[Editor's note: Ask yourself why the mainstream media haven't blown the trumpet on this highly significant news. If the change in temperature had been of equal magnitude but upward, you can be certain it would have made headlines around the world, and people like James Hansen and Al Gore would be heralding it as a sure sign of impending disaster.--ECB] January 2008 was an exceptional month for our planet, with a significant cooling, especially since January 2007 started out well above … [Read more...]
Few French Fried in 2006
In the history of global warming scare stories, the 2003 European heat wave was a landmark event—it was the first time that a rash of human deaths were specifically linked to global warming. Many of you probably recall that a widespread exceptionally hot and dry spell hit Western Europe in August, 2003. Depending on how you count the bodies, up to 35,000 people suffered premature death during this heat wave with the lions-share occurring in France, which happened to be heat wave ground zero. … [Read more...]
The Sun Also Sets
Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles. To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined. And … [Read more...]
More Ice Than Ever
Despite a warming Southern Ocean, the amount of ice surrounding Antarctica is now at the highest level ever measured for this time of the year, since satellites first began to monitor it almost thirty years ago. This represents a continuation of the record set last winter (our summer). Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, we can also look at the departure from the average for ice mass in a given month. At present, the coverage of ice surrounding Antarctica is almost exactly two million … [Read more...]
U.S. Senate Report Debunks Polar Bear Extinction Fears
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations “may now be near historic highs.” The alarm about the future of polar bear decline is based on speculative computer model predictions many decades in the future. And the methodology of these computer models … [Read more...]
Good Stewards, Good Samaritans
The environment is again an important election issue. Some candidates have claimed religious support for their views, but there is no single “Christian” perspective on the environment. It is a question of fact and prudence, not theology. We all have a stake in a healthy environment. God gave humanity dominion over the earth and called us to be good stewards of his creation. But he gave us no particular policy agenda. Rather, we must work together to balance environmental protection, economic … [Read more...]
Courts Should Confront Evidence on Global Warming
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled late last year that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration must consider the "risks of global warming" when setting gas-mileage standards for light trucks, minivans and SUVs. Central to the court's ruling was the claim that the federal agency, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, had ignored the benefits of reducing emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Whatever their legal acumen, Judge Betty … [Read more...]
Why ‘Global Warming’ Is Not a Global Crisis
I earned my Nobel Peace Prize by making the UN fix a deliberate error in its latest climate assessment. After the scientists had finalized the draft, UN bureaucrats inserted a new table, but with four decimal points right-shifted. The bureaucrats had multiplied tenfold the true contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise. Were they trying to support Al Gore’s fantasy that these two ice-sheets would imminently cause sea level to rise 20ft, displacing tens of … [Read more...]
H. L. Mencken’s Hoax and Gore’s Compared
From the "Why-Didn't-I-Think-of-This-Before?" Department If anybody needs proof of just how easily some of the smartest people can be fooled into believing absurdities, and refuse to recant even long after the absurdity has been exposed irrefutably, here is a short version of H. L. Mencken's famous "Tale of a Tub," from the year 1917. This is from the last chapter in Bergen Evans's classic, The Natural History of Nonsense (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946, 275 pp. plus index). Copyright has … [Read more...]
Unresolved Issues with Assessment of Global Surface Temperature Trends
This paper documents various unresolved issues in using surface temperature trends as a metric for assessing global and regional climate change. A series of examples ranging from errors caused by temperature measurements at a monitoring station to the undocumented biases in the regionally and globally averaged time series are provided. The issues are poorly understood or documented and relate to micrometeorological impacts due to warm bias in nighttime minimum temperatures, poor siting of the … [Read more...]
