Rice County Republicans

The following guest editorial was recently sent to us.  It is an important summary of a troublesome bandwagon.  After you read this, I also recommend another interesting writing (Deming) that talks directly to the problem with “True Believers” (see Eric Hoffer) when they are in charge.

Waxman-Marcky Passage: Final Result of Lack of Leadership of Prominent Scientists and Politicians
by Doug Ferguson

The debate on C-Span(or lack thereof) this past Friday of the narrowly passed climate bill, including House Minority Leader John Boehner’s angry denunciation and reading of sections of the new 300 plus page draconian amendment(dropped in the House’s lap at 3:00am by Waxman’s committee on the same day of the ram-rod vote called for by the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi), crystallized the basic underlying problem that has existed ever since the global warming specter was raised years ago at the infamous “Kyoto” conference.

Energy policy, environmental policy, cap and trade and other dominant debates in this country and the rest of the Western world have reached the ridiculous level they now share because there has been little or no leadership to attack the underlying premises that (1) the planet is rapidly warming to a critical state from which there is no return and that (2) man caused it and, therefore, can reverse it. This despite growing scientific evidence that neither of these premises is true.

First it is high time for responsible and prominent scientists and politicians to step up to the plate and refute these two erroneous premises in the best and most effective way they can. Failure to do so will surely cause us to ruin our economy, our democratic republic and our leadership to much of the free world. Our children and grandchildren will be the bearers of this burden if the draconian measures so far proposed by the current administration are enacted. In that respect we are truly in a “global warming” crises.

Second it is incumbent on our journalists to not rollover and accept global warming dogma, but to question and challenge scientists and politicians who make doomsday statements as a justification for their agendas. Such a course of action will require personal risk, courage and statesmanship by all involved. Nothing is more critical to the future of our country.

Background:

When Al Gore was Vice President and first brought the whole issue to national and international prominence at the time of the Kyoto conference years ago, there were scientists who raised sincere doubts about the conclusions reached by global warming advocates at the time. However Gore, using his “bully pulpit” power as VP, totally squelched these inputs to his VP energy task group, and, in fact, ridiculed them. This, by the way, has become the standard for dealing with anyone who questions global warming.

In a way, the lack of a vigorous retort by anyone to Gore’s program was understandable. At the time the actual data for either side of the issue was inconclusive and understood only by a few specialists in the field. All the dire predictions were based on complicated and complex computer models which got their input from a discontinuous world-wide surface station temperature measuring network which was in place originally to help forecast weather and was never intended to accurately measure long range trends. Ocean temperatures came from the random routes of commercial ships or the occasional research vessel voyage. Dr. Michael Mann of the University of Virginia’s “Hockey Stick” graph used by the Canadian government at Kyoto and widely publicized by Gore showing global temperatures going up dramatically in the previous 25 years really looked convincing. Man’s role in all this was based on an arcane (and still unproved) theory that carbon dioxide emission from burning fossil fuels was the cause due to it’s “greenhouse gas” characteristic. Certainly now one in public office or in the public employ wanted to risk their position or job on something which was so little understood. Besides, many politicians in the public arena thought, “well, if this gets us to conserve energy and get off mid-east oil, that’s a good thing.”

Consequently no one in significant positions of power rose to challenge the basics assumptions of global warming and the subsequent gobs of government money thrown at the “problem” only have served to convince everyone that the “problem” was real.

Fast forward to today’s world of climate knowledge. Things have changed significantly. Irony that it is, this the result of the billions of dollars that have been spent by government in this country and others in the Western world because of the fear of global warming. This money has resulted in much new technology being deployed, which is now starting for the first time to give mankind a systematic way of measuring what really is happening to our planet’s climate. Satellites recording systematic planet-wide surface temperature, magnetic fields and other global parameters are in place. After a multi-year international project, 3000 high-tech buoys are spread out through the earth’s oceans measuring ocean temperatures, currents and salinity (The ARGO Project). A new satellite to measure solar radiation accurately outside the earth’s environment for the first time is about to be launched. Temperature studies of Mars and other parts of our solar system are being seriously studied for correlation with our earth’s trends. Many other initiatives too numerous to mention here ranging from glacier studies to polar ice measurements have greatly added to our knowledge in the years since Kyoto.

An interesting footnote to show how hard it is to get at the truth:

After rigorous analysis by Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick and other researchers with math and science backgrounds, the famous “Hockey Stick” graph used at the original Kyoto conference mentioned above to dramatize global warming was shown to be erroneous, having been created by “cherry picking” newer data, ignoring some significant historical data (the medieval “warm” period), using data from only a selected number of tree rings as a proxy for ancient temperature and using biased weighting and filtering systems for all the data to achieve the “hockey stick” profile. While McIntyre and McKitrick independently showed it on there own using some of Mann’s data they accidentally found on one of his web sites, the final verification almost didn’t happen. Mann refused to give up his computer code and data sets showing how he arrived at the graph when McIntyre, McKitrick and others requested it. It wasn’t until Congressman Joe Barton, R-Texas, then chairman of the of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce at the time, sent him a letter asking that he provide the code and data (since Mann’s project had been federally funded) that he finally provided the information while at the same time claiming that the congressman was “intimidating” him. This in spite of the fact that he had previously testified to congress on the results of his study. Significantly the official UN body (the IPCC) “researching” global warming no longer uses Mann’s results.

One prominent journalist who has stepped up to the plate is the Wall Street Journal’s regular columnist Kimberley Strassel. Her recent editorial (below) sums this up this trend nicely. All leaders in the free world should read it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html#mod=djemEditorialPage

Bottom line: There is plenty of good scientific information available today to dispute the hysterical global warming claims. Leaders and journalists need only the courage to draw upon it.

Doug Ferguson is a retired engineer living in Mankato, Mn who has had a life-long interest in science, math, earth sciences and astronomy and, of course, politics.