tBlog - Global Warming Hoax Exposed

.... Michael Crichton has studied climatology with the eye and rigor of a well-trained doctor/scientist. Before State of Fear was published I had read a lecture he gave at Caltech, in January 2003, titled "Aliens Cause Global Warming." I was impressed with his grasp of this subject and also with his cogent observations on science in general. In this lecture he warns, as he does in the book, "once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us… you [can] subvert science to political ends."

Woven into the fabric of a page-turning thriller, State of Fear gives an unbiased assessment of the scientific evidence for global warming. The book also contains a 20-page annotated list of books and journal articles on the subject, an author’s message on climate science, and an appendix titled "Why Politicized Science is Dangerous." His conclusion: There is no human-caused global warming.

He’s right. Most of the rise in temperature in the 20th century occurred before 1940, before CO2 levels started rising. Temperatures fell 0.3° F from 1940 to 1970 while CO2 levels rose, from 310 to 325 ppmv (there is a graph of this on page 86). The temperature of the planet’s upper atmosphere (which the theory of global warming predicts should warm first), as measured by satellites, beginning in 1979, and weather balloons, has remained unchanged over the last 25 years despite a rise in atmospheric CO2 levels to 370 ppmv (p. 99).

Claims trumpeted by the media about how much warmer the planet is now compared with previous decades, centuries, and millennia are equally false. Indirect measurements of temperature, obtained from ice cores, tree rings, corals, ocean sediments, boreholes, and glacier movement, show that there was a Medieval Warm Period, from 800 to 1,300 (there were no thermometers then), when the planet was considerably warmer than it is now. Vineyards flourished in England and cattle grazed in areas of Greenland that today are blanketed by ice more than a mile thick. (The climate was also warmer 6,500 years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum.)

Policy makers and environmentalists claim that a "consensus of a very large group of scientists" agrees that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming. In his Caltech lecture, Dr. Crichton says, "I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels… In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results… Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough." He’s right. Furthermore, the proclaimed consensus for global warming is bogus: 1,500 scientists (of whom only 181 work in fields related to climatology) signed a pro-global warming petition in 1997, but 19,000 scientists signed a petition a year later opposing the U.N.’s Kyoto Treaty Against Global Warming. (The petition states, "… The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate….")

Environmental activists view CO2 as a pollutant. If plants could talk, however, they would disagree. Like oxygen is for animals, CO2 is a plant’s lifeblood. CO2 levels 200 million years ago were 5 to 10 times higher than they are now (without mothers driving SUVs). The planet was greener, enabling dinosaurs to thrive. "Contrarians" can say, with good evidence to support it, that burning fossil fuels to raise atmospheric CO2 levels promotes healthy plant growth. Studies show that a 300-ppmv boost in CO2 above current levels (in climate-controlled greenhouses) increases the productivity of plants by 30 to 50 percent, as measured by rate of photosynthesis and biomass production. Orange trees produce twice as many oranges, each containing a 20 percent greater amount of vitamin C. Rather than cause catastrophic global warming, perhaps continued burning of fossil fuels will help forestall the onset of the next ice age.

Why do so many people (including those 1,500 scientists) believe in global warming? One reason, as one of the characters in State of Fear puts it, is that "all reality is media reality." People who get their information from watching television and reading the New York Times do not learn the true facts of the matter. Media reality says there is man-made global warming, which if not constrained will be catastrophic.

For some scientists their views on this subject can affect their livelihood. Government and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) award $2 billion in grants each year for climate research. These organizations expect the scientists they fund to support the idea that global warming is a problem. As Michael Crichton points out (in his Caltech lecture), we now live in an "anything-goes world where science – or non-science – is the hand maiden of questionable public policy… Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron."

There are two other reasons why people believe in human-caused global warming despite strong evidence against it. Global warming is like a religion. In "Distinguishing Reality from Fantasy, Truth from Propaganda," a lecture given to the Commonwealth Club in September 2003, Michael Crichton identifies environmentalism as "the religion of choice for urban atheists." Gaia, the living planet, is its Mother Goddess. In this religion’s canon, industrial civilization (to paraphrase Merlin Stone, author of When God Was a Woman) is acne on her face. Crichton notes how environmentalism mimics Judeo-Christian beliefs: "There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability." The Kyoto Protocol is it's articles of faith. What about the fact no change in satellite and balloon-measured temperatures has occurred over the last 25 years despite rising CO2 levels? No problem. Adherents of this religion ignore facts like this and recite their catechism of apocalyptic computer climate models....