Posted on 12/26/2014 7:45:49 AM PST by Kaslin
Editor's note: This article was co-authored by Chris Skates.
In a recent interview with National Public Radio host Diane Rehm, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said his company “has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on facts. And the facts of climate change are not in question anymore. Everyone understands climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. We should not be aligned with such people. They’re just literally lying.”
While he didn’t vilify us by name, Mr. Schmidt was certainly targeting us, the climate scientists who collect and summarize thousands of articles for the NIPCC’s Climate Change Reconsidered reports, the hundreds who participate in Heartland Institute climate conferences, and the 31,487 US scientists who have signed the Oregon Petition, attesting that there is no convincing scientific evidence that humans are causing catastrophic warming or climate disruption.
All of us are firm skeptics of claims that humans are causing catastrophic global warming and climate change. We are not climate change “deniers.” We know Earth’s climate and weather are constantly in flux, undergoing recurrent fluctuations that range from flood and drought cycles to periods of low or intense hurricane and tornado activity, to the Medieval Warm Period (950-1250 AD) and Little Ice Age (1350-1850) – and even to Pleistocene glaciers that repeatedly buried continents under a mile of ice.
What we deny is the notion that humans can prevent these fluctuations, by ending fossil fuel use and emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide, which plays only an insignificant role in climate change.
The real deniers are people who think our climate was and should remain static and unchanging, such as 1900-1970, supposedly – during which time Earth actually warmed and then cooled, endured the Dust Bowl, and experienced periods of devastating hurricanes and tornadoes.
The real deniers refuse to recognize that natural forces dictate weather and climate events. They deny that computer model predictions are completely at odds with real world events, that there has been no warming since 1995, and that several recent winters have been among the coldest in centuries in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, despite steadily rising CO2 levels. They refuse to acknowledge that, as of December 25, it’s been 3,347 days since a Category 3-5 hurricane hit the US mainland; this is by far the longest such stretch since record-keeping began in 1900, if not since the American Civil War.
Worst of all, they deny that their “solutions” hurt our children and grandchildren, by driving up energy prices, threatening electricity reliability, thwarting job creation, and limiting economic growth in poor nations to what can be sustained via expensive wind, solar, biofuel and geothermal energy. Google’s corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.” From our perspective, perpetuating poverty, misery, disease and premature death in poor African and Asian countries – in the name or preventing climate change – is evil.
It is truly disturbing that Mr. Schmidt could make a statement so thoroughly flawed in its basic premise. He runs a multi-billion dollar company that uses vast quantities of electricity to disseminate information throughout the world. Perhaps he should speak out on issues he actually understands. Perhaps he would be willing to debate us or Roy Spencer, David Legates, Pat Michaels and other climate experts.
Setting aside the irrational loyalty of alarmists like Schmidt to a failed “dangerous manmade climate change” hypothesis, equally disturbing is the money wasted because of it. Consider an article written for the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers’ summit website by Google engineers Ross Koningstein and David Fork, who worked on Google’s “RE<C” renewable energy initiative.
Beginning in 2007, they say, “Google committed significant resources to tackle the world’s climate and energy problems. A few of these efforts proved very successful: Google deployed some of the most energy efficient data centers in the world, purchased large amounts of renewable energy, and offset what remained of its carbon footprint.”
It’s wonderful that the company improved the energy efficiency of its power-hungry data centers. But the project spent untold millions of dollars and countless man hours. To what actual benefits? To address precisely what climate and energy problems? And how exactly did Google offset its carbon footprint? By buying “carbon credits” from outfits like the New Forests Company, which drove impoverished Ugandan villagers out of their homes, set fire to their houses and burned a young boy to death?
What if, as skeptics like us posit and actual evidence reflects, man-made climate change is not in fact occurring? That would mean there is no threat to humans or our planet, and lowering Google’s CO2 footprint would bring no benefits. In fact, it would keep poor nations poverty stricken and deprived of modern technologies – and thus unable to adapt to climate change. Imagine what Google could have accomplished if its resources had been channeled to solving actual problems with actual solutions!
In 2011, the company decided its RE<C project would not meet its goals. Google shut it down. In their article, Koningstein and Fork admit that the real result of all of their costly research was to reach the following conclusion: “green energy is simply not economically, viable and resources that we as a society waste in trying to make it so would be better used to improve the efficiencies in established energy technologies like coal.”
Skeptics like us reached that conclusion long ago. It is the primary reason for our impassioned pleas that that the United States and other developed nations stop making energy policy decisions based on the flawed climate change hypothesis. However, the article’s most breathtaking statement was this:
“Climate scientists have definitively shown that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses a looming danger.... A 2008 paper by James Hansen, former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies… showed the true gravity of the situation. In it, Hansen set out to determine what level of atmospheric CO2 society should aim for ‘if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.’ His climate models showed that exceeding 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere would likely have catastrophic effects. We’ve already blown past that limit. Right now, environmental monitoring shows concentrations around 400 ppm.…”
We would never presume to question the sincerity, intellect, dedication or talent of these two authors. However, this statement presents a stunning failure in applying Aristotelian logic. Even a quick reading would make the following logical conclusions instantly obvious:
1. Hansen theorized that 350 ppm of atmospheric CO2 would have catastrophic results.
2. CO2 did indeed reach, and then exceed, this level by a significant amount.
3. There were no consequences, much less catastrophic results, as our earlier points make clear.
4. Therefore, real-world evidence clearly demonstrates that Hansen’s hypothesis is wrong.
This kind of reasoning (the scientific method) has served progress and civilization well since the Seventeenth Century. But the Google team has failed to apply it. Instead, they resorted to repeating the “slash fossil fuel use or Earth and humanity are doomed” tautology, without regard for logic or facts – while Mr. Schmidt impugned our intelligence, character and ethics as CAGW skeptics.
We enthusiastically support Eric Schmidt’s admonition that our nation base its policy decisions on facts, even when those facts do not support an apocalyptic environmental worldview. We also support President Obama’s advice that people should not “engage in self-censorship,” because of bullying or “because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of someone whose sensibilities probably need to be offended.”
In fact, we will keep speaking out, regardless of what Messsrs. Schmidt, Hansen and Obama might say.
Thank God (not google) mankind did not oppose climate change when Manhattan was under a mile of ice
or maybe they should have
Everyone understands ...aka Everyone Knows....are the two most dangerous words to ever come out of the mouth of a so called “liberal”.
the cone of consensus reality has completely surrounded these numbskulls
This certainly demonstrates that becoming a billionaire in no way guarantees either intelligence or wisdom. In so far as I can, I avoid all things “Google.”
Good find.
Global average surface temperature has NOT risen for the past 18 years and 2 months. Today’s entering college freshmen have not actually faced a single year yet of their government’s much-hyped “global warming” !
I guess he must mean the political 'fact' that he and his crony company have taken over Moffet Field from the government for a pittance so they can park their G5s there?? That kind of fact?
This government stinks to high heaven, from the head on down to the frigging tail. No wonder Gaggle Execs toe the line on Climate Change.
Everyone understands climate change WILL ALWAYS occur.
How can people so smart in puter crap are so ignorant when it comes to scientific data that really matters?
The day even one of them can predict with 100% accuracy what my local weather is one month from now will be, I’ll start thinking about whether to give them any credence.
As it is now, they can’t even go back and tweak their models with real data and do it honestly.
The only climate being affects be him is my Brain Temp.
In my 67 years I’ve noticed that the climate changes a little bit each day gradual getting warmer then cooler and then warmer again, back and forth year after year. So I’ve come to the conclusion that the climate is constantly changing. Just the way our Creator intended it to be.
List of Liberal catchphrases:
Everybody Knows
Everyone Understands
Scientists Say
Some Scholars Believe
Anyone with a brain
We All Know
Scientists believe
Settled Science
Everyone Believes
Modern research has shown that
It is Believed that
We know now that
Extensive research has shown that
Scientists agree that
Modern Theologians believe that
Most theologians now believe that
We all have seen that
New Evidence has shown that
and so on.
my view has always been that if there was a measurable change, there is no way we can tell whether (no pun) it was man made or not. and any attempt to address it was only to,
one, drain money from the American middle class, two, line the pockets of the climate change shysters.
and I still believe that.
but having said that, we just had Christmas in new England and it felt like april.
I have despised that squeaky-voiced wench since the first time I heard her after the Florida 2000 election fraud. I will note her passing without remorse.
Exactly
I seem to recall more than one idiot, starting with the one currently in the White House, stating that the “science is settled” when it comes to “global warming” or “climate change” or whatever they’re calling it these days. Anyone who understands science and the scientific method knows this is never true.
Add Schmidt’s name to the list of idiots who seek to impose THEIR views on the vast majority of people. The views of the NAZI left, if imposed, will lead to increased poverty and decreased freedom. I would also bet that the elites would not change THEIR lifestyle one bit (witness the Al Gores of the world).
“How can people so smart in puter crap are so ignorant when it comes to scientific data that really matters?”
Because they are self-important liberals. Personal wealth just makes the condition worse. (see Actors, Politicians, CEOs etc.)
Soooo. should I forget about having Palm trees in my front yard or not?
“Bing” is a fine search engine. Don’t know whether it’s P.C. or not.
It has one thing going for it though, it’s not google.
The change of terminology from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change” was deliberate and done when it became clear that the Earth had not warmed in nearly 2 decades. The term “climate change” was done in order to keep the scam alive.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.