John McCain's 'Global Warming' Hearings Blasted by Climatologist

Recent U.S. Senate hearings into alleged global warming, chaired by Arizona Republican John McCain, were among the "most biased" that a noted climatologist has ever seen - "much less balanced than anything I saw in the Clinton administration," he said. Patrick J. Michaels is the author of a new book "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media." He is an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia who believes that claims of human-caused "global warming" are scientifically unfounded.

Michaels spoke with CNSNews.com Thursday following a panel discussion sponsored by the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., where Michaels also serves as a senior fellow in environmental studies. "John McCain, a Republican, has probably held the most biased hearing of all," Michaels said. McCain is a big proponent of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, which he believes are causing "global warming." The Arizona senator also "is trying to define himself as an environmental Republican, which he is going to use to differentiate himself from his rivals for the (presidential) nomination in 2008," according to Michaels.

Earlier this week, McCain, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said the Bush administration's views about human-caused climate change were "terribly disappointing." McCain also held a Senate hearing on Tuesday to enlist testimony on the recently released report from an international commission called the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), which warned about rising temperatures in the North Pole.

Citing a visit he had to the Arctic with several U.S. senators last summer, McCain made it clear that he believed human-caused "global warming" was a certainty. "It was remarkable going up on a small ship next to this glacier and seeing where it had been just 10 short years ago and how quickly it's receded," McCain told the New York Times on Monday. McCain also warned about what he saw as the rapid pace of Arctic warming, evidenced by the arrival of wildlife that had never previously been seen in the region. "The Inuit language for 10,000 years never had a word for robin and now there are robins all over their villages," he told the Times.

Michaels refuted McCain's assertions about the North Pole, noting that the Arctic has actually been warmer in the past than it is now. "It was warmer 4 to 7,000 years ago [in the Arctic.] Every climatologist knows that. I saw no mention of that in the Arctic report that was paraded in front of McCain," Michaels said. He added that the past warming of the Arctic couldn't possibly be blamed on greenhouse gas emissions since it occurred long before the industrial era.

Other participants in Thursday's panel discussion also disputed McCain's statements. Harvard Astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas agreed that using the polar ice caps to promote "global warming" did not make sense. "Antarctica has been cooling for the last 50 years. Most of the Arctic has not warmed over long time scales," Baliunas told CNSNews.com. Baliunas also serves as the enviro-science editor for Tech Central Station. "Temperatures [have] always changed in the past and [they] always will. It can either go up or it goes down. We don't have enough understanding of natural variability and we don't see enormous amounts of temperature change to be alarmed about," Baliunas explained.

She also blasted the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to limit greenhouse gases which the U.S. does not support. "The Kyoto (Protocol) does not work, no matter what you think of it because Kyoto won't do anything meaningful."

McCain's claims about a robin population explosion in the Arctic were refuted as well. Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), said "Even if it's true that robins are making their first appearance in Arctic areas, what it means is that the robin's habitat is expanding... "I always thought environmentalists liked birds. To me this is good news," Lewis added.

Michaels lamented that the media are allowing certain government-funded scientists to manipulate science for funding advantages. "Scientists are playing the media because they know the media will publish a story that the world is about to end," he said. "What has happened to the editing process? What has happened to fact checking," he wondered. Baliunas noted that the media like to imply that the overwhelming majority of scientists believe in dire "global warming" scenarios. In fact, she said, "The scientific literature is full of skepticism. The only problem is -- one doesn't get the call from the newspapers and those [skeptical] quotes don't get included." Lewis of the CEI added, "The embrace of government and government funding corrupts whatever it touches and that is certainly the case of the scientific process."

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WINDY NONSENSE FROM THE UK

But the case for wind power as a serious component of the national grid is collapsing by the month, propped up only by soaring Treasury grants and statutory cross-subsidies. Figures about turbines "generating enough power for x homes" are rubbish. Claimed capacity is not output and output is not a substitute for fossil fuel.

Given the intermittency of wind, no grid can risk switching off its fossil-fuel generators for fear of a collapse in supply when the wind dies. Neither the Germans nor the Scandinavians have been able to close power stations through wind substitution. The conventional power stations must be kept running. The Irish have stopped taking wind power on to their grid because of this risk. Wind power may have local auxiliary uses, but it is irrelevant to the global warming account.

Science may one day find ways of storing energy from the restless elements, from wind and waves, and render their contribution to carbon reduction significant. As with offshore turbine parks, the cost would be astronomical. The Trade Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said on Tuesday that "no one is coming forward with plans for nuclear power stations". But that is because she will not subsidise them. No one applied to build wind turbines until the government threw money at them, now o300m a year. It is the most senseless investment ever approved by the Treasury. Farmers and manufacturers with lobbyists in tow may be tumbling over themselves to invest in wind. But the return is not commercial, it is subsidy.

If Britain is sincere about wanting to reduce carbon emissions it must build nuclear power plants. This is not revolutionary. A third of Europe's energy is now nuclear, while Britain is heading towards zero. Nuclear investment is taking place across the world. Even America, which stopped such commissioning in the 1980s, is starting to extend nuclear capacity and plan new plants. Twenty per cent of American power generation is nuclear. If increased, this would do more for global warming than signing the Kyoto Protocol. For Blair to lecture George Bush on this at the G8 summit, when he has not the courage to renew his own nuclear capacity, would be the height of hypocrisy.

I remain unconvinced that global warming is the apocalyptic threat that Blair proclaims. But if it is, Blair cannot prance onstage clad in nothing but a few turbine blades in an intermittent breeze. He will have covered the coasts and hills of Britain in expensive follies. Otherwise he will be naked.

Nuclear power is expensive and problematic. But all power is problematic and only fossil fuel is cheap. Nuclear power may be hated by the green lobby, now thick as thieves with the turbine builders, but at least it works. It generates power that is plentiful and eco-friendly. If Blair believes that the future of the world is at stake, he cannot start counting pennies, any more than he does the cost of wind turbines. He certainly cannot quake before the Friends - or Foes - of the Earth.

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GREENIE OPPOSITION TO DDT STILL KILLING AFRICANS

The great and the good of the health world, along with at least four African presidents, have descended on Tanzania for the United Nations' Global Fund meeting. The fund, established in 2000 to combat AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, has so far received over $3 billion from the wealthy nations.

Unfortunately, many health indicators are still moving in the wrong direction. The most dangerous diseases are less controlled today than at any time in the past 50 years. Malaria and AIDS are rampant; tuberculosis is increasing from an already high rate. Much of the blame for this lies with the inadequate attention paid to health by African leaders, some of whom have continued to deny that HIV causes AIDS, and many of whom have preferred to bolster their armies against non-existent enemies. A fair bit of the blame can also be heaped on aid and health agencies that have promoted the wrong policies: notably, advocating bed nets for malaria control at the expense of the more effective indoor DDT-spraying. As a result, over the past five years, malaria rates have increased by more than 10 percent at a time when funding for malaria has increased by over 200 percent.

Most of the fund's money is spent on AIDS prevention and treatment, and a lot of this money may be well spent. Unfortunately, we just don't know. If, in the first round of disbursements in 2002, significant health outcome statistics (morbidity and mortality changes in particular) had been collected, then we could know. But unfortunately they weren't, and so we don't. Add to this the fact that the fund was procuring anti-malarial drugs that were useless - and Indian generic AIDS drugs that may be useless and have now been recalled - and its track record is rather a mess. To its credit, however, the fund has listened to criticism, and appears to be building in outcome measurements and buying the right drugs.

And when it comes to malaria, in fact, the fund is doing the best job of all aid agencies. It is actually procuring DDT for countries that ask for it, such as Zambia. Other agencies continue to promote only bed nets and are doing everything they can to obstruct the use of DDT in Uganda. A decision was made over the summer by the Ugandan Ministry of Health to use DDT procured by the fund. But insiders I spoke with, who wish not to be named, say that overseas pressure to drop DDT use means the decision is on hold.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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