"Greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere reached record highs in
2008, with carbon dioxide levels increasing faster than previously," the
AP reported Nov. 23.
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said if
nothing is done to stop emissions, global temperatures could rise as
much as 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, triggering
droughts, floods and other disasters," concluded the AP dispatch.
Missing from the AP story were two facts some might regard as pertinent.
The first is that though the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
has increased in the last decade, global temperatures have not. They've
been declining since 1998.
This is not the first time this has happened. Between 1940 and 1970,
the amount of carbon dioxide expelled into the atmosphere from
industrial activities increased a lot. But global temperatures fell so
much that some of the scientists (such as President Obama's science
adviser, John Holdren) who are now warning about global warming were
predicting a new ice age.
This casts doubt on the theory that the carbon dioxide we expel from our
automobiles and factories is dangerously warming the planet.
The second missing fact is that the disclosure Nov. 20 of heretofore
secret emails to and from leading climate scientists, and documents
written by them, indicate the computer models on which the IPCC has
relied have been manipulated to show a warming absent from the raw data.
The emails, from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East
Anglia in Britain, indicate collusion to deny the data on which the
computer models were constructed to other researchers, and to keep
scientists skeptical of global warming from being published in peer
reviewed journals.
"The now non-secret data prove…that most of the evidence of global
warming was simply made up," said Frank Tripler, a physics professor at
Tulane. "Not only are the global warming computer models unreliable,
the experimental data on which these models are built are also
unreliable."
But the AP writer evidently considered the scandal unworthy of mention.
Two other facts unmentioned by journalists also cast doubt on the theory
of anthroprogenic (man-made) global warming.
"If you look carefully at these records, you find that first the
temperature goes up, and then the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere
goes up," Dr. William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton, told a
U.S. Senate committee in April. "There is a delay between a temperature
increase and a CO2 increase of about 800 years."
It's very difficult for something that happens after a phenomenon occurs
to be the cause of that phenomenon.
The second, as noted by the Australian geologist Ian Plimer, is that "in
the geologic past, there have been six major ice ages. During five of
these six ice ages, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was higher
than at present."
As Dr. Plimer notes, throughout the Earth's geological history there has
been little correlation between atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and
global temperature. That correlation exists chiefly in computer models
found to be flawed (they predicted a warming in the last decade that did
not occur) and suspected of being fraudulent. Yet journalists write
about the purported correlation as if it were settled science.
Nor should we take seriously — as the AP did — alarmist predictions
based on those flawed and likely fraudulent computer models, Dr. Plimer
said.
"In the 600-year long Roman warming (3rd Century BC-4th Century AD), it
was 4 degrees C warmer than now," he said. "Sea levels did not rise and
ice sheets did not disappear. The Medieval Warming (AD 800-1300)
followed the Dark Ages and for 400 years it was 5 degrees C warmer. Sea
levels did not rise and the ice sheets remained."
There is a saying among climate scientists: "No problem, no money."
The U.S. government has spent more than $79 billion since 1989 on global
warming research and related policies, according to the Science and
Public Policy Institute. Could keeping the megabucks flowing be a
reason why some climate scientists have manufactured a crisis that
doesn't exist?
If so, the AP and most other news organizations are incurious.
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