07.12.2010: The Climategate Whitewash Continues

Global warming alarmists claim vindication after last year's data manipulation scandal. Don't believe the 'independent' reviews.

Excerpt.... "Readers of ... earlier reports need to know that both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding (which can be confirmed by perusing the grant histories of Messrs. Jones or Mann, compiled from public sources, that are available online at freerepublic.com). Any admission of substantial scientific misbehavior would likely result in a significant loss of funding."

04.20.2010: Last in Class: Critics Give U.N. Climate Researchers an 'F'

A group of 40 auditors from across the globe have released a shocking report card that flunks the U.N.'s landmark climate-change research report.

02.04.2010: More wheels fall off the MMGW Bus.

News of the manipulations, distortions and frauds perpetrated to advance and preserve the environmentalists' cause celebre are so numerous and coming so fast, it's hard to keep up.

01.16.2010: Actually, space aliens are responsible... read why here!

By Michael Crichton:
My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today.

04.05.2010: Absolutely lovely comments...here!

Excerpt:
Researchers who have long questioned the premise of man-made global warming theories point out that alarmist claims are driven more by computer models that omit key variables than they are by actual observations. The growing "climategate" scandal goes a long way toward vindicating the scientific skeptics who have been ostracized in the media and the academic community. Emails that have been leaked to the Internet from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia show that researchers have deliberately fudged and manipulated data in an effort to account for predicted catastrophic warming that has not materialized.

Ken comments...

....fanatics (on all sides of every issue and political agenda) have this remarkable ability to ignore reality in favor of what they want. Then add to that motivation the literally trillions of dollars of wealth which would be removed from America to go to other countries (and not only the wealth, but also the influence and power of America which would be hurt), all of which will occur if people can be convinced that MMGW is real and we need to take immediate action.

Other countries want the ability to develop their industry as much as they want without either environmental regulations (look at China, bringing a new coal-fired power plant on line every week), and they want America's financial and military might reduced. They then have the millions of people in this country who want America's power reduced as well, in favor of a one world government: Al Gore has explicitly called for this for environmental regulations.

Add it up, and whether the science is accurate or not is the least of their worries. If they can scream loud enough, they will get what they want.

And please note that none of the above applies to the real scientists on both sides of this issue. Real scientists always disagree with each other, sometimes very loudly, and that is a good thing. Out of heat comes light. As long as all sides are focused on the actual data, and are interested in finding out the real facts, and generating theories which describe those facts, science can and will work. It is only when you have people like the head of the CRU who openly and blatantly manipulate and then hide the data, and when you have "scientists" (sic) like Kevin Trenberth quoted in the article who openly and blatantly say "the data don't fit my theory, the data must be wrong", that you have wandered away from real science and into politics.

The only possible explanation in the real world (as opposed to an explanation in man-made-global-warming-land, which needs bear no relationship to reality or facts or logic, it just has to sound good and make the problem be of crisis proportions) is that the weight is no longer where it was, meaning that a location which used to have the weight of a glacier on it no longer does, and the ocean is fractionally heavier than it was, allowing the crust to shift.

Clearly these people don't have a clue as to the enormous mass of the earth, and how literally insignificant the entire weight of the crust actually is. The "continental crust" (ie, everything we really understand, going from what we can see to down about 50km) represents 0.3% of the earth's mass, and it rests on the "upper mantle" (from about 50km to about 400km), which rests on the "transition region" (from about 400km to about 650km) and only then do you get to the hot part of the "lower mantle".

To make an analogy, assuming a 150lb person, 0.3% of their mass is 0.45lb’s, or about the weight of a half-full can of soda. If this theory was accurate, placing that can on your head would be enough to crack your skull and allow brain matter to leak out. Not so much…

09.04.2008: Enjoy this one, Warmites.. "What an amazing fraud; what a scam."

06.29.2008... Just Irresistable: No, Ahnold, They're Not "Girlie-Men," They're "Gore-Lie Men."

05.30.2008: How does Man-Made Global Warming Hysteria Start? Just like This....

Watch Penn and Teller manage to convince hundreds of leftists to sign a petition to ban water.

05.29.2008: Thank you, National Taxpayers Union !

On behalf of the 362,000 members of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU), I urge you to oppose S. 2191, the Lieberman-Warner "Climate Security Act." This bill would impose an annual cap on the emissions of six greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, and would establish a trading system for emissions allowances. This "cap-and-trade" system constitutes a colossal tax hike and should be opposed due to its enormous cost and regulatory implications.

05.08.2008: Thanks to Jon in Colorado... Wild Ecological Predictions!

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

04.29.2008... Headline: Gore to do pro bono work for consultant...
[just kidding, of course... Start a Movement, Move into Money-Making Positions, Make More Money.... My Hero.... (Not!)]

04.21.2008: Ok, Warmites: Question for you: What does "consensus" really mean?
100% agreement? 75%? 50%? Read this about your IPCC "consensus"!

04.21.2008: And NOAA is probably wrong, too; right, Warmies? Here's a note that the geometry of the Solar System will drive Global Warming for 65,000 years or so... so turn your car engines off NOW! Oh, and the 20,000- and 40,000-year cycles of the earth and its orbit are irrelevant, too?

Long-term variations in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation are generally thought to control glaciation. But the intensity of summer insolation is primarily controlled by 20,000-year cycles in the precession of the equinoxes, whereas early Pleistocene glacial cycles occur at 40,000-year intervals, matching the period of changes in Earth's obliquity. The resolution of this 40,000-year problem is that glaciers are sensitive to insolation integrated over the duration of the summer. The integrated summer insolation is primarily controlled by obliquity and not precession because, by Kepler's second law, the duration of the summer is inversely proportional to Earth's distance from the Sun.

ps... I think they've left out a few factors, and it won't be a warming trend, it'll be a cooling trend... but that's just me.

04.17.2008: Another report that Fundamentalist Global-Warmers won't read or believe... by Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D.

Yep, sure looks like an up-trend! Right, Al? ...........

...........Unless you widen your view and take a more realistic look... [the red line on the graph below is the entire graph to the left!]

Would you like a quote or three from that page?

"Al Gore likes to say that mankind puts 70 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day. What he probably doesn't know is that mother nature puts 24,000 times that amount of our main greenhouse gas -- water vapor -- into the atmosphere every day, and removes about the same amount every day. While this does not 'prove' that global warming is not manmade, it shows that weather systems have by far the greatest control over the Earth's greenhouse effect, which is dominated by water vapor and clouds. "

"The most important example of this lack of understanding is, in my view, how precipitation systems control the Earth's natural greenhouse effect, over 90% of which is due to water vapor and clouds. The Earth's total greenhouse effect is not some passive quantity that can be easily modified by mankind adding a little carbon dioxide -- it is instead being constantly limited by precipitation systems, which remove water vapor and adjust cloud amounts to keep the total greenhouse effect consistent with the amount of available sunlight. Our understanding of this limiting process is still quite poor, and likely not represented in climate models."

"The role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere's greenhouse effect is relatively small, due to the fact that CO2 is a 'trace gas' -- only 38 out of every 100,000 molecules of air are carbon dioxide. It takes a full five years of human greenhouse gas emissions to add 1 molecule of CO2 to every 100,000 molecules of air."

12.11.2007: Another report that Fundamentalist Global-Warmers will deny or not believe...

Excerpt:
"New Study Explodes Human-Global Warming Story
Monday, December 10, 2007 9:55 AM
By: Philip V. Brennan Article Font Size

As much of the U.S. is being blasted by vicious ice storms, a blockbuster report published in a prestigious scientific journal insists that the evidence shows that climate warming is both natural and unstoppable and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant.

Writing in the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society, professor David H. Douglass (of the University of Rochester), professor John R. Christy (of the University of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson and professor S. Fred Singer (of the University of Virginia) report that observed patterns of temperature changes ("fingerprints") over the last 30 years disagree with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability.

The conclusion is that climate change is "unstoppable" and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation."

But that never stops True Believers... trust me.

12.03.2007: Try this page out, too....
Excerpt:
"....for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero.)"

11.15.2007: Global Warming Zealots: Do NOT read this article!!!!

[copied here for those link-lazy folks out there...

From The Sunday TimesFebruary 11, 2007

An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains "very likely" as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is "Why is east Antarctica getting colder?" It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.

The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.

What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.

In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.

Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it "A new theory of climate change".

Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.

The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.

The Chilling Stars is published by Icon. It is available for £9.89 including postage from The Sunday Times Books First on 0870 165 8585

11.07.2007: Long one, here... thanks Jim in California....

Here are 9.5 Megabytes of pdf file from JR Christy, for fun reading after perusing the Al Gore Global Warming Love-A-Thon at current.com...... data the zealots won't believe from someone they'll label "not to be trusted."
But, what would you expect???
Please note the last slide, if none of the rest moves you....

My Nobel Moment
By JOHN R. CHRISTY
November 1, 2007; Page A19

I've had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don't think I will add "0.0001 Nobel Laureate" to my resume.

The other half of the prize was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore, whose carbon footprint would stomp my neighborhood flat. But that's another story.

Large icebergs in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. Winter sea ice around the continent set a record maximum last month. Both halves of the award honor promoting the message that Earth's temperature is rising due to human-based emissions of greenhouse gases. The Nobel committee praises Mr. Gore and the IPCC for alerting us to a potential catastrophe and for spurring us to a carbonless economy.

I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.

There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does show modest warming -- around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, if current warming trends of 0.25 degrees per decade continue.)

It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system's behavior over the next five days.

Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"

I haven't seen that type of climate humility lately. Rather I see jump-to-conclusions advocates and, unfortunately, some scientists who see in every weather anomaly the specter of a global-warming apocalypse. Explaining each successive phenomenon as a result of human action gives them comfort and an easy answer.

Others of us scratch our heads and try to understand the real causes behind what we see. We discount the possibility that everything is caused by human actions, because everything we've seen the climate do has happened before. Sea levels rise and fall continually. The Arctic ice cap has shrunk before. One millennium there are hippos swimming in the Thames, and a geological blink later there is an ice bridge linking Asia and North America.

One of the challenges in studying global climate is keeping a global perspective, especially when much of the research focuses on data gathered from spots around the globe. Often observations from one region get more attention than equally valid data from another.

The recent CNN report "Planet in Peril," for instance, spent considerable time discussing shrinking Arctic sea ice cover. CNN did not note that winter sea ice around Antarctica last month set a record maximum (yes, maximum) for coverage since aerial measurements started.

Then there is the challenge of translating global trends to local climate. For instance, hasn't global warming led to the five-year drought and fires in the U.S. Southwest?

Not necessarily.

There has been a drought, but it would be a stretch to link this drought to carbon dioxide. If you look at the 1,000-year climate record for the western U.S. you will see not five-year but 50-year-long droughts. The 12th and 13th centuries were particularly dry. The inconvenient truth is that the last century has been fairly benign in the American West. A return to the region's long-term "normal" climate would present huge challenges for urban planners.

Without a doubt, atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing due primarily to carbon-based energy production (with its undisputed benefits to humanity) and many people ardently believe we must "do something" about its alleged consequence, global warming. This might seem like a legitimate concern given the potential disasters that are announced almost daily, so I've looked at a couple of ways in which humans might reduce CO2 emissions and their impact on temperatures.

California and some Northeastern states have decided to force their residents to buy cars that average 43 miles-per-gallon within the next decade. Even if you applied this law to the entire world, the net effect would reduce projected warming by about 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, an amount so minuscule as to be undetectable. Global temperatures vary more than that from day to day.

Suppose you are very serious about making a dent in carbon emissions and could replace about 10% of the world's energy sources with non-CO2-emitting nuclear power by 2020 -- roughly equivalent to halving U.S. emissions. Based on IPCC-like projections, the required 1,000 new nuclear power plants would slow the warming by about 0.2 ?176 degrees Fahrenheit per century. It's a dent.

But what is the economic and human price, and what is it worth given the scientific uncertainty?

My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."

Given the scientific uncertainty and our relative impotence regarding climate change, the moral imperative here seems clear to me.

Mr. Christy is director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a participant in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, co-recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize

10.27.2007: Thanks to an email to me from Al Gore "himself," I've been able to witness and annoy a bunch of folks who would and do believe everything he says and have no intention of listening to any contradictory input.... If you're a Gore Fundamentalist, you'll absolutely love this site.

Go there and everyone will agree with you, too. Not necessarily do any thinking, but boy, lots of agreeing!!! ROTFLOL!
Just enter "global warming" in the search field and party down!

11.05.2007: Some updates from my Gang of N....
First, on the much-ballyhoo'd Ozone Hole of some years back.....

As I expected and predicted, "no big deal." Click here for NOAA's data. Yep, everything's still about average....

10.23.2007: Woo-Hoo!! Thank you, Fox News "Junk Science" !!!!

Junk Science: Hey Al Gore, We Want a Refund!
Friday, October 19, 2007

By Steven Milloy

A British judge ruled on the eve of Al Gore co-winning the Nobel Peace Prize that students forced to watch "An Inconvenient Truth" must be warned of the film’s factual errors. But would there be any science at all left in Gore’s "truth" if these errors and their progeny were excised?

Minutes of non-science filler dominate the opening sequence — images of the Gore farm, Earth from space, Gore giving his slideshow and the 2000 election controversy. Gore then links Hurricane Katrina with global warming. But the judge ruled that was erroneous, so the Katrina scenes would wind up on the cutting-room floor.

Another 12 minutes of filler go by — images of Gore in his limo, more Earth photos, a Mark Twain quote, and Gore memories — until about the 16:30 minute mark, when, according to the judge, Al Gore erroneously links receding glaciers — specifically Mt. Kilimanjaro — with global warming.

The Mt. Kilimanjaro error commences an almost 10-minute stretch of problematic footage, the bulk of which contains Gore’s presentation of the crucial issue in the global warming controversy — whether increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide drive global temperatures higher. As the judge ruled that the Antarctic ice core data presented in the film "do not establish what Mr. Gore asserts," this inconvenient untruth also needs to go. [Note to readers: A video debate between Al Gore and climatologists on this point produced by me can be viewed by clicking here.]

More filler leads to a 30-second clip about how global warming is causing polar bears to drown because they have to swim greater distances to find sea ice on which to rest. The judge ruled however, that the polar bears in question had actually drowned because of a particularly violent storm.

On the heels of that error, Gore launches into a 3-minute "explanation" of how global warming will shut down the Gulf Stream and send Europe into an ice age. The judge ruled that this was an impossibility.

Two minutes of ominous footage — casting Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) in a creepy light and expressing Gore’s frustration with getting his alarmist message out — precede a more-than-9-minute stretch that would need to be cut.

In this lengthy footage, Gore again tries to link global warming with discrete events including coral reef bleaching, the melting of Greenland, catastrophic sea level rise, Antarctic melting and more. But like Hurricane Katrina, these events also shouldn’t be linked with global warming.

Based on the judge’s ruling, the footage that ought to be excised adds up to about 25 minutes or so out of the 98-minute film. What’s left is largely Gore personal drama and cinematic fluff that has nothing to do with the science of climate change.

It should also be pointed out that Gore makes other notable factual misstatements in the film that don’t help his or his film’s credibility.

He says in the film that polio has been "cured," implying that we can cure "global warming." While a preventative polio vaccine does exist, there is no "cure" for polio.

Gore attempts to smear his critics by likening them to the tobacco industry. In spotlighting a magazine advertisement proclaiming that "more doctors smoke Camel than any other brand," he states that the ad was published after the Surgeon General’s 1964 report on smoking and lung cancer. But the ad is actually from 1947 — 17 years before the report.

Gore also says in the film that 2005 is the hottest year on record. But NASA data actually show that 1934 was the hottest year on record in the U.S. — 2005 is not even in the top 10.

Perhaps worse than the film’s errors is their origin. The BBC reported that Gore knew the film presented incorrect information but took no corrective steps because he didn’t want to spotlight any uncertainties in the scientific data that may fuel opponents of global warming alarmism.

"An Inconvenient Truth" grossed about $50 million at the box office and millions more in DVD and book sales. Gore charges as much as $175,000 for an in-person presentation of his slide show that forms the basis for the film.

Considering that a key 25 percent of "An Inconvenient Truth" is not true — and perhaps intentionally so — it seems only fair that Gore offer a refund to moviegoers, DVD/book purchasers and speaking sponsors. Where are the class action lawyers when you need them?

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

10.20.2007: I just excavated a Popular Science article from 1996. Here are the two pages of the writeup. [.pdf format]
You might find them interesting. Here's a graph that's part of the first page...

It's been just as warm "before" as it is "now" according to the graph. And right after these "high" temperatures have been reached, they dropped like a rock. Naturally, Mr. Gore thinks that they will continue to rise, despite any other effects, such as the wobble [precession] of the earth's axis, etc....

Sure.

10.15.2007: Thanks, Stuart, for this link. Gore is debunked yet again! When will the media listen????

Ken Adds... "Remember the definition of faith is "belief in the absence of proof". Think of this as faith-based environmentalism... :^)"

From Parade Magazine, August 26, 2007:

So, it looks like China blows more CO2 into the atmosphere with its coal mine fires than the USA does from all of the gasoline it uses? And another 5% on top of that comes from India's coal mine fires? So, by Gore-ian logic, we should set a goal to raise our cars' gas mileage by, say, 50%, thus cutting our autos' CO2 emissions by half while China does nothing to extinguish its coal fires? Why not put out China's coal mine fires first, which would be the equivalent of removing all of the cars from the US' roads? The Chinese CO2 coal mine fire emissions do nothing but spew CO2. The gasoline burnt in the USA produces tangible benefits.

From the Raleigh, NC News & Observer:

The earth's climate is affected by the tilt of its axis. The earth's axis wobbles. The earths' climate is affected by the tilt of its orbit around the sun. The earth's orbit wobbles. Can you tell me what caused the last Ice Ages? No? Then don't try to tell me that our CO2 over the past fifty years will have more impact than whatever caused the Ice Ages over the past millions of years. Thanks.

07.02.2007: And the Hits Just Keep a-Comin'!

Just a few quotes.... ok, all of them...

"Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny

June 30, 2007 BY JAMES M. TAYLOR

In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, "We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth." Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.

If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.

A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.

Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

For example,

• Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

• Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."

• Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.

• Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.

• Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."

• Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.

• Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.

Each of these cases provides an opportunity for Gore to lead by example in his call for an end to the distortion of science. Will he rise to the occasion? Only time will tell."

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute.

05.22.2007:
In the category I'd label "I LOVE IT!", get a load of this!
ROTFLOL!

05.15.2007:
...and the hits just keep a-coming, folks! Thanks this time to Dan in Alabama for this article from the Boston Globe.

MIT'S INCONVENIENT SCIENTIST

By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist | August 30, 2006

Speech codes are rare in the industrialized, Western democracies. In Germany and Austria, for instance, it is forbidden to proselytize Nazi ideology or trivialize the Holocaust. Given those countries' recent histories, that is a restraint on free expression we can live with.

More curious are our own taboos on the subject of global warming. I sat in a roomful of journalists 10 years ago while Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider lectured us on a big problem in our profession: soliciting opposing points of view. In the debate over climate change, Schneider said, there simply was no legitimate opposing view to the scientific consensus that man-made carbon emissions drive global warming. To suggest or report otherwise, he said, was irresponsible.

Indeed. I attended a week's worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider's directive. There is no science on the other side, Gore inveighed, more than once. Again, the same message: If you hear tales of doubt, ignore them. They are simply untrue. I ask you: Are these convincing arguments? And directed at journalists, who are natural questioners and skeptics, of all people? What happens when you are told not to eat the apple, not to read that book, not to date that girl? Your interest is piqued, of course. What am I not supposed to know?

Here's the kind of information the "scientific consensus" types don't want you to read. MIT's Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology Richard Lindzen recently complained about the "shrill alarmism" of Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth." Lindzen acknowledges that global warming is real, and he acknowledges that increased carbon emissions might be causing the warming – but they also might not.

"We do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change" is one of Lindzen's many heresies, along with such zingers as "the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940," "the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average," and "Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why."

When Lindzen published similar views in The Wall Street Journal this spring, environmentalist Laurie David, the wife of comedian Larry David, immediately branded him a "shill." She resurrected a shopworn slur first directed against Lindzen by former Globe writer Ross Gelbspan, who called Lindzen a "hood ornament" for the fossil fuels industry in a 1995 article in Harper's Magazine.

I decided to check out Lindzen for myself. He wasn't hard to find on the 16th floor of MIT's I.M. Pei-designed Building 54, and he answered as many questions as I had time to ask. He's no big fan of Gore's, having suffered through what he calls a "Star Chamber" Congressional inquisition by the then senator . He said he accepted $10,000 in expenses and expert witness fees from fossil-fuel types in the 1990s, and has taken none of their money since.

He's smart. He's an effective debater. No wonder the Steve Schneiders and Al Gores of the world don't want you to hear from him. It's easier to call someone a shill and accuse him of corruption than to debate him on the merits.

While vacationing in Canada, I spotted a newspaper story that I hadn't seen in the United States. For no apparent reason, the state of California, Environmental Defense, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have dragged Lindzen and about 15 other global-warming skeptics into a lawsuit over auto-emissions standards. California et al. have asked the auto companies to cough up any and all communications they have had with Lindzen and his colleagues, whose research has been cited in court documents.

"We know that General Motors has been paying for this fake science exactly as the tobacco companies did," says ED attorney Jim Marston. If Marston has a scintilla of evidence that Lindzen has been trafficking in fake science, he should present it to the MIT provost's office. Otherwise, he should shut up.

"This is the criminalization of opposition to global warming," says Lindzen, who adds he has never communicated with the auto companies involved in the lawsuit. Of course Lindzen isn't a fake scientist, he's an inconvenient scientist. No wonder you're not supposed to listen to him.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is "beam @ globe.com"

© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

...One of the oldest Rules of Debating: "If you're losing, attack your opponent, not the subject of the debate." +af

05.08.2007: From Ken in Florida:

Check out http://www.wecnmagazine.com/2007issues/may/may07.html for an interview with a scientist who counters the "proof" of global warming via mathematic models by asking "Do you believe the 5 day forecast?". Good stuff...

An excerpt:

"All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd," Bryson continues. "Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air."

Another excerpt:

Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. "What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?"

We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly.

"A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went," he says. "There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal."

And a third...

Bryson says he looks in the opposite direction, at past climate conditions, for clues to future climate behavior. Trying that approach in the weeks following our interview, Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News soon found six separate papers about Antarctic ice core studies, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1999 and 2006. The ice core data allowed researchers to examine multiple climate changes reaching back over the past 650,000 years. All six studies found atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations tracking closely with temperatures, but with CO2 lagging behind changes in temperature, rather than leading them. The time lag between temperatures moving up—or down—and carbon dioxide following ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand years.

[emphasis added by me...] Stuff it, Al Gore...

05.03.2007: Thanks go to Jim in California for this link:
Humans spread across the globe during warm periods and were occasionally forced back from polar regions by Ice Ages. Take a look at this "Journey of Mankind."

04.27.2007: ... some words of wisdom from my friend Sy in Palo Alto....

Forbes Magazine, 03.26.2007: Fact and Comment from Steve Forbes...
[you may need to register to see this on-line. Used without express permission, but Steve, I don't think you'd mind...]

An Astounding Fantasy

The Academy awards ceremony may have hailed Al Gore as a prophetic hero, but history will treat him as the personification of an incredible delusion: the idea that carbon dioxide emissions fundamentally affect the Earth's weather patterns.

While much of the media treats this theory as catastrophic fact, the fact is it ain't--it's an unproved theory. Over the last few decades carbon dioxide emissions have risen, and there has been a slight increase in the Earth's temperature. Ergo, goes the theory, it must be cause and effect and--ergo, ergo--we must take draconian measures to reduce the emissions, even if that means sharply cutting our standard of living and massively increasing bureaucratic controls over our lives.

Green socialism has now replaced the Red variety.

As near as anyone can figure, the Earth's surface temperature increased 1 degree Fahrenheit in the 20th century. But about half of that increase came before 1940, when carbon dioxide emissions were a fraction of the level they are today. Temperatures declined slightly after 1940 until the mid-1970s, even though emissions were increasing. In the real world this would be pretty flimsy proof of a cause-effect relationship. But human beings are prey to hysteria and delusions. Gore-ites have taken to calling doubters of their apocalyptic vision "global-warming deniers," a demagogic allusion to "Holocaust deniers." Doubting climatologists are often hounded in government and in academia.

You'd never know from all the shrill hullabaloo that weather patterns have been changing for about as long as the Earth has existed. From about A.D. 900 to 1300 the Earth's temperatures were even warmer than they are today, which is one reason Greenland was named Greenland. Southern England in those years was a wine-growing region. Last we looked, however, there was no evidence of knights in shining armor having ridden around medieval Europe in SUVs. Then from about 1300 to the mid-1800s there was a mini-ice age. Famines in Europe were far more frequent because of the colder weather. Since then the weather has gotten warmer.

Experts still don't know for sure what has caused the Earth's ice ages. In the mid-1970s, for example, the media was full of stories about an impending ice age. Models used to predict Gore-ite futures have been unable to predict past weather patterns.

But weather does respond to changes in the solar radiation activity of the sun. It also appears to be affected by slight changes in the tilt of the Earth. As for carbon dioxide emissions, their impact is, at worst, minimal. In fact, even the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges that pollutant particles reflect sunlight back into space, which has a cooling effect. Yet Gore's vividly illustrated, award-laden documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, treats us to images of the seas rising by 20 feet. However, the UN's latest report has revised downward--from 36 inches to 17 inches--its estimates of how much the seas are going to rise in the next 100 years.

We are told that global warming is putting polar bears on the road to extinction, even though the overall polar bear population today is higher than it's been in decades. Glaciers? Despite Gore-y images of them all rapidly melting away, the inconvenient truth is that many of them are expanding.

This hysterical belief in unproved theories is not new. For centuries Europeans and, later, North Americans believed in the existence of witches. In the 1970s most experts were convinced the Earth faced imminent mass famine. In the first half of the 20th century many educated people believed in eugenics--the theory that human beings could be improved if "inferior" people with low IQs were forcibly sterilized (or, in the case of the Nazis, exterminated). In the late 1920s Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said during a case involving forced sterilization, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

Thankfully, despite all the widespread misconceptions about weather, we are not going to submit to Gore-ite socialist global government regulations. In fact, some good may come out of this: a major push for nuclear power--a proved, ultraclean, nonemitting energy producer.

03.24.2007: Some comments back on Global Warming...

This is truly fantastic, well produced, and the story holds together very nicely. Last year I went to Alaska to see the glaciers and talk with the NPS people there. I also spent time at the Denali Institute and at the university of Alaska, Fairbanks, where we spend several nights. From flying and observing and from looking back on the photo records of this part of the world, there is no question that there is global warming during the last 100 years. I also saw the elaborate procedures to provide thermal isolation between the 100 degree Alaska pipeline and the permafrost. The system works very well. However, permafrost is melting, causing heaving of roads and visible changes in forests, not to mention pipeline disruptions.

However, the cause remains elusive. I’ve had personal doubts on this CO2 theory for some time. I have more concern for the effects of chlorofluorocarbons where there are real cause and effect experiments and direct observation of those effects on the Ozone layer. These are measurable at that level directly via the u2 aircraft and via satellite. Action has already taken place to reverse that. The British piece of the solar effects of sunspots and general cycles here are very insightful. More alarming to me is the politicization of this made possible by the near government monopoly on funding real science. The Margaret Thatcher speech is a pivotal point.

Do you know of a transcript of this? The spoken word in this can be more easily disseminated than the video, particularly to my dial-up AOL friends.

I’m reminded of other organizations and movements that countered establishment and ‘religions’ beliefs – the Jesuits "Question Authority – question everything." The Benedictines with their more optimistic point, "Every day we begin anew." They gave the prince bishops hell.

You know, Alan, that we do not teach critical thinking in high school anymore. We have replaced geography with ‘social studies.’ At least in this piece, there are plenty of scientists who can communicate through the producer of this film. Bravo.

What to do next? I laughed before Y2K during the Chicken Little phase when so many were concerned that civilized systems would stop. I flew an airplane on New Year Day 1-1-2000 to Arizona. My friends said, "Aren’t you afraid?" I had to point out that the airplane was not held up by computer programmers who couldn’t get their dates right. There are laws of physics and they have not been repealed. It would fly just fine even if the entire Air Traffic Control System were to go off the air.

Thanks for the link,
Rick

Outtasight!!! Of course, since Al Gore's globaloney docufantasy is becoming required viewing in public schools, I don't anticipate that this British film will be grabbing much airtime here. (You probably know that 50,000 copies of Gore's film ["I'd like to thank the coked-up Academy . . ."] have been magnanamously donated to public schools - can you spell "propaganda?) I'm a natural-born environmentalist at heart, but don't sell me baloney and tell me it's grade-A Colorado prime. Don't get me started - I'm on a short lunch break. Thanks for the film. I plan to pass it on.

and... 03.27.2007...

Thank you for being one of the very few intelligent people in my life to whom I don't have to apologize for not jumping on every envirobandwagon pushed in front of me. What's next? Cutting the national speed limit to 20 mph because driving too fast is causing plate tectonics??? Interestingly, the NY Times has recently been casting Gore in an unfavorable light, which would normally be totally anathema to the paper's editorial policy, but it's been suggested that this may be a reflection of pressure from Camp Hillary.

Wendie

[don't bet too much against that one, Wendie... someone wrote an op-ed to the Raleigh News & Observer suggesting reinstatement of the National 55 mph limit and putting speed limiters and/or horsepower limits on cars, in order to save fuel.]

03.21.2007: my reply to a Letter to the Editor appearing in the Raleigh, NC, News & Observer:
Point of View: Our houses are way too big (and our cars are way too fast)... by Anthony Hatcher

While I think it's incredibly stupid and hypocritical for both Gore and Edwards to proselytize "green" and "lower CO2" and all that while driving some of the largest homes in the East with huge energy consumption, I have to wonder why Anthony Hatcher, "associate professor of communications at Elon University" who "live[s] in a 1,600-square-foot house in Durham" chooses to criticize me and my wife, too, who also live in a home "much larger than needed."

While I would be less surprised if his byline included "People's Republic of Berkeley, CA" or "People's Republic of Santa Monica, CA" or "People's Republic of China," I must say that I find his recommendations offensive. If there ever were the right things to say to push all the buttons of a free-market/capitalist/libertarian like myself, he's found nearly all of them.

Why pick on a $110,000 Audi S8 that does 0-60 in "just over five seconds"? Fortune Magazine's March 16th issue described a $1.4Million car [the Bugatti Veyron, 16 cylinders, 253-mph top speed, 1001 hp] that goes 0-60 in 2.5 seconds.

"How many rooms can you physically be in at one time?" he asks. The answer to that, I'm pretty sure, is "one." If you have a spouse or partner and maybe children, is "one" still the right number, since rooms can be shared? Why does any home need more than one room? One per person? Not really vital or life-threatening if unavailable or unaffordable. Many families have shared single rooms in times of scarcity.

But for him to get on his pedestal and proclaim that he or anyone else of his alleged thinking can make or should make a decision as to how many rooms I may or should buy or occupy is patently repulsive.

In matter of fact, my wife and I did downsize when we moved to Raleigh. We moved from an $800,000+ house to a $400,000+ house. It just so happens that the new home has 7 times the land and about 2.1 times the internal square footage. It's our dream-house. Probably the first and last time we'll be able to own a house which has features we've only dreamed about for five or six decades of living in smaller, less "well-appointed" houses.

If my house [or Gore's or Edwards'] "[are] big enough to suck up the power it would take to light an African village," please tell me how the African village will get that power if I cut back? I don't know how to implement that. I don't think my power consumption is taking it away from them. I think that the religious warfare in Africa and the policies of governments in Africa and the lack of homeowner's rights and title rights to their land are doing much more to keep the incandescent lamps from lighting up those African villages.

You're entitled to your point of vies, Mr. Hatcher, as am I. But I'll oppose people with your beliefs down to my last breath who think they know what's best for me or my next-door neighbor, or the family three states away, whether they're living hand-to-mouth or in a McMansion. What may be right for you may be completely wrong for the next guy.

My other true sadness is that your students at Elon may be exposed to your thoughts, speech, writing, preaching and ideas on a regular basis, while they don't have as great an opportunity to hear mine.

10.13.2006: a Hot Day for Debate on Global Warming! Thanks, again Ken and Stuart!

Cows? Maybe not! Perhaps Cosmic Rays! And this comes from experimental data! More than has been demonstrated by any zealots in the Global Warming "debate" so far!

There's also some real information at www.junkscience.com, too.
But zealots are forbidden from reading or understand the data... :) Don't go there!

10.13.2006; Thanks, Ken in Florida...

A cow can produce as much as 500 litres of methane per day.

There are more than two million more like her across the UK.

They are the UK's biggest single source of methane - a gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to global warming.

In fact, cattle are responsible for about 3% of all Britain's greenhouse gases. Reduce that and experts say you not only make farming greener and more efficient, it could help Britain achieve its commitments under the Kyoto agreement.

So, 23 times more potent means that cows contribute 69% (3x23) of the greenhouse effect in the UK. The logical solution is to ban cows worldwide. This would also reduce obesity in humans, cut heart attacks from fatty foods and reduce healthcare costs in general. We should also include pigs, of course.

Actually, in terms of potent gases for global warming, water vapour is 1000 times worse that any gas, so water should also be banned or prevented from evaporating...

10.10.2006. Don't you just love it? Attorney General Bill Lockyer of California wants to sue the big auto companies for adding pollution to the CA skies. Get a load of the following. [Thanks, Ken.]

...suing GM for global warming is the worst kind of political grandstanding.

How about suing the California Dept of Highways because they didn't build enough roads, so all those millions of cars sit clogged in traffic for hours a day, producing vast amounts of CO2?

How about suing the largest employer in the state (the State of California itself, one of the worst sprawling bureaucracies in history) because they force all those people to be on the roads at the same time and don't encourage tele-commuting?

How about suing every owner of an SUV, especially Hummers, for producing a disproportionate amount of CO2 (that will certainly teach those rich Hollywood liberals a lesson!). How about suing the environmental nuts who torched an SUV, and then later learned that the smoke from that vandalism and arson was worse than the pollution produced by 78,000 SUV's driving for a year?

Nope, Lockyer ignores all of those things because he would either end up suing himself, or his rich Hollywood supporters and friends, or nut-case environmentalists. That wouldn't look good for his image of attacking the powerful...

[and who's running for election? Well, it seems to include Bill Lockyer!]

Update: 01.07.2007 to Bill Lockyer: "You're an asshole."

Why?

Read this excerpt from a webpage from the National Taxpayer's Union...

"One of the largest hurdles California must overcome in its suit is that to bring a tort action against auto manufacturers, there must be some element of control on the part of the companies. In past instances, courts have rejected lawsuits against gun manufacturers because the firms had no reasonable means of controlling their product after purchase. Batkins contends that Lockyer’s claim likewise fails the basic test of assigning control.
In addition, the author noted, the chain of causation for a successful suit is tenuous at best. California contends that: 1) the production of cars leads to consumers using them in a manner that pollutes, and 2) this pollution fundamentally changes the environment by increasing global temperatures, in turn 3) harming the very polluters (California drivers) supposedly responsible for the climate change. "This ‘House that Jack Built’ causal chain hardly survives scrutiny in bedtime stories and will not impress a court tasked with separating frivolous claims from legitimate legal inquiries," Batkins added." [my emphasis added.]

How about this, you moron? :

Your own state's lack of foresight, planning and commitment to a highway system capable of handling the number of cars on your state's highways is, in itself, a major cause of air pollution and carbon dioxide creation.
Cars idling in traffic cause much more pollution than if they're able to do reasonable highway speeds, get where they're going and get parked somewhere.

Your lousy government agencies are thus causing the pollution by not creating a highway sytem where all cars can operate at the posted limits all the time.
You should resign as a matter of principle and in shame immediately. Take that to court, idiot!

• suppressing data
• cherry-picking only the facts that you need to support your political position
• having grabbed on to global warming hysteria as a way to push your political agendas:
  • anti-globalization
  • pro-socialism
  • anti-Americanism
  • anti-free-enterprise
  • and just being anti-Bush

If you can't answer the question, you may be simply ignorant, and there's nothing to be ashamed of about that. Ignorance can be cured. Let's continue the discussion until we educate you (and we are possibly educated by you in return: we don't know everything either!).

If you won't answer that question, you don't have an unbiased enough view to be allowed into the discussion, or are too stupid and blinded and biased and not interested in listening to continue it.

From Astronomy Magazine, April 2006, page 14:

"Mesas of dry ice at the martian south pole have been retreating by about 10 feet (3m) per Mars year since Mars Global Surveyor began imaging them in 1999."

Excerpts from two Letters to the Editor:

"Noting the dramatic shrinking of dry-ice mesas at Mars' south pole, ... I wonder if this means Martians are causing global warming by the use of fossil fuels."
and...
"This obviously means the little green men should ratify the Kyoto Protocol before it's too late."

From the Associated Press, published in the San Jose [CA] Mercury News, Friday, January 3, 2003...

Headline: "Ice-sheet melting prompts concern"
Sub-head: "Steady Antarctic phenomenon has potential to significantly raise sea level."
"The West Antarctic Ice Sheet started retreating 10,000 years ago and is still melting. The ice sheet could be gone in 7,000 years, possibly raising worldwide sea levels by 16 feet."

16 feet.

10,000 years ago.

Started.

16 feet higher sea level, 7,000 years from now.

John O. Stone, first author of a study appearing today [01.03.2003] in the journal of Science [sic]: "Our measurements suggest a steady rate of melting, but we couldn't rule out short, rapid events," Stone said.

You didn't mention, Mr. Stone, that you couldn't also not rule out no change in the steady melting, either, did you?

Remember, kids, that there were Ice Ages just tens of thousands of years ago.

Until you hear a good explanation for why they happened, keep in mind that the "Global Warming Crisis" could be reversed by the next Ice Age, and we'd be in as bad or worse shape, as a species, from an Ice Age as from Global Warming.

Remember that next time a doomsday hyper-ecologist tries to scare you.