The UK’s Daily Express just published “Climate Change Is Natural: 100 Reasons Why.” Here’s a sampling:
70) Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the Earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. Such hysteria (over global warming) simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth.”
86) There are no experimentally verified processes explaining how CO2 concentrations can fall in a few centuries without falling temperatures – in fact it is changing temperatures which cause changes in CO2 concentrations, which is consistent with experiments that show CO2 is the atmospheric gas most readily absorbed by water.
98) The Leipzig Declaration in 1996, was signed by 110 scientists who said: “We – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the climate treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”
And Tim Blair has a bit of fun with The New York Times, sifting through over 100 years of Times headlines and finding dozens of reports of our impending doom:
• 1881: “This past Winter, both inside and outside the Arctic circle, appears to have been unusually mild. The ice is very light and rapidly melting …”
• 1932: “NEXT GREAT DELUGE FORECAST BY SCIENCE; Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of Seas and Flood the Continents”
• 1934: “New Evidence Supports Geology’s View That the Arctic Is Growing Warmer”
• 1937: “Continued warm weather at the Pole, melting snow and ice.”
• 1954: “The particular point of inquiry concerns whether the ice is melting at such a rate as to imperil low-lying coastal areas through raising the level of the sea in the near future.”
• 1957: “U.S. Arctic Station Melting”
• 1958: “At present, the Arctic ice pack is melting away fast. Some estimates say that it is 40 per cent thinner and 12 per cent smaller than it was fifteen years [ago].”
• 1959: “Will the Arctic Ocean soon be free of ice?”
The chaotic Copenhagen climate change conference came to an end this weekend, just as a massive snowstorm effectively shut Copenhagen down. Of course weather patterns are not sole indicators of climate, but one can’t help but notice the number of wintertime global warming-related events during the past few years that have been impeded by the coincident arrival of unseasonably cold weather.
Right now I am hopeful that the coming year will bring about two important realizations about “climate change.” First, our climate, like the rest of our natural environment, is in a constant state of change. That universal truth is the heart of evolution, which essentially means “change.” I have never understood how those on the cultural left, who cling to the precepts of Darwinian evolution like some kind of holy scripture, could at the same time insist that our climate must be static, and “climate change” is somehow proof of “unnatural” interference by mankind.
Second, the disgraceful show put on by Hugo Chavez and his socialist pals, as he openly called for the crippling of Western economies and the direct transfer of wealth from northern to southern hemisphere nations, punctuated by thunderous roars of applause from the Copenhagen conference attendees, perfectly illustrates the real agenda behind the worldwide movement to address “climate change.” Most people would welcome legitimate programs to guarantee individual liberty and economic growth in developing nations, but few would support a plan that increased the relative economic power of Third World nations by crippling the First World economy.
