When the proponents of any theory have to fake their data to make it conform to their prejudged result, one can safely assume that the theory itself is wrong. When the same people attempt to prevent scientific journals from publishing contrary data and conclusions, and email each other about how they hope nobody understands the Freedom of Information Act that will make their fakery available to all, when NASA itself issues bogus figures (see below) and demotes one of their own scientists who tried to blow the whistle, and moved him into a position where he would never be heard from again ... and much more ... one can safely assume that the entire premise of anthropogenic global warming is alarmist tripe. Tripe that makes a few people extremely rich, and gains multi-million $ grants to universities to study a.g.w., but zero to disprove it.
Global warming moved from the scientific to the political sphere 20 years ago, and political pressure from the White House down has had the expected result. 31,000 experts from every discipline involved in climatology, vs the IPCC, which is 85% politicians and the rest well-funded "bought off" scientists, and exists to extract billions of tax money from the developed nations to hand to others.
Unfortunately, NASA, together, as we now learn, the EPA - entities that should be totally science- and not politically-driven - have succumbed to the same political pressure. This week it was revealed that an EPA scientist was threatened if he released to the press his report, which was quashed by management, that global warming was a myth, and eventually reassigned to a department where he would not be heard from again.
Global warming fanatics have pointed to NASA as proof that their concerns about a warming planet are justified. They repeatedly cite the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whose director, James Hansen, asserted: "Nine of the ten warmest years in history occurred since 1995, with 1998 the warmest," an assertion eagerly reported in the media. However, very quietly, NASA reversed itself, admitting Hansen's statistics were wrong. NASA now admits: "Four of the top ten years of recorded high temperatures were actually back in the 1930s, with 1934 the warmest; and some of Dr. Hansen’s previously cited warm years (2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004) were actually cooler than many years of more than a century ago."
More evidence of NASA's James Hansen's duplicity recently came to light. In trying to prove that 2008 was warmer than previous years, he actually had the gall to use average temperature figures for September 2008 and compare them with previous Octobers. Nobody bothered to challenge this liar, but just accepted his data. Not, that is, until U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts and climatologist Steve McIntyre did an audit.
Caught out in the lie, the Goddard Institute at NASA, where Hansen works, juggled its books. To account for having carried the September figures over to October, it claimed to have discovered a new "hot spot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea ice 30% more extensive than the same time in October 2007.
And when a subject like this leaves the scientific, and enters the political sphere (and the highly profitable: close to $40 billion tax money has been spent since 1990 on global warming research), the opportunities and motives for skewing and distorting data, and selectively omitting contrary evidence, abound. Algore's An Inconvenient Truth, of which more anon, is a perfect example. You may be familiar with his false "hockey stick" image (if not, I suggest you look it up) and graphs that purported to show global warming following increases in CO2, whereas the absolute reverse is the case - warming increases production of CO2 from increased microorganism populations in the seas, and accelerated degradation of dead plant materials.
Global warming alarmists ignore, or evade, such awkward facts as the greatly increased CO2 production worldwide for 30 years from 1940, when industry vastly accelerated due to the war and the postwar booms in the Americas, Europe and Asia, while global temperatures simultaneously fell.
While glaciers are indeed retreating in places - as part of the cyclical advance/retreat that has also been going on for millennia (they carved much of our landscape and valleys) - they are advancing or thickening in others. The BBC reported two years ago that surveys showed Greenland's ice is thickening in the interior (the places that people like Algore don't film). The former VP's film shows dramatic shots of massive chunks of ice breaking off glaciers, but this "calving" of icebergs is a normal, natural process, which has been carving our valleys for millions of years. The film doesn't mention, of course, that polar bears - far from dying off - are actually increasing rapidly after the US, Canada and other countries agreed to limit their greatest threat, hunting, or that - far from drowning as their ice floes melt - they are great swimmers and have been known to swim as much as 60 miles in search of food. Nor that glaciers are growing in Norway, New Zealand and even parts of the US. I spent some time in Alaska in 2007, and the US Forest Service was warning us that the Hubbard Glacier in the Tongass National Forest was advancing so rapidly that it threatened to close of a major fjord.
Gore also shows dramatic time-lapse photos of ice disappearing from Mt. Kilimanjaro, conveniently failing to mention that this has been going on for hundreds of years. Australia's Marine Geophysical Laboratory has publicly stated: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic." His film also show the likely opening of the Northwest Passage to shipping, due to ice melting, but conveniently doesn't mention that this was the case asrecently as the 1940s (and is an economic boon, by reducing shipping route mileage and time).
People babble on about the "greenhouse effect" of CO2. But of all the so-called greenhouse gases, atmospheric levels of this are minuscule, water vapor is much more prolific, and methane is some 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas. Methane is produced essentially irrelevant of man's work, coming from the natural decay of organic matter and, especially, the gaseous emissions of the world's hundreds of millions of wild and domesticated ruminants. Cow flatus alone far surpasses in greenhouse gas effect all that produced by all American cars, trucks, buses and locomotives.
Lord Monckton used to be scientific adviser to Prime Minister Thatcher. After schools in the UK showed Algore's An Inconvenient Truth, several parents and Members of Parliament threatened to sue the (socialist) government for subjecting children to political indoctrination, complaining that their kids were panicking and weeping about dying polar bears, and having nightmares that they would soon be either drowned or roasted.
Monckton assembled a panel of eminent climatologists who essentially destroyed Gore's inaccurate and misleading movie.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
Since then, the BBC has screened two programs (one was “A Convenient Lieâ€) debunking Gore and his ilk. No TV station in the US will screen either program.
Gore, Hansen and most pro-warming speakers refuse to answer any questions on their assertions at press conferences or after they make their highly profitable speeches, and make sure that nobody with a contrary point of view can be heard. Last year Republican Congress members invited Lord Monckton, who flew from the UK at his own expense, to appear after Al Gore at the Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on climate. The Democrats refused to allow him to speak, so as not to embarrass Gore, whom they gave, of course, all the time he wanted. As Monckton said: “The Democrats have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution. Congressman Henry Waxman’s refusal to expose Al Gore’s sci-fi comedy-horror testimony to proper, independent scrutiny by the House minority reeks of naked fear.â€
