Congressman Wants to Drop a Dingleberry on United States

Rep. John Dingell has his sights on the money that you and I work so hard for under the ruse of fighting Global Warming. According to the NY Post:

Dealing with global warming will be painful, says one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress.

And he is proposing a recipe many people won't like - a 50-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax, a carbon tax and scaling back tax breaks for some home owners.

With gas prices already high and the housing market slowdown, Dingell wants to take steps that will really hit our wallet at the pump and cut an already ailing housing market off at the knees. Who knows what bad experiences Dingell had as a child to convert him into a sadist that likes to rub salt in wounds and kick people while they are down?

With this "Dingell-berry" the Democrats show once again how this Climate Change / Global Warming farce is designed for one thing: to separate more money from American citizens. The left refuses to do a cost-benefit analysis on the whole climate change shell game. Of my five global warming questions, they only bother with attempting to prove the first question. Recent exposure of corrupt data and contaminated weather stations (where more than half of the 25% analyzed don't meet federal guidelines) are beginning to cast doubt on the one point I have stipulated. They cannot prove man is the sole or even main cause of global warming. They can't prove the level of consequences, nor are they willing to concede the potential benefits of global warming in certain parts of the world. Most importantly they cannot prove that by taking more of our hard-earned money that they can do a darn thing to stop global warming or mitigate the consequences.

As always with posts on climate change, here are my five questions we need to answer before succumbing to Climate Change Alarmism:
1) Has it been proven that Global Warming is actually happening?
2) Has it been proven that Global Warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gases?
3) Has it been proven that Global Warming will cause catastrophic conditions that will result in massive human casualties?
4) Has it been proven that if 1-3 are correct that it is possible for man to prevent #3 by reducing or eliminating their output in greenhouse gases?
5) Just because 2-4 are unproven and likely a crock, does this excuse man's irresponsible polluting of the earth?

Climate Change Tower of Pisa

There are several reasons I hope to live a long time. I want to see as much of my kid's and grandkid's (not here yet) lives as possible. I want to have more time with the love of my life Olive Oyl (alias of course). I look forward to more traveling and time to read. I have always had a dream to write and publish a book, but have not had the time to write one.

After these things there is one other reason high on the list for desiring longevity. I want to live to see the Global Warming theory collapse in ruin and become the laughingstock it deserves. Climate Change (the new CYA name for Global Warming just in case the globe starts a cooling trend) is the Scientific Leaning Tower of Pisa of our times. The real Leaning Tower of Pisa leans because of its poor foundation. Climate Change is beginning to lean because it also has a poor foundation. That foundation would be the government funding of research. Mixing government funding with a politically charged theory is a recipe for flawed results.

There is a new press release on the website of Skeptic Champion Senator Inhofe that shows the tower is beginning to lean. The post quotes a blog post by Michael Asher, who in turn is providing more details on the original post by Marc Marano. A scientist might back a theory to obtain funding, or to give an opinion for the media, or for any number of reasons. However, the seem reluctant lately to stand behind Climate Change when writing a peer review. Asher states:

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

So less than half of scientists submitting peer reviews were willing to put their reputation on the line. Only 7% were willing to explicitly put their reputation on the line. A similar number (6%) were willing to explicitly reject it. The rest are implicit support or neutral. Note that the original assessment by Orekses on the peer reviews between 1993 and 2003 and this new assessment on the peer reviews between 2004 and 2007 only get to question #2 of my five questions (see below). Any consensus on man's contribution to warming that might have existed before seems to be on shaky ground these days. I have made the point before that there is no consensus on the extent of catastrophe (if any) to be caused by Climate Change. Throwing out consensus is a shell game used by frauds like Al Gore to stiff-arm any real debate on the matter.

While 3 years of reviews compared to 10 years of reviews may not yet be solid evidence of a shift, my opinion is that scientists are beginning to see the very real possibility of becoming a future laughingstock. While a scientist may want to enjoy public praise today, they want to make a mark that will outlive them. Ridicule is not the kind of mark they have in mind, either. Their tower is starting to lean. There is a fascinating story here about the extravagant steps taken to keep the real Tower of Pisa from collapsing. Look for similar extreme measures to be taken by the liberal camp to save Climate Change from disaster.

As always with posts on climate change, here are my five questions we need to answer before succumbing to Climate Change Alarmism:
1) Has it been proven that Global Warming is actually happening?
2) Has it been proven that Global Warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gases?
3) Has it been proven that Global Warming will cause catastrophic conditions that will result in massive human casualties?
4) Has it been proven that if 1-3 are correct that it is possible for man to prevent #3 by reducing or eliminating their output in greenhouse gases?
5) Just because 2-4 are unproven and likely a crock, does this excuse man's irresponsible polluting of the earth?

If You Hear Many Quacks - It Will Be the Sound of Thousands of Scientists Ducking

Here is another significant opportunity for the fools who have fallen for the Climate Change farce to offer a little proof that 1) It is a real and serious problem and 2) It is worth spending tons of American money to fix it.

The Junkscience.com website is sponsoring a contest where the first person able to provide proof that debunks the following two hypothesis will get a lump sum payment of $100,000:

UGWC Hypothesis 1

Manmade emissions of greenhouse gases do not discernibly, significantly and predictably cause increases in global surface and tropospheric temperatures along with associated stratospheric cooling.

UGWC Hypothesis 2

The benefits equal or exceed the costs of any increases in global temperature caused by manmade greenhouse gas emissions between the present time and the year 2100, when all global social, economic and environmental effects are considered.

Yes, it is the Ultimate Global Warming Challenge! Yeah, yeah. I know. The science is settled and the debate is over. But hey, who can resist such an "easy" proposition when the "science" is behind you? Here is an opportunity to get a fast hundred grand to throw at your favorite globe saving enterprise (or to greedily pocket for yourself - after the government takes half).

The fact is that there will likely be no takers and there certainly will not be any winners. In order to win, the submitter must do what the Climate Change crowd has been most unwilling to do: a cost-benefit analysis. They will have to provably answer the first four of my 5 questions on global warming:
1) Has it been proven that Global Warming is actually happening?
2) Has it been proven that Global Warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gases?
3) Has it been proven that Global Warming will cause catastrophic conditions that will result in massive human casualties?
4) Has it been proven that if 1-3 are correct that it is possible for man to prevent #3 by reducing or eliminating their output in greenhouse gases?
5) Just because 2-4 are unproven and likely a crock, does this excuse man's irresponsible polluting of the earth?

NASA Administrator Hits a Bullseye While Underlings Howl

I consider myself pretty well read on the Global Warming / Climate Change debate yet I do not recall anyone ever addressing the facet of the debate that NASA Administrator Michael Griffen has pointed out. ABC News reports Griffen's comments:

"I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists," Griffin told Inskeep. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."

"To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change," Griffin said. "I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."

When I read this statement, I could only sit there with open-mouthed fascination at the sheer beauty of it. The bottom line is that Climate Change proponents have indeed arrogantly judged the current earth climate as the optimal climate. Any climate change that has and will occur is ordained a "problem" without any analysis or consideration to the contrary. In their rush to picture worst case scenarios of catastrophe, has any scientific group actually done any research on the final climate state and considered if overall, this final state might actually be better for many areas? As Michael Griffen deduces, only after knowing the final climate state and comparing it to the current climate state can we begin to analyze if there is a "problem".

He drives the point even further by noting that we must also consider who both is capable and has the right to decide what the optimal climate is. Are we going to leave such decisions to government bureaucrats or even one group of scientists instead of another? So there is a lot of analysis and many decisions to be made before we are in a position to determine if we have a problem.

The incredibly weakly reasoned response by NASA's resident climate alarmist was also reported by ABC News:

Griffin's comments immediately drew stunned reaction from James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

"It's an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement," Hansen told ABC News. "It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change."

Hansen believes Griffin's comments fly in the face of well-established scientific knowledge that hundreds of NASA scientists have contributed to.

"It's unbelievable," said Hansen. "I thought he had been misquoted. It's so unbelievable."

Hansen's response have all the power of "well you're stupid". Hansen completely avoids actually responding to Griffen's main point and sticks on message to the "we are beyond debate" meme. The sheer impotence of Hansen's comments must be an embarrassment to his supporters. I hope Griffen's point continues to be driven home in the debate. It is fresh and reasoned approaches like this to the public discourse that may yet save us from the madness the alarmists are driving us toward.

As always with posts on climate change, here are my five questions we need to answer before succumbing to Climate Change Alarmism:
1) Has it been proven that Global Warming is actually happening?
2) Has it been proven that Global Warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gases?
3) Has it been proven that Global Warming will cause catastrophic conditions that will result in massive human casualties?
4) Has it been proven that if 1-3 are correct that it is possible for man to prevent #3 by reducing or eliminating their output in greenhouse gases?
5) Just because 2-4 are unproven and likely a crock, does this excuse man's irresponsible polluting of the earth?