Are they driven primarily by global climate change? Want to know whether this summer’s heat waves in the United States are extraordinary—nay, even unprecedented—due to manmade global warming? Where should you go for solid, objective data? Obviously, to the authoritative source, the Environmental Protection Agency. So you go to its page titled “Climate Change Indicators: Heat Waves.” Immediately when the page opens up, this is what you see: There you have it: decade by decade, … [Read more...]
Louisiana Religious Climate Activists Might Want to Check the Data
One can't help admiring the motives of many religious leaders alarmed about human-induced climate change. From the Pope to the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury to leaders of the Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish faiths, many express their angst that climate change is an "existential threat" to humanity, especially the poor, and to all life on Earth. But sometimes one wishes they would combine some knowledge of basic data with their good intentions. An AP story published today, "Faith … [Read more...]
A Brief History of the Cornwall Alliance—Part 3: A Tree Takes Root
As we saw in Part 2 of this brief history, the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship didn’t work out as originally hoped. But that didn’t mean the Cornwall Declaration would lie dormant forever. David Rothbard and Craig Rucker, whom I introduced in Part 2, kept in touch with me over the next few years, encouraging me to take up afresh the challenge of spreading the principles of the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship. At last in the summer of 2005—having finished my … [Read more...]
Chuck Todd Devotes an Hour to Attacking a Strawman
Chuck Todd, on a recent episode of Meet the Press, highlighted the issue of global warming and climate change. He unapologetically made it clear that he wasn’t interested in hearing from people on the opposing side of the scientific issue, stating: “We’re not going to debate climate change, the existence of it. The Earth is getting hotter. And human activity is a major cause, period. We’re not going to give time to climate deniers. The science is settled, even if political opinion is … [Read more...]
Are Georgia Summers Getting Hotter?
This morning a friend in Georgia mentioned that the common consensus among his friends there is that recent summers have been much hotter than in the past, and for that reason they're inclined to believe claims of rapid human-induced global warming. Aside from the facts that what's happening in one tiny part of the globe doesn't reveal what's happening everywhere else and that warming doesn't prove human causation, I told him I suspected the anecdotal memories might conflict with hard data. … [Read more...]
Are Western Wildfires Driven by Global Warming—Manmade or Otherwise?
The news media have made the number and intensity of wildfires in western states this summer a household topic: as of August 14, there were hundreds of them, and of major ones, 17 were burning in Alaska, 11 in Arizona, 10 each in Oregon and Colorado, and 9 in California. The media and many environmentalists blame them on global warming. The numbers sound bad to people not studied in the field, but in actuality they're not unusual. In fact, the number of fires has been decreasing since the … [Read more...]
How Do Hard Data and Computer Climate Models’ Dire Predictions Compare?
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman explained “the key to science” this way: In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is … [Read more...]
What’s a “Climate Skeptic”?
In his recent article “Four Reasons Alarmists Are Wrong on Climate Change,” Cornwall Alliance Research Associate for Developing Countries Vijay Jayaraj distinguished what, following widespread usage, he called climate-change alarmists, deniers, and skeptics. The “alarmists” generally think that human emissions of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) are driving global warming so rapid and eventually of such great magnitude as to be dangerous or even catastrophic and that the appropriate … [Read more...]
Climate Alarmist Consensus—About to Shatter?
Is this the End of the Beginning, or the Beginning of the End? On November 10, 1942, after British and Commonwealth forces defeated the Germans and Italians at the Second Battle of El Alamein, taking nearly 30,000 prisoners, Winston Churchill told the British Parliament, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” In The Hinge of Fate, volume 3 of his marvelous 6-volume history of World War II, published eight years later, he … [Read more...]
Why Is 2017’s “Third Warmest on Record” a Yawner?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) press release headline January 18 was blunt: “NOAA: 2017 was 3rd warmest year on record for the globe.” The tagline that followed made the inference obligatory for all climate alarmists: “NOAA, NASA scientists confirm Earth’s long-term warming trend continues” (emphasis added). The New York Times trumpeted, “2017 Was One of the Hottest Years on Record,” adding, “Scientists at NASA on Thursday ranked last year as the second-warmest … [Read more...]
