A paper presented to the Round Table on Theology, Climate Change, and Politics, University of Western Ontario, May 29, 2012 Paleoanthropologist and philosopher Loren Eiseley (1907–1977), who though religious in the tradition of American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau was certainly no orthodox Christian theist, on reflecting on the kind of soil in which science could flourish, wrote, “In one of those strange permutations of which history yields … [Read more...]
Finding Nemo Suffocated?
One hardly knows where to begin in assessing the sanity of the recent claim that "climate change" (aka dangerous manmade global warming renamed to hide the fact that far less warming is happening than predicted) could suffocate---yes, suffocate!---sea creatures by reducing ocean oxygen levels. The scary story comes mainly from popular reports. Take, for example, how blogger Cat DiStasio ("a writer, storyteller, and community architect" who "holds a B.A. in Ethnic, Gender, and Labor … [Read more...]
Stop calling me a ‘denier’: Debating science is honorable, not evil
We’ve all read the articles, and heard the voice of doom about “mother earth.” The earth is going to get really hot, it’s all humans fault, and we must make drastic changes to fix our mistakes. Those who disagree with this viewpoint are termed “Climate Deniers,” an insult intended to bring about the specter of Holocaust denial. The fact that this particular insult makes no sense, since it’s impossible to “deny” climate doesn’t seem to matter. What do climate alarmists and climate skeptics … [Read more...]
Low Climate Sensitivity Makes Fighting Global Warming Unwise
To achieve the IPCC’s 3˚ “best estimate” of warming from doubled CO2 since the Industrial Revolution by the end of this century, GAT would have to rise another 2.593˚ in the remaining 63.5 years, a rate of 0.41˚ per decade, which is 3.7 times as fast as the observed rate so far. To achieve the 2˚ lower bound claimed for over 20 years, GAT would have to rise two-and-a-quarter times as fast as the observed rate. Even to reach the 1.5˚ the IPCC now claims is the lower bound, GAT would have to rise … [Read more...]
What’s Wrong with Science Behind Global Warmings Fears?
Bad science is the foundation of fears of dangerous, manmade global warming and therefore of any policy recommended to reduce it. If you’re like many Americans, you find that position surprising, because you’ve heard that many national academies of science, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and an alleged overwhelming consensus of the world’s scientists say the opposite. So why should you judge that the skeptics are right and all those others are … [Read more...]
Freeman Dyson, World’s Top Physicist, Calls Out Obama, and Supports Cornwall Alliance Open Letter
Why did one of the world's top physicists—ever—sign the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation's Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change, which challenges climate alarmism, though he's a liberal, a Democrat, likes President Obama, and has a strong background in climate science? My latest article at Townhall.com explains. His reasons for signing that are also good reasons to sign our petition, Forget 'Climate Change', Energy Empowers the Poor! … [Read more...]
NOAA Study Takes World by Storm: No Global Warming Pause!
That's how most of the media are treating a new study, anyway. Even the Wall Street Journal ran a news piece titled "Study Finds No Pause in Global Warming." The source? "Possible artifacts of data bias in the recent global surface warming hiatus," published this week in Science, by long-time global warming alarmist Tom Karl et al. Abstract: Much study has been devoted to the possible causes of an apparent decrease in the upward trend of global surface temperatures since 1998, a phenomenon … [Read more...]
Defense of Climate Models Fails–Just as the Models Do
Critics of CAGW alarmism have for several years had fun pointing out the large and growing discrepancy between computer climate model simulations of global average temperature and real-world observations, with this graph being one of our favorite exhibits: Now Alex Sen Gupta, Senior Lecturer, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at UNSW Australia, has come to the models' defense, and John Cook, Climate Communication Research Fellow (note that this doesn't make him a … [Read more...]
New Observational Evidence Supports Old “Infrared Iris” Theory
About seven years ago I read a fascinating paper by Roy Spencer et al. that argued that clouds respond to Earth's surface temperatures in ways that moderate them--cooling the surface in response to warming, warming it in response to cooling. It led me to an earlier paper by Richard Lindzen that argued that, at least in a major region above the Pacific, clouds respond to surface temperature changes in a way analogous to how the human eye's iris responds to light. In response to dimmer light, the … [Read more...]
Oppressing the Poor In the Name of Fighting Global Warming
"No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change." So said President Barack Obama in his State of the Union message last week. That he spent under 5% of the speech on the subject—about one-ninth as much as on the economy, one-fifth as much as on our need to overcome cynicism, and a little less even than on affordable college education—and tucked it away in a section about two-thirds of the way through suggests that the President doesn't really believe it … [Read more...]
