Apocalyptic predictions are yielding fatal results; time to stop

Guest Post by Thomas Fuller

The deluge of catastrophic predictions regarding global warming and its consequences have reached almost everyone on the planet, and perhaps unintentionally have replaced Cold War bomb scares as the primary source of doomsaying.

The messages are well-thought out and prepared by professional communicators, with disturbing and graphic images of a post-apocalyptic scenario lifted from Mad Max, and with about as much connection to reality.

In March of this year, a couple in Argentina shot their two children before committing suicide over fears of global warming. On Wednesday, in Maryland, James Lee apparently committed ‘suicide by cop’ after taking three hostages in an attempt to force the Discovery Channel to alter its programming to suit his fears over the environment.

At what point will we call to account those who have preached ‘the end of the earth as we know it’ to countless people? How many people will be driven to desperation by those who distort the science?

The IPCC’s AR4, published in 2007, painted a future with global warming as a serious, multinational problem that we should face together. You may agree or disagree with their findings–I agree with most of it, not all.

But nowhere does the work of thousands of scientists in peer-reviewed literature say that we are doomed, that civilization is at risk, that there is no future for us.

That falls to several groups of committed lobbyists, scientists, environmentalists and politicians who began saying the IPCC report was too conservative almost the day it was published. The evidence they bring forward for that claim is nowhere near as robust as the science referenced by the IPCC.

They are scaring people to death. How many more lives will be blighted or destroyed before they understand that their propaganda has real world effects?

It’s hard to work up too much sympathy for Mr. Lee–he took hostages, threatened to detonate an explosive device, and pretty much guaranteed his fate. And his worries weren’t confined to global warming. He was equally concerned with overpopulation, another scare story put out by some of the same people pumping hysteria over global warming.

At any rate, what these people are doing is despicable, if not murderous.

Sea levels are not going to rise by 20 feet. Or 10. Or five. There is not going to be a climatic tipping point that pushes our planet into a spiral of ever-increasing temperatures. Global warming is not going to cause the extinction of half the species on this planet, or even 1%.

And it is long past time that respected members of the scientific community publicly acknowledge those facts and helped bring this debate back within the realm of reality.

My father met Jim Jones briefly before he moved to Guyana with his flock, and described him as intelligent and persuasive, able to talk reasonably about a multitude of subjects. We don’t need more smooth talkers preaching the language of despair. We can now see the results. In their zeal to communicate their fears of the effects of global warming that go far beyond the predictions of mainstream science, those who Anthony called ‘warmistas’ in his blog title and who I call alarmists and sometimes hysterics have created a library of disturbing words and images that can influence the vulnerable.

Are these people responsible for the tragedies in Argentina and Maryland? No. But did they act responsibly, caveating their predictions as personal fears instead of the verdict of science. No. They were trying to scare you. They succeeded too well.

It’s time to stop the hysteria.

Guess who helped pay for the embarrassing climate nonscience at England's East Anglia University? Gulp, that would be us

From the Sunday Times, by way of Wattsupwiththat.com:

The American government has suspended its funding of the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit (CRU), citing the scientific doubts raised by last November’s leak of hundreds of stolen emails.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) was one of the unit’s main sources of funding for its work assembling a database of global temperatures.

It has supported the CRU financially since 1990 and gives the unit about £131,000 ($200,000 USD) a year on a rolling three-year contract.

This should have been renewed automatically in April, but the department has suspended all payments since May pending a scientific peer review of the unit’s work.

The leaked emails caused a global furore. They appeared to suggest that CRU scientists were using “tricks” to strengthen the case for man-made climate change and suppressing dissent.

A spokesman for the DoE said: “The renewal application was placed on hold pending the conclusion of the inquiry into scientific misconduct by Sir Alastair Muir Russell.”

Muir Russell published his report earlier this month. It said that the rigour and honesty of the CRU scientists were not in doubt but criticised them for “a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness”.

The DoE peer review panel will now sift through the report and decide if American taxpayers should continue to fund the unit.

A spokesman for the university said: “We are still waiting to hear if the latest bid for funding to the US Department of Energy has been successful and would not comment or speculate in the meantime.”

Wattsupwiththat asks, What's up with this? Is more carbon in the air bad? Or good?

Sometimes I wonder if science hasn’t been infected with some sort of mass delusion about CO2. Watch this amazing video on CO2 and plant growth from CO2Science.org, then read below the claims made in this UC Davis press release.




Rising CO2 levels threaten crops and food quality

Historical records have documented that the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has increased by 39 percent since 1800. If current projections hold true, the concentration will increase by an additional 40 to 140 percent by the end of the century.

This trend is of concern to agriculture because elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been shown to decrease the rates of photorespiration, the naturally occurring chemical process that combines oxygen with carbohydrates in plants.

At first, this reduction in photorespiration boosts photosynthesis, the complementary process by which plants grow by using sunlight to turn water and carbohydrates into chemical energy in the form of plant sugars. In time, however, the increase in the rate of photosynthesis tapers off as the plants adjust to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, and plant growth slows.

From wattsupwiththat.com/

Graph showing our understanding of the climate. Image is the painting by J. M. W. Turner, “Rain, Steam and Speed”.

We're still sane; as evidence of global warming fraud piles up, public skepticism rises

From wattsupwiththat.com