An Old (But Important) Saw

Several times last year -- specifically, here, here, here, and here -- I wrote about some of the reasons I am skeptical when it comes to global warming. Since then, three whole seasons have come and gone and deposited us back into that time of year when the earth always cools…and that passage of time has served up even more reasons why we should doubt the prophets of warming.

In the Northeast, Manhattan’s June temperatures averaged 3.7 degrees below normal while Boston’s averaged 4.7 below. That made it Boston’s coolest June in 106 years and second coolest in 137.

In the Southwest, it was the first time in 96 years that Phoenix went 15 straight days in June without reaching 100 degrees. And L.A.’s temperatures that month averaged 5 degrees below normal while Yucca Valley’s averaged 8½ below.

In Yonkers, NY, it snowed in the second week of July.

For the U.S. as a whole, this October was the third coldest since they began keeping records.

North of our border, the November snowfall record for Whistler, B.C. had already been broken a week before Thanksgiving, with more than 14 feet accumulated.

And south of the Equator, New Zealand and Australia both experienced prolonged record cold during their autumn and winter.

But the most jaw-dropping reason for doubt comes from recently discovered emails between scientists who are considered to be among the world’s top authorities on global warming. In those emails, which were uncovered by hackers, the scientists communicate about concealing evidence that contradicts global warming. They discuss the need to “hide the decline” in temperatures that their data reveals.

And they discuss ways to avoid complying with requests for their data that might be made under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, or under similar foreign laws. They even toy with the idea of contending that their work is not subject to such laws because it relates to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change; in other words, the scientists have considered making an official claim that no nation’s laws apply to their work because it serves an international rather than national purpose.

Phil Jones, head of the Climactic Research Unit (CRU) at England’s University of East Anglia, wrote to an American colleague: “If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” In another email, he wrote to three American colleagues: “I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!” One of those colleagues (Michael Mann of Penn State) sent an email to the CRU’s Tim Osborn stating that he was sending results which should not be shared with others because they supported global warming’s skeptics.

With the global warming summit right around the corner, you might think that all of this would cause the world’s leaders to move slowly before they propose that sweeping changes be made to address a “problem” that is not even known to exist. But you would be wrong. By and large, world leaders (including our own) have barely acknowledged either the contradictory data or the email scandal, other than to downplay them with arrogant indifference.

With all the indications of cover-up and fraud and of manipulation and hiding of evidence, you also might think that the MSM would cover this story if for no other reason than its sensational allure. But you would be wrong again. They have barely mentioned it, because doing so would work against their political goals.

What we have here is a threefer: a scientific scandal, political scandal, and journalistic scandal all rolled into one.

Update, 12/3/09: I published this post three days ago. As of yesterday, which was 12 days after the the email story first broke, it still had not been mentioned a single time on any of the broadcast news programs of ABC, NBC, or CBS (according to the Business & Media Institute). That is a big deal because more people get their news from those programs than from the cable ones.

Couldn't Resist

I know that when it comes to my skepticism about global warming, I recently said “I’ll try to set this topic aside.”

Well, I couldn’t pull it off because one week after it snowed in New Orleans, it snowed in Las Vegas. In case you missed it, 3½ inches fell on the city between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, piling up on the strip itself.

Although snowflakes are not unheard of in Vegas, accumulations average just ½ inch per year and this week’s snowfall brought the heaviest single accumulation since 1979.

To quote myself from my November 18^th post, all I ask is that global warming’s believers stop acting as though its skeptics are a bunch of closed-minded n’er-do-wells whose opinions have no basis in evidence.

Now, I will try again to set this topic aside.

I Had to Mention It

Here and here I gave reasons why I am not on on the global warming bandwagon. Then, it snowed in New Orleans last Thursday and broke the city’s record for earliest snowfall by 11 days. That is especially notable when you consider that New Orleans has a subtropical climate and sits below sea level in a place where the white stuff is extremely rare: In the 158 years prior to Thursday, it had snowed just once every nine years on average.

While I’m at it, I might as well add that I have now scraped ice off my Florida windshield six times in less than two months, and since the beginning of November I don’t remember a single week when my car’s on-board temperature gauge did not record outside temps in the 30’s at least once on my way to work.

And did I mention that winter still hasn’t started?

Now, I’ll try to set this topic aside.

This is Warming?

It is widely accepted (though not with much publicity) that there has been a cooling trend from the 1990’s to this decade.

In many areas, the last two springs have been noteworthy for their tardiness.

Throughout North America, last winter's record snowfalls made it an instant legend among skiers and snowboarders, who spoke of its “epic snowpack” and were able to take to Colorado slopes as late as June.

A few weeks ago, ski season opened on October 28th…in North Carolina, some 10 hours south of the Mason-Dixon Line at Cataloochee Ski Area. This is the third consecutive year Cataloochee has broken the state’s record for earliest start to a ski season.

As of the end of October, Arctic ice covered an area 30 percent larger than it covered at the same time a year ago.

In my part of Florida, halfway down the peninsula and 20 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico, scraping ice off the windshield is something that gets done about once per winter…but yesterday I found myself doing it for the second time in the past month, and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet.

And finally, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies was just caught lying about last month’s temperatures. Goddard had released a statement claiming it was the warmest October on record, despite the fact that many observers noticed it was colder than usual. Now, we learn that Goddard took data from September and claimed it was from October.

Is it coincidental that Goddard is headed by James Hansen, a close ally of Al Gore? And is it coincidental that some years back Hansen spent a great deal of time publicly asserting that the twentieth century’s warmest decade was the 1990’s, only to eventually concede, with little publicity, that the warmest decade was actually the 1930’s?

These are just a few of the many, many reasons I do not believe the global warming hype, and why I am adamantly against submitting to the drastic measures that the alarmists demand we adopt to “address climate change” – measures that would clearly do harm to our already turbulent economy.

There are logical arguments to be made on both sides of the global warming issue. I don’t ask that everyone agree with me when I say that global warming does not exist, nor would I ask everyone to agree with me if I merely said that man-made global warming does not exist. What I do ask, however, is that global warming’s believers stop acting as though its skeptics are a bunch of closed-minded n’er-do-wells whose opinions have no basis in evidence.