The Great Global Warming Thread (merged)

[AMDScooter]

^^^ CARB... what a load of sh33t.


Read the whole thang... it's damning..

Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara

To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence---it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer "explanatory" screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind---simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people's motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don't think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

[Enmore]

It'll be interesting to see if Californian voters pass or reject Proposition 23 on November 2nd.

These are its main features:

Suspends State law that requires greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020, until California's unemployment drops to 5.5 percent or less for four consecutive quarters.

Requires State to abandon implementation of comprehensive greenhouse-gas-reduction program that includes increased renewable energy and cleaner fuel requirements, and mandatory emission reporting and fee requirements for major polluters such as power plants and oil refineries, until suspension ends.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.ph...ition_23_(2010)

[AMDScooter]

^^^^^ I hope so... but a lot of the MMGW moonbats running about this state would rather see this place turned into a 3rd world sh*thole than make sensible decisions.

Related.. known this about wikki in regard to mmgw for some time. It only took them a few years to finally clean house. IMHO, had the wheels not been falling off the MMGW bus already they probably would have let it go on.

Wikipedia Bans Radical Global Warming Propagandist From Editing All Pages

Wikipedia is the most popular source of written information in the world. It is the third most popular non-search engine site on the web, bested only by Facebook and YouTube. In other words, it can be a potent ideological force.

And it has been. The site's administrators recently banned 16 users from editing any article related to global climate change. One user, William Connolley - also an active member of the UK Green Party - had been editing misinformation and propaganda into Wikipedia articles since 2003.

Energy Probe executive director Lawrence Solomon wrote in December 2009:

Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known – Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

As NB's Matthew Sheffield wrote at the time, "Such a horrendously biased and obsessed individual should not be allowed to decide what is neutral or fair, the ostensible guiding principle of Wikipedia."

Just this week, Wikipedia followed through on its commitment to that principle - in this instance at least - by banning Connolley from creating or editing any articles having to do with climate change.

Connelley's work on Wikipedia - in addition to the work of the 15 other users banned - had turned Wikipedia into a bastion of left wing misinformation on the climate change issue. The decentralized nature of Wikipedia makes it difficult to combat concerted efforts to maliciously alter content.

Efforts to hijack Wikipedia pages bear a striking resemblance to plots unearthed by the so-called ClimateGate scandal of last year, which revealed that scientists were knowing falsifying or omitting information that undermined their climate change findings.

While Connolley was ostensibly concerned with scientific truth, his Wikipedia campaign smacks of a very unscientific effort to distort the truth to promote a specific political agenda.

Connolley complained to the New Yorker in 2006 that Wikipedia "gives no privilege to those who know what they’re talking about." But neither does the scientific method. You must prove your point if you want authority, not the other way around. Presumably, if anthropogenic global warming is "settled science," as Connolley and so many others claim, one need not lie to argue that case.

Bout fuggin time..

[Enmore]

Yes, I saw that. Connolley & his activities have been mentioned in this thread before.

[/\/\adGamer]

I hope so... but a lot of the MMGW moonbats running about this state would rather see this place turned into a 3rd world sh*thole than make sensible decisions.

Sorry to say this but last time I was there thats what it reminded me of anyway !

[Enmore]

Trouble is, where California leads, everyone eventually seems to follow.

I can almost the solid wall of dumb-ass ideas headed my way.

[AMDScooter]

NPR pitching their usual leftist rubbish on the taxpayer dime...

NPR weighs in on climate change policy, predictably

NPR helpfully weighs in on climate change and the upcoming election. Even though a certain party has had super-majority control of the Congress and the Executive branch for the past 2-years (and done nothing on energy/climate policy), NPR blames the real boogeymen and women: GOP candidates not-yet-elected and, of course author George W. Bush. Their arguments, aside from being of the typical straw man variety, go back to the age-old meme: if only the knuckledraggers and flat-earthers would get with the program and accede to the demands of the enlightened (NY Times John Broder summarizes that argument, dutifully). From NPR, which is known for impartial analysis:

[TheGlasMan]

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

[Enmore]

NASA should stick to rockets and leave the pseudo-science to others.

[AMDScooter]

MSM Painting people opposing the MMGW cult in it's usual fashion...

NYT: Hey, this professor makes a good point when he compares global warming skeptics to defenders of slavery!

I know, I know — environmentalists employ EXTREME rhetoric to shock Americans out of their complacency. Is it Thursday already? Anyway, you’re losing the global warming debate rather badly in the court of public opinion, so how can you win people over? I know! Let’s kill some kids. Wait, that didn’t work? Let’s try comparing global warming skeptics to proponents of slavery:

The American public is still mired in doubt about the science and the economics of climate change, he said, but is ready for the kind of social shift that eventually brought success to the abolition movement of the 18th and 19th centuries.

“Just as few people saw a moral problem with slavery in the 18th century, few people in the 21st century see a moral problem with the burning of fossil fuels,” Professor [Andrew] Hoffman [of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and School of Natural Resources] said. “Will people in 100 years look at us with the same incomprehension we feel toward 18th-century defenders of slavery?”

I don’t know what’s more offensive, the idea that skepticism of global warming is a moral injustice on par with slavery, or the fact that those people pushing global warming think of themselves in such incredibly self-righteous terms where they’re the ones saving humanity from itself. If Environmentalists wonder why their credibility is shot, perhaps they should stop with the doomsday propaganda and come up with a better solution to the global warming problem than making my monthly utility bills cost more than the gross national product of Burkina Faso.

[Enmore]

The peasants are revolting:

Wind farm revolts blamed for dramatic fall in planning approvals

Local revolts by British residents against wind farms are to blame for the number of planning approvals hitting record lows, an industry report has warned.

By Andrew Hough

More than 230 campaign groups across the country are putting plans to generate more than a quarter of Britain’s electricity in jeopardy, it was claimed.

New figures show one in three wind farm applications were approved by councils amid heightened opposition from angry residents.

Approvals in England has fallen by 50 per cent half over the past year while the number of new wind farms coming “on-stream”, or becoming active, has dropped by almost a third.

The report, from RenewableUK, which represents the wind farm industry, blamed a groundswell of opposition in areas including Kent, Yorkshire and Cornwall and Scotland.

Good news. These bird shredding eyesores are monuments to human stupidity.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ene...approvals.html

[Enmore]

More good news:

Figures show massive slump in UK sales of new electric cars

Campaigners say 90% drop in 2009 could be due to recession and premium prices – but government subsidy could reverse decline

Adam Vaughan

Sales of new electric cars in the UK plummeted by nearly 90% in 2009 compared with their peak in 2007, according to motoring trade association figures released this week.

Just 55 of the green cars – whose fans include Boris Johnson [Mayor of London], Jonathan Ross [Overpaid TV nonentity] and Jade Jagger [Mick's daughter]– were registered in 2009, in contrast to 397 in 2007, says the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

The huge fall is a blow to UK efforts to meet tough carbon emission cut targets in a decade, and comes just months before the government introduces a subsidy of up to £5,000 off new electric cars.

Nearly half of the electric vehicles sold last year were the tiny G-Wiz car. The latest model has a top speed of 50mph and a range of 48 miles between charges

What they didn't mention (it being the eco-lefty Guardian after all) is that the G-Wiz takes 6 hours to re-charge before you can use it again. That is of course using electricity produced by those nasty coal & nuclear power stations.

You therefore need to own a second, proper car to do anything useful.

It doesn't matter how much taxpayer money the stupid government throws at these glorified golf carts, they're never going to take over from regular cars.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...-sales-figures

[Enmore]

It'll be interesting to see if Californian voters pass or reject Proposition 23 [Suspend the state's global warming law] on November 2nd.

Seems they rejected it with 60% of the vote.

There goes even more business out of the state. Amazing really. .

[tucker]

Seems they rejected it with 60% of the vote.

There goes even more business out of the state. Amazing really. .

California isn’t known for voter intelligence and don’t forget California is the home of the environmental extremists movement.

[bk94si]

I think that the lefty Californians would be more than happy to have businesses leave the state. Cleaner air for those that are left, even if they are unemployed.