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I fear that we may be at an Orwellian tipping point in the Man-Caused Climate Change debate — lies becoming truth while the search for truth gets abandoned in the ensuing maelstrom. What should be a matter of conscientious scientific exploration dogged by skeptical peer review has been elevated to a religious crusade by those that believe rising levels of atmospheric CO2 is the most deadly threat that mankind faces today. Isn’t it interesting, that the preponderance of these believers come from the secular Left, the Democratic Party and the anti-business & anti-industry crowds. Oh, I forgot to mention the main-stream media, who are firmly in the “We’re all gonna die” corner of this alarmist-driven hysterical movement. This week, Newsweek takes to the mound and fires in a screamin’ hot fastball.

This August 13, 2007 datelined issue features a cover story that is nothing less than a full-on frontal assault on any and all that don’t buy in 100% to the beliefs of ol’ Big Al Gore and the Man-caused Global Warming Alarmists. In The Truth About Denial, reporter Sharon Begley practices the most blatant kind of “agenda journalism” — telling your side of a story as the illumination of pure truth and then demonizing all of the opposition. According to Begley, those that believe in anthropogenic climate change have odorless feces, while those that look at the scientific data and come to another conclusion are devils’ spawn — said devils being “Big Oil”, “Big Coal”, “Big Steel”, “Big Auto”, “Big Utility” . . . virtually all of industrial America.

“But Okie”, say you, “Maybe this Begley truly ‘believes’ that Al Gore‘s nightmarish future is gonna happen and wants to convince all the Newsweek readers to do likewise.” Well, no duh! However, to posit a convincing argument, especially regarding something as complex as global-climate dynamics, one would be more believable if one stated the arguments of the opposition and why they are wrong and then yours and why they are correct. Instead, Begley makes the assumption that man-caused global warming is irrefutable fact and then chooses to state the associations of the opposition, instead of their viewpoints and proceeds to bash the observer for same.

If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the “Live Earth” concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, “green” magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore’s best-selling book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.

Get that? “[T]he denial machine is running at full throttle[.]“ If you aren’t a Hollywood type, a Manhattan intellectual or some other member of the “chattering classes” that bad-ol’ “denial machine” is gonna run right over you and corrupt your brain. You’ll never be able to understand the truth as seen by those who know.

“They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry,” says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. “Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That’s had a huge impact on both the public and Congress.”

Ah, bring up and attach the stigma of “the tobacco industry”. A subtle bit o’ subterfuge that implies guilt by similitude. Not that false associations are not a stock and trade of the Global Warming Alarmists, see Gore’s hyper-agitated flick and then consider how ol’ Big Al kicked this whole shebang off way back in 1988.

A Senate committee, including Gore, had invited NASA climatologist James Hansen to testify about the greenhouse effect, and the members were not above a little stagecraft. The night before, staffers had opened windows in the hearing room. When Hansen began his testimony, the air conditioning was struggling, and sweat dotted his brow. It was the perfect image for the revelation to come. He was 99 percent sure, Hansen told the panel, that “the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”

Begley writes early in the article that a Big Oil-supported conservative think tank had offered scientists “$10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on.” What she didn’t bother to report was that Hansen has about 250,000 reasons of his own to side with the Democrats and their positions, check out page 10 of this report and page 51 of this one.

Begley, undeterred by or oblivious to any skeptical analysis of the Warmies’ positions, cites case after case where the deniers try to, or succeed in casting doubt on the “scientific consensus” that man-caused climate change is an absolute fact and how this has prevented the Congress from passing legislation that would save us all from Big Al’s predicted hell-on-earth.

“The questioning of the science made it to the Hill through senators who parroted reports funded by the American Petroleum Institute and other advocacy groups whose entire purpose was to confuse people on the science of global warming,” says Sen. John Kerry. “There would be ads challenging the science right around the time we were trying to pass legislation. It was pure, raw pressure combined with false facts.”

Of course, institutions that promote the warming position and pro-warming advocacy groups would never, ever “confuse people on the science of global warming” — “[P]ure, raw pressure combined with false facts[,]“ Kerry and the Democrats wouldn’t know anything about that tactic either, would they? So, is Ms. Begley at all fair to any person or entity that doesn’t agree with the Warmies? Not really. Look at how she introduces atmospheric physicist and the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Richard Lindzen.

Lindzen, whose parents had fled Hitler’s Germany, is described by old friends as the kind of man who, if you’re in the minority, opts to be with you.

The question begged for me is, what has Hitler’s Germany got to do with Global Warming? (Begley uses this reference again in the article when introducing another “denier”, Professor Emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia, S. Fred Singer.)

Singer, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria as a boy, had run the U.S. weather-satellite program in the early 1960s. In the Leipzig petition, just over 100 scientists and others, including TV weathermen, said they “cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes.” Unfortunately, few of the Leipzig signers actually did climate research; they just kibitzed about other people’s.

Not that hard to figure out — simply more guilt by association. Born under the Nazi’s rule — can’t possibly be telling the truth. After parsing that nonsense, did you also catch those snide sneers of Begley’s when she slams meteorologists by calling them “TV weathermen”? Here’s how the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics defines meteorology in its Occupational Outlook Handbook:

Atmospheric science is the study of the atmosphere—the blanket of air covering the Earth. Atmospheric scientists, commonly called meteorologists, study the atmosphere’s physical characteristics, motions, and processes, and the way in which these factors affect the rest of our environment. The best known application of this knowledge is forecasting the weather. In addition to predicting the weather, atmospheric scientists attempt to identify and interpret climate trends, understand past weather, and analyze today’s weather.
{…}
A bachelor’s degree in meteorology or atmospheric science, or in a closely related field with courses in meteorology, usually is the minimum educational requirement for an entry-level position as an atmospheric scientist.

After accusing the hundred-plus scientists and the “TV Weathermen” of kibitzing about other people’s research, she brings to the table some numbers in support of her side. Oh yes, she clearly has a dog in this hunt.

[T]he number of researchers whose empirical studies find that the world is warming and that human activity is partly responsible numbered in the thousands even then. The IPCC report issued this year, for instance, was written by more than 800 climate researchers and vetted by 2,500 scientists from 130 nations.

800, and 2,500 — not too shabby. But wait a sec. Begley makes no mention of the 17,000 plus scientists that have signed the petition denying man-caused global warming based on these arguments. Perhaps seventeen-thousand deniers are a bit — Inconvenient? — to her argument. In the one area where she does discuss some of the most recent science that casts doubts about man-caused warming, she dismisses it out of hand.

The idea of a “variable Sun” has remained a constant in the naysayers’ arsenal to this day, even though the tiny increase in solar output over recent decades falls far short of explaining the extent or details of the observed warming.

Odd that she didn’t follow up on that one. I’m a lay person, not a scientist, and only a tiny bit of research lead me to the rebuttal of her dismissal — the changing output of the sun appears to drive climate change with the help of an amplifier, cosmic rays. When the sun cools, more cosmic rays get past the diminished solar wind, penetrating our atmosphere, causing more cloud cover, causing lower temperatures. When solar activity is greatest, the opposite happens. We are near the end of a heightened solar period and those that postulate that the sun is the major driver of climate change have predicted that we will be seeing a cooling cycle over the next few decades.

These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet’s climate on long, medium and even short time scales.

You didn’t read anything about that in Ms. Begley’s Newsweek piece. You probably haven’t read about it in any of the big newspapers either. Another little inconvenient piece of information that clouds up the Warmies’ crystal ball. Fear and panic are hard to incite when a rational alternative to your fear mongering is readily at hand. Unfortunately, nothing seems to dissuade them from their pursuit.

What’s really pathetic is that I can easily imagine tens of thousands of public school teachers lugging in copies of this issue of Newsweek that they’ve bought with their own money, ready to subject little Timmy and little Tammy to the Leftist brainwashing that they must have to be ready to give their all to the cause of saving the planet from this horrendous scourge. You can hear them in your head if you try.

“Yes dears, there will be sacrifice needed on your part. You will need to pay much higher taxes. You will need to give up those horrible, gigantic SUVs that your parents drive you around in, even though they are safer than the little tin boxes the government will soon be requiring those bad ol’ car companies to build for you. You might even drown, when the waters come rushing into your cities, remember what BushCo. caused in New Orleans. And, if the monster hurricanes and killer tornadoes don’t get you, many will simply starve to death, because all of the crop lands will be decimated by heat and lack of rain. But, think of the bright side, if a lot of us die off and those of us left will give up our modern lifestyles and live like peasants, those cute polar bears won’t have to become extinct.”

Or, something to that effect!

If those doing current solar research are coming up with accurate data, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if by the time little Timmy and little Tammy are my age, those still here in the US of A will have a lot of new neighbors sayin’ “Have a beer, Aye?”, polar bears will be indigenous to Kansas and folks livin’ in LA and Florida will be wearin’ winter coats year round.

Of course, what will pass for Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and the LA Times will be earnestly hyping the next, greatest doomsday threat to come down the pike. ‘Cause, with them it always is, and always will be . . . well, just sing along with me and REM a lil’ bit:

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

[Technical assistance and many resources provided by Oklahoma-based environmental-chemist Glenn Speck. Any errors, misunderstandings or omissions should be blamed on yours truly.]

Technorati Tags: Man-Caused Climate Change, Newsweek, Global Warming Alarmists, The Truth About Denial, Sharon Begley, Al Gore, James Hansen, Richard Lindzen, S. Fred Singer, man-caused global warming, variable Sun, cosmic rays, CO2 variations, Time, It’s the end of the world

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 12:22 pm and is filed under A Future For Mankind?, Global Warming B.S.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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