PrintJuly 12, 2008
New Hope for Global Warming Deniers
Why would anyone be a global warming denier? What's the point? You earn the scorn of Al Gore and maybe Dr. James Hansen, NASA's pre-eminent climate scientist will call for you to be put in jail. Of fossil fuel company CEOs, Hansen recently testified to Congress:
In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.
If Dr. Hansen turns out to be wrong about climate change should he be tried for high crimes and misdemeanors too? Steve McIntyre and his collaborators at climateaudit.org have already found one big error in Dr. Hansen's GISS global temperature data series. How many mistakes add up to a felony?
But things are looking up for the global warming skeptics. First of all there is the global temperature. After holding constant since 1998 it has dropped markedly in the last two years. You can see the latest numbers at Dr. Roy Spencer's home page.
Recently the Germans prudently declared a ten-year hold on non-stop global warming. What with a flip in the Gulf Stream they realized that the numbers weren't going to look too good for the alarmists in the next few years. "There is a long-periodic oscillation that will probably lead to a lower temperature increase than we would expect from the current trend during the next years," they wrote. Clearly, more research is needed.
The World Bank in a "secret" report has found most of the recent increase in food prices was due to biofuels production. Writes Aditya Chakrabortty in the lefty Guardian:
Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.
Apparently, according to Chakrabortty, the World Bank refrained from publishing the report to avoid embarrassing President Bush! The US recently issued a report blaming China and India for the food price increases and this new report "emphatically contradicts" it. I say to heck with President Bush and the evil biofuels program that he rammed through Congress with the help of Halliburton in the teeth of opposition from sensitive, caring environmentalists and advocates for the global poor. Let's teach President Bush a lesson and stop biofuel subsidies now! What do you say, Senator Obama? Here is an opportunity for real change.
But the most fascinating and encouraging news for the deniers is from Australian astrophysicists I.R.G. Wilson, B.D. Carter, and I.A. Waite. They have developed a theory that the sunspot cycle and its intensity is driven by the gravitational relationships between the Sun and the Jovian planets Jupiter and Saturn.
The Sun wobbles a bit around the center of the Solar System. Sometimes the center of the Solar System lies outside the surface of the Sun, only 1,000 times heavier than Jupiter and 3,000 times heavier than Saturn. All that wobbling seems to affect the behavior of the Sun.
Here is the nub of the paper, as explained by author Ian Wilson to Andrew Bolt.
It supports the contention that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 - 30 years. On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World's mean temperature has dropped by ~ 1 - 2 C.
Wilson and Co. should talk to the Germans who think that the cooling will only last for 10-15 years and try to come up with a cooling consensus. Either way, it adds up to a comfortable truth for Al Gore who can now feel virtuous about warming up the planet with his mega-mansion and his compulsive jet-travel habit.
It's all so confusing.
Liberals tell us that we mustn't develop energy resources because of the impact on the polar bear -- even though polar bear numbers are on the increase. We shouldn't develop oil resources in ANWR because it is a pristine wilderness. We shouldn't develop offshore oil resources because 40 years ago there was an oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel. Anyway there's no point in developing oil and gas resources because it won't make any difference to the price of gasoline. Anyway we are running out of oil and gas so there isn't any point in developing any more oil and gas resources. We shouldn't mine coal because coal creates global warming. We shouldn't develop nuclear power because Jane Fonda once made a scary movie about it. We should develop solar and wind power, "renewables," even though both are extremely expensive right now. But we shouldn't build wind farms where Ted Kennedy could see the wind turbines from his window.
And now with a straight face liberals say we'll have to starve the people in order to save the planet. Now who's in denial?
Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his roadtothemiddleclass.com and usgovernmentspending.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.
