The sad, emotional polar bear soap opera playing out in 1 1/2 minute bits on cable TV is the driving force behind the passage of this ruinous, anti-capitalist, industry-gutting bill. But notice how temperatures into the beginning of the 21st century in Greenland are not any warmer than other warming spells have been?
There's a commercial that has been airing on certain Cable TV networks, for the past 6 months where the handsome, debonair, touchy-feely, stubble-faced Hollywood actor stands in front the footage of innocent-looking polar bears frolicking on the Arctic ice sheet while dark and sinister music plays in the background, harbingering the extinction of the entire species of mammal in a habitat it has thrived in for literally hundreds of thousand of years. The dire problem facing these 1,500 pound brutes that physically dominate every other species at the North Pole, including humans, the actor informs us, is Global Warming. More evidence and footage is aired showing the dire consequences of unchecked Global Warming, including the usual ice shelves crashing into the sea, icebergs floating across the North Atlantic, and scientists standing over what looks like poor, miserable, collapsed polar bears lying helplessly under an oppressively warm Arctic sun. Meanwhile, thousands of miles south, in the midst of one of the coolest summers in the Midwest in 15 years, The US House of Representatives rammed through a Cap&Trade bill that passed with only 7 votes.
The sad, emotional polar bear soap opera playing out in 1 1/2 minute bits on cable TV is the driving force behind the passage of this ruinous, anti-capitalist, industry-gutting bill. To the Global-Warming crowd and those who are particularly vulnerable to its pied-piper message, it is as if the polar ice caps and the extent of the Arctic and Antarctic ice fields have always been the same size, same shape, and same thickness. But recent history, going back into the late 1800s suggests otherwise. This NASA GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) compilation of temperature at Gothard Nuuk Greenland over the past 100+ years shows the exact variation in temperature naturally occurs over decades of time.
Weather extremes only in the 21st Century?
Notice how temperatures into the beginning of the 21st century in Greenland are not any warmer than other warming spells have been? If this is so, how is any melting or perception thereof any different than anything that Greenland has ever gone through even going back to the end of the latest ice age?
Even more fascinating are the temperatures observed over the Globe in recent years. Going back to 2002, observed temperature trends take from satellite data at the University of Huntsville Atlanta have shown that Global temperatures have been in steady decline despite a continued uptick in carbon emissions.
Carbon goes up, temp goes down?
As it can be easily seen even prior to 2002 and just after the super-El-Nino event of 1998, temperatures leveled off globally before the cooling spell ensued.
Where's the trend toward warming?
"There has been no significant global warming since 1995, no warming since 1998, and global cooling for the past few years," former U.S. Senate Environment Committee spokesman Marc Morano writes at ClimateDepot.com. Citing metrics gathered by University of Alabama, Huntsville's Dr. Roy Spencer, Morano adds: "The latest global averaged satellite temperature data for June 2009 reveal yet another drop in Earth's temperature." Despite his dire warnings, the Earth has cooled 0.74 degrees F since former Vice President Al Gore released "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006." 1 And the same measurements show that this cooling trend has ensued despite the continued uptick in CO2.
-5 to -6 below average during the hottest month of the year?
Keeping this temperature fluctuation in mind, it is no more surprising to find it revealed that Arctic Sea ice has been just as thin or thinner in various parts of the Northern Hemisphere during the early parts of the 19th and 20th Century. Sea ice records around Newfoundland Bay back to 1810 by Brian T. Hill. National Research Council – Institute for Ocean Technology, St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada shows this variability.
Yeah it's dropped off but it doesn't exactly have much of a baseline.
Throughout the early to middle 19th century the Royal Society of London dispatched several expeditions to explore the break up and near disappearance of ice in the Arctic Sea as break up such magnitude led to the possibility of a finding a northwest passage to North America.
"It will without doubt have come to your Lordship's knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations."
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817 2
Further variability in the state of Climate and polar ice caps on both ends of the planet comes from observed satellite trends and observations of the actual polar ice caps on both the North and South poles. While it has been documented that Arctic Sea Ice has been waning to the extent of as much as 10% per decade since 1979, the same studies have shown that Antarctic Sea Ice has increased by 2% per decade and in the last few years, after bottoming out and decreasing in the mid part of this decade, has exploded once again.
So it goes away! But it comes back too!
What's even more fascinating is what Global Warming advocates won’t tell you about the temperatures of the last 1,200 to 2000 years. It is well-known from recorded history that Vikings grew crops in Greenland in the 13th century, just before the Little Ice Age ensued and drove the Vikings from Greenland to search for places to settle in warm climates. It was in the exact period from 800 to 1,200 AD, where temperatures shown by ice core samples taken from Greenland, the Atlantic, and other parts of the world where European culture began to flourish and advance. This was known as the Medieval warm period and the Global Warming Crowd wants us to conveniently forget about this history and focus solely on the last 30 years. The Medieval warm period was much warmer than today's conditions. What did the polar bears do then? Did they drown? Did they die? That was before the Little Ice Age ensued, putting the kibosh on the flourishing Medieval warm period and ushering in the despair, harshness, and plaque of the Middle Ages. Shown here in temperature plots over the last 2400 years constructed through research of 1 kilometer long ice cores drilled out of the Greenland glacier as part of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project, these flip-flopping warm and cold periods appear to be the "normal" manifestation of the climate over the Northern Hemisphere. As a matter of fact, the majority of the temperature record on the graph is in flop-motion with the exception being the 700 years of the Little Ice age between 1,200 and 900 AD. This is the point on the graph where the temperature stays generally 0.5 C more below the 1950 worldwide average for longer for the majority of the time. Notice how 20th century temperatures are simply a return to the warmth offered in the warm periods before the Little Ice Age but they have yet to come close to the very maximums of those warm periods. Also remarkable on the graph is how these periods of large-scale warmth coincide the growth and demise of the Roman Empire and the flourishing of civilization in Europe before the Little Ice Age.
Up down, up down, up down, all around.
The same research from 100,000 and 420,000 years ago shows the same amazing swings in climatology notice again, the amazing number spikes on the graphs, large scale periods of cold and ice, interluded by brief spikes of warming. The up and down temperature fluctuation continues into the last 10,000 years but tightens with still more cold interludes than warm. Look at how the first graph below is similar to the others below and look at how today's 20th Century temperatures are simply appear to another spike of warmth in between glacial or near-glacial periods.
Are we on the brink of another return to an ice age? The temperature record from the last 10,000 years shows something ominous, at least to this author. At the beginning of the graph, or approximately 8,000 years ago, there is huge up-spike in what was a bottomed-out temperature – the end of the last major glacial period. Massive ice and glaciers covered huge portions of the Northern Hemisphere. The end of this glacial period resulted in rapid melting of these glaciers, all without the help of mankind in any way, shape, or form. And the end of this glacial period signaled the beginning of all human civilization and the moderate climate that we deal with today, still with all of its ups and downs explained above, being nothing like the harshness of that era or other era before it.
Why do global warming advocates say nothing about all of this history and ignore this publicly available information and data I simply acquired by just by some exhaustive research? Sounds like a line of BS being cast out to catch a bunch of fish that don't seem know that the worm on the end of hook is going to reel them into something completely illogical when compared to large-scale facts. Thirty years of modern climate data is used to justify the entire sanctioning of capitalism and the whole reversal of modern-day American ingenuity and progress. And how strange? And why it is that only America is targeted for such a mass change in lifestyle? Could there be an agenda here? Other countries of the world who live less successfully than we do and live a simplified life don't have as much to lose in their quality of life than we do. Could it be that Europe and Canada, China, India, and others who haven't been able abide by the accords of their own proposed Kyoto protocols, are envious of our world status and are involved in a socialist leaning agenda, along with scientific community, to knock America down to more than a few pegs? Perhaps to be more like them? Cap&Trade itself is nothing but a massive bureaucratic power grab by the American Government to stymie industry and feed off the taxes. Al Gore lives in the mansion that uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year. 3 The continent of Africa is being hampered in its development by Global Warming advocacy and they are suffering from poverty from it. Sea levels have risen steadily since the end of the Little Ice Age and have not accelerated in their rise throughout this century or last.4 Thirty-one thousand scientists including 9000 various climate scientists with Ph.D.'s have sent a petition the UN arguing that global warming has little or no effect on Climate and is a complete farce. 5
As for the polar bears, once an endangered species, the World Wildlife federation itself says that today’s polar bear population numbers 20- to 25,000. As far as population thriving or declining, in 2002, the US Geological Survey in the Arctic Refuge Coastal plain reported the polar bear population was, naturally, near historic highs. Biologist Mitchell Taylor of the Arctic community of Nunavit who tracks 13 colonies, says 11 are stable or thriving with populations that have increased 25%. Taylor was banned recently from a meeting with the Polar Bear Specialist Group. He had obtained funding to participate in the group's meeting at the end of June, to discuss his findings on the polar bear population but was voted down by the PBSG board. The PBSG group leader, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor's, said that the reason he was excluded was not because of his expertise on polar bears but because his views of warming in the Arctic not being due to manmade causes being "extremely unhelpful" and "inconsistent" with the position taken by the PBSG.6 Now if were a group that specialized in polar bears and I had a true expert in the field and was interested in learning about his expertise and studies on polar bear populations, wouldn't I want him at a meeting about polar bear populations? But he was pushed aside because he doesn't agree with man-made climate change? What? Oh, yes, and there's this little thing about polar bears. They don't drown in the arctic sea. Ice has been melting in the summertime in the Arctic for millenniums and the polar bears have survived just fine. Polar bears swim! They've been clocked to swim 60 miles! They prey on seals in under the water! They are in no danger.7
Hey, they're swimming and they're not drowning!
They are also not the cute sweet, innocent little teddy bears seen in the Coca-Cola commercials. Though polar bear attacks are generally rare, one would no more go up to a polar bear than one would go up to a black bear, brown bear, grizzly bear, or Kodiak bear. In the World Wildlife Federation commercial (er propaganda?) scientists were standing over the polar bears not because they were dying but because they to tranquilize them in order to put radio tags on them to do research. If they had not done this, they would have been mauled! Global warming had nothing to do with it. It simply amounts to nothing but a 5-cent theory delivered in a 10-cent can.
1. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/new-and-cool/murdock_the_chills_of_global_cooling
2. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/historic_variation_in_arctic_ice
3.http://townhall.com/columnists/FionaKobusingye/2009/07/29/africa%E2%80%99s_real_climate_crisis?page=full&comments=true
4. http://icecap.us/images/uploads/GREENLAND.pdf
5. http://www.petitionproject.org
6. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html
7. http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/polarbears/pbadaptations.html
Even if GW were true, which it is not, why would we want to save an animal that eats baby seals? Yea, yea, I know we want to save all species and those white bears are cute, but how does an animal with such disgusting eating habits become the symbol of conservation. Let’s save bats. At least they eat mosquitoes.
Hi Ivan,
Yeah, I agree with you about the bats. They’re very beneficial. Problem is they’re not as “cute” as polar bears and creep people out. I don’t necessarily think that we need to save all species but the lefties all want too. I just think we should save those that are beneficial to man or subsist with us without causing undue hazard or pestilance. We can always put polar bears in zoos. What would be wrong with that? They’d be safer in a zoo than they’d every be at the North Pole, especially with Global Warming being such a (so-called)threat! ;) But it sure is funny how greenies don’t seem to remember that the cute bear slaughters baby seals but they get outraged when Eskimoes do it for their blubber. I don’t advocate that but I’m just making the comparison.
Speaking of eating animals, that in fact is the best way to protect them from extinction. Cows, chickens, pigs etc. are not endangered because they have a value to humanity (as in, nutritional value). Snail darters and Pandas don’t, which is why they’re in danger of extinction.
Add a little garlic sauce to a snail darter soufflé, and serve a few Panda burgers at McDonalds, and you have a real “recipe” for protecting these species from going the way of the dodo bird (which I hear tasted like chicken, but alas we’ll never know).
Like abstinence, Capitalism works every time it’s tried.
Well said Phillip! But the bad thing for the a lot of these species is that, unfortunately, we can’t eat everything! :)
Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham wrote about this recently in the Houston Post. Here’s an advance copy of his op-ed piece he sent me, so it may differ slightly from what was published if he wordsmithed it a bit. It speaks to core issue about how politically-inspired junk science is corrupting this and other issues facing the country.
Ask the Right Questions If You Want the Right Answers
Walter Cunningham
I’m getting sick and tired of people talking from positions of influence and power about matters in which they, obviously, know very little. I am subject to the same criticism, of course, but I refuse to write for public consumption on topics outside of my areas of training and understanding. Expertise in one field is no guarantee of understanding another. A perfect example is Paul Krugman’s recent article, “Despite What Some Say, It’s Easy Being Green,” Houston Chronicle, September 26, 2009, followed by a second “woe-is-me” column ignoring the real questions. He reinforces the political aspect, saying, “Many on the right have chosen to deny that the problem exists.”
Mr. Krugman speaks on global temperature change from a platform accorded him by virtue of a Nobel Prize in Economics. For what? For analysis of trade patterns. For some time now, he has been using this platform to write inanities on the subject of human caused global warming. It is not unlike another scientific illiterate, Al Gore, using his political credentials to spout off on our responsibility for global warming. Without understanding global temperature change, he has amassed a fortune exploiting the global warming hysteria that he helped to create.
Krugman begins by comparing the intellectual honesty of human caused global warming deniers to that of health care reform opponents. He obviously believes the only honesty in both these debates lies solely on the side of those proposing trillion dollar hits to our economy and our quality of life.
Mr. Krugman’s ignorance would be tolerable, were it not for the fact that, like most of the public, he has little understanding of the science of global temperature change. Those not aware of the real points of disagreement are susceptible to the kind of political nonsense put out by Krugman and his ilk. I am fed up, because he persists in misleading the public about global temperature change and makes a good living doing it.
He believes those who disagree with the health care reform are ignorant, misguided, or both and applies the same description to those who do not believe humans are the principal cause of temperature changes on planet Earth. The questions he asks are straw men that are easily knocked down. If you don’t ask the right questions, you can never get the right answers.
I am unaware of the disagreement he claims exists over global warming. As a matter of fact, we don’t need to rely on opinion about the Earth warming or cooling at any given time; temperature is something we have been measuring and inferring by a variety of scientific techniques for centuries. The real, legitimate debate is over the cause of current temperature changes, and what, if anything, humans can do to control or influence the temperature of our planet.
Mr. Krugman buys into any argument that appears to support his emotional belief in human caused global warming. He objects to what he claims are “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of climate change.” Global warming alarmists began substituting “climate change” for “global warming” about three years ago, when it became obvious that global warming had actually been cooling for the past decade.
Krugman’s next straw man is to say that opponents of human caused global warming will switch from claiming that global warming is a myth to the new argument that “doing anything to limit global warming will destroy the economy”—something that is not out of the question. He claims the government is not doing anything because of vested interests and lobbyists, ignoring the fact they are proposing an expensive solution to an unproven crisis.
How a man claiming to be an economist can say that “Saving the planet won’t come free… but it won’t cost all that much either.” is beyond me. Krugman buys into economic models that say we can reduce the temperature of the world by cutting our CO2 production at a cost to the average American family of about $.40 per day. Utter nonsense!
I guess it’s not so silly for a man like him to fall for friendly economic models. After all, he bought into the IPCC global warming models—the only factor predicting disaster if we do not curb our CO2 emissions. Models are created to predict future results. They are tested and refined, in this case, by feeding them data from the past to predict or confirm our current temperatures. To date, no model has succeeded in predicting our known temperature history. That should not be surprising. The atmosphere is the most complex system we have ever attempted to model.
Krugman says “the campaign against saving the planet rests mainly on lies.” He expects us to save the planet “by going green,” and reducing CO2. Forgetting about costs for a minute, CO2 reduction comes from reducing energy consumption, and there is a direct correlation between energy consumption and standard of living. What Krugman is really telling us is: if we are willing to reduce our standard of living, we will save the planet, and it will cost us little or nothing. You can draw your own conclusions about that claim
It is ridiculous to argue about temperature change, per se. Sure, it’s changing, and it always will. The important first question is: What is causing global temperature change? The second is: If (and that is a mighty big if) we can pin down the cause(s) of temperature change, what, if anything, can humans do about it? And, finally: If there is anything we can do about controlling the temperature of the planet, is it worth the huge cost?
There is an alternative. We can simply adjust to any changes, as humans have throughout history.
Krugman’s approach is to ignore first two questions, while trying to brainwash us on the cost.
Scientists have been studying the process of temperature change for years, including factors such as: sunspot activity, the Earth’s tilt and elliptical orbit around the Sun, the Earth’s albedo, atmospheric heat retention, ocean current cycles, landmass distribution, both above and below the seas, etc. Journalists and politicians cannot be expected to understand these factors without specialized training. Mr. Krugman’s training in economics is a far cry from the physical sciences, and leaves him just as dependent on the opinions of others as the public at large.
Are greenhouse gases affecting the temperature of the Earth? Probably, but they are totally overwhelmed by the other worldly forces. Does human production of CO2 contribute? Yes, in a tiny way. CO2 is the third or fourth most influential greenhouse gas and makes a vanishingly small contribution to any temperature change.
The question of the causes of global temperature change should be left to serious scientists, excluding those with a political axe to grind.
As we better understand the causes—human caused CO2 is not the answer—can we do anything to control the temperature of our world? There are good reasons to conserve energy, but to initiate a cap and trade system in the name of controlling the temperature of the Earth is pointless, political and very, very expensive. Whether it is possible, is another question for serious and qualified scientists.
When we get to the cost-benefit analysis of trying to control our temperature, maybe there will be a place for the Paul Krugman’s of the world. I can assure you, it will be the highest cost of anything ever attempted by humans. Our real challenge is adjusting to changes and evolving, as we always have.
Kudos to Walter! If anybody should have some scientific understanding of this whole debacle it would be an astronaut. It’s all about seeing the forest for the trees and not getting caught up in the thistles and vines that clutter the passageways. Yes, there’s temperature change, but why? And why are these people making humans the sole, complicit cause of it?
Do you know Walter, Phillip?
I’ve known Walt for a few years. He wrote me after reading my essay on Global Warming back in 2006. I’ve also gotten to know him better through the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas. His Apollo 7 capsule is on display there, and I’ve donated a lot of space memorabilia to the museum. He’s a great guy.
That’s cool Phillip. . .does he have a Web site or a page where he puts out his columns or blogs? I’d like to talk to him. I think it would be neat.
He has a website http://waltercunningham.com/ I think you can contact him through it. (I have a different email I use when we talk.)