A UK Telegraph columnist reports,

… the latest US satellite figures [show] temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level - not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934.

How long until we will be advised that the fight against global warming has succeeded in turning the dire situation around?

Not until there’s no more big money to be made or given in being alarmist.

I am reminded of the Candid Camera put-on when Peter Funt and crew set up a booth outside a big supermarket with a banner that said, “Save the Grand Canyon! Donate Here!” They studiously avoided explaining to people just what the Grand Canyon needed saving from, but told people who asked that they could help save it by putting money into the big, glass jar on the table.

Peter Funt

They collected a large sum of money during the day. The skit ended with Funt talking to someone about donating when Funt’s cell phone rang, right on schedule. Funt answered it, said,”Okay thanks, that’s great!” and hung up. Then he started taking down all the displays and the banner.

“What are you doing?” the other man demanded.

“Going home,” answered Funt. “They saved it.”

“Saved what?” said the man.

“The Grand Canyon,” said Funt. “They saved it. Well, bye.”

Back in the real world, environmental scientist Prof. Bob Carter writes:

[T]he accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.

Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.

And that really is bad news. “Global cooling” has happened before; climatologists call it the “Little Ice Age.”

Western Europe experienced a general cooling of the climate between the years 1150 and 1460 and a very cold climate between 1560 and 1850 that brought dire consequences to its peoples. The colder weather impacted agriculture, health, economics, social strife, emigration, and even art and literature. Increased glaciation and storms also had a devastating affect on those that lived near glaciers and the sea. …

The cooler climate during the LIA had a huge impact on the health of Europeans. As mentioned earlier, dearth and famine killed millions and poor nutrition decreased the stature of the Vikings in Greenland and Iceland.

Cool, wet summers led to outbreaks of an illness called St. Anthony’s Fire. Whole villages would suffer convulsions, hallucinations, gangrenous rotting of the extremities, and even death. Grain, if stored in cool, damp conditions, may develop a fungus known as ergot blight and also may ferment just enough to produce a drug similar to LSD. (In fact, some historians claim that the Salem, Massachusetts witch hysteria was the result of ergot blight.)

Malnutrition led to a weakened immunity to a variety of illnesses. In England, malnutrition aggravated an influenza epidemic of 1557-8 in which whole families died. In fact, during most of the 1550’s deaths outnumbered births (Lamb, 1995.) The Black Death (Bubonic Plague) was hastened by malnutrition all over Europe.

One might not expect a typically tropical disease such as malaria to be found during the LIA, but Reiter (2000) has shown that it was an important cause of illness and death in several parts of England. …

I’m not willing to trade one kind of alarmism for another, but it’s interesting to compare the reports of the effects of the Little Ice Age with those of the Medieval Warm Period.

The Daily Tech asks, “Will the UN’s scenario for AIDS repeat for global warming reports?”

A new report from the United Nations acknowledges the agency has routinely overstated both the size and growth rate of the AIDS epidemic. …

Critics have long maintained the U.N. overstated cases to gain political and financial support. “There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda” said author and AIDS expert Helen Epstein.

Daily Tech goes on to report,

Climatologist and IPCC expert reviewer Vincent Gray has called the IPCC process “fundamentally corrupt” and its predictions a fraud. Dr. Madhav Khandekar, another IPCC expert reviewer, has called the review process scientifically unsound, and notes the latest report fails to acknowledge a growing number of scientists now question the theory of greenhouse gas-based climate change.

Is there a linkage between the UN’s handling of AIDS and global warming? According to journalist Claudia Rosett, the UN routinely overstates crises to generate funding, then uses it to fund a massive system of kickbacks, payoffs, and lavish expense accounts. According to Rosett, IPCC climate pronouncements are just part of this long-standing pattern.

The idea of the bureaucracy of the United Nations being made up of selfless, altruistic servants of humanity, who toil tirelessly for the benefit of all humankind, simply can’t be held by objective people. In fact, corruption of the highest order pervades almost everything the UN touches.

That aside, there are compelling (IMO, convincing) reasons to assert that global warming alarmism is really nothing more than the latest cash cow to milk. Consider the view of Dr William Gray, “a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts,” reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth. …

“We’ll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was,” Dr Gray said. …

“It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong,” he said. “But they also know that they’d never get any grants if they spoke out. I don’t care about grants.”

As I wrote last February, environmentalism is not merely a religion, it is an apocalyptic religion. And just like the sleaziest televangelist’s pleas, this religion requires massive cash inflows to survive.

Another thing - if global warming is the dire crisis the UN says it is, then why is the UN doing this?

Endnote: for more on the UN’s corruption, read , “Seeing the UN Plain: Corruption as a Way of Life,” by a US State Dept. official and this essay by Richard Sanchez at Belmont Club.

For some reason, I watched the NBC Nightly News tonight. Lester Holt was the weekend anchorman. About the second story was a breathlessly urgent story about how time has simply run out to stop global warming. If the world does not act now - right this very minute! - to reverse the greenhouse effect, then it will be too late. The linked report is not a transcript of the broadcast report, which, as of now, is still viewable online at msnbc.com under the title, “strong warming warning.” It’s javascript, so there’s no link to it.

Specifically, the broadcast segment says that “catastrophic” consequences will begin within 13 years unless by 2012 the world reduces CO2 emissions to five percent below 1990’s level. The text story says,

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia’s large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, according to the report.

Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, says the report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore this year.

The panel portrays the Earth hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace and warns of inevitable human suffering. …

“Hurtling” toward warming at a “quickening pace” with “inevitable human suffering”! And as further proof, of global warming, South America is having one of the coldest springtimes on record. There’s suffering, all right - from the cold.

The report also quotes U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon as saying he “witnessed the devastation of climate change in disappearing glaciers of Antarctica… .” You know, these “disappearing” glaciers:

The white area is the land mass of Antarctica. The purple area is the sea ice, the color indicating that its concentration is at or near 100 percent. This image is from the University of Illinois’ cryosphere center, which shows that Antarctic sea ice has been steadily growing since 1978.

Click for full-size image

It’s true, as the cryosphere center also shows, that Arctic-area sea ice has been falling in volume, but Antarctic ice has been growing. So in what way is global warming, well, global? And how does a theory of atmospherically-induced global warming account for record-low springtime temperatures right now in South America and the growth of sea ice in the south polar regions?

Speaking of Arctic ice, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s news release this week,

A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming. [italics added] …

“Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming,” said [James]Morison [of the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center Applied Physics Laboratory].

Back in Antarctica,

The Brazilian Base Comandante Ferraz in Antarctica is rationing water. Never in the last twenty years the weather was so cold and snowy this time of the year in the Brazilian post in the South Pole. The nearby lakes that provide water to the base are frozen since September. The heliport that allows the arrival of food and bottled water by air is under three meters of snow. Water for human consumption is limited to the fifty Brazilian researchers in the region and the situations turns more dangerous each day.

The link for that is to this Word document found on Icecap.us.

It would be well to remember that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, IPCC, is primarily a political body rather than a scientific one. And for any political entity anywhere, it is well to remember Den Beste’s Law: “The job of bureacracies is to regulate, and left to themselves they will regulate everything they can.” Get ready for another round of regulation coming our way.

Test your knowledge and common sense in this simple 10-question test.

Caution: This section contains sound science, not media hype … .

I got nine of 10 correct.

A few days ago the news was released that a High Court in the United Kingdom ruled that Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, may not be shown to school students there unless preceded by court-mandated disclaimers:

… The Court found that the film was misleading in nine respects and that the Guidance Notes drafted by the Education Secretary’s advisors served only to exacerbate the political propaganda in the film.

In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Nine inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

The inaccuracies are:

* The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
* The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
* The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
* The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
* The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
* The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
* The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
* The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
* The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is in hot water. ABC News reports,

In an interview broadcast [yesterday] morning on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” program, Griffin was asked by NPR’s Steve Inskeep whether he is concerned about global warming.

“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.”

Needless to say, this point of view drew the ire of advocates of anthropogenic global warming, including members of NASA’s science staff. Yet really, what is the fuss about? It is about the fact that Griffin took a politically incorrect view, and did so in public. Notice that he didn’t dispute whether the earth is warming, only that the warming trend is not necessarily a bad thing.

I covered this point in February in, “What if global warming is a good thing?“

I’ve always kind of suspected that underlying much of environmentalism is a desire for the impossible: stasis. For the earth will either get warmer or cooler, but it definitely won’t stay the same. Even if everyone were to agree that the globe really is warming, can we please see some scientifically-sound documentation that it is worse than the alternative?

Environmentalism is the hippest Po-Mo religion; as I noted in, “Global cooling ain’t so great, either,” it is an apocalyptic one to boot.

A leading hurricane scientist disputes claims that global warming has made hurricanes worse.

Chris Landsea, science and operations director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said the notion that global warming is causing an increase in hurricanes gained widespread attention after the stormy seasons of 2004 and 2005.

But that perception is wrong and the statistics don’t bear it out, Landsea told about 200 students and professors in the auditorium at USC’s geography building.

Further study continues to show that hurricane activity occurs in cycles of 20 to 45 years, he said. Even though the seasons of 2004, when four hurricanes bashed Florida, and 2005, when Katrina devastated New Orleans and neighboring parts of the Gulf Coast, seemed shocking, they were no more intense than some storms in the early part of the 20th century and in the 1930s, Landsea said.

The 1926-1935 period was worse for hurricanes than the past 10 years and 1900-1905 was almost as bad, he said. So it is not true that there is a trend of more and stronger hurricanes.

“It’s not a trend, it’s a cycle: 20-45 years quiet, 20-45 years busy,” Landsea said. Scientists currently have no idea what causes the time period.

What makes the recent storms seem worse is the amount of damage, and that is because of the amount of people and their structures on the coast, elements that barely existed in the early 1900s. …

“An Inconvenient Truth,” the book by former Vice President Al Gore, also persuaded some people that global warming is contributing to hurricane frequency and strength, Landsea said.

But facts that also refute the theory are that tropical storms are weakening and becoming less frequent in all oceans except the Atlantic, he said.

If the storms were caused by global warming, they would be getting worse everywhere, he said.

You may remember that global warming apocalyptics predicted that last year’s hurricane season would be even worse than 2005, the year of Katrina. In fact, though, no hurricanes made landfall in the United States last year. In a piece published in August 2006, Weatherstreet.com reflected, “Media reports over the last year have suggested that, since global warming will only get worse, and last year’s hurricane activity was supposedly due to global warming, this season might well be as bad as last season.” But it wasn’t.

Part of the reason for the slow season is that tropical western Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are running about normal, if not slightly below normal. …

The cooler SSTs in the Atlantic are not an isolated anomaly. In a research paper being published next month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists will show that between 2003 and 2005, globally averaged temperatures in the upper ocean cooled rather dramatically, effectively erasing 20% of the warming that occurred over the previous 48 years.

Catch that? In only two years, a fifth of the warming that had occurred in almost a half-century was erased. Twenty percent of the warming erased in four percent of the time. No explanation seems to be forthcoming from global warming apocalyptics as to how this cooling occurred, since they blame human activity for the previous warming. Well, folks, if you’re going to blame us going up, you’re going to have credit us going down.