Natural Climate Change Deniers "Hoist on Own Petard"

The following is my weekly letter to our local weekly newspaper, the Independent Coastal Observer (ICO):

A local natural climate change denier (NCCD) assured ICO readers that she knew what I would write before I wrote it, just as I knew that natural climate change deniers would attack people or organizations, but not use science. Another (NCCD) erroneously wrote that I get my facts from the Heartland Institute, but he is “hoist on his own petard.” Had he actually followed the “tinyurl” links I provide in my letters, he would find them linked to peer-reviewed studies. In fact, in my last letter I linked the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Chapter12, Table 12.4 of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report), in which the IPCC admit their climate alarmism is very unlikely.

About their report I wrote: “Alarmists also ignore the IPCC’s own low-probability estimates for climate change catastrophes. The IPCC now believes that in the 21st Century, Atlantic Ocean circulation collapse is ‘very unlikely,’ ice sheet collapse is ‘exceptionally unlikely,’ and catastrophic release of methane hydrates from melting permafrost is ‘very unlikely.’”

Of all the scientific studies I reference I put the least confidence in the IPCC’s. Although the chairman of the IPCC has stated repeatedly that its report is based solely on peer-reviewed literature, a check of all 18,531 references in the 2007 report found that 5,587 (30%) were not peer-reviewed. The most egregious of the 2007 report’s “grey literature” (non-peer-reviewed studies) was the thoroughly debunked prediction that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, based on an interview published in 2000 in New Scientist (Christian Science Monitor).

The NCCD concluded his letter by requesting I “use and cite only non-biased sources.” Sorry, Mr. NCCD, I‘ll continue to use IPCC and governmental records (less hurricanes, tornados, and droughts; flat global temperature; slower sea-level rise and glacier retreat), even though they are biased, whenever they contradict alarmism.

Wouldn’t you?

To Virgin's Richard Branson - A Challenge to Debate Natural Climate Change

 Richard Branson, founder of Virgin this-and-that, wrote on the Virgin.com website: " And climate deniers need to be called out, debated and rallied against; the science is clear enough now." 

So I put the following into his comments section: 

Hi Richard. I have had a standing public offer to debate in the affirmative that "present climate change is natural" for over five years, and no one has accepted my offer. I have exposed all of my arguments to potential opponents - that this is the coolest warm period of the five warming periods since the end of the Ice Age a bit over 10,000 years ago, and Greenland ice cores that show that 90% of the past 10,000 years were warmer than any of the past 100. At the current warming rate we have a long way to go just to get back up to the average temperature since the end of the Ice Age. That would still leave us much cooler than the Eemian interglacial (warmest period) 125,000 years ago, which was followed by a 100,000-year glacial period (our last Ice Age). All of these are proven facts, none are controversial or conjectural, and all are (apparently) not known by you and others, who I label "natural climate change deniers." Will you debate me?

Dilbert Berated for Using Facts (by Natural Climate Change Deniers)

The following is my weekly letter to our local weekly newspaper:

A recent cartoon featured Dilbert attacked verbally by co-worker “Alice”: “I got your stupid email with your stupid link to that stupid scientific study. I don’t care about your so-called ‘facts.’ I know I’m right!”

Like “Alice,” local writers' emotional venting instead of facts doesn’t advance the natural climate change denier argument. Natural disasters cause great suffering, but would cause even more if the frequency of strong hurricanes, tornados, floods, droughts, and wildfires was as great now as pre-1960. Unfortunately, the past half-century of unusually benign weather tricked people into exercising bad judgment and building their homes in precarious places.

Luckily, I’m not thin skinned. Al Gore at theSocial Good Summit in New York last week likened skeptics like me to homophobes, racists, and violent alcoholics. White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer affiliated my kind with arsonists, hostage-takers and suicide bombers. Aren’t my remarks tame in comparison, Mr. Walker?

Mr. Walker exhibits Liberal thin skin. When Tom Elias uses easily detected false “facts” and is believed, don’t his believers qualify along with him as the opposite of smart? I posed the question “stupid” to facilitate their self-identification.

It’s only because facts support us that we’re so effective. Natural climate change deniers outspend skeptics by at least $1,000 to $1; ExxonMobil hasn’t supported skeptic groups for years, and Big Oil money has gone to extreme green groups.

Chesapeake Energy alone gave $25 million to the Sierra Club for the radical organization’s anti-coal campaign. That one grant is ten times more money than the Heartland Institute received from all fossil fuel energy companies in its entire 29-year history, yet skeptics have the alarmists on the ropes.

Alarmist ad hominem attacks fail while skeptical science prevails. Warming isn’t scary when there’s none for over fifteen years.