Science

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) mandated in 1990 that ten percent of all cars and trucks on the road must be Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) by the year 2003. At the time, it claimed that the mandate could be met using electric vehicles that would cost only $1,350 more than gas-powered vehicles of similar size.

According to an article by Tom Austin, an automotive engineer and former CARB executive officer, CARBs dreams have come crashing down in the face of reality. Consultants hired by CARB have determined that electric vehicles will cost about $20,000 more than comparably-sized gas-powered vehicles. The limited driving range of electric vehicles is also a major drawback to most motorists, noted the consultants. Thus to meet the mandate, a subsidy of $30,000 per vehicle would be required.

To cover the subsidy, a surcharge of $3,000 per vehicle would be needed on the price of new gas-powered vehicles. The surcharge could be lowered to $1,250 under a recent change in the regulation, which allows the percentage of ZEVs to fall to 4 percent if makers of gas-powered automobiles significantly reduce auto emissions and provide a 150,000-mile warranty on their emission control systems. But, notes Austin, the cost of gas-powered vehicles would rise by several hundred dollars per vehicle due to the additional pollution control equipment and the longer warranty.

The only other option available to automakers, says Austin, to “further reduce the cost of complying with the ZEV mandate is for them to produce electric vehicles that are little more than glorified golf carts. The gasoline vehicle travel displaced by such vehicles would be negligible and CARBs regulation would become a laughingstock.”

Finally, Austin notes that, CARBs own analysis shows that the regulation will have almost no effect on environmental goals such as improved air quality or preventing global warming (Sacramento Bee, September 24, 2000).

Chinas Growth is Killing the Bicycle

Beijing, China, the city of bicycles, is changing. Commuters are abandoning the human-powered two-wheeler for more convenient and more comfortable transportation taxis and buses.

“I take buses and taxis,” said Zui, a Web site designer. “I dont even know how to ride a bicycle.” Most mornings Zui cannot find a seat on the packed bus but he doesnt mind. “At least the bus is air-conditioned,” he said.

The Seattle Times (October 4, 2000) explains why bicycles are on they way out. “Increasingly, young Chinese are not even bothering to learn to ride bikes, because growing wealth has unleashed a plethora of transportation choices, public and private.

“With the crumbling of the old socialist state-owned industries and their adjoining housing complexes, displaced by private companies and the wildfire growth of private apartment blocks, commuting distances have grown dramatically. In Beijing, a city of 12.6 million people, there are more than 167,000 buses, both city-owned and private mini-buses, along with 69,000 taxis.”

It sounds like Chinese citizens need a good tongue-lashing from Al Gore for making choices that contribute to global warming and urban sprawl, and which make their lives better.

Models Fail to Predict ENSO

The prediction of the 1997-98 El Nio was hailed as a great success for computer climate models and seemed to validate their usefulness in forecasting future climate change. One article in Science (1998) proclaimed, “Models win big in forecasting El Nio.” A study published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (September 2000) tests this claim.

The study found that, “the current answer to the question posed in this articles title [How much skill was there in forecasting the very strong 1997-98 El Nio?] is that there was essentially no skill in forecasting the very strong 1997-98 El Nio at lead times ranging from 0 to 8 months.” Indeed, no models were “able to anticipate even one-half of the actual amplitude of the El Nios peak at medium range (6-11 months) lead.” And, “since no models were able to provide useful predictions at the medium and long ranges, there were no models that provided both useful and skillful forecasts for the entirety of the 1997-98 El Nio” [emphasis in original].

The authors are disturbed “that others are using the supposed success in dynamical El Nio forecasting to support other agendas,” citing the American Geophysical Unions Position Statement on Climate Change as an example. “The bottom line is that the successes in ENSO forecasting have been overstated (sometimes drastically) and misapplied in other arenas,” according to the study. There should be even “less confidence in anthropogenic global warming studies because of the lack of skill in predicting El Nio.”

One of the predicted consequences of global warming is the northward spread of infectious disease vectors. The ranges of the mosquitoes that carry malaria and yellow and dengue fever, it is claimed, will move northward as temperatures in the cooler northern regions warm up. These predictions are based on computer models that are driven by temperature changes only.

A new study in Science (September 8, 2000) tests these models against real world data for the global spread of malaria and has found them lacking in their ability to make accurate predictions. In other words, these approaches do not give accurate descriptions of the current distribution of global malaria.

According to the study, “The fit of these predictions to the current global malaria situation shows noticeable mismatches in certain places; false predictions of presence (e.g., over the eastern half of the United States) are accounted for by past control measures or by peculiar vector biogeography, whereas false predictions of absence are dismissed as model errors.”

The authors of the study take a multivariate approach to modeling the spread of malaria, taking into account various climatic variables including temperature, humidity and rainfall. The new approach, which gives a better representation of the current situation, “predicted remarkably few future changes, even under the most extreme scenarios of climate change,” according to the study.

A new website tracks the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which “is a long-lived El Nio-like pattern of Pacific climate variability.” The difference between the two oscillations is that El Nio persists from 6 to 18 months, whereas the PDO persists for 20 to 30 years.

NY Times Eats Its Words

The New York Times on August 29 retracted its ridiculous front-page story of August 19 that the North Pole was melting. The reporter, John Noble Wilford, had even asserted that open water appeared at the pole this summer for perhaps the first time in 50 million years, which was only off by 49,999,999 years.

Apparently, the pressure to backpedal was fueled by an AP story that again retailed the claims of Harvard Professor James J. McCarthy without consulting any Arctic experts. However, the Times tried to save face by running another article by Wilford on page 3 of its Science section that did its best to cloud the whole issue. Wilford asserted that regardless of his little mistake, the Arctic has warmed by 11 degrees in the last 30 years. And in a major story in the September 4 Time magazine, “The Big Meltdown”, junk science purveyor Eugene Linden claimed that there’s still plenty of evidence of the deleterious effects of global warming in the Arctic.

The temperature data tells a different story that the fact checkers at the Times and at Time (if they still employ any) may want to consult. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Second Assessment Report, the Arctic has warmed, not by 11, but by 2.7 degrees F in the last 30 years. Moreover, the article looked at the past 30 years because 1969 was conveniently the coldest year since about 1920. The Arctic was warmer in 1935 than it is now. Over the past 70 years, the temperature trend has been essentially zero (see Virtual Climate Alert #29 at www.greeningearthsociety.org.)

The global warming propaganda juggernaut has been lying low this summer due to unusually cool temperatures and a relative lack of natural disasters. Indeed, the tropics this summer are cooler than they have been since satellites began measuring global temperatures in 1979.

According to Dr. John Christy, of Earth System Science Laboratory at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, “Based on the satellite record, which started in 1979, the equatorial tropics experienced its coolest year in 1999, when the composite temperature was 0.34 degrees Celsius below the 20-year average for that region.”

Moreover, “That trend has continued through the first eight months of this year, with temperatures in the tropics 0.39 degrees C cooler than normal,” he said. These cooler temperatures can be attributed to La Nia, which is a cooling of the Pacific Ocean, just as the warmer than average temperatures in 1997 and 1998 can be attributed to the El Nio Pacific Ocean warming event.

The Northern Hemisphere, on the other hand, has been warmer than normal this year. “That has been the trend over the past 20 years,” Christy said. “During that time weve seen a 0.25 degree C per decade warming in the Northern Hemisphere, a very slight cooling in the tropics, and enough cooling in the Southern Hemisphere to almost offset the warming in the north.”

The World Wildlife Fund has released a strident report that claims, “Global warming could fundamentally alter one third of the plant and animal habitats by the end of this century, and cause the eventual extinction of certain plant and animal species.”

“In the northern latitudes of Russia, Canada and Scandanavia,” claims the report, “up to 70 percent of habitat could be lost” due to rapid warming.”

According to Adam Markham, Executive Director of Clean Air-Cool Planet, and one of the reports co-authors, “As global warming accelerates, plants and animals will come under increasing pressure to migrate to find suitable habitat. Some will just not be able to move fast enough.”

The report also claims that species that are isolated, such as those found on islands or in “fragmented habitats” are most at risk. But these species are most at risk due to their isolation not from global warming. Indeed, island species have always been at greater risk from extinction than non-island species.

The report claims, “Already, Costa Ricas golden toad has probably become extinct. Birds such as the great tit in Scotland and the Mexican jay in Arizona are beginning to breed earlier in the year; butterflies are shifting their ranges northwards throughout Europe; and mammals in many parts of the Arctic including polar bears, walrus and caribou are beginning to feel the impacts of reduced sea ice and warming tundra habitat.”

Some of these changes, although true, are actually beneficial to species. The change in butterfly ranges isnt a shift but an expansion. A study in Nature by Parmesan et al, which analyzed the distributional changes of European butterflies, found that “nearly all northward shifts [of butterfly ranges] involved extension at the northern boundary with the southern boundary remaining stable,” thus increasing butterfly habitat and enhancing survivability.

Another study in Nature by Thomas and Lennon found that British bird distributions from 1970 to 1990 experienced a similar habitat expansion. Northern habitat boundaries shifted 19 kilometers while the southern boundary remained stable.

A study that appeared in the Canadian Field-Naturalist by Norment et al studied bird surveys taken along the Thelon River and its tributaries in the Canadian Northwest Territories from the 1920s through much of the 1990s. They found that three bird species had expanded their range southward, nine bird species had expanded their range northward and sixteen bird species were new to the area. Moreover, mammals such as red squirrel, moose porcupine, river otter and beaver had also recently established themselves in the area.

Finally, a review of the scientific literature by Keith and Sherwood Idso, which appeared in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, found that atmospheric CO₂ enrichment increases the temperature at which plants function optimally, negating the need for migration.

The WWF study can be found at www.panda.org/climate. Full citations and reviews of the scientific papers cited above can be found at www.co2science.org.

• The New York Timess embarrassing retraction of its “The North Pole is Melting” story inspired a top ten list by David Letterman on the August 30 Late Show.

Top Ten Signs the New York Times is Slipping

10. Instead of “All The News That’s Fit To Print,” slogan is “Stuff We Heard From A Guy Who Says His Friend Heard About It.”

9. President does something on the TV show “West Wing,” next day it’s on front page.

8. It’s 108 pages, and there’s not one single vowel.

7. For every story, accompanying photo is Tony Danza.

6. Obituary has become list of people editors wish would die.

5. Dick Cheney consistently referred to as “the dude from those Wendy’s commercials.”

4. Notice on sports page: “All scores are approximate.”

3. Only ad in job classifieds: “Wanted — someone who knows how to put together a damn newspaper.”

2. For last two weeks, edited by a disoriented Anne Heche.

1. They’re endorsing George W. Bush.

Hansen Cooks Up New Scenario

NASAs Dr. James E. Hansen has stirred the global warming pot once again. In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Hansen and his four NASA co-authors estimate that most of the global warming observed in recent decades has been caused, not by carbon dioxide emissions (!), but by increasing levels of other greenhouse gases. These include methane, chloro-fluorocarbons, and various soots.

Based on this new finding, the authors propose an “alternative, more optimistic scenario” to the conventional wisdom that “30 Kyotos may be needed to reduce warming to an acceptable level.” They suggest focusing efforts on reducing these other greenhouse gas emissions in the short term. This would slow the rate of global warming more quickly and cheaply than by reducing carbon dioxide emissions alone.

Hansens pronouncements carry a great deal of weight. A respected scientist, he directs NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies. His dramatic testimony before a Senate committee began the global warming scare in 1988. Last year, he confessed openly and honestlyto the chagrin of many global warming propagandiststhat, “The science is not converging.” The article may be found at www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.170278997.

Journalistic Meltdown Hits NY Times

Top of the page. Two columns. Left side. In a box. With a color photo. Headline: “Ages Old Icecap at North Pole Is Now Liquid, Scientists Find.”

The New York Times scooped the National Enquirer on August 19 with news that the Arctic ice cap has melted at the North Pole. The story by John Noble Wilford began, “The North Pole is melting.” The second paragraph claimed that, “The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago.”

The shocking story, which will undoubtedly be repeated as gospel for years by environmental cranks, was apparently based on a press release put out by James J. McCarthy, director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. McCarthy is also co-author of one chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes forthcoming Third Assessment Report.

McCarthy saw blue water at the North Pole while serving as a lecturer on a Russian cruise ship in early August. He said that the Russian captain told him that he had never seen open water at the pole in ten previous voyages. (Presumably these go back 50 million years.)

A fellow cruise lecturer, Malcolm C. McKenna, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, told the Times that, “I dont know if anybody in history ever got to 90 degrees north to be greeted by water, not ice.” McKenna provided the photo that the Times ran.

Apparently the Times published the story without first checking with any polar experts or even with anyone with common sense. Experts were uniformly dismissive and scoffing in their comments. Dr. Peter Wadhams, director of the Scott Polar Institute at Cambridge University, told the Times of London that, “Claims that the North Pole is now ice-free for the first time in 50 million years is complete rubbish, absolute nonsense.”

Ian Allison, a glaciologist with the Australian Antarctic Division, told the Australian that open water at the North Pole was highly unusual, but that global warming was not involved. Instead, he explained that ocean currents pack and break apart huge ice sheets with vast force.

S. Fred Singer, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, wrote, “I am a veteran of two Arctic expeditions with the US Navy, and I can testify that icebreakers always search for leads to make their way through the ice. After a long summer of 24-hour days it is not unusual to find open leads all over the place, especially after strong winds break up the winter ice.”

Patrick Michaels, climatologist at the University of Virginia, told National Review Online that temperature records show no Arctic summer warming for the past 70 years.

Although ABC News picked up the story hook, line, and sinker, even National Public Radio expressed doubt. It noted that the ice sheet often breaks apart and open water appears.

Oops! Sea Levels are Falling

The island state of Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean has been one of the most vociferous players in the global warming debate. It has been trotted out by the global warming establishment as an example of the horrific effects of global-warming-induced sea level rise. The country is comprised of nine islands, which are only 12 feet above sea level at their highest point.

New research has shown, however, that sea level has fallen by about 2.5 inches in the last 2 or 3 years, an apparently dramatic reversal from the 1.5 inch per year rise experienced throughout the earlier 1990s. Hilia Vavae, director of Tuvalus Meteorological Service, said, “This is certainly a bit of a shock for us because we have been experiencing the effect of rising oceans for a long time.”

The evidence does not sway Ms. Vavae, however. “We are still facing the daunting prospect of being one of the first countries to be submerged by sea-level rises related to climate change.” As noted by the Sunday Telegraph (London, August 6, 2000), “The Tuvalu government, a vocal critic of the industrialized world at environmental conferences in Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro, has said that the result of its research is a blip and it is expected to make climate change a major issue when it joins the United Nations next month.”

Patrick Nunn, head of geography at the University of the South Pacific of Fiji attacked the data saying, “It is nonsense to try to make predictions about climate change from a data base of only seven years.” Nunn should have looked at the long-term data before making this statement. Sea level data from Tuvalu since 1977 shows no trend. Indeed, sea level remains stable with three punctuated drops in 1983, 1992 and 1998 during El Nio years. The current drop is occurring in the absence of El Nio (www.vision.net.au/~daly).

Any potential global warming will actually cause sea levels to drop in the short term, according to S. Fred Singer, president of the Science and Environment Policy Project. Singers paper, which he presented at a Cooler Heads briefing, is available at the SEPP website, www.sepp.org.

One of the major pieces of evidence upon which global warming theory rests is the long-term temperature record derived from analysis of tree rings. According to this research, these long-term chronologies show a dramatic late 20^th century warming. However, an article in Quaternary Research (September 1999) questions the two critical assumptions upon which these findings rest, namely, “plant-climate relationships remain the same through time” and that “temperature-plant interactions are independent of changes in atmospheric CO₂.” These assumptions are “not supported by physiological data,” according to the article.

If these assumptions arent true, then any temperature records derived from tree rings which do not take into account the effect of CO₂ are wrong. Indeed, the article finds that CO₂ concentrations have an effect on tree growth in three different ways. First, “Processes that determine growth optima in plantsare all highly CO2-dependent.” Second, water-use efficiency “is sensitive to changes in atmospheric CO2.” Third, “leaf-gas exchange experiments indicate that the response of plants to carbon-depleting environmental stresses are strengthened under low CO2 relative to today.”

Nearly all studies of tree ring chronologies have interpreted tree growth in terms of changes in temperature and/or precipitation, not in terms of atmospheric CO₂ content. An article posted by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change at www.co2science.org notes that “the flawed studies of Mann et al. are fast becoming the centerpiece of the IPCCs misguided, but seemingly intentional, effort to rewrite earths climatic history in an attempt to prod national governments to adopt Kyoto-type measures to combat imaginary global warming.”

An August 6 Washington Post story on the top of the front page reported that the past month was the coldest July in Washington, D.C. since 1918. Neither global warming or global cooling was mentioned as a possible explanation for this continuing pattern of extreme weather (even though record cool temperatures are just the sort of thing that global warming theorists predict will happen).

Vice President Al Gore held a press conference in the summer of 1998 to call attention to record high temperatures in many areas of the country and to blame them on global warming. Gore also chastised the American people for using energy produced by fossil fuels, which was causing global warming. Apparently the demands of the election campaign do not allow him the time to hold a press conference to call attention to the current temperature extremes.

Other places in the U.S. experiencing unusually cold weather include Chicago, which has yet to have a day with temperatures over 90 degrees this summer. This hasnt happened since Ulysses S. Grant was president. “By and largeChicagos heat island has been swamped by a tidal wave of [cool] temperatures,” noted the Chicago Tribune (August 3, 2000).

Maine has also been suffering through “Cool, wet, foggy weather,” says the Portland Press Herald (August 6, 2000), which has been hurting tourism in the state. And both Boston and New York City have been unseasonably cold with New York City experiencing its coolest July since 1914.

Finally, England has been having such cold miserable weather that one frustrated lady wrote a letter to the editor saying, “Sir: We were promised global warming and I want it now,” (The Independent, July 28, 2000).

Of course, other parts of the U.S., such as the West and South, have been suffering through very warm temperatures. So what does all this tell us about global warming? Absolutely nothing. For more stories about the cold weather visit www.vision.net.au/~daly.

Melting Ice Sheets: Much Ado About Nothing

A recent study in Science (July 21, 2000) has prompted the press to run wild with lurid stories of melting glaciers, rising sea levels and looming disaster. If any of the reporters had taken the time to read the actual study, they would have learned that it is a non-story.

The study used aircraft laser altimeter surveys to determine the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet. It found that above 2000 meters there is both thickening and thinning of the ice sheet. In the north the ice sheet is thickening at a rate of 14 7 mm/year and a thinning in the south of 11 7 mm/year with an overall thickening of 5 5 mm/year. The authors estimate a bedrock uplift of 4 to 5 mm/year, meaning that the balance is essentially zero.

Below 2000 m, the coastal regions of the ice sheet, the authors estimate that “thinning predominates along approximately 70 percent of the coast.” The reason this is an estimate is because the coasts were “sparsely” measured. The authors explain that their estimate was obtained by calculating “a hypothetical thinning rate at the coast on the basis of the coastal positive degree day anomalies.” They then “interpolated between this calculated coastal thinning rate and nearest observed elevation changes to yield thinning rates within the ice-covered coastal regions.”

This interpolation from a calculation of a hypothetical thinning rates shows a total net reduction in ice volume of “51 km³/year, which is equivalent to 0.13 mm/year sea-level rise or, about 7 percent of the observed rate of sea-level increase.” The authors concede, “We do not have a satisfactory explanation for the observed, widespread thinning at elevations below 2000 m.” Perhaps the answer has to do with “hypothetical” rather than observed thinning.

To further complicate matters, the authors also note that “The 1980s and early 1990s were about half a degree cooler than the 96-year mean. Consequently, if present day thinning is attributable to warmer temperatures, thinning must have been even higher earlier this century.” But thinning rates on many glaciers are too large to be explained by warming, “leaving a change in ice dynamics as the most likely cause,” they argue. “We have no evidence for such changes, and we cannot explain whey they should apply to many glaciers in different parts of Greenland.”

Tree Rings: What Do They It Tell Us?

A study in Science (July 14, 2000) concludes that “A 21^st-century global warming projection far exceeds the natural variability of the past 1000 years and is greater than the best estimate of global temperature change for the last interglacial.” The researcher, Thomas J. Crowley, at Texas A&Ms Oceanography Department, comes to this conclusion using computer models that test various forcings for a 1000 year temperature time series.

Using an energy balance model, Crowley determined that solar irradiance and volcanism account for a large part of temperature variations prior to 1850, before the advent of man-made greenhouse gases. By removing solar and volcanic forcings from the temperature data (reconstructed from proxies such as tree ring data) Crowley determined that the resulting natural variability was similar to the control run of the climate model. A model run with only greenhouse gas forcing resulted in a warming similar to the “very large late-20^th-century warming that closely agrees with the response predicted from greenhouse gas forcing.”

The temperature data used by Crowley was a combination of proxy data up to 1860 and data from the instrumental surface record beyond 1860. There are several problems with combining the two data sets, which result in an apparent pronounced warming in the 20^th century. According to the study in the Quaternary Science Reviews (January 2000), there are several puzzles within tree ring data that complicate its use in climate science.

Keith R. Briffa, with the Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, notes that “The evidence from dendroclimatology in general, supports the notion that the last 100 years have been unusually warm, at least within the context of the last two millenia.” He cautions, however, that “This evidences should not be considered equivocal. The activities of humans may well be impacting on the natural growth of trees in different ways, making the task of isolating a clear climate message subtly difficult.”

In the section titled “Reconstructing large-scale patterns of climate change”, Briffa discusses a tree ring data set of the northern boreal forest which he says “provides the best overall indicator to date of long-term temperature changes over the higher northern land areas,” the area where climate models predict the most warming. There is a divergence in temperature trends between proxy records and the instrumental record after 1950, notes Briffa. “Average [tree ring] density levels have continuously fallen while temperatures in recent decades have risen.” The reason for this “is not known” says Briffa, but he gives several possible explanations. One explanation that he doesnt entertain is the possibility that the instrumental record is wrong.

On the whole, however, tree-ring chronologies show an increase in density that has been widely interpreted as evidence for “anomalous global warming.” Biffra argues that “Some of this accelerated growth is no doubt temperature driven but fertilization by increased nitrogen and/or CO2 levels may also be involved.”

Wind Turbines Kill Birds Dead

A new study conducted by BioResource Consultants for the National Energy Lab has found that certain types of wind turbines kill birds at a rate five times higher than previously estimated.

According to study author Carl Thelander, as many as 1150 birds are killed annually by the turbines at Californias Altamont Pass, including burrowing owls, raptors, and golden eagles, which are illegal to kill under the Bald Eagle Protection Act. Thelander warned the wind industry: “The electric industry has been prosecuted for killing less.”

At the heart of the bird-kill issue is a technological debate. The industry has claimed repeatedly that fewer lattice towers with horizontal bars and the elimination of high-rpm rotors reduce avian deaths dramatically. Said Thelander, “Our data shows these assumptions are not true.” In other words, no specific wind turbine technology exists that can reduce bird-kills. (Wind Power Monthly, July 2000)

Despite this alarming finding, Greenpeace and other green groups have not indicated any intent to protest or otherwise harass turbine operators and reports of the study have not been featured in the New York Times or Washington Post.

In “Breaking the Global-Warming Deadlock”, authors Daniel Sarewitz and Roger Pielke, Jr. advocate dropping pointless arguments over carbon dioxide emissions and temperature data in favor of addressing real environmental problems. Their article appears in the July issue of the Atlantic Monthly magazine.

Although they knock global warming skeptics as well as true believers, their argument is similar to what leading skeptics have been saying for many years. The authors suggest that as population grows and development continues, severe weather events will do more and more damage. They thus suggest that we should turn our attention to adaptation and mitigation.

Two quotes: “As a basis for action, vulnerability to weather has everything that global warming lacks: a clear story rooted in concrete experience, observable in the present, definable in terms of widely shared values.” And: “The moral imperative should be not to prevent human disruption of the environment but to ameliorate the social and political conditions that lead people to behave in environmentally disruptive ways.”

The National Assessment on Climate Change, recently released for public comment, has come under fire for its alarmist tone and political bent. Much of that criticism, we now learn, comes from the technical reviewers of the report. A new report by David Wojick, himself a technical reviewer of the National Assessment, compiles comments from the technical reviews.

Two well known scientists, who support the global warming theory, are very critical of the report. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research argues that “There are major problems with the report, in terms of structure and the content.” He also notes that, “The two models used are quite different and give different results, so how can they both verify against the observed data?” Finally, “The article I referred to (elsewhere) on the use and abuse of climate models describes appropriate use of models. Here is a classic example of misuse and abuse of them.”

James Hansen of the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction points out that, “The projected 1% per year or 2- to 3-fold 21st century increase in CO2 assumed in this study may be pessimistic. From what I understand, it over predicts recent trends, and may not account for observed slowing of the rate of global population growth. I didn’t find supporting evidence in the accompanying technical paper. Therefore, I think that it is overstated. Either cite empirical evidence or acknowledge uncertainties in this and other projections.”

Some of the comments were appropriately flippant. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville said the report seemed to be “written by a committee of Greenpeace, Ted Turner, Al Gore and Stephen King (for the horror lines). I saw no attempt at scientific objectivity.” Jae Edwards of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory commented that, “The current version of the report reads more like an advertising supplement to Time Magazine than a national assessment.” And later, “The example of flooding in New York is needlessly hyperbolic. If you want to go that route, and I dont recommend it, why dont you get out the old picture from the cover of Parade Magazine of the Statue of Liberty covered with water up to her arm pits.”

James Shuttleworth of University of Arizona said that, “Because the document retains the conventional looming gloom perspective throughout, it will likely be rejected by the majority of the population as just another tree huggers lobby piece. If its purpose is just to provide a further prop to the Kyoto agreement, so be it.”

The report, “Not a Pretty Picture,” can be downloaded at www.greeningearthsociety.org.

Remember when polls showed that CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite was “the most-trusted man in America”? After his retirement, the avuncular Walter revealed that he believed in one-world government and lots of other leftist claptrap.

Cronkites successor, Dan Rather, is more impatient to share his political wisdom with the world. Not content with CBS News’s stream of ridiculous stories connecting storms, floods, and droughts to global warming, Dan has now taken his fascination with natural disasters to the op-ed page of the Houston Chronicle.