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| London Smog, 1952 (via Wikipedia) |
By Jamie Douglas
For way too long, the mainstream press and some well meaning individuals have been engaging in pseudo scientific banter about what causes the current severe fluctuations in climatic conditions that we are observing all over the planet. Whether conservative, liberal, or libertarian, the term “Global Warming” has been completely overused and abused by all sides. Let me start by boldly declaring, that what we are dealing with is a phenomenon generally known as “Climate Change!”
This has happened over the millennia on many occasions, and it most certainly cannot solely be blamed on humankind’s recent activity on the planet. Changes in climate caused by the likes of El Niño and La Niña have existed since long before man and woman walked upright. However… one must take into consideration what early industrialization contributed in England, for example, where at least twelve thousand citizens died as the result of the smog that was mainly caused by coal burning plants as well as coke-consuming iron smelters. The Brits realized that they had to do something about the situation, and they did, by removing offending industrial plants from sensitive urban areas, as well as working to reduce the emissions created by some. Of course, that was before huge multinational corporations were able to buy off corrupt politicians by creating lobbies that have more influence over elected officials than the ordinary citizen has, thereby overruling common sense health issues such as power plants that have been known to spew carcinogens and other harmful pollutants into the environment, which ultimately belongs to everybody or nobody, but certainly not the corporations (in theory at least).
Unfortunately the system is now being rigged against the health and well being of individuals, particularly the most vulnerable occupants of the planet: children!
The rigging is being done right out in the open, by such means as the 5-4 United States Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission equating corporate political spending with a citizen’s right to free speech. This obscene decision actually just codified what had been going on for decades in one way or another. Any US citizen with half a brain must have realized by now that their elected representatives do not represent them (with a very few rare exceptions), but that they are in the pay of large corporations that are able to influence the outcome of elections, from small time school board elections to the presidency of the USA and other nations, as well.
While some may think that this is all good and well – freedom of speech and expression and all – there is actually something like guerilla warfare being waged by people such as the Koch Brothers of Wichita, Kansas and multinational corporations that seek to torpedo what sensible scientists and concerned citizens are trying to accomplish.
Imagine a world like this in 1950’s England, where the smog was harvesting lives like the plague, and the large corporations were hiring pseudo scientists to discredit the legitimate findings of coroners, doctors, and suffering individuals so they could continue to pollute, killing ever more thousands, for the purpose of making their bottom lines look prettier to stockholders, many of which were pension funds that stood to gain by the proletariat’s earlier-than-forecast demise. Huzzah – more money for the board of directors, bigger bonuses, and by God, screw the workers early and often!
The reality is that are scientists, with doctoral degrees, but without a social conscience, who have prostituted themselves out to organizations such as Exxon Mobil etc. One such individual is Dr. Willie Soon, who is actually Willie Wei-Hock Soon, a Malaysian born anti-environmental activist, masquerading as an astrophysicist at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian center for Astrophysics. It is his esteemed opinion, that climate change, or “global warming,” as he refers to it, is caused by solar variations. He is also chief science advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute, a right-wing corporate think tank that seeks to discredit any and all opposing viewpoints by planting doubt in the public’s mind about the science of climate change and even claiming that “global warming” is a hoax.
Dr. Soon’s credentials would be much more respectable, had his research not been tainted by being the recipient of at least a million dollars in research grants from coal and oil industry interests such as ExxonMobil, The American Petroleum Institute, Southern Industries, one of the leading filthy coal burning utilities on the planet, as well as the ever-present evil Koch Brothers. Dr. Soon is very unapologetic in his conduct, which is sure to have and continue to hurt many in his adopted homeland.
In 2003 he tried unsuccessfully to influence the findings of the Nobel Prize winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But don’t think for a moment that he is alone in his trying to twist reality. There are many not so reputable scientists out there who, for a few thousand dollars, will affix their names to any fictitious research paper, or stand in front of a US Senate hearing, as Dr Soon did in 2003 (Bush Era), when he claimed under oath that he had never knowingly been hired or received grants from any organization that had taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto Protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Jamie Douglas
San Rafael, Mendoza
Where the Malbec Wine is Always Fine!
see also:
id=860http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/climate-of-denial-20110622?link=mostpopular2
We would love to hear your comments on this article email us at editor@expatdailynews.com
Man made climate change propaganda is just another method of stealing money from the common people through carbon tax and the Chicago Climate Exchange credit selling by the corrupt corporations who control the governments. It's just another way of dividing the people so they can be easily conquered.....
ReplyDeletePeople who have a background in science understand that it is not "propoganda." The propoganda comes from the oil, gas, and coal companies who want do not want to pay into the system that they are benefiting from. There are hardly any places in the US that have carbon taxes, and the carbon credit thing is misguided, but it has nothing to do with the actual science. In case you missed it, the climate scientists who were being smeared have been cleared by very careful investigations into their actions, and the science is what it is, whether anyone likes it or not.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that we are in agreement that corrupt corporations control the governments. What I don't get is how taxing those corrupt corporations gets twisted around into taxing the common people. It is they who are fighting tooth and nail not to be taxed - so why is that, if, as the meme goes, they can just pass the cost on to the consumers? And the fact that the scientists who have been predicting the severe weather that we are all seeing were right, scientists who the big corporations have been trying to silence - does this not factor into your assesment of the situation?
Climate change goes far beyond the Chicago Climate Exchange, which was an attempt at a market solution to climate change that went horribly, horribly wrong because it is subject to manipulation and fraud. Look at what the scientists say - not the pundits or politicians or business people. Climate change is not a hoax, and the big power interests have been hiring scientists to muddy the waters for people who don't trust the scientific community - which is very wierd in a society that depends on science for such things as medical technology and communication to the extent that it does.
- Julie R Butler
let me reframe the argument....i do not believe we humans are causing climate change per se.
ReplyDeletei do believe humans in all countries are causing global pollution..which is bad to deadly for humans living in their environment. city & industrial pollution kills those living there and those breathing the toxic air. But there can be no half measures or hall passes for china and there ilk... active and passive controls must limit these carsogins. not political agendas..and beaurocrats
Ask and you shall receive... The following link goes to a blog post that explains that China just put into place mandatory emissions standards that are very similar to the strict Euro 4 standard.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/05/china-enacts-euro-4-emissions-standard-beijing-to-go-a-notch-higher/
I agree with Mr. Douglas' assertion that climate change is not global warming. Environmental ideologues first tried to convince us that CO2 from fossil fuel burning was acting as a greenhouse gas that was causing catastrophic global warming. True, global temperatures were rising from about 1980 through about 1998, but by 2000 temperatures had ceased rising and have started dropping again. Between the mid-1940s and 1975 there was a global cooling trend which led Time Magazine to proclaim on a 1975 cover, ICE AGE. So Mr. Douglas is right that climate changes all the time for reasons that are currently only vaguely understood.
ReplyDeleteBut I object to his dismissal of the solar variation theory of climate change. The Maunder Minimum of sunspot activity between 1645-1715 coincided with the most extreme period of the Little Ice Age. There is almost a perfect correlation between sunspot activity and Earth temperatures going back over the entire 400 year period we have reliable records of these two factors. The Sun is Earth's furnace. When the furnace burns hotter (increased sunspots) Earth gets warmer, just like when you turn up the furnace in your house. And when you turn down your furnace (decreased sunspots) your house cools off. I am not arguing that Dr. Soon's motives may be suspect in supporting this solar variance theory of climate change, but that does not mean that his facts are wrong.
On the other hand, the many thousands of people working and making a very nice living in the catastrophic global warming industry have even more reason to corrupt their science than does Dr. Soon. Notice how global warmers now talk about climate change, not global warming, but they still claim CO2 is driving climate change. CO2 was supposed to be a greenhouse gas causing global warming, not global cooling. Are people so stupid that they still think CO2 drives climate change when the entire argument of "greenhouse gases" was that increased CO2 was going to cause catastrophic warming? Notwithstanding the fact that there is no data whatsoever, despite 1000s of people spending 100s of billions of dollars looking for it, to support the idea that CO2 drives climate change. They just have climate 'models' that universally fail to track real historical climate trends. The models don't work, and CO2 does not drive climate change.
Historic periods of global warming, like the Medieval Warm Period from about 900-1200 AD, are associated with steady, predictable weather that is highly beneficial to plant and animal life, especially human life. England grew vineyards during this period, for e.g. It is periods of cooling, like the centuries long Little Ice Age that followed the MWP, that are associated with extreme and unpredictable weather that is harmful to life on Earth. Yet radical environmentalists want us to fear the very global warming that is so beneficial to our existence.
So far the solar variance theory of climate change is most consistent with the data. We shouldn't let personal suspicion of some proponent of this theory (e.g. Dr. Soon) poison our faith in the data based science that supports the solar variance theory of Earth's climate change.
Derryl Hermanutz
I find it very interesting how the term “radical environmentalist” keeps popping up. I don’t think it is fair to marginalize people who are concerned about problems that require solutions that affect all of us. Why aren’t oil magnates like the Koch brothers called “radical,” especially when they are the ones funding scientists whose theories are generally doubted by the scientific community. As I stated in an earlier comment – people who do not understand how science works really ought to listen to those who do, and not take the word of a few who have been heavily funded by industry or people who repeat scientific-sounding talking points without admitting that those talking points have been debunked by the scientific community.
ReplyDeleteWhile there is supposed to be a cabal of wealthy individuals pushing the “catastrophic global warming industry,” anyone such as Al Gore, the main focus of this illustrious title, doesn’t come close to the wealth that has been generated by the Koch brothers. They have been making a much nicer living by denying climate change for some time now, which you can read about in the following articles:
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2010/03/18/koch-industries-multibillionaire-koch-brothers-bankroll-attacks-on-climate-change-science-and-policy/
http://www.celsias.com/article/koch-brothers-fund-anti-warming-propaganda-califor/
Here are a few articles that go into how the sunspot theory is flawed:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/sunspots-do-not-cause-climate-change-say-scientists-1839867.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/sun-sets-on-sceptics-case-against-climate-change-1839875.html
Here are a couple that explain how cold snaps are consistent with the overall temperature of the atmosphere rising:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/coldweather-2009.html
http://texasclimatenews.org/wp/?p=1200
Here are stories about climate change denial and the Climategate scandal:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/apr/28/climate-change-denial-skeptical-science?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780852652299&INTCMP=SRCH
And here is the link to the Guardian’s collection of climate change stories:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/series/the-ultimate-climate-change-faq
- Julie R Butler
The link to the book was my mistake. I meant to post this link about Climategate:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/07/climategate-scientists-main-points?INTCMP=SRCH
sorry about that!
Jamie, you wrote "Changes in climate caused by the likes of El Niño and La Niña have existed since long before man and woman walked upright." But there is no evidence that El Ninos go back millions of years, though there are records of them back to about 1000 yrs ago. I doubt they would have existed before the more recent Ice Age.
ReplyDeleteDerryl Hermanutz, temperatures have certainly not dropped since 2000, as you claim. In fact, 2010 was the warmest year in one temperature record, tied for the warmest in two others. At best globally averaged temperature is flat over the past decade, but that is not unexpected by the theory of anthropogenic climate change, as other factors such as solar intensity, ocean currents and pollution from China have contributed some cooling in recent years. In any case the CO2 problem is about the long-term -- decades -- not what's happened in the last few years. Really we're just getting started.
ReplyDeleteDerryl Hermanutz, fluctuations in solar intensity have been well studied, and are now well observed by satellites. The "forcing" from solar fluctuations is only about 0.1 W/m2, while that of CO2 is about 15 times that.
ReplyDeleteChanges in the sun's output simply cannot account for the relatively large change we're seeing in temperatures in the last several decades.
Derryl Hermanutz wrote:
ReplyDeleteNotwithstanding the fact that there is no data...to support the idea that CO2 drives climate change. They just have climate 'models' that universally fail to track real historical climate trends. The models don't work, and CO2 does not drive climate change.
This is simply wrong. There is plenty of evidence of the effect of CO2, if you would only read it. Some of the best comes from ice cores drilled in the cryosphere, which illuminates the climate of the last 600,000 yrs and the role of CO2 and other GHGs. Other evidence comes from satellite data which shows drops in the energy given off by the Earth into space, drops at precisely the wavelenghts expected by CO2, methane, etc. There is much more data too, but you have to read it.
PS: The validity of models has been verified. Of course. Scientists are professionals and this is the first question they ask about their models.
Historic periods of global warming, like the Medieval Warm Period from about 900-1200 AD, are associated with steady, predictable weather that is highly beneficial to plant and animal life, especially human life. England grew vineyards during this period, for e.g. It is periods of cooling, like the centuries long Little Ice Age that followed the MWP, that are associated with extreme and unpredictable weather that is harmful to life on Earth. Yet radical environmentalists want us to fear the very global warming that is so beneficial to our existence.
So far the solar variance theory of climate change is most consistent with the data. We shouldn't let personal suspicion of some proponent of this theory (e.g. Dr. Soon) poison our faith in the data based science that supports the solar variance theory of Earth's climate change.