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...]
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...]
The Authoritarianism of Experts: Promoting a Green Dictatorship?
Have you ever heard anyone make the argument that we must take a certain course of action because the experts tell us we must? The issue might be the threat of another country or an environmental risk, but increasingly we see appeals to authority used as the basis for arguing for this or that action. In a new book, David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith take the appeal to experts somewhat further and argue that in order to deal with climate change we need to replace liberal democracy with an … [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...]
Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming in 2007
Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. The new report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's office of the GOP Ranking Member … [Read more...]
Contaminated Data
[Editor's Note: We don't usually publish such a long excerpt as this, but this is a very important, and very substantive, article. It adds to the many reasons to question seriously the reliability and scientific objectivity of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the magnitude of recent warming.--ECB] Below is the famous graph of "global average surface temperature," or "global temperature" for short. The data come from thermometers around the world, but between the thermometer … [Read more...]
Global Warming, Inc.
Originally Published in The Wall Street Journal, Review & Outlook, November 20, 2007 Editors Note by Cornwall Founder Dr. E. Calvin Beisner. Click here to read the article at WSJ.com . Al Gore no longer needs to make claims about creating the Internet, because the former Vice President deserves much of the credit for creating an entire new industry -- the global warming business. And like the energy barons of an earlier age, Mr. Gore has the chance to achieve enormous wealth after being … [Read more...]
My Nobel Moment
Excerpted from an article originally published in the Wall Street Journal. Read the full article here. I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over … [Read more...]
