard S.J. Tol and what are his scientific credentials?  Here is his CV (Curriculum Vitae):

Richard S.J. Tol received his PhD in Economics from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He is Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change at Hamburg University, director of the Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Science, principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a board member of the Centre for Marine and Climate Research, the International Max Planck Research Schools of Earth Systems Modelling and Maritime Affairs, and the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment. He is an editor of Energy Economics, an associate editor of Environmental and Resource Economics, and a member of the editorial board of Environmental Science and Policy and Integrated Assessment.

Warming "Denier" - Top Expert on Hurricanes

              Dr. Christopher Landsea at work

                 (Image by blogs.chron.com)

The Hurricane Expert Who Stood Up to UN Junk Science

Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, 2-2-07,  at http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=ae9b984d-4a1c-45c0-af24-031a1380121a&k=0 .  His article is below:

You're a respected scientist, one of the best in your field. So respected, in fact, that when the United Nations decided to study the relationship between hurricanes and global warming for the largest scientific endeavour in its history -- its International Panel on Climate Change -- it called upon you and your expertise.

You are Christopher Landsea of the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory. You were a contributing author for the UN's second International Panel on Climate Change in 1995, writing the sections on observed changes in tropical cyclones around the world. Then the IPCC called on you as a contributing author once more, for its "Third Assessment Report" in 2001. And you were invited to participate yet again, when the IPCC called on you to be an author in the "Fourth Assessment Report." This report would specifically focus on Atlantic hurricanes, your specialty, and be published by the IPCC in 2007

Then something went horribly wrong. Within days of this last invitation, in October, 2004, you discovered that the IPCC's Kevin Trenberth -- the very person who had invited you -- was participating in a press conference. The title of the press conference perplexed you: "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity." This was some kind of mistake, you were certain. You had not done any work that substantiated this claim. Nobody had.

As perplexing, none of the participants in that press conference were known for their hurricane expertise. In fact, to your knowledge, none had performed any research at all on hurricane variability, the subject of the press conference. Neither were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability, you knew, showed no reliable upward trend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Not in the Atlantic basin. Not in any other basin.

To add to the utter incomprehensibility of the press conference, the IPCC itself, in both 1995 and 2001, had found no global warming signal in the hurricane record. And until your new work would come out, in 2007, the IPCC would not have a new analysis on which to base a change of findings.

To stop the press conference, or at least stop any misunderstandings that might come out of it, you contacted Dr. Trenberth prior to the media event. You prepared a synopsis for him that brought him up to date on the state of knowledge about hurricane formation. To your amazement, he simply dismissed your concerns. The press conference proceeded.

And what a press conference it was! Hurricanes had been all over the news that summer. Global warming was the obvious culprit -- only a fool or an oil-industry lobbyist, the press made clear, could ignore the link between what seemed to be ever increasing hurricane activity and ever increasing global warming. The press conference didn't disappoint them. The climate change experts at hand all confirmed the news that the public had been primed to hear: Global warming was causing hurricanes. This judgement from the scientists made headlines around the world, just as it was intended to do. What better way to cast global warming as catastrophic than to make hurricanes its poster child?

You wanted to right this outrageous wrong, this mockery that was made of your scientific field. You wrote top IPCC officials, imploring: "Where is the science, the refereed publications, that substantiate these pronouncements? What studies are being alluded to that have shown a connection between observed warming trends on the earth and long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity? As far as I know, there are none." But no one in the IPCC leadership showed the slightest concern for the science. The IPCC's overriding preoccupation, it soon sunk in, lay in capitalizing on the publicity opportunity that the hurricane season presented.

You then asked the IPCC leadership for assurances that your work for the IPCC's 2007 report would be true to science: "[Dr. Trenberth] seems to have already come to the conclusion that global warming has altered hurricane activity and has publicly stated so. This does not reflect the consensus within the hurricane research community. ... Thus I would like assurance that what will be included in the IPCC report will reflect the best available information and the consensus within the scientific community most expert on the specific topic."

The assurance didn't come. What did come was the realization that the IPCC was corrupting science. This you could not be a party to. You then resigned, in an open letter to the scientific community laying out your reasons.

Next year, the IPCC will come out with its "Fourth Assessment Report," and for the first time in a decade, you will not be writing its section on hurricanes. That task will be left to the successor that Dr. Trenberth chose. As part of his responsibility, he will need to explain why -- despite all expectations -- the 2006 hurricane year was so unexpectedly light, and at the historical average for the past 150 years.

- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.

And who is Christopher Landsea and what are his scientific credentials?  Here is his CV (Curriculum Vitae):

Christopher Landsea received his doctoral degree in atmospheric science from Colorado State University. A research meteorologist at the Atlantic Oceanic and Meteorological Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he was chair of the American Meteorological Society's committee on tropical meteorology and tropical cyclones and a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's Banner I. Miller Award for the "best contribution to the science of hurricane and tropical weather forecasting." He is a frequent contributor to leading journals, including Science, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Journal of Climate, and Nature. .  Also, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Landsea.

Why Israel Is World's Happiest Country

                     (Image from zionism.me.uk)

Have you met Spengler yet?  If not, this week's column is a splendid place to start.  Look at this:

Envy surrounds no country on Earth like the state of Israel, and with good reason: by objective measures, Israel is the happiest nation on Earth at the 60th anniversary of its founding. It is one of the wealthiest, freest and best-educated; and it enjoys a higher life expectancy than Germany or the Netherlands. But most remarkable is that Israelis appear to love life and hate death more than any other nation. If history is made not by rational design but by the demands of the human heart, as I argued last week , the light heart of the Israelis in face of continuous danger is a singularity worthy of a closer look.

Then he goes on to comment that Israel has both the highest fertility rate in the world, plus one of the lowest suicide rates.  And many other marvelous things.

But read the rest, at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JE13Ak01.html.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Tonight

     (Image from lauro.blogs.com)

Tonight PBS showed a one-hour film on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian imprisoned by the Nazis for involvement in the group that tried to assassinate Hitler.  His writings and life made him a modern martyr.

When I was newly-Christian in prison, I encountered Bonhoeffer's books.  He became one of my heroes of the faith.  It was he who coined the phrase "cheap grace," which he said was "accepting God's love without cost."

Later I read his letters and writings from prison.  He was in prison two years. When Nazi Germany was crumbling in 1945, they hung him in the prison yard, to make sure he would not be released.  I vividly remember reading his sad and beautiful poem from prison, "Who Am I?"  It was a very hard poem to read in prison - very real to me, at a time when I thought I would never leave prison either.

Later, after paroling and in seminary, one day I was "chapel-sitting" - one of the many ways I paid for seminary.  The elderly pastor who celebrated the wedding there was a famed theologian.  He stayed to chat a bit after the ceremony, and told me he and Bonhoeffer were good friends when they were in seminary in New York.  He laughingly remarked that everyone thought Bonhoeffer was "such a saint, but I can tell you, he was not!"   Oh no.  My heart sank.  Then he went on to say that Bonhoeffer had a terrible temper.  That once when they were playing tennis and Bonhoeffer lost, he threw down his racquet so hard that he smashed it.  That didn't seem so bad, I thought.  Later, of course, I recalled that none of us are perfect, not even our heroes of the faith.

Bonhoeffer was just 39, and newly-engaged, when they hung him in April of 1945.  He had so much to live for.  It is hard to believe now that he was the same age as my father.  My dad also volunteered to fight in WWII, the day after Pearl Harbor, at the old age - then - of 35.  They volunteered on different continents and in different ways, but to bring down the same monster.  I wonder - would I have had that much courage? 

They both are still good examples for me. 

Additional Anti-Warming Documentation

               (Image from archives.zinester.com)

It is easy to understand that, essentially, many would like me to do their basic googling for them.  I would like that kind of assistance too!

There also have been complaints that too many of the sources I offered have been media articles, rather than peer-reviewed articles - presumably from scientific journals.  But the media can render all of us a very valuable service by doing such reading for us and briefly summarizing it, while referring us to the original sources.  The articles I included did that, with varying success.  At any rate, reading the very long technical sources they summarize is not something most of us have time to do.

No one has mentioned watching the scientists' videos I listed, or noting their scientific credentials or assessing what they said.  That would help with many of the questions raised..

Of course, no one wants to take all that time.  I understand - I badly needed the 4 1/2 hours it took to build the previous post, to do things important to me.  But just a little time for some open-minded opposition research could help..

Meantime: FOR THOSE WHO MUST CONSERVE THEIR TIME:

Try Lawrence Solomon's "The Deniers."  Solomon also generously summarizes his book for free, a topic at a time,  at http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0 .  The credentials of  the scientist(s) behind each article are presented. 

FOR THOSE WITH MORE TIME:

You might also try the following iinks, to some media articles and some scientific papers.

• Global Warming and Solar Radiation 
• Milankovitch Cycles and Glaciation
• The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change (PDF)
• Up against the warming zealots
• When Physics Trumps Hysteria in Global Warming
• Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
• Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists versus Scientific Forecasts
• Geophysical, archeological and historical evidence support a solar-output model for climate change (PDF)
• Gamma rays and climate (PDF)
• Temperature vs. Cosmic Ray Flux
• Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development (PDF)
• Proof on Ice: Southern Greenland Was Once Green; Earth Warmer
• Global Warming and Nature's Thermostat
• The Past and Future of Climate (PDF)
• Global warming is not a crisis
• The Great Global Warming Swindle
• IceCap

Lawrence Solomon's "The Deniers" (a series of articles on the view of scientists who have been labelled "Global Warming Deniers"):

• Science, not politics
• Statistics needed
• The original denier: into the cold
• End the chill
• They call this a consensus?
• The limits of predictability
• Unsettled science
• Models trump measurements
• The ice-core man
• The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science
• Polar scientists on thin ice
• The sun moves climate change
• Bright sun, warm Earth. Coincidence?
• Look to Mars for the truth on global warming
• Read the sunspots
• Forget warming - beware the new ice age
• Little Ice Age is still with us
• Fighting climate 'fluff'

Other References:

• Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny
• The Global Warming Myth
• Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective
• Strong Evidence Points to Earth's Proximity to Sun as Ice Age Trigger
• THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!
• Father of Climatology Throws Up at the Thought of Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth'
• IPCC Scientists Challenge Al Gore’s View of Global Warming Consensus
• Swedish Scientist Accuses UN's IPCC of Falsifying Data and Destroying Evidence
• CO2 Science
• Global Warming and Climate Forcing by Recent Albedo Changes on Mars
• Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics
• The Real 'Inconvenient Truth'
• New findings indicate today's greenhouse gas levels not unusual
• Climate Change: Incorrect information on pre-industrial CO2
• Global Warming as a Religion
• I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train (By David Evans)
• Global Warming: it's not caused by greenhouse gases says academic
• Still Waiting for Greenhouse
• GREENIE WATCH
• Why Global Warming Would be Good for You
• Global Warming Primer (PDF)
• Global Warming: An Official Pseudoscience
• Sun's Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming
• Fiddler On The Roof
• Debating Global Warming
• Climate Resistance

List of Some Anti-Warming Documentation

                             (Image from jou.ufl.edu)

In the previous post, I summarized some global warming issues without my usual documentation.  A commenter rightly pointed out that such statements needed to be documented.  And all this time, I have been assuming that since I had amply documented similar statements in previous posts, that people naturally would read all my previous posts on the environment, and get the documentation from there.  Yeah, right!  OK.

So I went back over many previous posts, pulled the documentation, and made the list below.  (Putting it in a post rather than a comment, for easier reference and linking.)  It took 4 1/2 hours.  Here it is.

(In the future, I may simply link to this post rather than repeat much of it.  I hope it will make it easier for readers to track some of the documentation on the subject. I assume they will google freely to find whatever may be missing here.  Readers may also be interested in other posts concerning the environment, under the category "Environment" at www.gerrycharlottephelps.com. ). 

LIST OF DOCUMENTATION ON PREVIOUS POSTS CONCERNING VARIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES::

1.  global cooling, 5-8-08  - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/05/04/do0405.xml and http://www.climateaudit.org/ and http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ and http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/

2. biofuel farm crisis, 4-26-08 - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24227498

3. Gore's financial stake in global warming, 4-15-08 - http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=f5eda7b7-fc8b-4d97-9652-b148247cbe89 and http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/04/11/gore-admits-financial-reasons-advancing-global-warming-hysteria and video at http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/243 (begins at about minute 15.)

4.  global cooling, 3-5-08 - http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=332289

5. global warming skeptics, Senate report,  list of over 400 scientists, 12-23-07 - http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb

6. biofuels worse for environment than oil, 12-1-07 - http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/27/a-lethal-solution/ and http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/

.7.  no serious global warming, 11-9-07 - at http://media.newsbusters.org/stories/weather-channel-founder-global-warming-greatest-scam-history.html?q=blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/11/07/weather-channel-founder-global-warming-greatest-scam-history and Harvard Paper Calls Al Gore a Hypocrite and Renowned Environmentalist Calls Biofuels‘Crime Against Humanity’ and John Stossel: ‘Don’t Look to Government to Cool Down the Planet’ and Global Warming Tutorial Media Should be Required to Watch.

8.  no global warming is caused by humans, 10-15-07 - http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-shoulder/2007/10/13/1191696238792.html

9.  ozone hole shrinks by 1/3, 10-11-07 - http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gYLqBz5upTVGDhfMl1EgJpQKIWDQ

10. percentage of human-caused CO2 warming gases,  5-25-07 - http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,%20DRMN_23972_4760800,00.html

11. percentage of water vapor and other warming gases, 5-25-07, 5-25-07 - http://newsbusters.org/node/12852

12.  percentage of methans as warming gas, 5-25-07 - http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cow-emissions-more-damaging-to-planet-than-cosub2sub-from-cars-427843.html

13. group of "heavy-weight, independent scientists" make "Doomsday Called Off", 5-11-07 - http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doomsday.html, and  Part 1: Part 2: Part 3:  Part 4:  Part 5 .

14.  U.S. has made tremendous anti-pollution progress since 1970, 3-27-04 - http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110008416

15.  group of UK scientists' feature-length film, "The Great Global Warming Swindlw," 3-21-07 (original link broken.  The best I can find is this 9-video film.  You will have to look around this site to find each of the 9 videos.)  At http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22The+Great+Global+Warming+Swindle%22+ 

16. sunspots, cosmic rays, not warming gases, cause globe to warm, 2-12-07 = http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07035/758996-373.stm

17.   more carbon dioxide is better for humans, 2-6-07 - http://www.cgfi.org/2005/05/19/global-warming-famine-or-feast/

18.  more global warming is better for humans, - 2-7-07  -http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/resisting_global_warming_panic.html  (scroll down to the middle of this, where it is indented and has a light blue background)

19.  blame cows more, cars less for warming gases, 12-12-06 - http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cow-emissions-more-damaging-to-planet-than-cosub2sub-from-cars-427843.html

20.  UN report - humans have much less effect on warming than previously thought, 12-11-06 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536454/UN-downgrades-man%27s-impact-on-the-climate.html

21.  leading economist says global CO2 emissions will increase, no matter what, 6-5-06 -  http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/the_real_inconvenient_truth.html

22.  scientists rebutt Gore's alarmism, 6-19-06 -  http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm and http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,%20DRMN_23972_4760800,00.html

23. global warming stopped in 1998, 6-13-06 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html

24.  Newsweek, 5-28-1975, says world in danger, new ice age beginning, 6-8-06 - (link broken.  You can google it, using text from http://www.gerrycharlottephelps.com/2006/06/the_cooling_wor.html )

25.  global warming not supported by science, 6-6-06 - http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st285/

Fight Global Warming? Or Cooling? Or Stop Fighting Climate Change?

                             (Image from climatescience.gov)

Apparently the globe has stopped warming (if it was actually warming) and has started cooling (if there actually is a cooling trend.)  But we are still rushing ahead with drastic, often harmful, measures to stop global warming..

Shouldn't we be stopping what we are doing to cool the earth?  Should we start trying to warm the earth instead?  Or should we stop everything about warming or cooling until we see what, if anything, we should be doing?

In fact, is trying to fight "climate change," whether warming or cooling, something we should be doing at all?  Is it even within our capacity to stop the climate from changing?  And if it is within our power, should we even be trying?  And shouldn't we answer such questions before we try to do anything further about the climate?

We can't just keep going as we are, anyhow.  It is already too costly, and too harmful.  A glaring example is using cropland for biofuels instead of food, which is contributing to soaring world hunger and soaring food prices.  Another example is blockiing more production of oil, which has caused soaring oil prices and could greatly harm our prosperity.

Fighting global warming and fighting oil production are causing world-wide problems, even for the prosperous.  But it is the poor of the world who are suffering most.

Still, if we stop fighting global warming, won't pollution get worse?  No.  The things that might contribute to warming are not the things that cause pollution. 

Warming gases and polluting gases are not the same, but opposite to each other.  The warming gases - water vapor, methane, carbon dioxide - do not pollute.  They are clean, clear, non-toxic gases.  They do not cause air pollution.  They do not kill anyone, or even make them ill.  In fact they are necessary if there is to be life on earth at all.

Water vapor is 95% of total warming gases.  Nothing can be done about water vapor.  So "Warmists" focus mostly on carbon dioxide instead.  But CO2 is only around 5% of all warming gases.  Almost all of that 5% comes from the oceans anyhow.  Human-caused carbon dioxide is a only tiny fraction  - about 3% of that 5%!  That is not enough to warm the climate significantly, or even measure accurately.  That tiny percentage of CO2, plus the tiny percent of mathane that is human-caused, are the only warming gases we could do anything about anyhow.

Polluting gases, on th