GLOBAL WARMING HAS MADE MORALISTS OUT OF THOSE WHO USED TO RIDICULE MORALITY!

The "moral relativists" of the Left themselves have a typically psychopathic lack of any morality -- but they are always ready to use moral talk to manipulate more decent people

As a scientist, I find the current strategy of the global warming crusade to be fascinating. Particularly because I am a scientist, I also find it insulting. Everyone should find it very disturbing. I am referring to the fact that the global warming issue is now regarded as a "moral" matter by its advocates. None other than The High Priest of Global Warming (Al Gore) has decreed it as such.

Of course, there is some obvious humor in this because the liberals will also tell you that you "cannot legislate morality". Well, it does not take complicated logic to conclude that if global warming is indeed a moral matter and if it is true that you cannot legislate morality, then it should hold that you cannot legislate global warming.

But making funny distracts us from a deeper concern that should worry anyone who wants to see the truth remain relevant in the matters that face our society. To see this deeper danger, let us forget about global warming for just a moment and consider morality in very general terms. There are numerous ways to define morality, but one that is particularly helpful here is to regard morality as the "lens" through which one views the facts. Morality should not be used to simply deny the facts; and people who really understand morality do not use it that way. Rather, they use morality to put the facts in a proper context. Morality tells them "what to make of the facts".

This sounds a little abstract, so consider a practical example: Let us assume that Bob has just shot George dead with a shotgun and that this is an undeniable fact supported by overwhelming evidence. Now, one could use a moral argument to suggest that the shooting was justified as an act of self-defense. Alternately, one could also use a moral argument to insist that the shooting was cold-blooded murder. But one cannot use a moral argument to insist that the shooting simply did not happen. In other words, moral considerations influence how we view the facts and can be used to argue "what we should make of the facts", but they cannot be used to literally change or deny the facts. Whether a claimed fact is indeed true should be a purely intellectual question, rather than a moral one.

Now consider, in contrast, how "morality" is being employed by global warming advocates like Al Gore: For many years, global warming seemed to be a fact-focused debate. But a persistent problem for the advocates has been dissenting scientific opinion. Some very reputable scientists hold that global warming may be attributed to natural phenomena like the intensity of solar radiation. Others have valid questions about how much warming will actually occur and how severe the resulting effects will really be. Still others suggest that, if the problem is indeed real and serious, then serious responses are indicated. These folks propose an honest examination of real solutions (like a renewed emphasis on nuclear power) instead of the childish games of useless treaties, carbon credits, windmills and fluorescent light bulbs that seem to enamor so many of the advocates.

It is one thing to write these dissenting opinions off as factually false, but this is apparently no longer regarded as adequate by the global warming advocates. The dissent keeps popping up, it backed by some very reputable people wielding very credible facts, and the availability of alternate information outlets has made it impossible to smother the doubters and dissenters. Now enter the moral angle. If global warming is now a moral matter, it would seem to suggest an associated implication that these inconvenient viewpoints are immoral. Apparently it is now the duty of "good" people to reject these opinions on this "moral" basis and without regard to whether they are factually true or false.

The most bizarre aspect of this strategy is that it is exactly what the liberals have always (unfairly) accused us conservatives of doing. Here, morality is not being used as a lens through which to view the facts, but rather as a hammer that can smash the inconvenient ones. Regardless of the evidence to the contrary, I must not believe it possible for Bob to have shot George because such a fact is not compatible with the accepted moral viewpoint! If I dare to believe otherwise, then I am "immoral".

The message of these pseudo-moralists is that "good" people must start by accepting the pre-ordained orthodox conclusion and then work backwards through the claimed facts, making not an intellectual assessment of whether they are indeed true, but rather a "moral" assessment of whether or not they agree with the conclusion. Things claimed as facts which are "good" (in this moral sense) should be embraced and those which are "bad" (in this same moral sense) should be discarded, not because they are factually false, but because they are "immoral".

In all honesty, this should scare the heck out of everyone. This is an atmosphere in which scientific inquiry is steered not by factual truth, but by a pre-ordained "moral" position. What is at work here is exactly what the liberals have always claimed to condemn. How is this any different from the decree of a radical theocratic dictator who will allow only those scientific conclusions which are approved by his church? The liberals always claimed that such behavior - allowing moral considerations to trump factual ones - was the ultimate evil. But apparently, even this "ultimate evil" becomes "acceptable strategy" if the cause is justified. This is "liberal moral relativism" taken to a whole new level.

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BRITISH FARMERS TOLD: DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE, BE SCEPTICAL

Worried about your carbon footprint? Maybe you shouldn't be. In the week the Government unveiled its Climate Change Bill seeking huge CO2 emissions cuts, the Tenant Farmers' Association annual meeting heard from a scientist who claims current climate change thinking is 'nonsense'. ALISTAIR DRIVER heard him go down a storm at the Farmers Club.

It was certainly a speech with a difference. Over the past 12 months, farmers have been bombarded with rhetoric about their frontline role in the fight against climate change and how their carbon footprint is now the only thing that really matters. So when a respected scientist told tenant farmers they were being conned and everything they had heard up to now on climate change was wrong, they sat up and took notice.

Philip Stott is rare thing in that he is a scientist who refuses to buy into the prevailing theory that human carbon dioxide emissions are the main driving force behind climate change. He ridicules the idea that politicians can control the earth's climate and says the current global drive to reduce CO2 emissions is not only futile but is diverting attention and resources away from issues that really matter.

During a charismatic speech at the TFA's annual meeting he pleaded with farmers to remain open-minded on the issue. "Everybody is trying to use global warming for their own ends and beware of politicians trying to bear gifts because they want to use you for their agenda. That could backfire badly for farmers on the ground."

Prof Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at the University of London, stressed he was not saying climate change was not happening or even that humans were not playing a part. He argued, however, that the role played by CO2 emissions in creating a greenhouse effect that traps the sun's heat above the earth was relatively small.

Prof Stott, who is well known as a media commentator on the environment, featured in a groundbreaking programme on climate change on Channel 4 last Thursday, which brought together scientists who dispute the CO2 theory. They argued, for example, that while fossil records have shown a correlation between climate and CO2 over time, it is not CO2 that has made the earth hotter but the other way round. Warmer oceans, for example, have produced more CO2, they said.

They put forward the theory that linked climate change to the interaction between the sun's cosmic rays and water vapour and cloud cover, and produced convincing graphs to demonstrate their theory. Prof Stott said the planet's temperature had always fluctuated - in the 1970s the great scare story was the next ice age - and numerous factors together combined to create the variations. "Climate is governed by everything from the tilt of the earth, to volcanoes, ocean currents, sun spots, cosmic rays, solar sunspots, meteors and reflection from the land.

So to put it all down to one factor - human CO2 emissions - is just not credible and the idea that politicians can control the climate is nonsense. It's Alice in Wonderland stuff." Even if CO2 was a major factor in global warming, just 'tinkering' with emissions was going to make little difference, he said. It would take 'massive emission cuts' to make a real difference, as much as 90 per cent, according to one commentator, he said. Yet politicians and the media were fully signed up to what was now 'fundamentally a religion divorced from science' where opposition was 'simply not allowed'.

At the farm level, policy was being distorted by the obsession with reducing the industry's carbon footprint, which was shifting the focus and funds away from research in areas that really counted - including food production and mitigating the impact of climate change. "We need research into new forms of farming -- help farmers adapt to climate change -- but all that is seen as secondary," he said.

The vital debate about energy had also been skewed by the emphasis on CO2 emissions. While local farm renewable initiatives, whether it be biogas or biofuels, were important, large scale biofuel production had environmental downsides and would be divisive for the industry, he said. "Having ignored them for so long, the Government has decided farming is important because of the climate change rhetoric but it is not for you, it is for the image it gives the public about them," he said.

On a global level poorer countries were being lectured on energy use by western politicians who did not even live by their own rules, such as climate change campaigner Al Gore, recently exposed for using 12 times the average amount of energy in his own home.

He dismissed the Stern report's key finding that climate change would cause a 13.8 per cent loss in global income by 2020, claiming this would be compensated for many times over a general increase in wealth. "We are trying to benefit a rich future generation by taking from a poorer current generation and that does not make sense. We have four billion people in poverty, two billion with dirty water and two billion with no modern energy - we should be trying to solve those problems not a future problem that may never happen," he said.

Prof Stott remains in a very small minority - 2,500 scientists signed the global Inter-Government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report backing the CO2 theory in February - and is often attacked for his views. He counters by saying most scientists are being 'dragged along by a great story' and the knowledge they can get funding easily for research in the area, while the media is making the mistake of believing science works by consensus. "It does not and never has done - remember Galileo. Science progresses by scepticism and paradigm shifts when new theories rise up and displace dominant ones. I think we are at the hysterical peak of the CO2 theory and this paradigm is bound to fail as it predicates it itself on one factor when climate change is a very, very complex thing. "So my message to you as farmers is to remain sceptical, don't get drawn in and fight your corner as practical land stewards of this earth."

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The "hockeystick" climate chart -- increasing recognition of a scientific fraud

That something so contrary to all prior knowledge was immediately accepted shows how gullible scientists can be when it suits them

The basics of science involve a number of simple rules, a healthy skepticism, and a guiding principle of letting the data settle the disputes. Data need to be checked and validated, measurements need to be explained and justified, as well as the calculational techniques described. Replication of the results by others is essential, as are the analyses of measuring errors and uncertainties.

The global warming issues alarmingly have not been sufficiently scrutinized. Errors, misstatements, partial statements, evasions, and lack of cooperation and candor, even ad hominem attacks are used by the proponents instead. Senators Rockefeller (VA) and Snowe (ME) called for the suppression of skeptics. Others suggest that Nuremburg Trials be held for them as well. Science isn't conducted that way....

The lack of scientific integrity permeates the global warming movement and can be traced to include the IPCC itself. In the Third Assessment Report of 2001 the IPCC published and repeatedly presented what has become known as the "Hockeystick". This is a graphical representation shaped like a hockeystick, of the global temperatures for the last 1000 years. It was published in the science journal Nature as a two-part reconstruction of the temperatures over the past 1000 years.

The statistical studies used to produce the chart were extremely dense technically, using logically opaque and obscure statistical techniques. It was so opaque that the editors of Nature as well as its peer reviewers were not able to reconstruct the data and computing efforts needed to generate the "Hockeystick". This is not the way peer review is supposed to work.

Worse, the chart was enthusiastically adopted by the authors of the IPCC, and published in its Third Assessment Report apparently without review. Worse still, many foreign governments adopted the chart as gospel as they addressed their national policies toward "global warming", and mitigation efforts. It turns out that the Hockeystick wasn't gospel at all.

Incredibly, there were two individuals, Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre (M&M), two Canadians who had the wits, statistical and computer skills, and doggedness to unravel the complex data and the obscure statistical techniques used to construct the "Hockeystick'. (http://tinyurl.com/27vu3v). Their efforts were obstructed at many steps along the way by the studies' authors. This opposition by the authors also is an intellectual red-flag indicating that something besides good science was involved, such as politics, funding, or fame, etc. Good scientists welcome replication and solid reviews.

What M&M found in the statistics behind that IPCC chart has been a great example of international scientific fraud and malpractice. That it now drives energy policy in many nations is frightening.

Simultaneously M&M have given the world a classic example of what true science is about, that is, how skilled individuals can unravel the confusing data and analytical techniques and find the errors. It has happened many times in our history. Heavy prices have been paid for challenging prevailing dogmas. The world owes a great debt of gratitude to both McKitrick and McIntyre for their unique and powerful efforts and their extraordinary findings.

Temperature proxy data from the past 1000 years of course were needed to construct the 'Hockeystick" curve. Actual temperature measurements could not be made during much of this time simply because the thermometer wasn't invented until 1709 by Gabriel Fahrenheit. Such thermometers were not widely used for decades and the concept of heat was unknown (Fourier provided the Laws of Heat Transfer much later) so that actual climate temperature data did not systematically begin for another two hundred years. Thus proxies such as core samples and tree rings were used.

What McKitrick and McIntyre have found in their hockeystick analysis is shattering and profound. It destroys the credibility and integrity of the IPCC, the editors of Nature Magazine, and the 2500 hundred or so members of a so-called consensus of climate experts. As M&M have once again shown that consensus is not science.

The authors of the hockeystick chart did not indicate finding the well-known Medieval Warming Period (WMP, when temperatures were higher than now. They did not find the well-known Little Ice Age in the 1500s to the 1800s, when temperatures were lower than now. The warming shown in the 20th century was not consistent with other data, such as the 50 years of balloon data. Their work has been a series of lessons learned about incompatibilities of politics and science. They don't mix.

Since the findings of M&M are not well known one might suspect that the climate experts don't agree with M&M. As a matter of fact many do agree with M&M and have said so. For example McKitrick has received many communications from climatologists from around the world who have expressed support for his findings. McKitrick says: "Since our work has begun to appear we have enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing we are winning over the expert community, one at a time. Physicist Richard Muller of Berkeley studied our work last year and wrote an article about it:

`[The findings] hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others". Suddenly, the hockeystick, the poster child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics'".

He goes on: "In an article in the Dutch science magazine Natuurwetenschap & Techniek, Dr. Rob van Dorland of the Dutch National Meteorological Agency commented "It is strange that that the climate reconstruction of Mann passed both peer review rounds of the IPCC without anyone ever really having checked it. I think this issue will be on the agenda of the next IPCC meeting in Peking this May".

McKitrick continues: "In February 2005 the German television channel Das Erste interviewed climatologist Ulrich Cubasch, who revealed that he too had been unable to replicate the hockey stick. He (climatologist Ulrich Cubasch) discussed with his co-workers-and many of his professional colleagues - the objections, and sought to work them through. Bit by bit, it became clear also to his colleagues: the two Canadians were right (M&M). .Between 1400 and 1600, the temperature shift was considerably higher than, for example, in the previous century. With that, the core conclusion, and that also of the IPCC 2001 Report, was completely undermined".

McKitrick continues: "Recently we (M&M) received an email from Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, retired director of the Royal Meteorological Institute of the Netherlands. He wrote: `The IPCC review process is fatally flawed. The behavior of Michael Mann is a disgrace to the profession.The scientific basis for the Kyoto Protocols is grossly inadequate'".

Of course the likes of Al Gore and Hollywood are beyond hope when it comes to scientific skills. It is beyond comprehension just how Gore, Hollywood, and the media have not asked to sit down and confront other valid, defensible, yet opposing points of view. They have simply started with their conclusion that doom is imminent, and ignored all evidence which doesn't support it. And there is lots of such evidence.

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A coming apocalypse always has plenty of believers

People often ask how I can be sceptical about the claim that global warming is the major threat of our time, requiring urgent and massive action. After all, many scientists believe it and I am not a scientist. It's a good question, but I think I have a good answer. History shows that scientists are not always right. Sometimes they get caught up in the non-scientific enthusiasms of their time. History also shows that one of those enthusiasms, which crops up constantly, is a desire to believe in the approach of some kind of apocalypse. Of course, I have no way of knowing if the carbon crusade is a case in point. But it shares some of the characteristics of previous apocalyptic movements, which provides grounds for cool scepticism.

An apocalyptic movement comparable to the carbon crusade was the belief the world would soon run out of resources. According to the 1984 book The Apocalyptics by the American journalist Edith Efron, in 1970 scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world's great centres of learning, produced the so-called SCEP report that acknowledged there just wasn't enough data to make such a prediction. Two years later the institute completed another report, Limits to Growth, commissioned by the Club of Rome, a group of people fearful for the planet's future. This time the conclusion was very different: a computer-modelled graph "showed natural resources, the industrial output, the food supply, and the population crashing somewhere near the year 2005 and continuing to crash for years . On the basis of these findings, the study called for an immediate cessation of all economic growth". Limits to Growth caused an international furore and was a bestseller in many countries, moving 3 million copies worldwide.

Although the resource issue was more widely debated among scientists than global warming, the similarities between the two are many, including the faith in computer modelling and the media treatment. The media largely ignored the moderate report (SCEP) and seized upon the alarmist one ( Limits to Growth). Something similar has happened with the carbon crusade. In 2005 the House of Lords select committee of economic affairs produced a report urging a cautious economic response to climate change, because its implications are so unclear. That report is well regarded by many economists but was largely ignored by the world media. The alarmist report produced the following year for the British treasury by Sir Nicholas Stern had the opposite fate: the world media have embraced it even as an increasing number of economists have been scathing in their condemnation.

On March 21 Bjorn Lomborg, the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, gave evidence to the US Congress house committee on energy and commerce. Lomborg believes humanity is warming the globe, but noted that academic papers have described the Stern report as "substandard", "preposterous", "incompetent", "deeply flawed" and "neither balanced nor credible". There's an emerging consensus among economists (for example in the leading journal World Economics) that Stern vastly inflated the likely damages from climate change and vastly underestimated the cost of the action he recommended.

To see such work hailed so effusively and widely, and to see its author received by Australia's top politicians just this week, are two indications to the sceptical observer that the carbon crusade is about apocalypse as much as it is about science.

There's a widespread view that we need to evoke the precautionary principle with climate change on the grounds that it's better to be safe than sorry. But when we talk about the precautionary principle, we need also to evoke another concept: opportunity cost. Money devoted to climate change is money not devoted to other problems. So the right question is this: given our current state of knowledge, which of the problems facing humanity deserves most of our attention?

Several years ago, Lomborg set up a project known as the Copenhagen consensus to determine this. Its starting point was to ask how we might best spend $US50 billion ($62 billion) if we wanted to make the world a better place. (As it happens, the amount of money spent on global warming research since 1990 is now about $US50 billion.) The project has compiled a list of problems that are real, urgent and solvable. Here are some of them, ranked by a panel of top economists, including four Nobel laureates. When reading them, bear in mind that if the world were to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol and thereby postpone warming by just five years to 2100, the cost would be $US180 billion annually.

According to Lomborg's evidence to the Congressional inquiry "preventing HIV/AIDS turns out to be the very best investment humanity can make . For $US27 billion, we can save 28 million lives over the coming years." Investing $US12 billion would probably halve the number of people dying from malnutrition, currently almost 2.4 million a year; $US13 billion would reduce deaths from malaria, now a million a year, by the same proportion. UNICEF estimates that just $US70-80 billion a year could give all Third World inhabitants access to the basics such as health, education, water and sanitation.

The need to believe in an apocalypse is a base craving unfortunately rooted in the human psyche. We need to resist it with another human attribute: the power of reason.

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Australia's "drought" hits Sydney again

Despite repeated loud claims of "drought", there is nothing inadequate about Australia's current rainfall -- but there IS a shortage of will among politicians who have been so cowed by Green fanatics that they have built no new dams for many years -- hence water usage restrictions amidst floods thoughout Australia



Commuters told of roads turning into rivers and water lapping at front doors after a storm hit Sydney's eastern suburbs this morning. About 80 millimetres of rain fell on Rose Bay in about an hour and small hail hit Bondi. The State Emergency Service said they had 12 requests for help during the storm, including flash flooding problems.

IT consultant Anthony Fajwul, 34, found himself surrounded by water while driving through Kiaora Road in Double Bay. "It was surreal," he told smh.com.au. "[The water] was lapping at the doorsteps of the houses. One resident stepped out of their front door into knee-deep water. "I thought [my car] was going to break down - the water was above my wheel line. I put the window down and I could touch the water. "I thought surely that must be a one-off, but when I turned into New South Head Road, it was just as bad. "It was just this massive river as far as the eye could see. People were drenched on the sidewalk. People were holding their shoes up. "It was just such a sudden storm. I've never seen anything like it."

Bob Moore, senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology, said a storm built up near Kurnell about 8am and moved through the eastern suburbs over the following hour. "It was moving along fairly steadily but slowed down a bit over Rose Bay, and they copped [it]. They've had about 80 millimetres," he said. "It was enough to cause a bit of flash flooding there apparently. "[Eighty millimetres] is something we would get once every one or two years around the eastern suburbs in that space of time."

He said a Bureau of Meteorology staff member had also reported small-sized hail falling in Bondi. "[The hail] didn't seem to be a worry to anyone but the rain certainly was pretty heavy." Mr Moore said the downpour had since eased off but warned that there was still a chance of a thunderstorm later in the day. A spokesman for the NSW Fire Brigades said crews had been sent to locations in Bellevue Hill, Edgecliff, Randwick and Coogee to deal with flooding-related issues. In Edgecliff, crews were pumping out 60 centimetres of water, which had flooded three buildings and caused a retaining wall to collapse, he said.

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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 generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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