Julie Walsh

From Classically Liberal Blog

Another warming story doesn't hold up.

I have long argued that when the mainstream media reports on global warming that they play fast and loose with their facts. And the New York Times is certainly no exception.

The Times has just reported that duck hunting in Missouri is going through changes due to a warming climate in Missouri. They claim that rising temperatures have changed the behavior of ducks though they confess that “Scientists and state wildlife officials say there is not clear-cut data to support the reports of changes in duck behavior…” But political lobbying groups like the National Wildlife Federation are quoted as saying: “This actually is happening.”

I was curious and decided to check the historical data. The Times sets their story in Rich Hill, Missouri. The closest weather station to Rich Hill is just 25 miles away in Appleton City. So I looked at the annual mean of the monthly mean temperature for that station since 1900. And the data simply doesn’t support the claims made by the Times reporter.

Here is the data as supplied by the United States Historical Climatology Network. What sticks out rather dramatically is that the most recent 50 years were considerably cooler than the previous 50 years. Missouri didn’t warm up over the last half century — if anything it cooled.

Look at the peak years for temperatures. In recent years only one year exceeded an annual mean in excess of 57 degrees and one was almost that warn. But from the mid-1950s back to 1900 we find 13 years in excess of 57 degrees.

Similarly look at the coolest years in Missouri over the last century. The warmest mean temperature for any year was 1954, over half a century ago. The second warmest year was in the early 1920s, third was in the early 30s, fourth in the 1940s. In fact all of the ten hottest years in Missouri, since 1900, were prior to 1955.

Routinely the New York Times makes claims about temperatures in specific localities rising in recent years in stories about global warming. Not one of such stories that I’ve read bothered to check the historical data.

From Marc Morano, Inhofe Senate EPW Press Blog

BALI, Indonesia – An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to "have the courage to do nothing" in response to UN demands.

Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt message for UN climate conference participants on Monday.

"Climate change is a non problem. The right answer to a non problem is to have the courage to do nothing," Monckton told participants.

"The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,)" Monckton added. (LINK)

Monckton also noted that the UN has not been overly welcoming to the group of skeptical scientists.

"UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I should not come to this conference. They have also made several attempts to interfere with our public meetings," Monckton explained.

"It is a circus here," agreed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans. Evans is making scientific presentations to delegates and journalists at the conference revealing the latest peer-reviewed studies that refute the UN's climate claims.

"This is the most lavish conference I have ever been to, but I am only a scientist and I actually only go to the science conferences," Evans said, noting the luxury of the tropical resort. (Note: An analysis by Bloomberg News on December 6 found: "Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year." – LINK)

Evans, a mathematician who did carbon accounting for the Australian government, recently converted to a skeptical scientist about man-made global warming after reviewing the new scientific studies. (LINK)

"We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don't cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years," Evans said in an interview with the Inhofe EPW Press Blog. Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper "Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming." (LINK)

Evans touted a new peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists appearing in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society which found "Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence." (LINK)

"Most of the people here have jobs that are very well paid and they depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They are not going to be very receptive to the idea that well actually the science has gone off in a different direction," Evans explained.

[Inhofe EPW Press Blog Note: Several other recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. For most recent sampling see: New Peer-Reviewed Study finds 'Solar changes significantly alter climate' (11-3-07) (LINK) & "New Peer-Reviewed Study Halves the Global Average Surface Temperature Trend 1980 – 2002" (LINK) & New Study finds Medieval Warm Period '0.3C Warmer than 20th Century' (LINK) For a more comprehensive sampling of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007 see "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears" LINK ]

‘IPCC is unsound'

UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports since its inception going back to 1990, had a clear message to UN participants.

"There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any affect whatsoever on the climate," Gray, who shares in the Nobel Prize awarded to the UN IPCC, explained. (LINK)

"All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this conclusion after a very long time. If you examine every single proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science somewhere fails," Gray, who wrote the book "The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001," said.

"It fails not only from the data, but it fails in the statistics, and the mathematics," he added.

‘Dangerous time for science'

Evans, who believes the UN has heavily politicized science, warned there is going to be a "dangerous time for science" ahead.

"We have a split here. Official science driven by politics, money and power, goes in one direction. Unofficial science, which is more determined by what is actually happening with the [climate] data, has now started to move off in a different direction" away from fears of a man-made climate crisis, Evans explained.

"The two are splitting. This is always a dangerous time for science and a dangerous time for politics. Historically science always wins these battles but there can be a lot of causalities and a lot of time in between," he concluded.

Carbon trading ‘fraud?'

New Zealander Bryan Leland of the International Climate Science Coalition warned participants that all the UN promoted discussions of "carbon trading" should be viewed with suspicion.

"I am an energy engineer and I know something about electricity trading and I know enough about carbon trading and the inaccuracies of carbon trading to know that carbon trading is more about fraud than it is about anything else," Leland said.

"We should probably ask why we have 10,000 people here [in Bali] in a futile attempt to ‘solve' a [climate] problem that probably does not exist," Leland added.

‘Simply not work'

Owen McShane, the head of the International Climate Science Coalition, also worried that a UN promoted global approach to economics would mean financial ruin for many nations.

"I don't think this conference can actually achieve anything because it seems to be saying that we are going to draw up one protocol for every country in the world to follow," McShane said. (LINK)

"Now these countries and these economies are so diverse that trying to presume you can put all of these feet into one shoe will simply not work," McShane explained.

"Having the same set of rules apply to everybody will blow some economies apart totally while others will be unscathed and I wouldn't be surprised if the ones who remain unscathed are the ones who write the rules," he added.

‘Nothing happening at this conference'

Professor Dr. William Alexander, emeritus of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, warned poor nations and their residents that the UN policies could mean more poverty and thus more death.

"My message is specifically for the poor people of Africa. And there is nothing happening at this conference that can help them one little bit but there is the potential that they could be damaged," Alexander said. (LINK)

"The government and people of Africa will have their attention drawn to reducing climate change instead of reducing poverty," Alexander added.

We were living in Kansas City when the Ice Storm of 2001 hit, knocking off power to half the city. Many people were without power for weeks. First we tried out our wilderness survival skills, until the novelty wore off and we moved to the higher ground of somewhere with electricity. Many have had similar storm experiences and understand that truly being thrown into an 1800’s power-less lifestyle would not be pleasant.

Energy is at the very foundation of our economy and society; yet the EPA is contemplating precipitously defining CO2 as a pollutant, making an endangerment finding, which would turn the Environmental Protection Agency into the gargantuan regulator of our economy’s energy usage. 

Brian Walsh, Senior Legal Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, thinks that the EPA may be basing its actions on flawed legal premises.  “We’re hearing,” Walsh said,” that some inside the EPA are reporting that they are compelled by the Supreme Court’s April 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA to regulate so-called greenhouse gases.  If these reports are accurate, they suggest that these EPA officials are misreading that opinion.  The Court did not determine that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are in fact endangering health or welfare.  In fact, the Court specifically said that it was not deciding that question. Courts often accept plaintiffs’ allegations as true simply to determine whether the plaintiffs have any hope of winning their case if everything they allege is later proven to be true with sufficient evidence.  That’s essentially what happened here.”

The courts and the EPA really have no business on how our energy use is regulated. If it’s necessary at all to regulate energy, it should be done by our elected representatives in Congress.