Climategate - Cherry Picking

A Salon article on Bjørn Lomborg's "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming," criticizes Mr. Lomborg for "cherry picking" support for his position that resources spent combating global warming could be spent better elsewhere. Eban Goodstein, the Salon reviewer, discredits Mr. Lomborg's benefit-cost analysis for using the most likely outcome, rather than the most dire. Without saying "precautionary principle," that is what Mr. Goodstein is advocating.

To fight fire with fire, the use of the precautionary principle leads to cherry picking the worst-case scenario from the spectrum of possible outcomes. Again and again in his criticism, Mr. Goodstein finds one, maybe two, examples of a prediction that is far beyond the realm of even the IPCC's expectations. Not surprisingly, Dr. James Hansen is the author of most of them, and Al Gore concurs.

However, the central fact is that Hansen/Gore et al construct their apocalyptic prognostications on an element of climate change that has not been demonstrated in any recent periods of even higher temperatures. Apparently they believe - they can't know - the concept that the very limited ability of atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase global temperatures will trigger "positive forcings" - the release of vast quantities of methane from frozen tundra deposits - and those temperatures will then increase far beyond expectations.

Other equally eminent scientists have theorized, on the basis of past warming periods, that negative forcings will dampen, not accentuate, the warming trend. Considering that there is evidence for expecting negative forcing, and none for positive forcing, Mr. Lomborg's position is far more likely.

Recent headlines also add weight to this. The bright light shining on the Climate Research Unit e-mails and records liberated in the UK this week has disclosed that the top "hockey stick" scientists, Drs. Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and others, cherry picked (there's those words again) climate proxies to exaggerate current warming and to understate historical warming. In particular, proxies were used and abused to suppress or eliminate the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period of roughly 800-1300 AD.

The Medieval Warm Period cannot be allowed to stand if the current warming alarmists are to prevail, because the positive forcings their predictions require did not appear when natural climate change gave them the opportunity. In fact, one of the Warmists unknowingly confided to a warming skeptic that "we have to eliminate the Medieval Warming Period."

Unfortunately for the Warmists, the evidences of the Medieval Warming Period, and the even warmer Holocene Climate Optimum which preceded it by 4,000 years, are abundant and irrefutable.

What really must be eliminated is the cherry picking the Warmists use to accuse skeptical scientists of cherry picking, and then their corruption of peer reviews to hide their ethical lapses.

Just the tip of their unethical activities was exposed this week, and much more is coming out as investigators pore over the e-mails.

"Tighten your seat belts."

Climategate - Man-Caused Global Warming is Dead!

I've had so much fun reading the hundreds of e-mails that were hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK, that I forgot that one of my duties as a global-warming skeptic is to help publicize evidence that the alarmists are lying, distorting, or fudging climate science.

A very good spot to get a lot of information directly from the e-mails is the Bishop Hill Blog. Forinstance, Michael Mann, the creator of the discredited "hockey stick" that was/is the core of Al Gore's presentations, discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)

So far all the main stream media reports have only reported the records being hacked, and their only analyses have been that the consensus for man-caused global warming will stand. How this can be concluded without looking at the e-mails involved is beyond me, except it again illustrates how the media wants to advocate rather than report.

Bloggers will have to stay on this and keep pushing the disclosures, or the main stream media will do as usual - ignore it and hope it all goes away.

How reporters can walk - run - away from such a juicy opportunity to engage in momentous investigative reporting boggles my mind. Their editors have to really want them to carry the water for Al Gore to let that happen.

Why Do Muslims Hate Us?

According to Liberals, Muslims don't hate us, we just don't understand them. What we have is a failure to communicate, and if we would just listen to Muslims everything would be wonderful.

I admit I don't understand Muslims. Their religion has never seemed peaceful and tolerant to me, and those seem like worthy expectations of religion.

Thinking about the prescription for peaceful relations with Muslims - improved communications - leads me to consider Muslim violence against other Muslims. Don't Sunnis and Shiites understand each other, live together, worship the same God, yet kill each other viciously and indiscriminately given the opportunity?

When Muslims kill Muslims - Saddam Hussein killed more Muslims than all the Crusaders combined - what chance do we hated infidels have? Suppose you are a gay, or a feminist; will your views be tolerated in Saudi Arabia? Iran? Pakistan? Afghanistan? How about if you're a Christian or Jew? Or a Muslim who wants to be an atheist or convert?

The political correct say we are the problem, not the Islamists.

Such are the fruits of colossal ignorance and stupidity.

Obama Gets Something Right

Obama finally gets something right. He has dithered on many things, the latest Afghanistan, and things have gotten worse.

But his dithering on climate change is the best thing he has done. A Spiegel Online article takes Obama to task for causing the failure of Copenhagen before it fails - Obama Has Failed the World on Climate Change - and for that the world should be truly grateful.

Obama has saved the world from misguided leaders that who would fruitlessly destroy economic progress in the developing nations that will enable their people to adapt to natural climate change.

It's too bad that Obama is clueless about the good he is doing.