Beware of the Green Inquisition

The Economic Times ^ | 21 Jul, 2008 | Bjorn Lomborg

[Delacon]

WHEN it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six metres (20 feet) of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world.


Gore’s scientific advisor, Jim Hansen from NASA, has even topped his protégé. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 metres (80 feet), with a six-metre rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that “we are engaging in a reckless drive — by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of creation.”

Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: over the past two years, the global sea level hasn’t increased. It has slightly decreased. Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy — 3-4 millimetres (0.2 inches). For two years, sea levels have declined.

This doesn’t mean that global warming is not true. As we emit more CO2, over time the temperature will moderately increase, causing the sea to warm and expand somewhat. Thus, the sea-level rise is expected to pick up again. This is what the climate panel of the United Nations Organisation is telling us; the best models indicate a sea-level rise over this century of 18 to 59 centimetres (7-24 inches), with the typical estimate at 30 centimetres (one foot). This is not terrifying or even particularly scary — 30 centimetres is how much the sea rose over the last 150 years.

Simply put, we’re being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories. Proclaiming six metres of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists, and requires the sea-level rise to accelerate roughly 40-fold from today. Imagine how climate alarmists would play up the story if we actually saw an increase in the sea-level rise.
Increasingly, alarmists claim that we should not be allowed to hear such facts. In June, Hansen proclaimed that people who spread “disinformation” about global warming — CEOs, politicians, in fact anyone who doesn’t follow Hansen’s narrow definition of the “truth” — should literally be tried for crimes against humanity.

It is depressing to see a scientist — even a highly politicised one — calling for a latter-day Inquisition. Such a blatant attempt to curtail scientific inquiry and stifle free speech seems inexcusable.

But it is perhaps also a symptom of a broader problem. It is hard to keep up the climate panic as reality diverges from the alarmist predictions more than ever before: the global temperature has not risen over the past ten years, it has declined precipitously in the last year and a half, and studies show that it might not rise again before the middle of the next decade. With a global recession looming and high oil and food prices undermining the living standards of the western middle class, it is becoming ever harder to sell the high-cost, inefficient Kyoto-style solution of drastic carbon cuts.

A much sounder approach than Kyoto and its successor would be to invest more in research and development of zero-carbon energy technologies — a cheaper, more effective way to truly solve the climate problem.

Hansen is not alone in trying to blame others for his message’s becoming harder to sell. Canada’s top environmentalist, David Suzuki, stated earlier this year that politicians “complicit in climate change” should be thrown in jail.

Campaigner Mark Lynas envisions Nuremberg-style “international criminal tribunals” against those who dare to challenge the climate dogma. Clearly, this column places me at risk of incarceration by Hansen & Co.
But the globe’s real problem is not a series of inconvenient facts. It is that we have blocked out sensible solutions through an alarmist panic, leading to bad policies.

Consider one of the most significant steps taken to respond to climate change. Adopted because of the climate panic, bio-fuels were supposed to reduce CO2 emissions. Hansen described them as part of a “brighter future for the planet.” But using bio-fuels to combat climate change must rate as one of the poorest global “solutions” to any great challenge in recent times.

Bio-fuels essentially take food from mouths and puts it into cars. The grain required to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol is enough to feed one African for a year. Of this year’s corn production, 30% in the US will be burned up on America’s highways. This has been possible only through subsidies that globally will total $15 billion this year alone.
Because increased demand for bio-fuels leads to cutting down carbon-rich forests, a 2008 Science study showed that the net effect of using them is not to cut CO2 emissions, but to double them. The rush towards bio-fuels has also strongly contributed to rising food prices, which have tipped another roughly 30 million people into starvation.

Because of climate panic, our attempts to mitigate climate change have provoked an unmitigated disaster. We will waste hundreds of billions of dollars, worsen global warming, and dramatically increase starvation.

We have to stop being scared silly, stop pursuing stupid policies, and start investing in smart long-term R&D. Accusations of “crimes against humanity” must cease. Indeed, the real offence is the alarmism that closes minds to the best ways to respond to climate change.

[Delacon]

If you ask me, Bjorn Lomborg places way too much importance on the effect man made CO2 contributions have to global warming but he was one of the first guys to leap out of the foxhole on the global warming alarmist battlefield and charge. More importantly, he has a government support of market investment versus government control that I really like. 

[Delacon]

ping

[goldstategop]

I don't agree with Lomberg that global warming exists. But I do agree with him that the Green Lobby, has through its own extremism, discredited GW as a hypothesis far better than any of its opponents ever could.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Lomberg has to say that, to avoid being pilloried & being plastered with overripe, organically and locally grown fruit and vegetables.

[centurion316]

No one expects the Green Inquisition.

The images of the classic Monty Phython skits aside, we need to understand that this analogy is dangerously close to the truth. The same DNA that produced the personalities that delivered all of the inhuman excesses of the Inquisition is still producing human beings today.

Rather than visiting the objects of their twisted minds on heretics and unbelivers of the One True and Catholic Faith, modern incarnations of these beasts impose their twisted view of the world on those who would deny the coming holocast caused by the evils of human excess and capitalism.

We have seen these lunatics before and have suffered their excesses when they held power. Will you empower these morons by supporting Obamalangadingdong or by foregoing your visit to the polls because McCain is not the perfect Conservative that you so hoped for? What will you do?

[A_perfect_lady]

Dang, I was hoping the rising seas would sweep away the UN building.

[McBuff]

[Delacon]

“Dang, I was hoping the rising seas would sweep away the UN building.”

Hey, I never thought of that. LOL. We are all familiar with the litany of supposed BAD things that a warming of the globe will bring(human induced or not) yet there are many good things that will come with it if it happens. Add that one to the list.

[Delacon]

“No one expects the Green Inquisition.”

Monty Python bump. The troupe were perfect in satirizing all that was ridiculous in society. Wish they were still performing and included global warming alarmism in their repertoire.

[FredZarguna]

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves" -- William Pitt

[mkleesma]

I know...MP used to do great sketches on such impossible amd improbable things; like the gay Anglican bishosps, for examp- Oh, wait a minute...

[steveab]

How many of you know about the PR CHALLENGE(PR stands for Paleoclimate Reconstruction

http://www.pages.unibe.ch/scirnce/prchallenge/index.hml

The main core of people of this group are the same one that gave us the “HOCKEY STICK” and how with a few new member of the “Team” they going to re-”con”-struct a new past climte if we let them.
Here is a letter I sent to my Senator:

Dear Sir;
You may be aware of the PR Challenge or Paleoclimate Reconstruction Challenge. http://www.pages.unibe.ch/science/prchallenge/index.html Many scientists of this group are the same “scientists” which give us the famous “Hockey Stick” reconstruction of our past climate. I should not have to remind you of the boondoggle surrounding the hockey stick starting with “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period to any input number resulted in the same graph being reconstructed.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I demand as a tax payer and citizen that:
A) An independent audit done to validate and verify all works from Paleoclimate Reconstruction Challenge before any government body and/or government employee can refer to and/or use in full and/or in part for any government function including the IPCC.
B) If any government funding is used in all and/or part of this reconstruction, the reconstruction shall be subjected to the principle of forecasting as described in Principles of Forecasting handbook.
C) If any government funding is used in all or part of this reconstruction, the reconstruction shall be subjected to the Data Quality Act.
D) If scientist and/or institution that does not comply with independent audit and/or principle of forecasting and/or Data Quality Act shall have his and/or hers and/or institution government funding suspended immediately.

Thank you,
Sincerely,

[Matchett-PI]

“The rush towards [James Hansen promoted] bio-fuels has also strongly contributed to rising food prices, which have tipped another roughly 30 million people into starvation. Because of climate panic, our attempts to mitigate climate change have provoked an unmitigated disaster. We will waste hundreds of billions of dollars, worsen global warming, and dramatically increase starvation.” ~ Bjorn Lomborg

We should bring a tax-payers class-action suit against the reckless cynical opportunists responsible for hyping the anthropogenic GW hoax and causing so much mayhem here and around the world.

The main culprits have already been identified:

’UK Watchdog finds [Channel 4 - The Great Global Warming Swindle] documentary was unfair to scientists but did not mislead viewers.’

One of the scientists who filed the original complaint (Carl Wunsch) is from MIT - an important point in this mix, in light of what one of his MIT collegues (Kerry Emanuel) had to say, which I am copying and pasting below this excerpted preface:

“..Channel 4 will still claim victory because the ultimate verdict on __a separate complaint about accuracy__, which contained 131 specific points and ran to 270 pages, will find that it did not breach the regulator’s broadcasting code and did not materially mislead viewers. ..

..The IPCC, King and other scientists including __Dr Carl Wunsch, a climate expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology__, complained to the regulator over the way they were represented. ...

..After the broadcast, Wunsch said the programme was “masquerading as a science documentary when it should be regarded as a political polemic” and was “as close to pure propaganda as anything since world war two”.

[[[ My interjection: That’s pretty funny in light of the fact that Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was determined by a UK court to be one-sided ‘extremist’ political propaganda and unfit to be shown to school children without disclaimers and equal time from ‘the other side’ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2047988/posts?page=8#8 ]]]

Wunsch claimed he had been duped into appearing and his comments had been misleadingly edited.
The Ofcom ruling is expected to find that Wunsch was misled about the tone and content of the programme, __but that his views were accurately represented within it__. ..” http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/19/channel4.climatechange

Now here is Kerry Emanuel of MIT (who made these remarks months and months ago):

“.. “The evolution of the scientific debate about anthropogenic [man-caused] climate change illustrates both the value of skepticism and the pitfalls of partisanship. .. Scientists are most effective when they provide sound, impartial advice, but their reputation for impartiality is severely compromised by the shocking lack of political diversity among American academics, who suffer from the kind of group-think that develops in cloistered cultures.

“Until this profound and well documented intellectual homogeneity changes, scientists will be suspected of constituting a leftist think tank.”

“On the left, an argument emerged urging fellow scientists to deliberately exaggerate their findings so as to galvanize an apathetic public...”

“Conservatives have usually been strong supporters of nuclear power. .. Had it not been for green opposition, the United States today might derive most of its electricity from nuclear power, as does France; thus the environmentalists must accept a large measure of responsibility for today’s most critical environmental problem.” ~ Kerry Emanuel - MIT http://bostonreview.net/BR32.1/emanuel.html

*
Is Emanuel’s collegue, Carl Wunsch, one of those “scientists on the left” who was involved in deliberately “exaggerating the science”?

And from what I can determine, the Rev. Houghton may be another one of the scientists (mentioned by Kerry Emanuel above) who was involved in deliberately misleading / manipulating people. He even admits it:

The Reverend Sir John Houghton, former head of the UK Meteorological Office, Publisher of Al Gore’s book on GW and Former Co-Chair of the IPCC said:

“Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.”

He then proceeds to do just that:

” .. human induced global warming is a weapon of mass destruction at least as dangerous as chemical, nuclear or biological weapons that kills more people than terrorism.”
~ John Houghton Monday July 28, 2003 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93466,00.html

*
James Hansen of NASA is another:

Hansen has long employed stagecraft http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDk2YjVlYTYzZjZkNTRhZWU2NGNkNzcwYTMzMmFlNGQ= for political gain. On June 23, 1988, he delivered his testimony in an unusually toasty hearing room.

Why was it so warm?

As then-Sen. Tim Wirth (D., Colo.), told ABC’s Frontline: “We went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room . . . it was really hot.” June 27, 2008, 7:00 a.m. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjQ2YTllODZiOTA0N2E2MTIzODQwNjUzMjQwYjI2MDI=

*
More first-hand admissions:

“We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” ~ Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory) (in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)

*
[Therefore] “I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth’s actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.” ~ Sincerely, Chris Landsea

Expert leaves IPCC 17 January, 2005, Resignation letter http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html

*

“The climate modelers have been cheating for so long it’s almost become respectable” (Richard Kerr, discussing adjustments in climate models, Science 1997)

*
Personally, I think that these men (along with others like Al Gore), bear a large responsibility for the suffering and nightmares they have inflicted on adults and children around the world.

Here is merely the latest fallout, among the many examples I’ve read about, from such reckless behavior:
Climate Change Delusion Driving Boy to Kill Himself http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23992448-5007146,00.html

Hopefully more mature, cooler heads will prevail so that this madness may end.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2047988/posts?page=9#9

[xcamel]

FReepmail me to get on or off
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH

The Great Global Warming Swindle Video

Not Evil Just Wrong (mash here)

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[Fawnn]

Finished and turned in a book on Monday morning, so I finally had time to do some "coloring" Monday afternoon/evening.

Nobody expects the globAL Warming Inquisition



Larger version of the graphic is here.

[FredZarguna]

Much better than my picture, which I photo-shopped in about 5 minutes. Just one small thing: I think crosses would be about as welcome on most enviros’ attire as they would be to vampires. They really need to have earth medallions, or little green peppers or something instead of crosses.

[Fawnn]

Good point. And I already have an idea what I’ll use to replace the crosses. Unfortunately, one editor already sent me some editing requests for the book, so I’m not sure how long until I can find time to “color” some more. ;)

(I truly had my idea before I returned to the thread and saw the one you’d posted. I just don’t move as quickly as you do.)

[Fawnn]

FredZarguna pointed out that the crosses were out of place, so I replaced them with something more appropriate. If you refresh the page, the new (and improved, I hope) image should appear. The full-size image at the link has been updated, too.

(NOW I need to quit “coloring” and get back to my edits.) ;)

[FredZarguna]

Love it!

[Kathy in Alaska]

Nice touch....hanging around their necks. LOL! May the mercury spill on their skirts.