Al Gore hides from Blizzard, promises heat wave

[fossten]

Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Analysis: Al Gore Ducks Northeast Blizzard
Phil Brennan
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2007

As a blizzard of snow and ice pummels the Northeast after trouncing the Midwest, and waves of Arctic cold fronts drop much of America below sub freezing weather, the $64,000 question is, Where is Al Gore?

Gore claims that global warming is an immediate problem facing the United States and the world, and places like New York and Chicago could feel like Caribbean haunts.

If there is any doubt that God has a sense of humor, it has to be dispelled by a headline in Wednesday's Drudge Report: "House hearing on 'warming of the planet' canceled after ice storm."

He followed up with this: "Save it for a sunny day: Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area canceling screening of Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' because of a snowstorm."

What must have evoked the loudest laugh in heaven is the notion that if global warming is really occurring, puny mankind is going to overcome it by legislation and business regulation that would strangle the U.S. economy and be overseen by the super efficient United Nations. [Editor's Note: Read more about how Al Gore and his friends spin and fib about global warming -- Go Here Now.]

In a NewsMax.com column, I made a prediction that was greeted with scorn by the promoters of the global warming theory. One even called me "evil."

Here's what I wrote: "Within the next 24 months, some areas of the U.S. will have 20 feet of snow falling in just one storm." This was around the time parts of Japan got hit by a 13-foot snowfall.

Last month Colorado had about 20 feet of snow fall in little more than a week's time. Now areas of northern New York State are reeling under more than 12 feet of snow. [I believe that deserves an *owned*]

Picture a person 6 feet tall with 6 feet of snow above the top of his head, and you'll get an idea of what a dozen feet of snow amounts to.

My prediction was based on a very simple fact. Over the past two years, areas of the United States, including New England, had twice experienced rainfall of 20 inches in a single storm.

If 20 inches of precipitation fell as snow, it would total 20 feet.

And there are solid reasons why an area that got hit with 20 inches of rain in the summer and fall would be a prime candidate to experience 20 feet of snow in the winter, especially if levels of precipitation are rising.

And precipitation levels are rising — for a very good reason.

The world's oceans are being heated by underwater tectonic activity — underwater volcanic eruptions and blisteringly hot magma seeping up from cracks in the sea floor.

The heated ocean water creates high levels of CO2 that it sends aloft along with huge amounts of moisture. That moisture becomes precipitation — rain in the spring, summer, and fall, and snow in the winter. Increased amounts of moisture in the upper atmosphere equals increased amounts of precipitation.

The hotter the oceans, the more water vapor sent heavenward and the heavier the precipitation. This explains the large number of record-breaking rainfalls we've been seeing in the past couple of years — with as noted above, areas of the United States getting 20 inches of rain in a day or so.

As for that dreaded greenhouse gas, CO2, atmospheric levels of which now exceed 400 parts per million (ppm), it is important to note that paleological records show that every time CO2 levels have exceeded 300 ppm there has been an ice age. Every time — without exception.

The same records show that there have been a series of ice ages over the past 5 million years, naturally occurring every 100,000 years, with about 90,000 years of glaciation followed by about 12,000 years of interglacial climate.

The last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. Clearly we are in line for the next period of glaciation. But more about that later.

Suffice it to say that unless Al Gore has managed to repeal a demonstrated law of nature, the iceman cometh.

The befuddled Gore keeps blathering about how the oceans are being heated by global warming, instead of the warming being created by the oceans, as the facts clearly show.

On his Web site iceagenow.com, Robert W. Felix provides the following information about ocean warming as a result of hydrothermic activity under the seas.

"A new type of volcano may be heating up the floor of the western Pacific Ocean," says an article posted on National Geographic News and on Yahoo. "Scientists suspect the new volcanoes occur at cracks in tectonic plates caused by stress as the plates slide past each other. A group of small volcanoes called petit spot volcanoes has been discovered far from the tectonic-plate boundaries (like mid-oceanic ridges) that often spawn volcanoes, earthquakes, and other geologic activity.

"Geoscientist Naoto Hirano's team believes that the source of these volcanoes is melted rock from the upper mantle, which has been squeezed through cracks in the tectonic plate above. This type of [activity produces] tiny volcanoes, possibly now active, on the old, cold subducting Pacific plate,' said Hirano from his office at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. 'This petit spot volcano theory suggests that this type of eruption can occur wherever the oceanic plate is flexed. These small volcanoes may be widespread on ocean floors where the mantle just under the crust is squeezed out by tectonic forces when one plate moves under another, the researchers explained.

"'Dubbed "petit spots," these new types of volcanoes are difficult to spot using satellite technology. Specific geophysical and sampling expeditions would have to be carried out in order to locate them,' Hirano explained."

Scientists working in the southern Atlantic Ocean have found a 407 degree centigrade hydrothermal vent, the hottest yet known on an ocean floor. Expedition leader Andrea Koschinsky of International University in Bremen, Germany, and her team found the hydrothermal vent just south of the equator on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at a depth of 2,990 meters. The vent is located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the African and South American continental plates are moving apart at the relatively sedate rate of 3.2 centimeter a year. In the Pacific, by comparison, the Pacific and Nazca plates are speeding apart at some 15 centimeter per year.

German-American researchers discovered more hydrothermal activity at the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean than anyone ever imagined. The Gakkel ridge is a gigantic volcanic mountain chain stretching beneath the Arctic Ocean. With its deep valleys 5,500 meters beneath the sea surface and its 5,000 meter- high summits, Gakkel ridge is far mightier than the Alps. Two research icebreakers, the USCGC Healy from the United States and the German PFS Polarstern, joined forces in the international expedition AMORE (Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Expedition). In attendance were scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and other international institutions.

The scientists had expected that the Gakkel ridge would exhibit "anemic" magmatism. Instead, they found "surprisingly strong magmatic activity in the west and the east of the ridge and one of the strongest hydrothermal activities ever seen at mid-ocean ridges." The Gakkel ridge extends about 1,800 kilometers beneath the Arctic Ocean from north of Greenland to Siberia, and is the northernmost portion of the mid-ocean ridge system. To their surprise, the researchers found high levels of volcanic activity. Indeed, magmatism was "dramatically" higher than expected.

Hydrothermal hot springs on the seafloor were also far more abundant than predicted. "We expected this to be a hydrothermally dead ridge, and almost every time our water measurement instrument came up, they showed evidence of hydrothermal activity, and once we even 'saw' an active hot spring on the sea floor," said Dr. Jonathan Snow, the leader of the research group from the Max Planck Institute.

Remember, that "magmatism" is red hot magma seeping up from the ocean floor. It's like putting a burner under a pot of water.

In short, heated oceans are warming the globe and setting up a scenario that includes among its consequences more and increasingly violent hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards.

In 1979, Genevieve Woillard, a pollen specialist in France, concluded from detailed studies that the shift from a warm, interglacial climate to ice age conditions at the beginning of the last ice age, some 100,000 years ago, took "less than 20 years." Her observations of the decline of European forests led her to conclude we may be in a similar period of rapid climatic change.

Research has shown that this 20-year period is one in which Mother Nature wreaks havoc on humanity.

If the unchallenged results of the work of Woillard and others who studied past ice ages are any indication of the pace of glaciation, once it starts, the transition period is a mere 20 years or so. And we may be well into that 20-year period now. Woillard estimated that the period before that final 20 years — when the earth began gearing up for an end to the interglacial period — could be as long as 150 years and as short as 75 years."

According to Woillard's studies and those of other paleological climate researchers, the transition between interglacial and glacial periods is one of increasing violence — more volcanic eruptions, storms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.

We are being bombarded with horror stories about how the arctic regions are warming and the polar bears are disappearing (actually their number numbers have increased by some 20,000) but we are not informed by Mr. Gore and his acolytes as to how a warming arctic region can continue to send more and more record breaking cold waves southward, creating the incredibly frigid weather much of the northern U.S. is shivering under.

If your refrigerator is running low on freon it will not keep its contents cold. If the arctic is our refrigerator, and the refrigerator is rapidly running out of coolant, how can it create colder and colder weather fronts?

The mechanics here are simple. The earth is getting warmer in some areas thanks to the heat being given off by the seas – picture standing next to a pot of boiling water – you'll feel the heat. Stand next to a heated ocean and you'll feel the warmth. That melting ice in part of the arctic regions is probably the result of hydrothermal activity in the Gakkel Ridge under the Arctic Ocean.

When that warm air coming north from the tropics meets the frigid air coming south from the pole, it creates violence. And the hotter the air from the south and the colder the air from the north, the more violent the collision will be. Tornadoes, violent storms, and blizzards are some of the results.

This process feeds on itself. As the amount of atmospheric moisture increases more precipitation is sent poleward, resulting in more snowfall to build heavier and heavier polar ice packs which fail to decrease in summertime because the cloud cover created by the moisture-laden air transported from the tropics prevents any thawing.

As the ice packs grow deeper and heavier, more magma is squeezed out and sent toward the equators, creating more volcanic activity, which spews more and more volcanic ash into the upper atmosphere, along with enormous quantities of greenhouse gasses. This results in greater and greater amounts of moisture-laden clouds being sent poleward. And so on.

As the glaciation process continues, winters will get longer and longer; that's colder air reaches farther and farther toward the equator. Summers will get shorter and shorter, and growing seasons will slowly vanish.

Areas previously blessed with temperate climates are transformed into subarctic regions, and the subtropics turn colder and colder.

And all this can happen in a matter of a very few years. So few, that the world may very well learn that the interglacial period has been replaced by the glaciation process before the end of the next decade — or even earlier.

On his Web site, Bob Felix cites facts ignored or lied about by the global warming alarmists. He shows that despite their claims that the worlds glaciers are melting, fully 75 percent are actually growing.

In response to claims that oceans levels are rising and threatening to drown New York City, he shows they are actually falling.

Finally, what mankind faces now is not glaciation burying cities under miles of ice – that's tens of thousands of years away. In our immediate future is the beginning of the process which starts with a bang – that 20-year interim period I think the record shows we are now experiencing. The effects will be more or less immediate, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. If I'm correct in all of this, we'll know it over the next couple of years.

As for the current media fed hysteria, let me finish with this: Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, told the publication "Hospodárské noviny," a Czech economics daily, that "Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution; it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor."

"Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice."

 

[Marcus]

Let's see how many different font sizes I can use.

Junk Science
David Bellamy's Inaccurate and Selective Figures on Glacier Shrinkage
are a Boon to Climate Change Deniers
GEORGE MONBIOT / The Guardian (UK) 10may2005​

For the past three weeks, a set of figures has been working a hole in my mind. On April 16, New Scientist published a letter from the famous botanist David Bellamy. Many of the world's glaciers, he claimed, "are not shrinking but in fact are growing ... 555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980". His letter was instantly taken up by climate change deniers. And it began to worry me. What if Bellamy was right?

He is a scientist, formerly a senior lecturer at the University of Durham. He knows, in other words, that you cannot credibly cite data unless it is well-sourced. Could it be that one of the main lines of evidence of the impact of global warming — the retreat of the world's glaciers — is wrong?

The question could scarcely be more important. If man-made climate change is happening, as the great majority of the world's climatologists claim, it could destroy the conditions that allow human beings to remain on the planet. The effort to cut greenhouse gases must come before everything else. This won't happen unless we can be confident that the science is right. Because Bellamy is president of the Conservation Foundation, the Wildlife Trusts, Plantlife International and the British Naturalists' Association, his statements carry a great deal of weight. When, for example, I challenged the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders over climate change, its spokesman cited Bellamy's position as a reason for remaining sceptical.

So last week I telephoned the World Glacier Monitoring Service and read out Bellamy's letter. I don't think the response would have been published in Nature, but it had the scientific virtue of clarity: "This is complete bullsh*t." A few hours later, they sent me an email: "Despite his scientific reputation, he makes all the mistakes that are possible." He had cited data that was simply false, he had failed to provide references, he had completely misunderstood the scientific context and neglected current scientific literature. The latest studies show unequivocally that most of the world's glaciers are retreating.

But I still couldn't put the question out of my mind. The figures that Bellamy cited must have come from somewhere. I emailed him to ask for his source. After several requests, he replied to me at the end of last week. The data, he said, came from a website called www.iceagenow.com. Iceagenow was constructed by a man called Robert W Felix to promote his self-published book about "the coming ice age". It claims that sea levels are falling, not rising; that the Asian tsunami was caused by the "ice age cycle"; and that "underwater volcanic activity — not human activity — is heating the seas".

Is Felix a climatologist, a volcanologist or an oceanographer? Er, none of the above. His biography describes him as a "former architect". His website is so bonkers that I thought at first it was a spoof. Sadly, he appears to believe what he says. But there, indeed, was all the material that Bellamy cited in his letter, including the figures — or something resembling the figures — he quoted. "Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich." The source, which Bellamy also cited in his email to me, was given as "the latest issue of 21st Century Science and Technology".

21st Century Science and Technology? It sounds impressive, until you discover that it is published by Lyndon LaRouche. Lyndon LaRouche is the American demagogue who in 1989 received a 15-year sentence for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax-code violations. He has claimed that the British royal family is running an international drugs syndicate, that Henry Kissinger is a communist agent, that the British government is controlled by Jewish bankers, and that modern science is a conspiracy against human potential.

It wasn't hard to find out that this is one of his vehicles: LaRouche is named on the front page of the magazine's website, and the edition Bellamy cites contains an article beginning: "We in LaRouche's Youth Movement find ourselves in combat with an old enemy that destroys human beings ... it is empiricism."

Oh well, at least there is a source for Bellamy's figures. But where did 21st Century Science and Technology get them from? It doesn't say. But I think we can make an informed guess, for the same data can be found all over the internet. They were first published online by Professor Fred Singer, one of the very few climate change deniers who has a vaguely relevant qualification (he is, or was, an environmental scientist). He posted them on his website, www.sepp.org, and they were then reproduced by the appropriately named junkscience.com, by the Cooler Heads Coalition, the US National Centre for Public Policy Research and countless others. They have even found their way into the Washington Post.

They are constantly quoted as evidence that man-made climate change is not happening. But where did they come from? Singer cites half a source: "A paper published in Science in 1989." Well, the paper might be 16 years old, but at least, and at last, there is one. Surely?

I went through every edition of Science published in 1989, both manually and electronically. Not only did it contain nothing resembling those figures, throughout that year there was no paper published in this journal about glacial advance or retreat.

So it wasn't looking too good for Bellamy, or Singer, or any of the deniers who have cited these figures. But there was still one mystery to clear up. While Bellamy's source claimed that 55% of 625 glaciers are advancing, Bellamy claimed that 555 of them — or 89% — are advancing. This figure appears to exist nowhere else. But on the standard English keyboard, 5 and % occupy the same key. If you try to hit %, but fail to press shift, you get 555, instead of 55%. This is the only explanation I can produce for his figure. When I challenged him, he admitted that there had been "a glitch of the electronics".

So, in Bellamy's poor typing, we have the basis for a whole new front in the war against climate science. The 555 figure is now being cited as definitive evidence that global warming is a "fraud", a "scam", a "lie". I phoned New Scientist to ask if Bellamy had requested a correction. He had not.

It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in the palm of your hand. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world's most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals. You must, if you are David Bellamy, embrace instead the claims of an eccentric former architect, which are based on what appears to be a non-existent data set. And you must do all this while calling yourself a scientist.

 

[fossten]

Monbiot is one of the most leftist, conspiracy-theory, demagogue bloggers out there. He is the epitome of what he describes Bellamy to be, just on the other side. His website is replete with garbage, spewed leftist anti-americanism, and bullsh*t.

Here it is: http://www.monbiot.com/

Oh, and by the way, he's trying to push his own book: Heat: how to stop the planet burning.

The man is a kook, but it's not surprising that you'd latch onto him, although I doubt you are aware of the man's hateful roots.

Here is one example of the man's hate-filled rhetoric.

Israel’s Attack Was Premeditated
Posted August 8, 2006
Hizbullah’s capture of Israeli soldiers provided the excuse for an assault planned for months.


By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 8th August 2006

Whatever we think of Israel’s assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to agree about one fact: that it was a response, however disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated this “fact” in my last column, when I wrote that “Hizbullah fired the first shots”. This being so, the Israeli government’s supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It’s an important question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.

Since Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the “blue line” between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line “on an almost daily basis” between 2001 and 2003, and “persistently” until 2006(1). These incursions “caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas”. On some occasions Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with anti-aircraft guns.

In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005 and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN records, “none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation”(2).

On May 26th this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad – Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub – were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency(3). In June a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994(4). Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region “remained tense and volatile”, UNIFIL says it was “generally quiet” until July 12th(5).

There has been a heated debate on the internet about whether the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah that day were captured in Israel or in Lebanon(6), but it now seems pretty clear that they were seized in Israel. This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to have be found sneaking around the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Aitaa al-Chaab. Now it states simply that “the Islamic Resistance captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine”(7). Three other Israeli soldiers were killed by the militants. There is also some dispute about when, on July 12th, Hizbullah first fired its rockets; but UNIFIL makes it clear that the firing took place at the same time as the raid – 9 am. Its purpose seems to have been to create a diversion. No one was hit.

But there is no serious debate about why the two soldiers were captured: Hizbullah was seeking to exchange them for the 15 prisoners of war taken by the Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon(8) and (in breach of article 118 of the third Geneva convention(9)) never released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over the prisoners, it would – without the spillage of any more blood – have retrieved its men and reduced the likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli government refused to negotiate. Instead – well, we all know what happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33 Israeli civilians have been killed so far, and a million Lebanese displaced from their homes.

On July 12th, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years, by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail.”(10) The attack, he said, would last for three weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper that “of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared … By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board.”(11)

A “senior Israeli official” told the Washington Post that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a “unique moment” for wiping out Hizbullah(12). The New Statesman’s editor John Kampfner says he was told by more than one official source that the United States government knew in advance of Israel’s intention to take military action in Lebanon(13). The Bush administration told the British government(14).

Israel’s assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse. It was also unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah had been building up munitions close to the border, as its current rocket attacks show. But so had Israel. Just as Israel could assert that it was seeking to deter incursions by Hizbullah, Hizbullah could claim – also with justification – that it was trying to deter incursions by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back from the Israeli border by the Lebanese government and disarmed. Yes, the raid and the rocket attack on July 12th were unjustified, stupid and provocative, like just about everything that has taken place around the border for the past six years. But the suggestion that Hizbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or constitutes an existential threat to the state is preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts of war have been minor ones, and nearly all of them reactive.

So it is not hard to answer the question of what we would have done. First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed groups in Lebanon with violations of the blue line – in particular the persistent flights across the border. Third, release the prisoners of war who remain unlawfully incarcerated in Israel. Fourth, continue to defend the border, while maintaining the diplomatic pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much more feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is my challenge to the supporters of the Israeli government: do you dare to contend that this programme would have caused more death and destruction than the current adventure has done?

What a piece of human debris. Do you want me to post more of his articles?

 

[Marcus]

What exactly in the article you posted do you consider "hateful"? Or is any criticism whatsoever of Israeli policy automatically considered anti-Semitic?

 

[fossten]

Cleveland Weathermen Slam Global Warming Alarmists and Al Gore
Posted by Noel Sheppard on February 16, 2007 - 11:24.

What’s that about a consensus concerning anthropogenic global warming? Well, regardless of the assertions by such experts as Al Gore and Ellen Goodman, more and more professionals actually involved in the climate industry are speaking out against this man-made myth.

The most recent announcement by skeptics came during a panel discussion Tuesday evening in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. As reported by the Plain Dealer (emphasis mine throughout):

It's not that Mark Johnson, Dick Goddard, Mark Nolan, Jon Laufman or former Cleveland weatherman Don Webster disbelieve the data entirely.

But they're skeptical, and they don't believe that it's necessarily our fault or that we should panic over it.

The article explained why they’re skeptical:

"We have maybe 100 years of data on a rock that's 6 billion years old," said Johnson, a WEWS Channel 5 weatherman. "Mother Nature tends to even herself out, and the fact is, the Earth is cyclical."

Goddard, WJW Channel 8 meteorologist, said scientists have flip-flopped on the matter: "I have a file an inch thick from 30 years ago that says the planet was cooling," he told the crowd of several hundred.

They cautioned listeners not to put too much stock in what they said was an insufficient history of warming.

"The term global warming' strikes fear in the heart of people every time you say it, but it's simply a rise in temperature over time, and it's happened before," said Nolan, meteorologist at WKYC Channel 3. "I'm not sure which is more arrogant for humans: to say we caused it or to say we're going to fix it." [WOW! You said a mouthful, there, buddy!]

Well said. The article continued:

Laufman, who has free-lanced for WOIO Channel 19 and taught meteorology courses at several local colleges, including Case Western Reserve University, also referenced history.

"There was also a significant spike in world temperatures during the 1400s -- and that was well before the Industrial Revolution," he said "We haven't studied it long enough to know what causes global warming."

Of course, no discussion about global warming can be complete without a reference to the former vice president and the nation's chief fear-monger:

Even Webster, who now lives in Hilton Head, S.C., but flew in this week to moderate the discussion, was flippant.

"Where's Al Gore now?" he joked with the audience, referring to the former vice president and his documentary film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which argues the case for global warming. "You can bet he's not in New York, where they've got nearly 12 feet of snow right now."

[snip]

Of course, Al Gore is supposed to hold a massive symposium on GW later this year - um - in July. How conveeeeeeeenient.

 

[fossten]

Global Hot Air: Part III
By Thomas Sowell
Thursday, February 15, 2007

If you take the mainstream media seriously, you might think that every important scientist believes that "global warming" poses a great threat, and that we need to make drastic changes in the way we live, in order to avoid catastrophes to the environment, to various species, and to ourselves.

The media play a key role in perpetuating such beliefs. Often they seize upon every heat wave to hype global warming, but see no implications in record-setting cold weather, such as many places have been experiencing lately.

Remember how the unusually large number of hurricanes a couple of years ago was hyped in the media as being a result of global warming, with more such hurricanes being predicted to return the following year and the years thereafter?

But, when not one hurricane struck the United States all last year, the media had little or nothing to say about the false predictions they had hyped. It's heads I win and tails you lose.

Are there serious scientists who specialize in weather and climate who have serious doubts about the doomsday scenarios being pushed by global warming advocates? Yes, there are.

There is Dr. S. Fred Singer, who set up the American weather satellite system, and who published some years ago a book titled "Hot Talk, Cold Science." More recently, he has co-authored another book on the subject, "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years."

There have been periods of global warming that lasted for centuries -- and periods of global cooling that also lasted for centuries. So the issue is not whether the world is warmer now than at some time in the past but how much of that warming is due to human beings and how much can we reduce future warming, even if we drastically reduce our standard of living in the attempt.

Other serious scientists who are not on the global warming bandwagon include a professor of meteorology at MIT, Richard S. Lindzen.

His name was big enough for the National Academy of Sciences to list it among the names of other experts on its 2001 report that was supposed to end the debate by declaring the dangers of global warming proven scientifically.

Professor Lindzen then objected and pointed out that neither he nor any of the other scientists listed ever saw that report before it was published. It was in fact written by government bureaucrats -- as was the more recently published summary report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is also touted as the final proof and the end of the discussion.

You want more experts who think otherwise? Try a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, Patrick J. Michaels, who refers to the much ballyhooed 2001 IPCC summary as having "misstatements and errors" that he calls "egregious."

A professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, David R. Legates, likewise referred to the 2001 IPCC summary as being "often in direct contrast with the scientific report that accompanies it." It is the summaries that the media hype. The full 2007 report has not even been published yet.

Skeptical experts in other countries around the world include Duncan Wingham, a professor of climate physics at the University College, London, and Nigel Weiss of Cambridge University.

The very attempt to silence all who disagree about global warming ought to raise red flags.

Anyone who remembers the 1970s should remember the Club of Rome report that was supposed to be the last word on economic growth grinding to a halt, "overpopulation" and a rapidly approaching era of mass starvation in the 1980s.

In reality, the 1980s saw increased economic growth around the world and, far from mass starvation, an increase in obesity and agricultural surpluses in many countries. But much of the media went for the Club of Rome report and hyped the hysteria.

Many in the media resent any suggestion that they are either shilling for an ideological agenda or hyping whatever will sell newspapers or get higher ratings on TV.

Here is their chance to check out some heavyweight scientists specializing in weather and climate, instead of taking Al Gore's movie or the pronouncements of government bureaucrats and politicians as the last word.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.