20070913 Marc Morano’s Round Up – September 13, 2007
Press Release: SPPI Exposes Fundamental Scientific Error in Laurie David’s “Global Warming” Book for Children
[Note: Laurie David was one of former Vice President Al Gore’s producers for “An Inconvenient Truth.”]
September 13, 2007 09:52 AM ET: A fundamental scientific error lurks in a book calculated to terrify schoolchildren about “global warming”, Robert Ferguson, SPPI president, announced today: “The Down-To-Earth Guide to Global Warming", by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon, is intentionally designed to propagandize unsuspecting school children who do not have enough knowledge to know what is being done to them. A new SPPI paper http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/other/childrensbookerror.html)
briefly examines a cardinal error, found on page 18 of the David book, where she mousetraps children: “The more the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the higher the temperature climbed. The less carbon dioxide, the more the temperature fell. You can see this relationship for yourself by looking at the graph.
What makes this graph so amazing is that by connecting rising CO2 to rising temperature scientists have discovered the link between greenhouse-gas pollution (sic) and global warming.” The SPPI paper states, in part: What really makes the David-Gordon graph “amazing” is that it’s egregiously counterfactual. Worse, in order to contrive a visual representation for their claim that CO2 controls temperature change, the authors present unsuspecting children with an altered temperature and CO2 graph that reverses the relationship found in the scientific literature. The manipulation is critical because David’s central premise posits that CO2 drives temperature, yet the peer-reviewed literature is unanimous that CO2 changes have historically followed temperature changes.
Case in point, on page 103 of their book, David cites the work of Siegenthaler et al. (2005). However, Siegenthaler et al. clearly state the opposite, that CO2 lags “with respect to the Antarctic temperature over glacial terminations V to VII are 800, 1600, and 2800 years, respectively, which are consistent with earlier observations during the last four glacial cycles.” “Parents and teachers should be concerned enough to demand that the publisher, Scholastic Books, recall, pulp and correct the error before mores copies reach innocent children,” said Ferguson.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070913/20070913005546.html?.v=1
Full Report on David’s Book:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/other/childrensbookerror.html
New doubts on global warming in revised NASA temperature data
Excerpt: Imagine basing a country’s energy and economic policy on an incomplete, unproven theory — a theory based entirely on computer models in which one minor variable is considered the sole driver for the entire global climate system.
This is precisely what former Vice President Al Gore, Senate Environment Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer and others want their nation to do. They expect Americans to accept on blind faith the thesis that human carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are causing catastrophic climate change.
Boxer, Gore and their allies readily resort to emotional bullying against anyone who dares question this dogma. Their pronouncements — Boxer’s juvenile “the American people have the will to slow, stop and reverse global warming” is a prime example — are merely displays of arrogance that expose their lack of basic science understanding, and their complete disrespect for public intelligence. The policies they advocate are wholly unjustified scientifically and have extraordinarily damaging economic implications for the developed world.
The scientific method, which even grade-schoolers know, provides that science advances through hypotheses based on a set of assumptions. Other scientists challenge and test those assumptions in what philosopher Karl Popper called the practice of “falsibility.” Trying to disprove hypotheses is what real science is all about.
Yet the hypothesis that human addition of CO2 would lead to significantly enhanced greenhouse warming was quickly accepted without this normal scientific challenge. < > Four of the 10 warmest years on record are now acknowledged to have occurred when human production of CO2 was minimal, in the 1930s. The past decade now includes only three of the 10 warmest years. Will Gore withdraw “An Inconvenient Truth” pending necessary corrections?
A second “proof” of human CO2-caused warming, according to the U.N.’s IPCC, was a claimed increase in global temperatures of about one degree Fahrenheit over 130 years. This was asserted to be outside natural variability. But the uncertainty in the measurements was more than 0.3°F, meaning possible values could vary by as much as 66 percent of the total change. The source of this temperature calculation, University of East Anglia’s Professor Phil Jones, has refused to disclose which temperature records were used and how he “adjusted” them. Clearly, the IPCC’s conclusions must be viewed with considerable suspicion until they provide full disclosure on the Jones data.
The meaning of these revelations is clear: Computer models are the basis of all forecasts used by alarmists. These models used temperature data that is now known to be suspect or completely wrong. Will Gore, Boxer and the IPCC call for a rational re-evaluation of the global warming scare? Don’t bet on it — accurate science was never a hallmark of this crusade.
http://www.examiner.com/a-932175~DrTim_Ball_and_Tom_HarrisNew_doubts_on_global_warming_in_revised_NASA_temperature_data.html
Marie Claire Magazine calls for 'global cooling' so women can wear $41,000 of winter apparel.
Excerpt: In one picture the female model sits in a $7,595 Prada “feather-and mohair-trimmed coat.”
She’s holding a “Preserve the world now” sign as an RV sits parked and power lines stretch out behind her. In another picture, the same model oversees seven men painting a banner that appears to read “Resistance” and “Rise Up.” Particularly dramatic was the protest photograph. A black-and-white image with the model holding a megaphone, “Stop Global Warming” painted on the street, fog meant to look like smoke or tear gas clouding the scene. The protesters held signs proclaiming: “Save Earth,” “[No] Plastic,” and “Be the Change” as the same menacing power lines stretch behind them.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20070912145559.aspx
Column: Global warming is not about the Science
FOR YEARS, supporters of global warming alarmism have repeated an odd refrain: Even if we're wrong, we're right. Sen. Timothy E. Wirth, D-Colo., said it in 1988, as the National Journal reported. "What we've got to do in energy conservation is (to) try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/09/13/ED0URU52F.DTL