An investor's view

If Global Warming were a stock, and you bought it in 1979 at zero (par) and decided to sell it this month to buy a house, 29 years later you aren't very happy with your investment. At it's peak in 1998, the temperature only went to a 0.8 increase, and in April it dipped to very nearly unchanged.



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Canada's gullible Leftist fool

Scientists keep publicly dissenting. Today's dissenter speaks up below: Patrick Carroll, retired Environment Canada meteorologist

Re: "Dion needs 'third party validators,' says Nanos," (The Hill Times, May 26, p. 1).

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion is a gullible fool in continuing to believe that CO2 emissions drive climate change. He is whistling past a political graveyard if he thinks that Canadians will accept billions more in taxes to reduce and sequester CO2 emissions when there is zero proof that such activities will have any measurable, let alone detectable, effect on global temperatures. In short, Dion has been a victim of the alarmist propaganda emanating from the IPCC and radical environmentalists such as David Suzuki.

If Dion had advisers who were keeping up with the latest research and climate data, he would have been informed by now that the IPCC theory of anthropogenic warming is a hoax that is rapidly falling into disfavour among atmospheric scientists. Instead, he continues to blunder along listening to clueless alarmists like Mr. Suzuki.

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U.S. rivers on target for a stellar rafting year after record snowfall

During the late 19th century, this railroad town on the banks of the Animas River made its fortunes from coal. Today's moneymakers are tourists such as the LaVergnes of suburban Phoenix, who are settling into a rubber raft for a two-hour jaunt down the Animas, one of the last free-flowing rivers in the West.

On the family's Mountain Waters trip early this month, rented wetsuits and splash jackets come in handy: The 38-degree water, the color of chocolate milk, roils with snowmelt from the nearby San Juan Mountains. And a combination of heavy snowfall and a relatively cool spring means the Animas probably will continue to draw rafters - with warmer temperatures and a slower pace - through August. The Animas is just one of many U.S. rivers on target for a stellar rafting year. Several expect their best water levels in a decade, says David Brown of America Outdoors, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based trade association of outdoor outfitters.

Says Tom Kleinschnitz, head of the Colorado River Outfitters Association and owner of Adventure Bound River Expeditions out of Grand Junction: "With the record or near-record snow we had this winter, from the top of the state to the bottom, all the rivers are looking at extended seasons."

One beneficiary of Mother Nature's largesse is Cataract Canyon, an undammed, 112-mile section of the upper Colorado River near Moab, Utah, that's lined by 2,000-foot red cliffs. At the canyon, home of some of the USA's most challenging rapids during the annual spring melt, water levels are "crazy high, (and) this year we could see big water into July," says Ryan Hutchings of the outfitters organization Rafting America.

Other Western winners include the Owyhee and Rogue rivers in Oregon, the Sauk and Wenatchee in Washington state and Idaho's Middle, Main and Lower Salmon. In the eastern and southeastern USA, meanwhile, agreements between rafting outfitters, local authorities and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will translate to guaranteed summer releases from such popular dam-controlled rivers as the Nantahala in North Carolina, the Pigeon in Tennessee and the Lehigh in Pennsylvania.

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Sirius Radio Host Mike Church's Challenge to Climate Alarmist Heidi Cullen



We've heard enough from these Nature Nazi goons and it's time for them to put their money where their mouth is. The Weather Channel's leading Global Warming Chicken Little is Dr. Heidi Cullen, who has been curiously silent about climate change over most of the record shattering cold winter across America, and proclaimed that the above average temperatures in the northeast is an indicator that we will be having more frequent and severe heat waves in the near future and that it re-enforces climate model predictions of global warming.

Sorry babe, we're not buying it. With a record breaking winter under our belts, sunspot absence, record late snowfall, and Aspen slopes hosting skiers on the third weekend in June, we'll happily offer up the meteorological version of the Pepsi Challenge:

Let's wager $1000 (to the charity of the winner's choosing) that the frequency and magnitude of cold spells far out perform the frequency and magnitude of heat waves over the next three years (from Jan 1, 2008 to Jan 1, 2011).

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Academic inquiry failing on global warming

From a student at the University of Utah

Academic freedom and academic courage are taking a major blow in the United States. Academic courage looks like Galileo, who opposed the Roman Catholic Church's Ptolemaic theory and was imprisoned. He sought truth despite the consequence and regardless of what was popular. This is the courage we are lacking. Akin to the Catholic Church's control of exploring new ideas during the first few centuries, our government is failing to support and share research that doesn't support their agenda.

This control of ideas is most visible in the current debate surrounding the cause of global warming. There is much evidence and scientific testimony that humans are negatively affecting the Earth's temperature through release of greenhouse gases. "Increased greenhouse gas concentrations are very likely to raise the Earth's average temperature," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on its website.

However, there is also evidence and scientific testimony that opposes this theory. Thirty thousand scientists, 9,000 of whom hold doctorate degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition Project, which states, "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide...will...cause disruption of the Earth's climate."

If you've never heard of this, that's exactly my point. The causes and solutions to this important scientific issue are debatable, but for some reason, the debate isn't being discussed. Discussion of this subject is impeded by the carelessness of our government. Speaking of the popularity of human-caused global warming, William M. Gray, atmospheric science researcher at Colorado State University said, "My fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong (because) they...know that they'd never get any grants."

Billions of dollars are given in grants for global warming research. Gray said he feels some of his colleagues are conforming to popularity and profitability.

While grants are an incentive for some, deadlines are a factor for government scientists. Auke Bay laboratory research chemist Jeff Short said in his 2004 article "The Corporate Corruption of Science" in American Welfare Institute Quarterly, "Intramural government scientists may be forced to release data prematurely, without the opportunity to examine it for errors or interpret it." "Academic scientists supported by government grants are explicitly exempted," he added. "These exemptions should be extended to government scientists."

Our government needs to stop censoring credible scientists who hold different views. In September 2007, Virginia climatologist Patrick Michaels resigned because of his skeptic view of human-caused global warming. "I was told that I could not speak in public on my area of expertise, global warming, as a state climatologist," he said.

Not only is the government censoring some of these scientists, but it is slandering them when they do speak. During Al Gore's LIVE Earth concert in July 2007, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said of climate skeptics: "This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors."

With such a strong arm in forming policy and public opinion, science needs a plan to ensure more honest and refined data. "Scientific reform has yet to achieve the attention it deserves," Short said. "Scientists like to think of themselves as above all that."

Just as the Catholic Church's monopoly on information came to an end through Protestant reformation, a scientific reformation needs to take place. Sadly, the U seems to have given up on this academic conversation. On Nov. 29, 2006, Kevin Trenberth, a leading expert on global warming, gave, according to the official announcement, "a popular lecture for the general public." And on April 22, U President Michael Young signed the Presidents Climate Commitment.

A university should be the place that multiple ideas and opinions are shared and heard. Participating in these programs and lectures is not wrong, but giving no medium or attention to opposing views cancels the purpose of the critical education the U should be providing. There is a lot of talk about the significance of academic freedom at our university. To have any type of freedom, there must be choice. To have true academic freedom, administration, faculty and students need to hear all sides fairly and without bias.

The media and government seem to be making up their mind on what common science is. They don't want to give the public choices. They're drawn to science that sells. Our university needs to be a bastion of resistance to conforming to a single idea. Administration and faculty at the U have an academic obligation to-and should-present both sides without fear of being called heretics and traitors.

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Environmental Skeptics Are Overwhelmingly Politicized, Study Says

And Greenie alarmists are not??

A review of environmental skepticism literature from the past 30 years has found that the vast majority of skeptics, often identified as independent, are directly linked to politically oriented, conservative think tanks. The study, published in this month's issue of Environmental Politics, analyzed books written between 1972 and 2005 that deny the urgency of environmental protection. The researchers found that more than 92 percent of the skeptical authors were in some way affiliated to conservative think tanks - non-profit research and advocacy organizations that promote core conservative ideals.

While many environmental skeptics are known to work for these think tanks, the study is the first to provide a quantitative analysis of the relationship. The popular media often regard environmental skeptics as independent experts, despite their connection to industry-funded campaigns that seek to de-legitimize sound environmental science reports, especially on climate change, says lead author Peter Jacques, an environmental politics professor at the University of Central Florida.

"A lot of skeptics might say they are independent voices, but it's clear there is an organization behind the skeptical discourse," Jacques said. "If not for conservative think tanks, we wouldn't be having this same discussion; we wouldn't be hung up on whether climate change is real."

The review analyzed 141 books, which the authors consider the largest compilation of the environmental skepticism genre and the majority of all English-language skepticism books. An author was "affiliated" to a think tank if the organization published the book or if the author ever - before or after the book was published - held a position with the organization, wrote for an organization's publications, or delivered lectures sponsored by the organization.

The U.S. conservative movement has lead opposition to international environmental regulation since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In the years since, the movement has succeeded in undermining the credibility of many environmental issues, said Riley Dunlap, a sociology professor at Oklahoma State University, who co-authored the study. "From the [political] right, there's no longer a sense of neutral, objective science - only liberal or conservative - and that's an unfortunate trend," Dunlap said.

Many skeptics say that they form their opinion despite their affiliation to think tanks or industry. For instance, Ronald Bailey, a correspondent for the ExxonMobil-funded Reason Foundation and former fellow for the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, recently reversed his stance as a climate change denier. His original skepticism was the result of inconsistent temperature datasets. He was not "passing along misinformation supplied to me during expensive lunches," he wrote in the article Confessions of an Alleged ExxonMobil Whore.

The authors say skeptics like Bailey have every right to voice their opinion. But the statements of a few think tank-supported experts should not be regarded as equal to scientific findings that have been vetted through an intense peer-review process, they say. "We want to allow a cacophony of voices in public policy," Jacques said. "Where we get into problems is where we fail to evaluate the voices; we fail to evaluate the merit of the claim."

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