Often Wrong

Anthony Watts has a post on this article at WUWT but it deserves a bit of venting here.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce seeks trial on global warming

I wanted to highlight some of the leftists attempts at defining and marginalizing anyone skeptical of government funded science. The article was written by Jim Tankersley in the never right but often wrong LA times.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Sounds fine to me, there are valid reasons that government funded science claims of concluded science are false.   From my viewpoint the recent attempts to declare consensus only adds weight to the skeptics case.  There are many things to be skeptical about within the defined boundaries of climate science, the fact that these details are largely ignored by the declaration of consensus cannot be understated and should raise red flags everywhere.  Three critical items off the top of my head which are key to the global warming case and yet poorly defined are moisture feedback, solar forcing (past and present) and natural variability.  There are many others as well.

As an example, what is wrong about calculating or discussing the magnitude of natural variability?  Has it truly been defined?  So far the math I’ve seen says not just no but HELL no!  What should we do if we find natural variability  is far greater than CO2 warming can reasonably be?  Would we be capable of controlling the sun?  My own opinion is we would then not be capable of stopping the predicted disasters and should instead work on better quantifying and  coping with them.  From my reading there is good cause to believe nature is in charge still, hockey sticks and proxies are mostly garbage and previous ice melts are well documented. This cannot be ignored!  Well it shouldn’t be anyway.

Still that doesn’t prevent people from trying to marginalize reasonable debate.

“It would be evolution versus creationism,” said William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. “It would be the science of climate change on trial.”

I might actually agree with the sentence above if it is recognized that skeptics are on the side of evolution.  Of course in our ‘rush to socialism’ government disagrees and moves on presenting the party line.

EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said the agency based its proposed finding that global warming is a danger to public health “on the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare.”

I suppose the EPA report discussed here – Change You Can Believe In contains the best peer reviewed evidence government money could buy.  However, it was loaded with exaggeration and claims of disaster which have absolutely no method for verification.  It is disguised as peer reviewed science  though so you’re not allowed to point out the asinine conclusions are bull.

Environmentalists say the chamber’s strategy is an attempt to sow political discord by challenging settled science — and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end.

So the envirowhackos are still pushing consensus as if any challenge is extremist.  The same environmentalists who just came out and admitted their goal wasn’t as stated but rather to reduce the prosperity of the American people.  This is from Greenpeace CEO Gurd  Leipold who is probably the only leftist being honest in the debate.

Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.

Of course the socialist front groups are weighing in, as well they should:

The chamber proposal “brings to mind for me the Salem witch trials, based on myth,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist for the environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists. “In this case, it would be ignoring decades of publicly accessible evidence.”

The only problem is that they don’t announce that they are government funded leftists, they seem like worried scientists to those who don’t know.  The Union of Concerned Scientists is a scam and a disgrace  in my opinion but they get to say, hey I’m a climate scientist  and everything is true.  Followed shortly by,  let’s expand government taxation and regulation.  Brenda disgusts me.  Claiming or even implying there is certainty in the severity of the problems a few C of warming will create is completely unreasonable.

Most climate scientists agree that greenhouse gas emissions, caused by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities, are warming the planet. Using computer models and historical temperature data, those scientists predict the warming will accelerate unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced.

I agree too as do most people who study the issue, greenhouse gas is capable of causing warming and probably is causing some.   Where we don’t agree is how much warming it will create, how serious a problem warming is and what we need to do about it.  Governments never, never, never have trouble with those issues though.

The LA times again uses the false consensus argument

“The need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable,” said a recent letter to world leaders by the heads of the top science agencies in 13 of the world’s largest countries, including the head of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

In this letter the heads of 13 government agencies support higher taxation indirectly through the agreement that CO2 causes warming.  THIS IS NOT SCIENCE PEOPLE!

Then there’s the exaggerations of the EPA endangerment findings.  The report contains exaggerated temp curves, unverified projections and even the hockey stick was included in this report.  People need to understand that despite the claims, these glorified weathermen don’t have a clue what will happen next year let alone one hundred years in the future.

The EPA’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, as proposed in April, warned that warmer temperatures would lead to “the increased likelihood of more frequent and intense heat waves, more wildfires, degraded air quality, more heavy downpours and flooding, increased drought, greater sea level rise, more intense storms, harm to water resources, harm to agriculture, and harm to wildlife and ecosystems.”

The final statement in the paragraph after multiple declarations of consensus and numerous examples of government collusion and exaggeration comes across as so weak it’s hard to describe.

Critics of the finding say it’s far from certain that warming will cause any harm at all. The Chamber of Commerce cites studies that predict higher temperatures will reduce mortality rates in the United States.

Some of the CRITICS BELIEVE IN SCIENCE!!!

Where is the evidence for any disasters due to warming.  So far the only disasters which have been conclusively related to global warming is the OBVIOUSLY corrupted science, the money sent to the IPCC and Euopean cap and trade.

If you’re in the mood, here’s the author’s email – jtankersley@latimes.com

Ah, there I feel better now.