Global Warming: Tawk Amongst Y’selves
By Jill Kuraitis, 1-22-07
Editor’s note: In the interest of balance, we are posting this press release about global warming. We hope you’ll take the time to comment.
IDAHO VALUES ALLIANCE PRESS RELEASE, January 22, 2007
Contact: Bryan Fischer (208) 841-2546
Executive Director, Idaho Values Alliance
IVA: GORE’S ENVIRONMENTALISM BAD SCIENCE, HARD ON THE POOR
In anticipation of former Vice President Al Gore’s lecture in Boise on Monday night, the Idaho Values Alliance claims that his radical environmental policies will cause undue hardship for the poor, and should be opposed by all who value the emphasis in the Judeo-Christian tradition on compassion for the neediest among us.
Plus, Gore’s point of view is based on what is likely bad science. This week, a distinguished professor emeritus from Oxford, Nigel Weiss, a former president of the Royal Astronomical Society, said that climate science is anything but settled, contrary to Gore’s assertion, and that the most “obvious explanation” for climate change is not human activity but the “variable behavior of the sun.” He, along with many Russian scientists, actually predicts a climate “crash” in the not-too-distant future that will result in sudden and dramatic global cooling. (Wikipedia has a page devoted to scientists who are skeptics of human-caused global warming:
In addition, meteorologist James Spann said this week that he does not know a single meteorologist who believes in human causation as the primary culprit in global warming, and suggests a “follow the money” approach quickly reveals that gloom-and-doomers have a financial incentive to make humans the culprit, because that’s the only way they can get their hands on significant funding for research.
According to Paul Driessen of the Congress of Racial Equality, environmental policies such as those advocated by Mr. Gore and contained in the Kyoto Protocol will harm minorities. Such policies are very expensive, and will drive up the cost of the basic necessities of life, such as food, shelter, and transportation. This will hurt the poor the most because they are least able to afford the increased strain on limited family budgets.
Said Bryan Fischer, Executive Director of the Idaho Values Alliance, “It is unconscionable for us to make policy decisions based on bad science that will keep the poor in America and around the world mired in poverty. This makes Mr. Gore’s documentary ‘An Inconsiderate Error’ if our objective is to help the poor.
“According to a study done by Management Information Services, if we implement the Kyoto Protocol in America, minority families in the U.S. would lose 1.3 million jobs by 2012, 100,000 minority businesses would be forced to close, and average minority family incomes would plunge by $2,000 a year.
“Public policies that will enslave millions in poverty and worsen the lives of the poor and elderly are by definition unjust and a gross violation of the emphasis in both the Jewish and Christian traditions of compassion for the poor.”
According to the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, over 2 billion people worldwide still do not have electricity, which in turn leads to four million deaths a year due to respiratory illnesses (caused by indoor air pollution from indoor fires), and six million deaths a year due to intestinal diseases caused by unsafe water and spoiled food.
Said Fischer, “There’s a Danish environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg, who says that the cost of Kyoto for just one year will be $1 trillion, which is five times what it would cost us to provide the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation. If we truly care for the poor, it makes much better sense to make energy cheaper and more accessible rather than more expensive and harder to get. For many people around the world, access to cheaper energy is literally a matter of life and death.”
Fischer points to the ethanol industry as an example of the unintended consequences of well-meaning environmental activism. Ethanol must be heavily subsidized, since it takes more than a gallon of petroleum to get each gallon of ethanol from field to market. Worse, producing ethanol is consuming more and more of the corn produced in the U.S., which is rapidly raising the cost of corn for the poor in Mexico, where tortillas are as much of a staple as bread is in America.
Said Fischer, “An Associated Press article ran this week that said the cost of tortillas in Mexico has gone up 14 percent in the last year, in part because ethanol plants are gobbling up corn supplies. With half of Mexico living in poverty, how does that represent compassion in any way, shape or form?
“The Hispanic community ought to send a crew to Taco Bell Arena to hand out a frozen tortilla to everybody who shows up to listen to Mr. Gore, to remind them that there is a real human cost to radical environmentalism.”
SCIENTIFIC ERRORS IN “AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH” – AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
In addition to components that are either “one-sided,” “misleading,”“exaggerated,” or “speculative,” a study done by the American Enterprise Institute indicates that Mr. Gore’s documentary got the following things – in addition to others – just plain wrong:
* Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson’s reconstruction of tropical climatehistory actually indicates that several decades of the Medieval Warm Period were as warm or warmer than any recent decade (despite Mr. Gore’s assertion that the Medieval Warm Period was “tiny”)
* CO2 is not “the most important greenhouse gas” – water vapor is
* The so-called “Hockey Stick” analogy is now widely acknowledged to have been built on flawed methodology and inappropriate data
* CO2 levels are actually increasing at half the rate Gore claims
* The rate of global warming is actually not accelerating but has been constant for the past 30 years
* Europe’s killer heat wave of 2003 was caused by an atmospheric circulation anomaly, not global warming
* Hurricane Katrina was actually caused by cold air – sea temperatures in 2004 were cooler than normal, but unusually cold air produced the same kind of heat flux from the ocean that fuels hurricanes in warmer waters
* There is downward trend in tornado frequency since 1950, not an increase
* Contrary to Gore’s confident predictions of increasingly severe tropical weather, 2006 was one of the quietest years on record for hurricane activity
[End of article]
You should be commended for publishing an alternative viewpoint.
I feel it's unfortunate that the issue has been politicized. The climate affects everybody, from the Commies to the Nazis.
If, as Mr. Fischer states, "it takes more than a gallon of petroleum to get each gallon of ethanol from field to market," THAT is pretty pathetic, huh? BUY CORN!! (I was also interested to see, when I visited Nebraska awhile back, that corn-burning stoves are becoming very popular. They are similar in operation to the "pellet stoves" that are more familiar in these parts. You dump a bag of dried corn into the hopper, and it feeds into the stove, producing flame and heat.)
I've criticized Algore for not "walking the walk." He jets all over the world, wringing his hands and warning his disciples about the Inconvenient Truth. I believe that's a valid criticism, of Gore and of his most devoted followers. How many of the 10,000 who attend in Boise will make any lifestyle changes as a result? As a society we've grown accustomed to our effortless transportation and our remote-controls, and our kitchens-ful of awesome appliances for every need, and our warm-in-winter, cool-in-summer houses. (And all the goods and services that require energy to produce.) Can't we do ANYTHING without a government mandate?
A "liberal" friend of mine chided me for making fun of Algore. And proceeded to tell me his level of commitment. He and his wife not only went to see the movie, but they've decided when they die, it will be said of them, "They never owned or drove a SUV." And he was serious! (He's WAY more committed than the people that saw the movie, and are only willing to put a pro-environment bumper sticker on the back of the SUV, huh?)
Fischer's rhetoric is a shameless example of playing politics with the poor. This isn't about the poor. It's about the rich - the people who stand to lose the most if our selfishness and avarice continue. Why are anti-science people so hell bent on debunking climate change? Because they know they are the ones who have the most to lose (or less to gain if they're upper middle class people aspiring to be rich).
Although I look forward to hearing Gore tonight, I don't care what causes climate change. I just need to look at the brown muck hanging over Boise on inversion days to know that we need to do something.
I also appreciate an alternative view. The very fact that those who believe in human caused global warming feel compelled to use name calling to intimidate tends to diminish their message. I keep going back to the 70s when I was raising a family and we were facing a global freeze (much easier to believe if you're spending the winter in Wyoming). Believers have all sorts of reasons to explain away the hurricanes they predicted and the warm winters, but the one I like best is the one where they insist the global warming is causing the cold temperatures.
Comment By Craig Moore, 1-22-07Jill, I hope you put a stick in your mouth to keep from shattering your teeth in your effort to be balanced. ;)
Julie, regarding the poor see: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/11/news/edreiter.php
Regarding global warming see: http://www.springerlink.com/content/g28u12g2617j5021/?p=dffd7a1c999b4ea299983ec4f0a27914&pi=2
Regarding Al Gore and Bjorn Lomborg see: http://online.wsj.com/google_login.html?url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116909379096479919.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Regarding Greenland see: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/11/17/cooling-the-debate-a-longer-record-of-greenland-air-temperature/
Craig, you'll have to explain that comment; I'm clueless about its meaning.
Comment By SM, 1-25-07Thanks for presenting the "other" side of the story. You do a service for those that are tired of having the media shove this "global warming" baloney down our throats. I tend to agree with those who say the only reason many scientists are doing this is to get more funding for their "questionable" research. If one knows or has researched anything about CO2 on the planet earth (blamed for global warming), that person would know that wo/man's activities here represent only about 5% of the CO2 emitted and re-absorbed by the ecology of this planet. Power generation is only a fraction (less than 1%) of that 5%. Reducing CO2 by a fraction of a fraction presents almost no chance of changing any kind of global warming effect. The whole issue of manmade CO2 as a precursor to dooms-day is naive, and is primarily a political event. I can't believe this film was nominated for an award.
Comment By Irwin Horowitz, 1-25-07SM,
I trust that you have references for the statistics that you give in your post (give us a link or other reference to a published scientific article that supports your assertion).
Real refreshing to read the other side of coin. Really get tired of this global warming garbage, when we know that the earth has its cycles and this is one of them. Stick around and it will cool off.
Cindy
http://www.edmondsun.com/opinion/local_story_010123756.html?keyword=topstory
http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759
http://www.cato.org/realaudio/michaels-on-fox-news-01-02-.html
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6622
http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/michaels.shtml
So, SM, I've looked at your references. One was an op-ed piece in a small town Oklahoma newspaper written by a geophysicist. Another was a rambling speech by that noted protector of the environment, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma (sarcasm intended). Two more come from that unbiased think tank, the Cato Institute (sarcasm intended again), and the last is a link to the webpage of a climate scientist from UVa. None of them are peer-reviewed scientific articles. And none of them even mentioned the statistics from your initial post that I had called into question.
For more on the global warming debate (and more on my take on it), you should check out the discussion following the blog post on former VP Al Gore's appearance here in Boise. About 1/2 way through that discussion, I join in and add my $0.02 worth.
Bryan Fischer's attacks on environmentalists and the science of global warming is about as reputable as he. I've chronicaled the lies and deceptions that Bryan Fischer has published on his site, at very great length. If you'd like to see how easy it is, just go to http://www.43rdstateblues.com
Bryan hasn't earned a reputation for credibility, either on political issues or on scientific ones. The "scientists" he quotes are funded by petroleum companies or have been rebuked by the real scientists. In one instance Bryan's "scientist" claimed that snow buildup on Greenland glaciers was outpacing the sloughing of ice from the sheets. While correct on the surface, he forgot to mention water density as a function of snowfall vs. glacial sloughing. The water density contained on Greenland is down to a serious fraction of what it was 20 years ago and the trend is increasing, significantly.
As well, Bryan has used the Ann Coulter defense against global warming: If it's cold out today, global warming is a sham. (shortened from many many posts of Bryan's. See the end of his January 18th post on his web site).
If lying and deception are values of Idaho, then yes, look to Bryan as a leader for information. Fortunately they arn't my values.
Kuraitis' article is itself based on unsound evidence. She quotes Professor Weiss of the University of Cambridge in support of her argument, but has used information originally published in an inaccurate article by Lawrence Solomon in the Toronto National Post, which has spawned various unfounded arguments in blogs all over the internet. Mr Solomon got his facts wrong, which is unsurprising as he didn't even interview Professor Weiss himself. Weiss' research into solar activity has shown that it may have an effect on climate change, but that this is MINIMAL and insignificant compared to the global warming that we are already experiencing - and very small compared to what will happen if we continue to burn fossil fuel at the present rate.
In his own words (I know these as Professor Weiss is my father):
"It has been established from satellite measurements that during the 11-year solar cuycle the solar irradiance drops by about 0.1% from sunspot maximum to sunspot minimum, corresponding to a drop of around 0.1 degrees Celsius in global temperature. There might be a similar fall in temperature in a Grand Minimum. Such modulation has occurred several times in the last thousand years and may have been associated with climatic variation -- but we know that global temperature has only varied by about 0.2 degrees Celsius during that period (though fluctuations in local climate have been more severe). That is a small effect compared to the changes that we have experienced in the last half-century, and is much smaller than the changes predicted for the future.
It would, of course, be very interesting to experience a Grand Minimum, and it would be satisfying to be able to calibrate the influence of solar variability on climate. But I have always been careful to maintain that this does not affect the issue of global warming, which is caused by greenhouse gases, and that the concentration of CO2 is rising owing to burning fossil fuel."
For further information, please see his webpage at http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/now/.
As my father is on holiday, we, his children, are defending his scientifc reputation on his behalf. It makes us all very sad and angry to see his research being used to such bad ends by ignorant deniers of Global Warming.
Dear Ms. Weiss, Dr. Shaviv also has a bone to pick with Mr. Solomon's methods. See: http://www.sciencebits.com/NoInterview Dr. Shaviv points the finger at cosmic and solar radiation causes rather than CO2 as the driver.
Beyond the polarizing debate there is a breath of fresh air. Dr. Peilke et al. recently refocused the debate. Their paper can be read in Nature. Here is an account of their work: http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_50835.shtml In my opinion, those scientists are spot on as to where the debate should shift.