PrintNovember 20, 2008
Obama Out-Gores Gore at Climate Summit
Barack Obama managed to say all the wrong things at this week's Governors Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles -- without even showing up. The President-elect appeared to the green faithful on Tuesday in the form of a mammoth video image, and opened his pre-recorded pledge to "take the lead" in addressing global warming with these eerily familiar words:
"Few challenges facing America -- and the world -- are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."
Now from whom have we heard such an arrogant concentration of misinformed alarmist hokum before? Of course - the man that Obama promised "will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this problem." The Delphic Goracle himself.
And just as we have been compelled to do with the teacher, so must we with the heir apparent student. Let's dissect this opening bit of twaddle.
"Few challenges facing America -- and the world -- are more urgent than combating climate change"
Stop right there! Waging a Don Quixote style battle against the very forces of nature trumps all but a few challenges? Do these happen to include the immediate issue of collapsing international markets and their very real potential to spark a worldwide depression? Or assuring the denial of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists and rogue nations? Or evading the strangle hold our dependency on oil allows those same factions and governments to leverage over us? Or our deteriorating confidence in the safe stewardship of a nuclear weapons arsenal already in the hands of an Islamic State of dubious intent and political cohesion? Or the successful outcomes of wars currently waging in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or resolving our increasingly tenuous relationship with Russia? Or the "poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan [that] could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris" Obama himself spoke of in his July "fellow citizen of the world" speech in Berlin?
Or, for that matter, any of countless bona fide and resolvable dangers the planet actually faces in the immediate future?
"The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear"
Of course, no science is beyond dispute. Furthermore, one in its infancy, as is climatology, literally depends upon disagreement to light its path to maturity. And considering the thousands of media-ignored-or-demeaned scientists disputing AGW dogma each and every day, Obama diminishes any credibility he might have on the subject by uttering words lifted directly from Gore's devious playbook.
He is, on the other hand, quite correct in stating that the facts are clear. Although, not as he sees them. To name but a few of contextual note:
- Warming stopped in 1998 and the planet has been cooling for over a year now while atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise. In fact, the 2009 Old Farmer's Almanac includes an article by IceCap editor Joe D'Aleo making the case in its subtitle that "Some scientists believe that an extreme cooling episode, potentially a mini-ice age, is imminent. Others think that it may already be under way."
- Over long time periods, global temperature anomalies appear correlative not to CO2 levels, but rather a combination of natural forces -- particularly solar activity and sea surface temperatures.
- Bad Supreme Court decisions notwithstanding, CO2 is not a pollutant but a gas as essential to the flora as O2 is to us fauna.
- Global climate has always and will always change -- independent of the actions of man.
- Policy makers would do well to realize that entities such as the IPCC - from which their "scientific" beliefs emanate -- are commissioned to deal exclusively with human influence on the climate and have no motivation to find any natural explanations.
Meanwhile, as falling temperatures continue to topple their AGW house of cards along with public acceptance of furthering existing economic anxieties by adding fruitless green-burdens, it's the alarmists that deny the facts. Just last month, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri told a large group at NSW University that "we're at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before]". And at a Brussels Climate Conference just last week, Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute, took it a step further, warning that "the world is in even ‘more dire straits' than the worst predictions set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC)." Imagine the audacity of such hopelessness.
Sorry, Mr. President-elect, but the science is in active dispute and your side is working overtime to maintain cloud-cover over the facts.
"Sea levels are rising."
Yawn.
Sea levels have been rising at varying rates since the end of the last ice age -- over 10,000 years ago. And, despite Monday's proclamation by NBC's Meredith Vieira that "if [Icelandic glaciers] were to melt, the oceans could rise at least 200 feet," and Al Gore's map-redrawing 20 feet by the year 2100, the worst case scenario of the equally alarmist IPCC is less than 3 feet.
Even if true -- Somehow an atomic Iran seems the more imminent threat.
"Coastlines are shrinking."
When Obama dropped this idiom in Berlin, it was meant to be synonymous with "rising sea levels." Now, I like effect as much as the next fellow, but if our next president intentionally used redundant expressions merely as a scare tactic, then I'm going to cry foul and count them individually nonetheless. If, on the other hand, these were separate observations, then Obama must be referring to beach erosion, which has a multitude of non-AGW causes, chiefly storms, which we'll address later.
"We've seen record drought, spreading famine"
Record drought? Where? Certainly not here. Even the media-hyped June 2008 U.S. Climate Change Science Program assessment report disagreed with that propaganda:
"Averaged over the continental U.S. and southern Canada the most severe droughts occurred in the 1930s and there is no indication of an overall trend in the observational record, which dates back to 1895."
And what's this about spreading famine? Where? Yes, there have been scare-stories of future warming-induced famine in Africa, Philippines and other areas rich in poverty photo-op potential. But as none has materialized yet, no one not blessed with precognitive vision has ever "seen" it.
In any event, there have also been predictions of crops becoming more bountiful during longer growing seasons of warmer (and even carbon rich) air and increased rainfall. In fact, according to a peer-reviewed report in Quaternary Science Reviews, floods, storms, droughts and famines are more frequently associated with cold periods than warm periods. That's right, it just might turn out that global warming is a good thing.
Nice try, Barack. And now, speaking of storms, you said:
"Storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."
Assuming he's referring to North Atlantic hurricanes, he's all wet once again. Obama has likely heard alarmists use estimated property damage costs to conclude that we're about to close the second most destructive season on record. But applying instead the widely accepted Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) metric - an amalgam of storm frequency, intensity, and duration -- paints a different picture entirely. This chart from the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies shows 2008 to be, indeed, above average, but the 10th highest since 1978, not the 2nd. And between it and the worst year ever -- 2005, which included Katrina and 6 other major hurricanes -- sat 2 extremely quiet years.
Bottom line: As clearly depicted by the COAPS's up and down annual trends, storms most definitely are not growing stronger with each passing hurricane system.
Wrong as Gore - But Possessing Perilous Power and Personality
In all, it took Obama but 50 words to craft 8 material mistruths and misrepresentations. At just over 6 average words per green lie (AWPGL), the brilliant orator displayed a bravo sierra talent almost twice that of the reigning King of greenhouse gasbags himself. Indeed, during Gore's Deceptive Rolling Stone Interview, the hitherto undisputed Globaloney Champion of the World managed a paltry 5 deceptions and took 58 words to squeeze them out, for an AWPGL of nearly 12.
But Obama's out-Goring Gore transcends dishing underhanded hyperbole.
During Tuesday's sermon on the mounted flat-panel, Obama promised that his presidency "will mark a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change," starting with a federal cap and trade system:
"We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 percent by 2050."
And those Kyotoesque words aroused much rejoicing.
But the green fable of Obama as eco-savior is based largely on the lie that it was George Bush who blocked American Kyoto compliance. Non Obama-bots (nee Gore-bots) know damned well it was the Senate that unanimously rejected the accord back in 1997 for fear of its adverse impact on our economy and CO2 abatement futility in its exemption of China and India. And that was during what Democrats are quick to point out were prosperous times.
These, of course, are not. And a majority of Kyoto-abiding nations, including Japan, Italy and Australia, are still releasing so much more "greenhouse-gas pollution" than they agreed to that they face a combined 36 billion euros ($46 billion) in penalties. Japan's emissions reached record levels of 1.37 billion tons in 2007 -- 8 percent above 1990 target levels and 15 percent above last year's national reduction target. It seems all but impossible that even Kyoto's host country, which ratified over 6 years ago, will even approach its 2012 goals.
Australia is facing similar problems, where leaders fear the country's emissions trading scheme (ETS) will push industry overseas. In England, EU anti-pollution directives demanding one third of all electricity be generated from wind turbines and other renewables by 2020 and austere green taxes are destroying the country's ability to meet energy demands. As with their Aussie allies, an uncertain green tax future is causing companies to flee the island in droves. Other EU nations are revolting, demanding developing states like China and India "contribute adequately" to emissions reduction - a demand that cannot possibly be met, given their booming economies and consequent unquenchable thirst for energy.
In short, Obama promised his flock he'd leverage the Democrats' majority in both houses to inflict policies -- which Congress kiboshed in June and have proven disastrously ineffectual on every level in every country -- upon an economy in the most precarious state of his lifetime. To the loud cheers of simple drones who thought they had died and gone to green-heaven, the new Green Messiah promised immediate rapture:
"Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response."
Wrong again. Were there a genuine long-term threat, now would be the worst time imaginable to address it; delay would be our only viable option. And it is the alarmists and their obedient minions who remain in denial, many of whom truly believe drastic and immediate measures our only hope to save a planet not in peril. Obama's sermon climaxed:
"The stakes are too high. The consequences -- too serious."
On the surface, the beloved next leader of the free world espouses unequivocally fallacious ideas toward both the problem and its solutions. Given his glaring facility for subterfuge, we can only hope that deep down -- he's no more serious than the consequences he preaches.
Particularly about the timing.
Marc Sheppard is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and welcomes your comments.
