Trillions Of Dollars To Be Wasted On Bad Science?

Will politicians’ foolish reliance on faulty “global warming” models will cost you and your children a staggering fortune?
This article is the appendix of a paper by William Gray, emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, on the paper titled:

On The Hijacking of the American Meteorological Society (AMS)

(Scientific Discussion)

ABSTRACT
I am presently preparing a lengthy research paper to back up my low estimates of the potential for human-induced global warming resulting from a doubling of CO₂. This Appendix attempts to show that only a very small amount of the global warming that has been observed over the last century and since the mid-1970s can be attributed to global CO₂ increases. A second paper with yet more scientific documentation will hopefully be ready in another couple of months.
A doubling of CO₂ would lead to a global infrared (IR) energy blockage to space (all other processes held constant) of about 3.7 W/m². We are about one-third (~1.2 W/m²) of the way to a CO₂ doubling from the pre-industrial state. The balancing of the 1.2 W/m² energy gain from CO₂ increase that has so far occurred would lead to an upper tropospheric emission temperature increase of about 0.3^oC and a corresponding surface temperature increase of about 0.15^oC. This is less than a quarter of the ~0.7^oC global temperature increase that has been observed since the start of the industrial revolution. Processes more dominant than CO₂ increases had to be responsible for most of the global warming that has occurred.
The globe has continuous solar energy absorption of about 235 W/m² which is balanced by continuous infrared (IR) energy emittance to space of 235 W/m². This continuous in-and-out energy flux is 200 times greater than the accumulated current CO₂ induced energy gain from the mid-19^th century. Long period infrared and albedo energy changes resulting from naturally occurring differences in global rainfall, cloudiness, surface sensible flux, deep ocean current changes, etc. can be considerable greater than this relatively small and gradual 1.2 W/m² global infrared energy suppression to space. Yes, increases in CO₂ are causing global warming, but very little of it. Too little to justify a sizable reduction of our society’s use of fossil-fuels for the far more expensive employment of renewable energy.
This Appendix discusses how the variation in the global ocean’s deep circulation resulting from changes in the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (THC) and/or the associated ocean Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) is the likely cause of most of the global warming that has been observed since the start of the industrial revolution and the more recent global warming that has occurred since the mid-1970s. Changes of the MOC since 1995 are hypothesized to have lead to the cessation of global warming since 1999 and to the beginning of a weak global cooling that has occurred since 2001. This weak cooling is projected to go on for the next couple of decades.

1. INTRODUCTION
There are about 20 different General Circulation Model (GCM) groups around the world that have been conducting extensive numerical modeling simulations of the likely changes in global mean temperature that should be expected to occur from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas. Carbon dioxide has so far risen about 33 percent (to 385 ppm) over its pre-industrial values and about 15 percent during the last 30 years. It is expected that there will be a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ by the latter part of the 21^st century. Most of these GCM simulations indicate that there will be a 2-5^oC (4-9^oF) increase in global mean temperature by the time this doubling takes place if there is no action to reduce these CO₂ increases. Such large warming would cause great changes in human society. These large warming scenarios are highly unlikely, however. The GCMs greatly exaggerate the potential warming that will occur. These exaggerations are due to:

1. Models assuming that an increase in atmospheric CO₂ will cause weak global warming and an increase in global precipitation that will lead to a large increase in upper-level water vapor and cloudiness. They simulate that this increase in water vapor and cloudiness will block large amounts of infrared radiation emitted to space. New observations by satellite and reanalysis data however, do not support these GCM model assumptions. The global warming that has occurred since the mid-1970s has been associated with a general decrease of global upper tropospheric water vapor and an increase of Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) to space. These measurements are opposite to what the models predict.

1. GCMs do not currently model (or if they do – not accurately) the globe’s deep-water ocean circulation. Accurately modeling the global ocean’s deep circulation is fundamental to any realistic understanding of global temperature change. Such global deep water circulation patterns appear to be the primary control of global surface temperature. The global warming we have seen since the mid-1970s and over the last 100 years is largely due to reductions in the rate of global ocean deep water circulation (or Meridional Overturning Circulation – MOC) which is viewed as being driven by global ocean salinity variations. CO₂ changes play no role in these ocean changes.

Recent GCM global warming scenarios assume that a slightly stronger hydrologic cycle (due to the increase in CO₂) will cause additional upper-level tropospheric water vapor and cloudiness. Such vapor-cloudiness increases are assumed to allow the small initial warming due to increased CO₂ to be unrealistically multiplied 3-5 or more times. This is where most of the global warming from the GCMs comes from – not the warming resulting from the CO₂ increase by itself but the large extra warming due to the assumed increase of upper tropospheric water vapor and cloudiness. As CO₂ increases, it does not follow that the net global upper-level water vapor and cloudiness will increase very much, certainly not anything like the amount projected by the GCM climate simulations. Observations of upper tropospheric water vapor over the last 3-4 decades from the NOAA-NCEP reanalysis show that upper tropospheric water vapor undergoes a small decrease and that Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) undergoes an increase. This is opposite to what has been programmed into the GCM models. The predicted large global warming of the GCMs should thus not be taken to be credible.


2. OTHER GCM PROBLEMS

Small-Scale Problems. In order to integrate over the entire globe and many years into the future it is necessary that the GCMs have rather large grid spacing. This requires that the GCMs employ sub-grid scale cumulus parameterization schemes which can often be poor approximations of the real-world complex, non-linear small-scale cumulus convective processes. An important deficiency in the global models is the large amount of compensating up-and-down motion occurring between grid spaces that cannot be explicitly resolved by the models (Figure 1). These poorly-resolved approximations of sub-grid scale processes are integrated by the models for hundreds of thousands of time steps into the future. This guarantees large errors. Realistic sub-grid scale parameterization schemes have yet to be developed. Most GCM modelers are unfamiliar with the detailed functioning of the hydrologic cycle. Their models assume that changes in lower and upper tropospheric water vapor occur simultaneously which the observations do not verify (Figure 2). Observations show, in fact, that as global warming has occurred since the mid-1970s that lower tropospheric water vapor has increased while upper tropospheric water vapor has decreased. This appears to be a result of there being somewhat more deep Cb convection and a higher rainfall efficiency when the globe is warmer than when it is colder. There are slightly more deep convection updrafts and compensation mass subsidence drying during times when the globe is warmer.
Much research on the small scale parameterization of cumulus convection in terms of the large scale circulation patterns was done in the 1970s and 1980s without satisfactory resolution. The topic was too complex to be resolved during this period. To move forward the GCM models primarily ignored this difficult task. They chose not to get ‘down-in-the-trenches’ on such a complex topic. They accepted a few simple compromised schemes (with known problems) and went forward with their broader-scale modeling integrations assuming that their sub-grid schemes were ‘good enough’ or that the errors would average out in the end. But the sub-grid scale approximations they have used have not been good enough and the sub-grid parameterization errors do not average out over the long integration periods.
There are many large and complicated variations as to how sub-grid scale cumulus parameterization should be accomplished with respect to differences in latitude, land, sea, season, and other conditions. There are no general sub-grid parameterization schemes that can perform this function within the various global regions and on the long climate time-scales. And there will likely never be a satisfactory scheme.


Figure 1. Idealized portrayal of how the grid size of the GCMs is too large to accommodate real sub-grid scale vertical motion. GCMs cannot resolve (top) the concentrated rain or the surrounding cloud downdrafts and subsidence within the scale of its grid space (bottom). The top and bottom diagrams contrast the mean vertical motion of the GCM (top) and the real up-and-down vertical motion of nature if deep convection is occurring within a grid space. Note that the unresolved vertical motion of the top diagram allows less OLR to escape to space – than the bottom actual representation.


Figure 2. Comparison of correlation coefficient between upper and lower level tropospheric water vapor of the typical GCMs model output (red) and that of the Rawinsonde-reanalysis observations (blue line). The GCM model outputs are programmed to have a simultaneous moistening of the lower and upper tropospheric levels, but the observations of upper vs. lower troposphere moisture shows little correlation. This high correlation of the models causes them to artificially moisten the upper troposphere and block too much OLR to space. Adapted from Sun and Held 1996.
The net effect of the GCM’s sub-grid scale parameterization schemes is to underestimate sub-grid subsidence drying, and to unrealistically suppress OLR to space. This is one of the ways the GCMs are able to develop their large amounts of artificial warming. It is thus not so surprising that the GCMs produce so much global warming (~2 to 5^oC) for only a relatively small increase (3.7 ^W/_m²) of suppressed radiation to space for a doubling of CO₂.
It is expected that global rainfall will increase somewhat as human-induced greenhouse gases increase. This increased rainfall is expected to primarily manifest itself in small amounts of increased and concentrated deep cumulus convection and increased rainfall efficiency in the normal areas where deep convection and rainfall are already occurring. This somewhat greater and more concentrated rainfall will not bring about global upper-level water vapor and cloud increase anywhere near as much as the GCM modelers have assumed. The diagram of Figure 3 gives the author’s concept of how the globe will handle a doubling of CO₂ by the end of the 21^st century. We will not see a global warming of 2-5^oC as the GCM models indicate but rather a much more modest warming of about 0.3-0.5^oC.
Albedo Considerations. Analysis of OLR and albedo from the new ISCCP (International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project – 1984-2005) for differing reanalysis determined rainfall amounts shows that at the places and times where rainfall increases that albedo goes up more than OLR goes down. There is thus more net short and long wave energy going to space in periods of increased rainfall than with decreased rainfall conditions. These observations do not agree with the programmed physics within the GCMs.


Figure 3. A view of the physical process differences between the global warming for a doubling of CO₂ from the GCM climate models and reality.


Positive Water Vapor Feedback. Most geophysical systems react to forced imbalances by developing responses which oppose and weaken the initial forced imbalance; hence, a negative feedback response. Recent GCM global warming scenarios go counter to the foregoing in hypothesizing a positive feedback loop. This positive water vapor feedback assumption allows the small initial warming due to human-induced CO₂ increases to be unrealistically multiplied 3-5 or more times. As AGW gases increase it does not follow that upper-level water vapor and cloudiness will increase very much. Observations indicate that the specific humidity and relative humidity of the middle and upper troposphere has been going down over the last 4-5 decades (Figure 4). The assumed positive water vapor increase with temperature as programmed into the GCM models does occur however at the surface and the lower troposphere. But this simultaneous increase of temperature and water vapor is not found in the upper troposphere near the radiation emission level. It is not the total precipitable water which is most important (measurements show this goes up with temperature) but rather the amount of water vapor near the upper tropospheric emission level which is important. This specifies the amount of infrared energy going to space.



Figure 4. The NOAA-NCEP reanalysis of standardized anomalies of 400 mb (~7.5 km altitude) water vapor content (i.e. specific humidity – in blue) and Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) from 1950-2008. Note the downward trend in moisture and the upward trend in OLR.


Faulty Reasoning Behind Climate GCMs. A basic assumption error behind the global GCMs has been the model builder’s general belief in the physics of the National Academy of Science (NAS) 1979 study – often referred to as The Charney Report. This report hypothesized that a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ would bring about a general warming of the globe’s mean temperature between 1.5 – 4.5^oC (or an average of ~ 3.0^oC). This was based on the report’s assumption that the relative humidity (RH) of the atmosphere should be expected to remain quasi-constant if the globe’s temperature were to increase. The fundamental law of the Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) equation specifies that as the temperature of the air rises its ability to hold water vapor goes up exponentially. If relative humidity (RH) were to remain constant as atmospheric temperature rose then the water vapor (q) amount in the atmosphere would accordingly rise (Figure 5 and Figure 6). Observations show that this is indeed a valid assumption for the lower tropospheric levels but does not observationally apply in the upper troposphere (300-400 mb) where water vapor and relative humidity have been observed to slightly decrease as the atmospheric temperatures rises. Lower RH and reduced water vapor contents near the upper radiation emission level will act to increase the amount of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) which will be emitted to space. By contrast, the GCMs have programmed a reduction of OLR for rising upper level temperature.
The global general circulation models (GCMs) which test the influence of CO₂ increases, have accepted the hypothesized NAS – Charney Report (1979) scenario. Some of the GCM modelers such as the early NASA-GISS (Hansen 1988) model have even gone further than the Clausius-Clapeyron equation would specify for water vapor increasing with temperature. Hansen’s early GISS model assumed that a doubling of CO₂ would cause the upper tropospheric RH not just to stay constant but to actually increase. And his assumed upper tropospheric increase of water vapor (q) for a doubling of CO₂ led to a water vapor increase (∆q) in the upper troposphere of as much as an extremely unlikely 50 percent. These large vapor increases caused Hansen to require that his model have a tropical (30^oN-30^oS) upper tropospheric warming for a doubling of CO₂ as much as 7^oC (Figure 8). No wonder Hansen got such high values of global warming for a doubling of CO₂. This logically followed from his extremely high water vapor assumptions.





Figure 5. The very influential NAS report of 1979 which deduced that any warming of the globe would occur with near constant relative humidity (RH). Global warming consequently causes an increase in atmospheric water vapor (q) and decrease outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). This assumption appears valid in the lower troposphere but no the upper troposphere.

Figure 6. Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) relationship showing the required increase of water vapor as temperature increases at constant relative humidity (RH) – red line. The observations of upper tropospheric water vapor – green dashed line – do not follow this theoretical relationship. This is likely a result of a warmer climate causing more deep convection and more return flow dryer subsidence.



Figure 7. James Hansen’s early GISS showing his assumed increases in specific humidity (q) and RH for a doubling of CO₂. Such water vapor assumptions are completely unrealistic.



Figure 8. North-South vertical-cross section showing Hansen’s early GCM’s model change in temperature (^oC) that would accompany a doubling of atmospheric CO₂. There is no way a doubling of CO₂ and an extra 3.7 ^W/_m² blockage of OLR to space could lead to such extreme upper tropospheric temperature rises. These large temperature increases occurred because of Hansen’s unrealistic upper level water vapor assumptions.
In order to obtain the global balance of incoming and outgoing radiation for his assumed high values of upper tropospheric water vapor it was necessary for Hansen to unrealistically raise his model’s upper tropospheric temperatures to obtain the amounts of Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR or σT⁴) to space that would accomplish net radiation balance. It is amazing that Hansen’s high water vapor increase assumptions for a doubling of CO₂ were not immediately challenged.
It was these large amounts of warming resulting from his model’s gross over-estimate of water vapor which Hansen presented to a US Senate Committee hearing at the request of then Senator Al Gore during the hot summer of 1988. The media and much of the general public accepted it all. The environmentalists salivated. Hansen had secured his place in the sun. But history will reverse such adulation when his warming predictions are inevitable proven to be wrong.
Not only have Hansen’s extreme and unrealistic high values of upper tropospheric moisture and temperature changes (for a doubling of CO₂) not been challenged, they were instead closely emulated by most of the other prominent GCM early global warming modeling groups of NOAA-GFDL (Figure 9), NCAR (Figure 10) and the British Met Service (Figure 11). They all followed suit and incorporated unrealistically high amounts of upper tropospheric water vapor and, as a result, obtained unrealistic high values of global upper and surface temperature just as Hansen had.
I am sure that the more recent global climate models of Hansen’s GISS model and the more recent, GFDL, NCAR and UKMET models have been improved. I expect the current set of GCM modelers will say I am referring to older model runs that are now obsolete. This argument does not hold however. If the more recent year models are superior to the older ones, then we would be seeing a revision downward of their warming estimates. But their newer models give much the same magnitude of warming as their older ones.

Figure 9. Same as Figure 8 but for early model NOAA-GFDL GCM temperature rises for a doubling of CO₂.



Figure 10. Same as Figure 8 but for NCAR’s early model GCM temperature rises for a doubling of CO₂.

NASA Announces $1.5 Million ‘Green’ Aircraft Challenge

The NASA Innovative Partnerships Program and the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation today announced the Green Flight Challenge. The contest is a flight efficiency competition for aircraft that can average at least 100 mph on a 200-mile flight while achieving greater than 200 passenger miles per gallon.

The prize for the aircraft with the best performance is $1.5 million. The competition is scheduled for July 2011 at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, CA. A variety of innovative experimental aircraft using electrical, solar, bio-fuel or hybrid propulsion are expected to enter. Several major universities and aircraft builders have expressed their intention to enter teams in the challenge.

To win, teams must use cutting-edge technologies in mechanical and electrical engineering, structures, aerodynamics and thermodynamics. As a national showcase of "green" technology, the challenge is expected to help advance all three of the major climate mitigation initiatives: efficiency, conservation and zero-carbon energy sources. These technologies will support advances in aviation and may have broader applications in transportation and energy storage.

The Green Flight Challenge is administered for NASA by CAFE. Founded in 1981, CAFE is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the understanding of personal aircraft technologies through research, analysis and education.
NASA is providing the prize money as part of the Centennial Challenges program. The program seeks innovative solutions to problems of interest to NASA and the nation from diverse and unconventional sources. Competitors may not receive government funding for their entries in this challenge.

For information about CAFE and competing in this challenge, visit:

http://cafefoundation.org/v2/main_home.php

For more information about Centennial Challenges, visit:

http://www.ipp.nasa.gov/cc

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

Apollo Astronaut-Moonwalker Calls Global Warming Political Tool

Says global warming is being exploited by scientists for political purposes

Tells of scientists who lose funding if they speak out

Harrison Schmitt, seen here during his Apollo 17 moonwalk in December, 1972

This story is a few months old, but I feel it bears repeating considering the prominence of Dr. Schmitt. Intriguing perspective.
Adding his voice to a growing chorus of scientists speaking out against the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis, former astronaut and moonwalker Harrison Schmitt says that many scientists have sold out their objectivity for political reasons.
In some very strongly-worded statements, Dr. Schmitt lets it be known that he does not agree with the belief that man is predominantly responsible for global warming.  He said, “I don’t think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect.”
Dr. Schmitt recently resigned from the Planetary Society over his firm belief that global warming is not man-made.
In his email resignation Schmitt said:

“Consensus”, as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science. You know as well as I, the “global warming scare” is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the [Planetary] Society's activities.

As a geologist, I love Earth observations. But, it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a "consensus" that humans are causing global warming when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise.

In an interview with AP, in speaking about those that advocate the man-made climate change hypothesis, Schmitt said:

They've seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven't gone along with the so-called political consensus that we're in a human-caused global warming.  It's one of the few times you've seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it's coloring their objectivity.

Best known as the first ‘scientist astronaut’, Dr. Schmitt was chosen to walk on the moon with Apollo 17 in 1972 due to his education and experience as a geologist.
Dr. Schmitt received a B.S. degree in science from the California Institute of Technology, then spent a year studying geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and received a Ph.D. in geology from Harvard University in 1964.
Now a resident of Silver City, NM, he has been a United States Senator and currently serves as chair of the NASA Advisory Council providing technical advice to the NASA Administrator as well as being an adjunct professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

NASA Warming Scientist James Hansen Blasts Obama's 'Counterfeit' Climate Bill

Calls H.R. 2454—the Waxman-Markey bill “a monstrous absurdity...less than worthless!”

James Hansen, the rogue NASA researcher largely responsible for the “Global Warming” hysteria, rakes the “climate” bill over the coals

Excerpt from James Hansen’s statement:

It didn't take long for the counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey to push back against President Obama's agenda. As the president was arriving in Italy for his first Group of Eight summit, the New York Times was reporting that efforts to close ranks on global warming between the G-8 and the emerging economies had already tanked…

This requires nothing less than an energy revolution based on efficiency and carbon-free energy sources. Alas, we won't get there with the Waxman-Markey bill, a monstrous absurdity hatched in Washington after energetic insemination by special interests.

For all its "green" aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like "cap-and-trade" scheme…

The fact is that the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. Their bill is an astoundingly inefficient way to get a tiny reduction of emissions. It's less than worthless, [Emphasis mine] because it will delay by at least a decade starting on a path that is fundamentally sound from the standpoints of both economics and climate preservation.

Here are a few of the bill's egregious flaws:

•It guts the Clean Air Act, removing EPA's ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants.

•It sets meager targets -- 2020 emissions are to be a paltry 13% less than this year's level -- and sabotages even these by permitting fictitious "offsets," by which other nations are paid to preserve forests - while logging and food production will simply move elsewhere to meet market demand.

•Its cap-and-trade system, reports former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro, "has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives."

•It fails to set predictable prices for carbon, without which, Shapiro notes, "businesses and households won't be able to calculate whether developing and using less carbon-intensive energy and technologies makes economic sense," thus ensuring that millions of carbon-critical decisions fall short.

End Hansen Excerpt.

To read the complete Hansen article go to this link.

My, my. A falling-out amongst thieves.

Even the most rabid climate-change lunatics are demonizing H.R. 2454, the so-called Waxman-Markey or Cap-and-Trade, (more like Graft-and-Tax), bill as an abomination.

For more on Hansen and global-warming go to this link.

Obama On U.S. Oil Imports: Lying Or Just Ignorant?

In a 6 July 2009 interview with the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Obama gave the same false information on U.S. oil imports he has been repeating since at least February of this year:

We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy.  Yet we import more oil today than ever before [Emphasis mine].

That quote is from the official White House transcript of the interview.

Obama was wrong in February and is wrong today.

The above chart from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, shows that U.S. oil imports peaked in November 2005 and have been declining ever since.

On the page at the above link, you may view a data table of the U.S. weekly oil imports from 1991 to date.

Now, I know the facts on this, you (now) know the facts on this, but the President of the United States keeps spouting inaccuracies about U.S. oil imports. I found this data very easily, and I would kinda think Obama—backed by dozens of staff and a trillion-dollar bureaucracy—could as well.

Yet Obama has been spouting this drivel since at least February 2009—even though the facts are laughably easy to obtain.

So my question is this:

Are Obama and his administration lying or simply ignorant and inept?

The answer has to be one of those two choices.

Frankly, neither answer sits well with me, nor should it with you.

GOP Fairytale? $30 Million For Harvest Mouse?

Here is the interesting tale as reported by PolitiFact:

No money in the stimulus for San Francisco mice

To hear Republican House members tell it, you'd think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stuffed $30 million into the stimulus bill to benefit an endangered mouse in her district.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa called it an earmark and "a pet project" while pointing to a sign he made that said "Pelosi's Mouse slated for $30 Million."

Rep. John Boehner of Ohio opposed the bill and asked how money "for some salt marsh mouse in San Francisco is going to help a struggling autoworker in Ohio?"

And Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana said on Fox News that there was "$30 million in there to protect mice in San Francisco."

The tale of the mouse appears to have originated around Feb. 6, 2009, from Republican staff members of the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee.

"Appropriations Republicans, concerned with this irresponsible process and possible abuse of taxpayer funds, have asked various federal agencies how they intend to spend the windfall of cash that Congress may approve in the 'stimulus' bill," said a memo posted to the site. "One peek behind the bureaucratic curtain has yielded the following examples of hidden program information that is not included in the language of the bill or report . These are programs which various federal agencies have privately indicated they will fund with 'stimulus' money."

The memo lists a number of projects, including up to $37.5 million for "wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area — including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse."

That became fodder for a Feb. 11 e-mail from Michael Steel, Boehner's spokesman. "Thirty million dollars for wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area — including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse," Steel wrote. "This sounds like spending projects that have been supported by a certain powerful Democrat in the past. And it certainly doesn't sound like it will create or save American jobs."

That e-mail made it into a Feb. 12 story in the Washington Times headlined "Pelosi's mouse slated for $30M slice of cheese." The story stated, incorrectly as it turns out, that the stimulus bill "includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse."

And that story was then picked up by the Drudge Report.

That's when the mouse references exploded, morphing from a possible project of an unnamed agency to Pence's "$30 million in there to protect mice in San Francisco."

We wanted to get to the bottom of this issue and find out what was up with the mouse.

Turns out the salt marsh harvest mouse is a previously obscure beneficiary of a major environmental restoration project for the San Francisco Bay area.

"A friend e-mailed me and asked me if any of the $30 million for the mouse was for us, and I was like 'What are you talking about?'" said Steve Ritchie, an engineer with the California State Coastal Conservancy, a state agency charged with preserving and restoring the coastline.

When the stimulus bill was first proposed and a call went out for ready-to-go projects, Ritchie prepared a list of the agency's shovel-ready projects and submitted it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, both of which received money in the final version of the stimulus bill.

Three projects would turn abandoned industrial salt operations back into natural wetlands, about 26,000 acres in all. It turns out the mouse is an endangered species that likes tidal salt marshes, and it's mentioned by name as one of several species that will benefit.

But the projects themselves — the South Bay Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project , the Napa Plant Site , and the Napa Salt Marsh restoration — are intended to do more than just benefit wildlife. It's major construction work to create recreation areas and to restore marshland that will resist flooding and storm surge.

"This is bulldozers, front-end loaders, backhoes. These are major earth-moving projects to break down levees, to resculpt the landscape and to make sure nature can do its thing," Ritchie said. "Right now, we just have these lousy little salt pond levees and they break."

"These are real jobs, and these are truly ready to go," he added. "We can definitely spend this money for construction by Nov. 30, 2010."

Given this description of the projects, which were first reported in the San Jose Mercury News , it's a serious distortion to say there's money in the bill to protect San Francisco mice. The bill doesn't even list the San Francisco projects by name. And the funding agencies — the Corps of Engineers or NOAA — could still decide to fund the projects or not. The bill passed a final vote in the House on Feb. 13, with no Republicans supporting it.

So Pelosi did not put an earmark in the bill to save the mice. In fact, there's no money in the bill for mice. For this reason, we rate Pence's remark False.

And here is the take on the tale from Media Matters for America:

In his February 12 blog entry, posted at 1:27 p.m. ET, Sargent explained how he determined the source of the Pelosi-mouse allegation, and how he debunked it:

How did this one get going? Yesterday a House Republican leadership staffer circulated a background email, which I obtained, charging that GOP staffers had been told by an unnamed Federal agency that if it got money from the stim package, it would spend "thirty million dollars for wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area -- including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse."

The GOP staffer's email didn't say what agency it was. It didn't say the money was actually in the package -- just that an unnamed agency had said they would spend it on that if they got it.

But conservatives picked up the claim and began stating as fact that the mouse money was in the bill. On Fox News yesterday, Mike Huckabee blasted the bill for containing money for Pelosi's mouse, and today GOP Rep Dan Lundgren hammered the alleged mouse money in the bill as "absurd." Today's Washington Times ran with a story called: "Pelosi's mouse slated for $30M slice of cheese."

But I just contacted the House GOP staffer [and his name would be…?] who wrote the initial email laying out this talking point, and he conceded that the claim by conservative media that the mouse money is currently in the bill is a misstatement. "There is not specific language in the legislation for this project," he said.

Politicians: Loathe them or despise them, you can’t like them.

Or trust them.

All in a Good Cause by Orson Scott Card

Note: With the kind permission of Mr. Card, I am reposting one of his articles on the "Global Warming" disgrace: Sadly, it is just as relevant today.
All clickable links are my additions—not those of Mr. Card.

All in a Good Cause
by Orson Scott Card
 
This article was originally posted at the Rhino Times
March 08, 2007

Here's a story you haven't heard, and you should have.
An intelligence source, working for a government agency. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. He uses computers to crunch numbers and at the end of his work, out pops the truth that was hiding in the original data. Let's call him "Mann."
The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to fight.
Well, that's not acceptable.
Cooking the Figures
He starts with his software. There are certain procedures that are normal and accepted in his line of work. But if he makes just one little mistake, his program does a weird little recursion and if there's any data at all that shows the pattern he wants it to show, it will be magnified 139 times, so it far overshadows all the other data.
He can run it on random numbers and it gives him the shape he wants. Unfortunately, the real-world numbers aren't random – they have a very different shape. All the numbers. Even his jimmied program won't give the results he wants.
All he needs is any data shaped the right way. And so he looks a little farther, and ... here it is. It looks, on the surface, like all the other data that he's been working with. Other researchers working in his field, just glancing at it, will assume it is, too.
But it isn't. Because the source that gathered this batch of data had some other key information that takes it all away. The numbers don't mean what they normally mean. In fact, this number set is absolutely false.
If you use these numbers along with all the other data, however, the clever little program will pick them up, magnify them radically and voilá! The final report shows exactly the shape he needs the numbers to have.
The trouble is, these numbers are supposed to be doublechecked. Anybody who looks closely at his numbers and at his program will see what he's done. It's not hard to find, if you have the original data sets and can examine the program. He will be exposed as a fraud. It will do his cause more harm than good, if it's made public.
But he's not afraid. He knows how this works.
He doesn't show the program or the lists of his data sources to anybody.
Second, he is given a big boost by the fact that another researcher – we'll call him "Santer" – had his own ax to grind. He was also the author of a questionable report and got himself appointed to a position that allowed him to get to the final report before it was published, delete all statements about how "there is no way to reach a definitive conclusion," and replace them with his own conclusion, which is absolute.
And it works. Santer's report is accepted, even though it has since been proven false. Mann's report continues to be relied on, and no one questions it. The government agency issues the report which they know has been altered to fit preconceived conclusions.
Vast sums of money are expended on the basis of what he claims to have found. People's lives are put at risk.
Mann and Santer didn't do it for the money, though grants do flow in their direction.
They did it for the cause. It's a noble cause. And even though the data don't actually say what they wanted them to say – in fact, they say the opposite – they are untroubled by that. Because the government actions that are being taken are the Right Thing.
Santer and Mann are true believers. They don't need evidence. Evidence is just something you create to persuade other people.
Here's the amazing thing about Mann's original report: He's not the only researcher working in this field. In fact, it's the job of many hundreds of researchers to refuse to accept his data at face value. After all, his findings disagree with everyone else's. Before they accept his results, they have a duty to look at his software, look at his data and try to duplicate his results.
But nobody does it. Not a soul.
Nor, when it goes public, does anyone in the press check the results – because they want him to be right, too.
Steve the Canadian Businessman
Not until a Canadian businessman – let's call him "Steve" – took a look at the stats and got curious. Now, it happens that Steve is in the mining business; he also happened to be a prize-winning math student in college. He knows how to read number sets. He knows what good analysis looks like.
He also knows what cooked figures look like. He has seen the phony projections that companies use when they're trying to swindle people. Their results are too perfect. Mann's report looks too perfect, too.
So Steve starts digging. First, he reads Mann's original report. He finds it an exercise in obscurity. From what he published, it's very, very hard to tell just what statistical methods Mann used, or even what data he operated on.
This is wrong – it's not supposed to be that way. Scientists are supposed to leave a clear path so other people can follow them up and replicate their research.
The fact that it's so obscure suggests that Mann does not want anyone checking his work.
But Mann used government grants in his research. Which means he has an obligation to disclose. Steve contacts him, asks for the information. He gets a runaround. He gets pointed to a website that does not have the information. He tries again, and again gets a runaround – in fact, Mann sends him a very rude letter saying that he will no longer communicate with him.
Why should he? Steve isn't a legitimate researcher in that field. He's just a businessman.
But Steve is now sure there's something fishy going on, and he doesn't give up. He gets other people to help him. Finally they are pointed to a different website, where, to their surprise, they find that someone has accidentally left a copy of the FORTRAN program that was used to crunch the numbers. It wasn't supposed to be where Steve found it – which is why it hadn't been deleted.
Also, there was a little more carelessness – there is a set of data labeled "censored." Steve can't see, right away, what's significant about it, except that a score or so of data sets are left out of the censored data.
Steve looks at the program. He finds the glitch rather easily. He tries the program on random numbers and realizes that it always yields the distinctive shape that has caused all the stir.
Sorting out the data sets is much harder. He contacts a lot of people. He does what anyone checking these figures would have to do, and he realizes: If anyone had tried to check, a lot of this information would already have been put together.
He realizes: I am the first person ever to attempt to verify these astonishing, anomalous, politically hot results. Out of all the researchers in this field who had a responsibility to do "due diligence" before accepting the data, none of them has done it.
Finally he has all the original data put together. It includes more than just real numbers – it includes "extrapolated" data, which means that sometimes, where there were holes, Mann just made the numbers up and plugged them in. This is sloppy and lazy – but it's just the beginning.
What's crucial is that Steve now understands why the "censored" data sets are smaller than the ones Mann used. The full source data includes those misleading results that shouldn't have been used. But the "censored" data sets leave it out.
This means that Mann knew exactly what he was doing. This was not an accident. Mann ran the program on the data without the misleading numbers, and then he ran it with the misleading numbers. What he published was the results that made his ideological case.
Where's the Press?
This story is true.
Anybody who cares to can verify the story. In fact, one of the leading science journals was prepared to publish Steve's results. But then, before publication, they kept cutting back and cutting back on the amount of space they would let Steve's report take up in the journal.
Finally the space they were going to allot was so small that they concluded Steve could not tell his story in that number of words, and therefore they decided not to publish it at all.
Meanwhile, serious publications did publish Mann's savage response to what Steve was saying on the website where he was putting up his results for everyone to read.
Notice: Steve is making all his work transparent to the world – anyone is free to check his data.
Mann is still hiding, denying, attacking – but not providing the full information. You still have to do detective work to ferret it out.
Now, if you were a reporter – you know, those brave guys and gals who are committed, body and soul, to "the public's right to know" – wouldn't you smell a rat? Wouldn't you jump on the chance to expose such an obvious fraud?
After all, there are now governments all over the world basing their decisions on Mann's false report. Crucial decisions are being made. Schoolchildren are being terrorized with dire projections of what will happen if Mann's report is not believed and acted upon. Vast sums of money are being spent. People are treating Mann's cause as a crusade – and his fake results are the chief weapon they use to prove their case.
Where's the press? Why am I able to tell you this story in full confidence that very few who are reading it will have ever heard it before?
Because Mann doesn't report to the Bush administration. The government agency for which the result was filed was a UN agency – specifically, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
And Mann's report is the famous "hockey stick" that "proves" that global warming not only is happening, but right now we're in the warmest climate period in the past thousand years.
Ah! You've heard of that report, haven't you! The press has been all over that one! Your kids are being taught about it in school!
You have friends who look at you like an idiot or the scum of the earth if you don't get energized by it, frightened by it, determined to act on that information. Don't you care about the future of the environment?
Why haven't you joined the cause? Why doesn't the Bush administration act to save the world from the most terrible threat imaginable?
It's like the opening of the "Talk of the Town" section of the Feb. 12 New Yorker: "Except in certain benighted precincts – oil-industry-funded Web sites, the Bush White House, Michael Crichton's den – no one wastes much energy these days trying to deny global warming."
This statement is not just false, it's stupidly false. It speaks of such deep ignorance at The New Yorker – ignorance that they're actually proud of – that it makes one despair, for this is a magazine that once prided itself on knowing what it was talking about.
"By the time the I.P.C.C. publishes an assessment, it has been vetted by thousands of scientists," says The New Yorker – but we know that in fact nobody vetted the Mann paper, and nobody checked Santer except, of course, Santer – while he went ahead and removed statements of some of those "thousands of scientists" (p. 27).
In other words, whoever wrote this New Yorker piece did not check. He or she just spouted.
What is really being said here is, "We believe in the IPCC and anybody else who supports global warming. We believe it so much that we refuse to listen to anybody who says otherwise."
The only difference between this and Jim and Tammy Bakker on the old PTL Club is that nobody says "Jesus." It's all faith, no science.
They're like 4-year-olds putting their fingers in their ears and chanting "La la la la" until the person talking to them goes away.
The Hockey Stick Hoax should be a scandal as big as the discovery of the Piltdown Man Hoax. Bigger, really, since so much more is at stake.
But because the media are dominated by true believers, they are doing everything they can to maintain the hoax, to keep the public from learning the truth.
What were those bad numbers Mann plugged in to get his fake results? Modern bristlecone pine tree-ring data in which recent tree rings showed the widths that would normally mean unusually warm weather.
However, these trees were located near temperature recording stations that showed lower than usual temperatures. So instead of being a sign of warmer temperatures, the tree rings are actually responding to the increased CO2 levels.
Even the heading on this bristlecone pine study clearly stated that the wider tree rings did not indicate higher temperatures. But Mann plugged them in as if they did, producing the one data set that showed "warmer weather" (i.e., wider tree rings) in recent years, allowing the defective software to produce its hockey-stick result.
The bristlecone pine study was real science. Mann's use of it was deliberately fraudulent.
How Can We Know What's True?
All this can be checked. I didn't even change the names. "Mann" is Michael Mann; his co-writers on that hockey stick report are Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. "Steve" is Stephen McIntyre, and the writer of the report I'm working from is Ross McKitrick, who is a climate scientist. Their report is a chapter in Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming, edited by Patrick J. Michaels.
Do you know how true believer scientists respond to this? Just like the ignorant New Yorker writer. There's no attempt to answer any specific charge. They simply dismiss any disagreement by saying, "All the smart scientists agree that global warming is happening; anybody who denies it is just a crank, and you should ignore them."
This is exactly the kind of bias that President Bush's enemies accuse him of having during the run-up to the Iraq War. They claim that Bush and his people only believed the intelligence reports that told them what they wanted to hear, and ignored the rest, claiming that "everybody knew" things that were false.
That's not what happened with Bush (but you don't actually have to prove accusations against President Bush these days). But with the Hockey Stick Hoax it can be proved – yet the very same reporters pay no attention at all. It's "not a story."
In other words, the very people who attack Bush as a liar are actually behaving exactly as they accuse Bush of behaving.
Global Warming vs. Climate Change
If you pay close attention, you'll find that global warming alarmists are not actually saying "global warming" lately. No, nowadays it's "climate change." Do you know why?
Because for the past three years, global temperatures have been falling.
Oops.
The thing is, we've had 20 years since the alarmists first raised the banner of global warming. They told us that "if this goes on" by 2010 or 2020, sea levels will be rising so high that coastal cities will be flooded, famines will cover the earth, and ...
Oh, you know the list. They're still making the same predictions – they just move the dates farther back.
It's like those millennarian religious cults in the 1800s. Religious leaders would arise who would predict the Second Coming of Christ in 1838. When Christ didn't oblige them by showing up, they went back to their visions or scripture calculations or whatever they claimed and report that they miscalculated, now it was going to be 1843. Or whatever.
Here's the raw truth:
All the computer models are wrong. They have not only failed to predict the future, they can't even predict that past.
That is, when you run their software with the data from, say, the 1970s or 1980s, and project what should happen in the 1990s or 2000s, they project results that have absolutely nothing to do with the known climate data for those decades.
In other words, the models don't work. The only way to make them "work" is to take the known results and then fiddle with the software until it finally produces them. That's not how honest science is done.
Why are so many scientists so wrong?
First of all, there aren't all that many scientists. You hear about how "everybody" agrees about global warming. But who is "everybody"?
I had somebody at a conference get very angry with me for even raising a question. "I have a friend who's a climate scientist and he says that the Everglades are definitely drying up!"
But that's not the question, I said. Global warming isn't even the question. The question is, what is causing global warming or cooling or climate change? Is it human carbon dioxide emissions or something else? Your friend is studying aquifers in one specific area. In what way is he qualified to speak about global climate?
The only answer I got was the answer you always get when you challenge the roots of someone's religion – fury, dismay and a refusal to talk about it any more.
That's what happens over and over. Who are the scientists who are qualified to speak? There aren't that many. It's the relatively few scientists who are studying the paleoclimate and those who are working on contemporary data collection and collation and analysis.
And here's where it almost gets funny. Even the IPCC, which was so heavily biased in favor of global warming alarmism, could not get its pet scientists to agree that global warming in recent decades is even probably caused by human activity.
What Is Driving Global Climate?
Science isn't done by consensus. It's done by rigorous testing. When a hypothesis – or a computer model – fails to correspond to the actual real-world data, you throw them out.
That's what the real climate scientists are doing. They have found, in recent years, a very close correspondence between global climate and variations in the amount of radiation the Earth receives from the Sun.
The light and heat we get varies depending on the distance and position of the Earth and the amount of radiation the Sun puts out. The Earth's distance and position seem to determine the big cycles – the ice ages – and the Sun's variations seem to determine the smaller climate cycles.
We have historical data indicating several global warming periods. There was one during the heyday of the Roman Empire; then there was a global cooling during the Dark Ages (beginning about 600 A.D.) The medieval warming kicked in about 950, followed by the Little Ice Age beginning about 1300.
The Little Ice Age ended in about 1860. You'll notice that most reports on our modern global warming set that as their base point, and leave out all prior warmings.
But those warm periods are real, as are the cool periods. Ice core samples from various places around the world back it up, as do ocean floor samples. In fact, the predictions based on the 1,500-year (approximately) solar cycle are borne out everywhere.
There's now at least as much real-world evidence supporting the solar cycle as the cause of climate variation – including all of today's climate variation – than there was for, say, tectonic plates or the asteroid-caused extinctions at the time when they were first plastered all over the media as the hottest science news of their day.
It's not that it's really a secret. The book Unstoppable Global Warming by Singer and Avery tells us what the media could easily have reported to us:
"On 16 November 2001, the journal Science published a report on elegant research, done by unimpeachable scientists, giving us the Earth's climate history for the past 32,000 years – along with our climate's linkage to the sun" (p. 8).
They quote Richard Kerr of Science:
"... the climate of the northern North Atlantic has warmed and cooled nine times in the past 12,000 years in step with the waxing and waning of the sun."
And Kerr quotes glaciologist Richard Alley of Penn State:
"The ... data are sufficiently convincing that [solar variability] is now the leading hypothesis to explain the roughly 1,500-year oscillation of the climate seen since the last ice age, including the Little Ice Age of the 17th century" (p.8).
We're not talking about fly-by-night whackos. We're talking about leading scientists doing solid research.
And other scientists have found data that correlates closely with their findings all over the world. In other words, these solar oscillations account, completely, for the global variations.
The opposite is the case with the global warming alarmists. Their human-emitted carbon dioxide hypothesis is made ludicrous by the fact that most of the warming since the 1860s occurred before 1940, an era when human CO2 emissions were not significant. And we had significant global cooling between then and 1970, precisely the period when CO2 emissions were steeply rising.
CO2 really is rising, though. Any greenhouse heat effect seems to be dissipated by a newly discovered "Pacific heat vent." Moreover, CO2 emissions are probably involved in fertilizing vegetation wherever CO2 levels have risen.
Global Warming "Solutions"
We can't stop global warming or cooling. We simply don't have the power to do it. We can't heat up or cool down the Sun; we can't jiggle the Earth in its orbit or change its position. We'd be idiots to try, even if such unimaginable powers came within our reach.
So we'll continue, as long as the human race persists, to have ice ages and warm periods, with relatively minor oscillations (like the Little Ice Age and our current warm period) in between.
In fact, what we have right now, while we are not yet as warm as the peak of the medieval warming (a fact that Mann and others have tried to deny or obscure), is a superb climate that is making life better for people all over the world. It's the cold periods that cause famines and population drops, and promote plagues and floods.
We should be grateful.
Instead we are being hit with dire warnings, every one of which is either false or a normal part of the Earth's history; our business should be to adapt to the unavoidable solar-caused warming, not to destroy the worldwide economy in order to prevent something that human activity is not causing.
Because the "solutions" proposed by the alarmists do not solve anything – and they admit it! The drastic proscriptions of the Kyoto Protocols, even if anybody were actually following them, would not have had any effect on global warming, even if it had been caused by human CO2 emissions.
Do you understand that? When Al Gore goes on and on about what we must do to save the Earth, he knows – and everybody involved with the global warming alarmist movement knows – that none of their drastic proposals would have the slightest effect on global warming even if it worked the way their fantasies say it does.
So why do they propose it? There are many personal motives, of course, but when you look at the non-solution "solutions" they propose, the pattern is clear: They are not trying to stop global warming. They are trying to punish the Western democracies for being richer than the rest of the world.
There are solutions to that problem (and I believe it is a problem), but they involve stabilizing bad governments, increasing international trade and making unsafe parts of the world safer so they can take part in the global boom.
Not only that, but many of the programs the alarmists advocate are actually needed for completely unrelated reasons. It is a mark of our folly and blindness that we continue to be so ridiculously oil-dependent all these years after the oil embargo of 1973.
For national security, environmental, futuristic and personal-happiness reasons we should be working hard to change our automobile centered culture into more civilized patterns that invariably make people happier wherever they are tried.
It can't be done by cutting back on automobile emissions or even by raising taxes on gasoline – especially because these changes are hardest on the poor and the marginal middle class.
But I'll write about how and why we need to cut back on our destructive love affair with that faithless mistress, the car, in another column.
What matters right here and now is that it is time for the world's scientists to apostatize from the Church of Global Warming. It is a false religion. It is based on lies, and its leading prophets know that it is because they're the ones faking the data or stretching it to ridiculous lengths to pretend that the real world hasn't already ruled against their claims.
It is time for our school systems to stop accepting the gospel of that false religion and start doing their due diligence. Our children should be taught about the demonstrable solar cycles and the whole human-caused global warming theory, along with the Hockey Stick Hoax, should be taught only as another example, after Piltdown Man and pre-Copernican theories of planetary movement, of how science can be corrupted when ideology gets ahead of the data.
It is time for us to laugh at the ideologues who try to pretend that any criticism of global warming alarmism is idiotic and unscientific. They are the ones who ignore the data; they are the ones who believe on faith alone, without evidence; and, most important, they are the ones who are trying to stifle the opposition without answering it.
The global warming alarmists are the anti-science religion that is trying to forcibly indoctrinate and convert everyone while suppressing dissent. And the news media are their patsies, their stooges, their puppets.
Right now, let's start demanding that whenever the local newspaper or TV stations say anything about global warming, they back it up with actual data that takes into account the solar oscillations, the real climate history of the earth, and the facts about what CO2 actually does in the atmosphere.
It's time to stop letting them pass along other people's lies. It's time for the news media to stop doing cocktail party "research" and dig down into the science and get it right.
Read It For Yourselves
I could not possibly array all the evidence here; you must read the books for yourself. Unstoppable Global Warming is a highly accessible book written for ordinary educated readers. It's the book I recommend most highly.
Shattered Consensus, on the other hand, uses the language of various disciplines of science to a degree that makes some chapters fairly difficult for untrained readers, though the key chapter I cited here, on the Hockey Stick Hoax, is quite readable and worth looking at by everybody.
S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years.
Patrick J. Michaels, ed. Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming.. (See especially: Ross McKitrick, "The Mann et al. Northern Hemisphere 'Hockey Stick' Climate Index: A Tale of Due Diligence," pp. 20-49.)

America Unplugged! Obama's Cruel Tax on the Poor

America Unplugged! Obama's Cruel Tax on the Poor
Obama's "ideological" energy plan would cripple US economy

by Orson Scott Card

A reprint of an article which originally appeared in the Rhino Times of Greensboro, NC.

October 30, 2008

Obama isn't cutting taxes for the poor, because they don't pay any.

Instead, he's planning to make it so expensive to generate electricity that only the rich can afford to use their appliances whenever they want.

Why? It's all in the name of Obama's true belief in global warming. He says it himself – he'll take coal off the table as an "ideological matter." Even if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, he's opposed to pursuing it.

He wants to put a huge penalty on companies that emit carbon – which means that starting up new coal-powered electrical plants will be prohibitively expensive. In Obama's own words, "It will bankrupt them."

"Cap and trade" plans have already been tried, and they don't work – they cost too much and people find ways to get around them. But Obama promises us that he'll take that failed idea and be "as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's" plan.

In other words, if it doesn't work, let's do more of it!

This is Obama the New Puritan. We've found his real religion: Political and environmental correctness.

It's more important to him to eliminate coal than to find practical solutions. Why? Because coal is "bad." Our groupthinking "intellectual" elite thinks they are post-religious – but they believe in sin and hate the sinners.

(Real intellectuals are skeptical and look for evidence before they embrace an idea; global warming, like the rest of the dogmas of the extreme left, are believed without proof, by faith alone.)

For the New Puritans, global warming is the vengeful god that must be placated. Our economy is the sacrifice to that deity. In the name of global warming, we must destroy our quality of life – and, like sales tax, it will hurt the poorest people first and most.

Unfortunately, human-caused global warming exists only in the way Zeus exists – in the imagination of believers who ignore obvious natural explanations. So this sacrifice of America's most bountiful and reliable energy source (until we can get solar and wind and nuclear up and running) is to a god that only seems real to people who are not serious about staying connected to reality.

Right now it is vital that we convert all our land transportation to electricity so we can wean ourselves from oil (and save that fuel for air transport). It will take far longer to convert away from coal as a source of that electricity – so what we need right now, as a temporary measure, is to build more generating capacity.

Obama would freeze us where we are. Literally.

Our electrical system would be rationed, or as intermittent as in Saddam's Iraq or today's Nigeria – oil-rich countries that did such a poor job of providing electricity to their citizens that it might go away for weeks, and when it comes back on, it's only for a few hours a day.

The poor would be hardest hit. When that electric bill is bigger than your house payment, something's got to go. What do you turn off? The fridge? The stove? Using the microwave is out of the question. Hair dryers? Gone. And you can forget watching DVDs or television.

It's Obama's first album: America Unplugged.

But the harm to the poor wouldn't stop with their inability to afford to use the appliances that the rest of America gets to use. With energy costs soaring to assuage Obama's god, people will have less money to spend. The cost of manufacturing everything would soar.

Let's see – higher prices, less income. Do you see vast unemployment following?

Not only will the poor be worse off, there'll be a whole lot more of them.

Why didn't the San Francisco Chronicle tell us about this back in January, when Obama laid out this plan?

Because it wasn't good for the rest of the country to know what Obama really plans to do. If we knew the truth, we might not vote for the "anointed ruler."

So why did this tape emerge now? Maybe some reporter or editor got an attack of honesty. Or maybe they woke up when they saw Obama declare war on the press – punishing newspapers and TV stations that were not sufficiently loyal to the anointed ruler.

Think of it: Not only can we have Nigeria's electrical power system, we can have Egypt's and Russia's "free" press! All courtesy of Obama!

For a long time we really haven't been able to find out who Obama is. But now, as the anointed ruler makes his triumphal parade to Mount Olympus, his arrogance is showing.

We caught a glimpse when he sneered at religion, saying that we turn to it only out of bitterness – rather than, say, faith, or charity, or love of virtue, or spirituality.

Obama thinks like a New Puritan – the people who punish anyone who speaks an incorrect thought. You've seen how they borked Joe the Plumber and, for that matter, Sarah Palin, accusing them of terrible things – none of which were even bad!

Obama thinks that coal is the devil. But when you ban coal as a source of additional electricity, you cripple our ability to transition to the technologies we must have to keep our great, world-fueling economy going.

But Obama, when you bring the whole global economic system crashing down, what do you think we'll use to heat our houses – or caves – then?

Coal and trees. Lots and lots of carbon.

Obama and his elitist friends think they're smart, but they don't live on planet Earth, they live in a playhouse where they can make huge messes with their stupid policies and then pretend that the mess is someone else's fault while they hope for some invisible mommy to come and clean it up.

The invisible mommy so far has been the American people and the resilient economy that we create (along with the few remaining moral standards that have not yet been crushed).
But we can't clean up after Obama's plan if we're too broke to turn on the lights.

Copyright © 2008 by Orson Scott Card

Don't wait for permission – reprint, forward or link to this now.

US Senator: James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a "Human-Caused Global-Warming" Skeptic

 Note: This is a repost from the "U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works" Webpage which nobody reads. Interesting information to add to the mix.

Says Hansen ‘Embarrassed NASA’ & ‘Was Never Muzzled’

Gore Faces More Scientific Blowback

Also See: Gore’s Inconvenient Astronaut: NASA Moonwalker Defies Gore's Claim That Skeptics Are Akin To Those Who Believe Moon Landing was 'Staged'

[ See: Senator Inhofe’s YouTube Clip on Hansen’s former supervisor ]

Washington DC: NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fears soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of anthropogenic global warming fears.
[See: U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims & See Prominent Scientist Fired By Gore Says Warming Alarm ‘Mistaken’]

“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man-made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen's supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation,” Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained.
[Note: Here are the results of a Google Scholar search on Theon. - Theon's complete written correspondence to EPW reprinted at the end of this report. ]

“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA's official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind's effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote.
[Note: NASA scientist James Hansen who runs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has created worldwide media frenzy with his dire climate warnings, his call for trials against those who dissent against man-made global warming fear, and his claims that he was allegedly muzzled by the Bush administration despite doing 1,400 on-the-job media interviews - See: Don’t Panic Over Predictions of Climate Doom - Get the Facts on James Hansen & UK Guardian: NASA scientist calls for putting oil firm chiefs on trial for 'high crimes against humanity' for spreading doubt about man-made global warming – June 23, 2008 & NYT's Revkin chides Hansen for promoting sea level claims that are at upper boundary of what is 'even physically possible']

Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.

“As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research,” Theon wrote of his career. “This required a thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate science since retiring by reading books and journal articles,” Theon added. (LINK) Theon also co-authored the book Advances in Remote Sensing Retrieval Methods.

Hansen 'is a political activist who spreads fear'

Award-winning NASA Astronaut and Physicist Walter Cunningham of NASA’s Apollo 7 also recently chastised Hansen. “Hansen is a political activist who spreads fear even when NASA’s own data contradict him,” Cunningham wrote in an essay in the July/August 2008 issue of Launch Magazine. “NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Unfortunately, it is becoming just another agency caught up in the politics of global warming, or worse, politicized science,” Cunningham wrote.

[Note: Theon joins many current and former NASA scientists in dissenting from man-made climate fears. A small sampling includes: Aerospace engineer and physicist Dr. Michael Griffin, the former top administrator of NASA, Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and is formerly of NASA, Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt, Chemist and Nuclear Engineer Robert DeFayette was formerly with NASA’s Plum Brook Reactor, Hungarian Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Ames Research Center, Climatologist Dr. John Christy, Climatologist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Atmospheric Scientist Ross Hays of NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility]

Gore faces a much different scientific climate in 2009 than the one he faced in 2006 when his film An Inconvenient Truth was released. According to satellite data, the Earth has cooled since Gore’s film was released, Antarctic sea ice extent has grown to record levels, sea level rise has slowed, ocean temperatures have failed to warm, and more and more scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made climate fears as peer-reviewed studies continue to man-made counter warming fears. [See: Peer-Reviewed Study challenges 'notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming' & New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears ]


“Vice President Gore's and the other promoters of man-made climate fears' endless claims that the 'debate is over' appear to be ignoring scientific reality,” Senator James Inhofe, Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee.

A U.S. Senate Minority Report released in December 2008 details over 650 international scientists who are dissenting from man-made global warming fears promoted by the UN. Many of the scientists profiled are former UN IPCC scientists and former believers in man-made climate change that have reversed their views in recent years. The report continues to grow almost daily. We have just received a request from an Italian scientist, and a Czech scientist to join the 650 dissenting scientists report. A chemist from the U.S. Naval Academy is about to be added, and more Japanese scientists are dissenting. Finally, many more meteorologists will be added and another former UN IPCC scientist is about to be included. These scientists are openly rebelling against the climate orthodoxy promoted by Gore and the UN IPCC.

The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. Reports from the conference found that Skeptical scientists overwhelmed the meeting, with '2/3 of presenters and question-askers hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' ( See full reports here & here ]

In addition, a 2008 canvass of more than 51,000 Canadian scientists revealed 68% disagree that global warming science is “settled.” A November 25, 2008, article in Politico noted that a “growing accumulation” of science is challenging warming fears, and added that the “science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.” More evidence that the global warming fear machine is breaking down. Russian scientists “rejected the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming”. An American Physical Society editor conceded that a “considerable presence” of scientific skeptics exists. An International team of scientists countered the UN IPCC, declaring: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate”. India Issued a report challenging global warming fears. International Scientists demanded the UN IPCC “be called to account and cease its deceptive practices.”

The scientists and peer-reviewed studies countering climate claims are the key reason that the U.S. public has grown ever more skeptical of man-made climate doom predictions. [See: Global warming ranks dead last, 20 out of 20 in new Pew survey. Pew Survey & Survey finds majority of U.S. Voters - '51% — now believe that humans are not the predominant cause of climate change' - January 20, 2009 - Rasmussen Reports ]

The chorus of skeptical scientific voices grow louder in 2008 as a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses, real world data and inconvenient developments challenged the UN’s and former Vice President Al Gore's claims that the "science is settled" and there is a "consensus."

On a range of issues, 2008 proved to be challenging for the promoters of man-made climate fears. Promoters of anthropogenic warming fears endured the following: Global temperatures failing to warm; Peer-reviewed studies predicting a continued lack of warming; a failed attempt to revive the discredited “Hockey Stick”; inconvenient developments and studies regarding rising CO2; the Spotless Sun; Clouds; Antarctica; the Arctic; Greenland’s ice; Mount Kilimanjaro; Global sea ice; Causes of Hurricanes; Extreme Storms; Extinctions; Floods; Droughts; Ocean Acidification; Polar Bears; Extreme weather deaths; Frogs; lack of atmospheric dust; Malaria; the failure of oceans to warm and rise as predicted.

Theon’s complete written correspondence to EPW reprinted below:

-----Original Message-----
From: Jtheon [mailto:jtheon@XXXXXXX]
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 10:05 PM
To: Morano, Marc (EPW)

Subject: Climate models are useless

Marc, First, I sent several e-mails to you with an error in the address and they have been returned to me. So I'm resending them in one combined e-mail.

Yes, one could say that I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation. He was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind's effect on it). He thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.

My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit. Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.

With best wishes, John

# #

From: Jtheon [mailto:jtheon@XXXXXX]
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 12:50 PM
To: Morano, Marc (EPW)

Subject: Re: Nice seeing you

Marc, Indeed, it was a pleasure to see you again. I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that Global Warming is man made. A brief bio follows. Use as much or as little of it as you wish.

John S. Theon Education: B.S. Aero. Engr. (1953-57); Aerodynamicist, Douglas Aircraft Co. (1957-58); As USAF Reserve Officer (1958-60),B.S. Meteorology (1959); Served as Weather Officer 1959-60; M.S, Meteorology (1960-62); NASA Research Scientist, Goddard Space Flight Ctr. (1962-74); Head Meteorology Branch, GSFC (1974-76); Asst. Chief, Lab. for Atmos. Sciences, GSFC (1977-78); Program Scientist, NASA Global Weather Research Program, NASA Hq. (1978-82); Chief, Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch NASA Hq., (1982-91); Ph.D., Engr. Science & Mech.: course of study and dissertation in atmos. science (1983-85); Chief, Atmospheric Dynamics, Radiation, & Hydrology Branch, NASA Hq. (1991-93); Chief, Climate Processes Research Program, NASA Hq. (1993-94); Senior Scientist, Mission to Planet Earth Office, NASA Hq. (1994-95); Science Consultant, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (1995-99); Science Consultant Orbital Sciences Corp. (1996-97) and NASA Jet Propulsion Lab., (1997-99).

As Chief of several NASA Hq. Programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research. This required a thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate science since retiring by reading books and journal articles. I hope that this is helpful.

Best wishes, John
# # #

Note: This is a repost from the "U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works" Webpage which nobody reads. Interesting information to add to the mix.