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Jewish World Review February 15, 2010 / 1 Adar 5770 Globull warming: Climate alarmists keep scrambling for evidence By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Eve Ensler, writer of the "Vagina Monologues," snickered with Joy Behar on Ms. Behar's talk show Monday about how stupid Sarah Palin is for not regarding earthquakes and tsunamis as proof of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. "I just think the idea that she doesn't believe in global warming is bizarre,"said Ms. Ensler, who was on the show to promote her new book. "Every scientist at every note believes in it but Sarah Palin doesn't believe in it," Ms. Behar said. "We just have to walk around the world at this point and look at what is happening to nature and earthquakes and tsunamis," Ms. Ensler said. "Right," agreed Ms. Behar. Earthquakes are caused by sudden shifts beneath the surface of the earth. What happens in the atmosphere has no effect on them. Likewise, a tsunami is a giant ocean wave caused by sudden motion on the ocean floor, not by changes in atmospheric temperature. Ms. Ensler and Ms. Behar are airheads who think they're smart. They are — alas — typical of believers in anthropogenic global warming, particularly of those in journalism. Recent events have tested the faith of true believers in AGW. In September 2008, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote an op-ed lamenting that, thanks to global warming, it would snow no more in Washington, D.C. The blizzard of 2010, which dumped record snow on the nation's capital, must have come as a shock. Europe is experiencing its coldest winter in decades. During its winter (our summer), Australia experienced record cold. Journalists have hastened to remind us that weather is not climate. But for decades, many of these same journalists were citing every hot weather event as proof of AGW. And not obviously related things, too, such as changes in the polar bear population and the spread of malaria. They're still at it. In an article Tuesday, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune linked an apparent decline in Minnesota's moose population to global warming. "Minnesota, already at the southern fringe of the moose range, apparently is becoming inhospitable for the large animals," wrote reporter Doug Smith.
Minnesota blogger John Hinderaker notes that over the last half- century, mean temperatures in the land of lakes have increased by just half a degree Fahrenheit. He doubts that's enough to have much effect on the moose population. But if global warming is responsible for a decline in the moose population, why is the decline confined to Minnesota? Mr. Hinderaker cites recent news accounts which indicate the moose population is "burgeoning" in Massachusetts, "growing" in Michigan, "returning to" Wisconsin, "booming" in Oregon, and "growing exponentially" in New York. As some journalists roam further afield to find "evidence" for global warming, they ignore mounting evidence that the "evidence" they cited earlier is false, even fraudulent. Consider the polar bears, whose alleged plight was featured in Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Dr. Mitchell Taylor, Canada's leading authority on polar bears, said that of the 19 different bear populations he studies, 17 are increasing or are at optimal levels; only two are decreasing slightly. Or Mr. Gore's claim that global warming is causing malaria to return to Africa's Central Highlands. Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute, arguably the world's leading authority on malaria, said the disease was much more prevalent there a century ago than it is today, and that its spread has next to nothing to do with temperature. Journalists in Europe have told their readers and viewers that the 2007 report of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore, is fraught with egregious errors — some apparently deliberate — which could result in the dismissal of IPCC chieftain Rajendra Pachauri. Journalists here have barely mentioned the controversy. Writing in November about how U.S. journalists largely ignored evidence that the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain — on which the IPCC relies — had been manipulating data to exaggerate warming, Jonah Goldberg of National Review said: "This should be considered not just a scientific scandal but an enormous journalistic scandal."
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2009, Jack Kelly |
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