STOP EVERYTHING! -- EVEN WIND POWER

Greenies don't want their scenery disturbed

"In ecologically minded New England, it was the gusty dream of energy officials and environmentalists: Windmills were going to help the region reduce its dependence on pollution-spewing power plants. But seven years after the region's first commercial wind farm was built, it is becoming clear that wind power faces a hard road here, partly because of environmentalists themselves. Last year was a near record year for commercial windmill installations nationwide, with enough built to power almost 500,000 residences, yet not one went on line in New England. Wind farms have gone up in Texas, California, and Wyoming, but in Massachusetts the only commercial wind farm is Searsburg's 11 turbines, which went up in 1997.

"I hoped way back when because of the stronger environmental consciousness here it would be an easier place to locate" turbines, said Tom Gray, deputy executive director of the American Wind Energy Association. "The irony I did not foresee is that it would be more difficult." At least eight proposed windmill farms in New England are meeting sharp opposition. While much of the resistance is coming from neighbors, environmental concerns are also holding up some plans, including one that would add 20 to 30 turbines to an existing wind farm on a mountain ridge here.

For environmentalists, the conflict between green power and green land has produced a moral quandary. In the search for the open, windblown spots that make the best sites for turbines, developers are finding that much of the region's land is already spoken for as conservation land, preserved vistas, or the home of protected species. "Two totally separate good things are in tension with each other," said Seth Kaplan of the Conservation Law Foundation, a regional environmental group that is part of a collaborative trying to forge a compromise on the Searsburg expansion.

The most contentious wind farm plan, the 130-turbine proposal in Nantucket Sound, is far enough offshore to enjoy the quiet support of several regional environmental groups, though fishermen and shoreline property owners largely oppose it. But inland, where most wind farms are proposed, the conflict among environmentalists is becoming acute, as wind farms are proposed in places or near species these groups fought so hard to protect over the years....

And in Vermont's remote Northeast Kingdom, an East Haven wind farm proposal is bumping into conservationists' visions of untouched forest tracts and mountain ridges.....





AND ANOTHER THE REASON WHY WINDMILLS HAVE WILTED:

"The universal rationale for this massive public commitment to wind power is that it is environmentally benign. But wind power has at least one major environmental problem -- the massive destruction of bird populations -- that has begun to draw serious concern from mainstream environmentalists.

Wind blades have killed thousands of birds in the United States and abroad in the last decade, including endangered species, which is a federal offense subject to criminal prosecution. While bird kills are not considered a problem by everyone, it is a problem for some environmental groups who lobbied to put the laws on the books, made cost assessments for dead birds and other wildlife pursuant to the Valdez accident, and vilify petroleum extraction activity on the North Slope of Alaska as hazardous to wildlife. While such groups as the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society have criticized wind power's effects on birds, many eco-energy planners have ignored the problem in their devotion to wind power.

There have been numerous mentions of the "avian mortality" problem in the wind power literature (the Sierra Club labeled wind towers "the Cuisinarts of the air"). An article in the March 29-April 4, 1995, issue of SF Weekly was particularly telling. The cover story in the San Francisco newspaper was no less than an expose, written not by a free-market critic but by an author sympathetic with the environmentalist agenda.....

Explained one study: "Wind farms have been documented to act as both bait and executioner -- rodents taking shelter at the base of turbines multiply with the protection from raptors, while in turn their greater numbers attract more raptors to the farm." "How many dead birds equal a dead fish equals an oil spill?" Ten thousand cumulative bird deaths from 1,731 MW of installed U.S. capacity is the equivalent of 4.4 million bird deaths across the entire capacity of the United States electric market (approximately 770 gigawatts). A 20 percent share of U.S. capacity, a figure that the American Wind Energy Association put forward some years ago in congressional hearings (see above), would equate to 880,000 cumulative bird deaths. Calculated on an average operating basis, the number would rise severalfold. Not every potential wind farm would be an Altamont Pass, which was sited to be near existing transmission systems with little thought as to bird activity, but the mortality-per-megawatt ratio of existing capacity should give pause.

A 1992 study commissioned by the California Energy Commission (CEC) "conservatively" estimated that 39 golden eagles were being killed at Altamont Pass each year, a significant figure given a total population of 500 breeding pairs. On a percentage basis, the mortality rate per year at Altamont Pass under that estimate is eight times greater than the bald eagle kill from the Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound in 1989.

American kestrels and red-tailed hawks were also considered to be at risk from Altamont Pass, according to the CEC study. While these facts could be ignored by the prowind power community, the National Audubon Society's call for a moratorium on wind power projects in bird-sensitive areas (a position spearheaded by Audubon's San Francisco chapter) cannot."

More here


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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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"THERE'S TOO MANY PEOPLE ANYWAY"

Greenies don't even pretend to be "caring"

A cry of pain from Bangladesh: "Socialists once believed that planned development and distribution would erase poverty. They did not. We are done with those collectivist intellectuals, although socialism has resurfaced in ideological environmentalism through opposition to industrialization, free trade, and genetically modified seeds that feed growing populations. The leftwing environmentalists are deeply worried that the planet would not be able to sustain an overpopulation with depleted resources, environmental damage, and climate change.

In Bangladesh, through resourceful NGOs, such ideas are widespread. We often hear intellectuals and development experts opposing genetically modified food under their "precautionary principle" or opposing oil exports, presumably for a fear of pollution.

Genetically modified seeds could be used in the mongia regions of Rangpur to stave off famines, but our hands are tied. These seeds grow in adverse and dry conditions, as in Rangpur, but we cannot disappoint the NGO wallahs or their international donors by using the seeds to meet hunger. Nor can DDT be used to eradicate mosquitoes and save lives from encephalitis, malaria, and dengue.

This international assortment of mathematical and macro economists, Malthusian doomsday environmentalists, nervous climatologists, UN officials, and consultants to governments would not tolerate free markets or reduced economic interventions by the government. To them, more freedom would mean a rapid acceleration of the economy and industrialization, or simply more motor cars on the road that may add to global warming.

These unfounded fears by environmentalists, who wish to decide how the Third World should be run, add to the tremendous pressure on the Bangladeshi government to remain the sole leader and arbiter of the economy. The government is surrounded and influenced by pressure groups to enact policies that are obliquely anti-free trade, anti-globalization, anti-"sweatshop," anti-genetically modified crops, and so on....

Our economy fails to grow. A poor economy burns less fossil fuel, and there is no capital inflow to exploit natural resources. This pleases the ideological environmentalists. But what does it do for the world's poor?....

But there is an answer: The private sector must be freed of all government control and subject only to the basic laws of the country. These laws must reflect personal freedom, property rights, and limited government. Let the people freely choose their service providers and allow job seekers to choose their employers.

However, such a scenario would be a major setback for the NGOs. They will wrestle to save Mother Earth by arguing that market freedom is dangerous and must be regulated and controlled. Political dictators, authorities, and colonial settlers have always believed freedom is dangerous, and we now see the economic authorities deny freedom for the same unfounded reason. Poverty in Bangladesh persists because of the wrong ideology. The government alone is not to be blamed. It is the prevailing intellectual climate"....

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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SOME OF LAST YEAR'S NASTY FINDINGS:

Look what happens when you actually MEASURE things instead of just making arbitrary "models" of them

"It turns out there's a silver lining to the cloud of smog that drapes large cities around the world, as an international team of atmospheric scientists conclude pollution protects the planet from "global warming." The revelation, reported by New Scientist, came out of a workshop in Dahlem, Berlin, earlier this month that was attended by the likes of Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin, the former chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

"It looks like the warming today may be only about a quarter of what we would have got without aerosols," Crutzen told New Scientist. "You could say the cooling has done us a big favor."... According to New Scientist, IPCC scientists have long suspected aerosols, particles from burning rainforests, crop waste and fossil fuels that block sunlight counteract the warming effect of carbon dioxide emissions by about 25 percent. Now the news out of the Berlin workshop is the aerosols thwart 75 percent of the warming effect. That would mean they prevented the planet from becoming almost two degrees warmer than it is now.

Scientists examined direct measurements of the cooling effect of aerosols reported in the May issue of Science by Theodore Anderson of the University of Washington in Seattle. Earlier calculations only had been inferred from "missing" global warming predicted by climate models....

Then in January 2002, the journal Science published the findings of scientists who had been measuring the vast West Antarctic ice sheet. The researchers found that the ice sheet is growing thicker, not melting. The journal Nature published similar findings by scientist Peter Doran and his colleagues at the University of Illinois. Rather than using the U.N.'s computer models, the researchers took actual temperature readings and discovered temperatures in the Antarctic have been getting slightly colder - not warmer - for the last 30 years.

Last September, U.S. scientists based at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station announced that, finally, they have been able to measure the temperature of the atmosphere 18 to 68 miles over the pole. They found it to be 68 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the computer models used to predict global warming showed...

"Spending any money at all to curb CO2 emissions is a complete waste of time," Dr. Arthur Robinson, professor of chemistry at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, told WorldNetDaily last year amid hype over the U.N.-U.S. diplomatic row over the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty that seeks global regulation of emissions. There is absolutely not a shred of evidence that humans are causing any change in the climate by generating CO2," he said.

More here

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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DRILLING FOR OIL IN ALASKA

Jonah Goldberg has been there recently:

"The oil is on the coastal plain at the very top of ANWR on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. And that ain't beautiful. Believe me. Winter on the coastal plain lasts for nine months. Total darkness reigns for 58 straight days. The temperatures drop to 70 degrees below zero without wind chill. This is the time of year when the oil companies would do almost all of their work; when nary a caribou nor any other creature would be dumb enough to venture out on to the frozen tundra for long.

Regardless, ANWR's summer is no picnic either. The coastal plain is covered in a thick brick of ice for much of the year. When it melts, it creates, well, puddles. Lots and lots of puddles - and mud. This provides the lebensraum that mosquitoes and other flying critters need to stretch their wings. In short, the section that Lieberman claims as one of "G-d's most awesome creations" is a colossal fetid petri dish for some of the worst flying pestilence you can imagine. Every moment I was outside, the mosquitoes swarmed around me like John McCain near a TV camera.

The myth has been perpetuated that wildlife on the "American Serengeti" is more fragile than a butterfly's wings, especially for the exalted caribou. But, in next-door Prudhoe Bay, the number of caribou has increased fivefold since oil exploration began decades ago. One explanation for the caribou's success in Prudhoe is that the infrastructure gives the caribou an opportunity to hide from the trillions of mosquitoes, as well as the nostril flies (yes, they lay their eggs in the caribou's nose) and parasitic warble flies that make life a living hell for the animals.

Opponents of drilling in ANWR succeed by appealing to the imaginations of guilty liberal environmentalists. So they compare ANWR to places we humans go and enjoy, like Central Park, Yosemite and other of G-d's "most awesome creations." If you don't want to drill for oil in ANWR that's fine. But don't slander G-d by saying this giant mosquito pool is among his finest works."

More here

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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THE ANTI-GM SUPERSTITION

A molecular biologist speaks

Anti-GM activists have claimed that GM transgenes are unstable and will escape and contaminate the environment; that GM causes cancer; and that GM transgenes can enter our cells or our gut bacteria. But there is no evidence that GM transgenes cause cancer, or that they are particularly unstable or liable to escape. All cultivated crops can cross with wild relatives; there is no particular risk with GM crops. GM transgenes are no more likely to enter bacterial cells or human cells than any other DNA we eat in our food - and if they do, they don't tend to survive.

It is also often claimed that only large multinational companies desire GM. But many people in the developing world are trying to develop and take advantage of these technologies. When I published my work on engineering GM plants that resist virus infection, a group of scientists in Pakistan invited me to collaborate with them to solve the problem of a serious endemic viral pathogen that was causing them to suffer 30 per cent yield losses in their cotton crop. Cotton and the associated textile industry bring 60 per cent of foreign exchange earnings to Pakistan, and so this loss to viral pathogens represents an annual loss of about US$500million. Using public sector funding, the scientists have recently demonstrated in field trials that GM cotton is resistant to vial infection.

So where is the evidence that the current generation of GM crops are beneficial for neither people nor planet? Modern agriculture can certainly damage the environment: over the past 50 years, the need to increase food production has resulted in the loss of one-fifth of the world's topsoil, one-fifth of its agricultural land and one-third of its forests. One solution is to develop new technologies to make agriculture more efficient. Greater efficiency means less agricultural land is required, and so more land can be left wild.

Current varieties of GM crops include those that are insect-resistant and those that are herbicide tolerant. Both require lower inputs, such as spraying, and so are particularly suited to small-scale farmers in the developing world.

Modern agriculture involves the use of powerful toxic pesticides - including copper, often used by organic farmers - which enter the groundwater and can damage the environment and human water supply. Spraying pesticides requires expensive equipment and protective clothing, and can also damage the health of farmers who have to spray them. Insect-resistant GM technology here offers a biological solution that organic farmers should embrace: the Bt crop varieties, for example, express a natural insecticide that organic farmers have sprayed on their crops for many decades. Rather than using inefficient spraying, the plant is armed against its specific insect pests - for example, in maize, the corn-borer, which leads to infestation by fungal pathogens that produce mycotoxins.

Meanwhile, GM crops designed for herbicide resistance can be sprayed with a safe biodegradable herbicide. Less spraying is required, again reducing equipment and labour inputs. Another benefit is that agricultural land doesn't require such extensive tilling, which reduces soil erosion and allows more humus to accumulate in the soil.

This is just the beginning. The future holds promise for new GM crop varieties with increased tolerance of drought, heat and cold; with improved disease resistance or nutritional value; or as production systems for pharmaceutical compounds (such as edible vaccines for the developing world) and renewable industrial compounds (such as biodegradable plastics). That's why GM technology is of benefit to both people and the planet.

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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THE "SUPERFUND" FRAUD

"Almost one in 10 of the nation's 1,230 Superfund toxic waste sites have not yet been cleaned up enough to guarantee that people and drinking water supplies won't become contaminated," reported the Associated Press this week. "Environmentalists said Tuesday those figures show the Bush administration is failing to protect public health, and Congress and the White House should reinstate a special tax to help fund the Superfund program," the AP continued.

But this election-year attack on President Bush by environmental extremists rings hollow - something that becomes clear once the dirty secrets of the Superfund program are revealed. Superfund is the federal program providing for the cleanup of so-called "toxic waste sites." The law was hastily passed after the 1980 elections by a lame-duck Congress and signed into law by a lame-duck President Carter. And all that lame-ness became part-and-parcel of the Superfund program.

Cleanups of Superfund sites were commenced regardless of actual risks to local residents and environment, and regardless of cost.... Sites originally selected to be cleaned up, the so-called National Priorities List, were not selected on the basis of threat to the local community or environment, but on the basis of spreading the wealth. The National Priorities List was established so that every state could have a Superfund site - no doubt because the cleanup program was more about local jobs than environmental protection....

And so we come to the most important but least known of Superfund's "dirty" secrets - there has never been a single shred of evidence and not a single documented case of anyone ever becoming ill, getting cancer, or dying because of contaminants at a Superfund site. That is based on my personal review of, and subsequent testimony to Congress in 1995 about, the records of over 1,300 Superfund site histories prepared by the EPA. I have not seen any evidence or heard of any credible claim since that time that would change that fact....

Even at the headline-grabbing Love Canal site or the Woburn, Mass., site featured in the John Travolta-movie "A Civil Action," multiple studies have subsequently been unable to link the sites with any actual health effects in local populations.

Another dirty secret of the Superfund program is that, while there is no evidence that anyone has been harmed by the contamination at Superfund sites, perhaps thousands of workers and others have been killed or injured as a result of construction and traffic accidents related to cleanups".

More here.

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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GOOD NEWS ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT IS NO NEWS

"Much good news about contentious environmental issues is regularly kept quiet by regulatory agencies, activist groups, and the media. Why this is so is the question we have continually asked ourselves after closely examining the most recent scientific research behind three of the most important contemporary environmental debates in the United States: the health of salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest, global warming, and the impact of hog farming on water quality in coastal North Carolina.

The good news is that there is plenty of good news. The bad news is that hardly anyone is reporting or discussing it, so that the public continues to believe in environmental crises that are nonexistent. Because such crises often result in new laws, policies, and regulations-and thus have widespread and lasting effects on our communities and economy-we ignore the blackout on good news at our peril.

Salmon

In August of this year, President Bush visited the Ice Harbor power dam on the Snake River to celebrate the strong Northwest salmon runs of the last two years. Salmon numbers in the Columbia River Basin have lately been the highest in four decades. Salmon fishermen in northern California celebrated the Fourth of July (and record salmon hauls) by giving their fellow citizens free salmon.

Environmentalists, however, were horrified by the presidential visit. They have been trying to get the Ice Harbor dam (and three others) breached. They have said the dams caused the recent decline in the Northwest salmon population, and that despite the recent recovery, the dams must still be breached to protect the long-term stocks of a fish that is second only to the American eagle as an environmental icon.....

Last May, however, a federal judge ruled that the federal plan for salmon recovery was inadequate, because it did not include breaching the dams. Neither the National Marine Fisheries Service (which designed the plan), nor any of the seventeen environmental groups suing to get the dams breached, mentioned the twenty-five-year salmon cycle to the judge. The Fisheries Service did not want to lose its funding for salmon recovery, and the eco-groups did not want the judge to know that the dams were basically irrelevant to salmon numbers.

This long-known natural cycle has been kept secret for years now. We first reported it in 1999, in a column that went to more than four hundred Knight-Ridder-Tribune newspapers, and was published by perhaps a dozen of them. Respected researchers such as Nathan Mantua and Stephen Hare of the University of Washington, and Ted Strub and Harold Batchelder of Oregon State University, have been writing about salmon co-variance for more than five years in respected journals such as Oceanography and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Climate change

On November 16, 2001, the journal Science published an elegant research report, done by unimpeachable scientists, recounting the earth's temperature history for the past 12,000 years. The report directly linked Earth's changing climate to the variable behavior of the sun. Dr. Gerard Bond and a team from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York (and affiliated with Columbia University) compiled the report titled, "Persistent solar influence on North Atlantic climate during the Holocene."

Science gave it star treatment. The magazine's Richard Kerr wrote, in that issue, Paleo-oceanographer Gerard Bond and his colleagues report that 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. "It really looks like the sun has mattered to climate," says glaciologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University, University Park. "The Bond et al. 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 seventeenth century, says Alley. . . .

The research implies that global warming has nothing to do with the activities of mankind. This scientific bombshell was almost totally ignored by the media, despite the favorable comments in Science, which journalists watch carefully for news. In fact, an Internet search revealed that not a single publication other than Science and American Outlook reported the Bond research.

Why the selective reporting?

These instances amply demonstrate that the public is too often given only one-sided, simplistic, pessimistic versions of environmental realities by the news media and even by our government agencies and researchers. The reasons why are fairly simple and obvious: money and power. For the news media, bad news sells. It doesn't take a genius to know that a newspaper with a scary headline will sell far more copies than the paper declaring, "Nothing Bad Happened Yesterday, Tomorrow Looks Great!" It is a basic fact of human nature.

For our regulatory watchdog agencies, bad news means huge increases in research and staff funding. The amount of dollars spent on climate change research and watchdogging is billions higher today than before the threat of human-caused climate change was postulated. Likewise for environmental groups, whose donations and memberships skyrocket with these crisis campaigns".

More here

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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EARTH'S TEMPERATURE IS A BIT UP AT THE MOMENT BUT THAT STARTED WAY BACK

"In a study of lichens of the subspecies Rhizocarpon geographicum found on avalanche boulder tongues in the eastern part of the Massif des Ecrins of the French Alps (45ø00' S, 6ø30' E), Jomelli and Pech (2004) make an important discovery that adds to the growing body of evidence which demonstrates that what climate alarmists call the unprecedented and CO2-induced warming of the 20th century was neither unprecedented nor driven by rising CO2 concentrations.

According to the findings of Jomelli and Pech, high-altitude avalanche activity during the Little Ice Age (LIA) reached an early maximum prior to 1650, after which it decreased until about 1730, whereupon it increased once again, reaching what was likely its greatest maximum about 1830. In support of these findings, Jomelli and Pech note that "a greater quantity of snow mobilized by avalanches during the LIA can be supported by the fact that the two periods, AD1600-1650 and 1830, during which the run-out distances [of the avalanches] were maximum at high elevation sites, have corresponded overall to the periods of maximum glacial advances for these last 500 years (Le Roy Ladurie, 1983; Reynaud, 2001)."....

In contrast to these observations, the infamous temperature history of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) -- which is cited by climate-alarmists as justification for the ungodly warming power they attribute to anthropogenic CO2 emissions -- post-Little Ice Age warming did not begin until about 1910. Consequently, it can be appreciated that (1) perhaps half of the warming experienced by the earth in recovering from what was likely the coldest part of the Little Ice Age occurred well before the Mann et al. temperature history indicates any warming at all, that (2) an even greater part of the total warming occurred before the air's CO2 concentration began increasing in earnest (approximately 1930, which is actually close to the time when warming peaked in the United States and many other parts of the world), and that (3) the lion's share of the warming of the past nearly two centuries must therefore owe its existence to something other than rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations."

More here

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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PRO-GREEN BIAS AMONG JOURNALISTS

"In 1995, they told us that Yucca Mountain was going to explode in a nuclear firestorm. It won't. In 1998, they told us that nuclear-weapons installations were making people sick. They weren't. In 2000, they weren't concerned with arsenic in the water. In 2001, they were. This year, they have claimed that the Pentagon is worried about global warming and that phosphate mines are harming Floridians. "They" are journalists, and the issue is the environment. What makes this particular issue so susceptible to bad journalism?

At least part of the answer has to be politics. If you followed the controversy over arsenic in drinking water in 2001, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Bush administration was plotting to poison the reservoirs. Yet, in fact, the Environmental Protection Agency had simply chosen to revert to standards that were changed only in the last few days of the Clinton administration. The press had gone almost eight years without noticing that Carol Browner and the Clinton EPA were happy to allow these "dangerous" standards of arsenic in the water.

In other areas, too, the press deliberately changed its tune. In 1987, The Washington Post had editorialized in favor of oil exploration in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve, saying, "That part of the Arctic coast is one of the bleakest, most remote places on this continent, and there is hardly any other where drilling would have less impact on the surrounding life." By 2000, when George W. Bush had made drilling in ANWR part of his proposed energy policy, the Post became concerned about whether "the oil to be gained is worth the potential damage to this unique, wild, and biologically vital ecosystem." The New York Times similarly reversed its position on the issue between 1989 and 2001.

As strong environmentalism is one of the defining characteristics of the modern liberal, it should come as no surprise that the media lean toward environmentalism in their coverage of key issues.....

When journalists are happy enough to junk the well-established scientific tools that help us separate truth from fiction in favor of their own methods, there's a problem. Whether they are motivated by politics, sensationalism, or a strange mixture of ignorance and arrogance, journalists the world over are painting a misleading picture of the environment. Small wonder that the issue is of little importance to Americans. In a Gallup poll for "Earth Day" this year, they ranked it second-last in importance from a list of no fewer than twelve major political issues".

More here.

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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SOME UNCOMMON SENSE ABOUT RECYCLING

An excellent post from Madsen Pirie about recycling newsprint

"Why do people recycle newsprint when the practice is so bad for the environment? The collection and transportation of the stuff uses fossil fuels and causes atmospheric pollution. The treatment of the pulp leaches both bleach and chemical pollutants into the environment, and uses energy. Even at the end the resultant recycled paper is of lower quality.

Some people seem to suppose that by recycling paper they are saving trees, but the opposite is often true. Paper is mostly made from trees planted for the purpose, and it is young trees that soak up most of the carbon dioxide. If those trees are not planted, that carbon is not soaked up. Nor is it if they are not harvested and replaced.

Recycling paper may make people feel good, but gesture politics can be environmentally unfriendly. Should the planet as a whole pay so that a few can enjoy feeling good? Or should those who enjoy the gesture pay for the consequences of their actions?

No doubt some would argue for a paper recycling charge. A dollar a ton could be levied on those who recycle paper, and used to plant more young trees to undo the damage caused. (Maybe not.)"

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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MORE ON THE ATLANTA OZONE FRAUD

Australian earth scientist Warwick Hughes has weighed in here on the fraud I reported below on 19th. The fraudulent Greenie claim was that reduced traffic during the Atlanta Olympic games reduced ozone in the air and hence asthma.

Warwick's findings in brief are that ozone fluctuations observed in other areas well away from Atlanta traffic mirrored those of Atlanta -- so traffic had no role in the matter. A few excerpts:

"All my ozone data analysis experience tells me that big city summer ozone peaks will be broadly influenced by daytime max temperature and meteorological factors such as wind; I would be sceptical that a slight decrease in vehicle emissions could dominate over these more important factors....

The graph below shows clearly that across a broad region of Georgia and Alabama the Olympic period happened to be characterized by the lowest ozone levels of the 1996 summer. So you would have to suspect that the lower ozone levels in Atlanta during the Olympics are also following this regional trend which is no doubt due to broad scale meteorological factors and nothing to do with traffic....

We decided to compare data from a central Atlanta station and a rural site 80 kms NW, Yorkville; taking ozone and nitrous oxide (NO) numbers for August 2001, a cooler year with lower ozone similar to 1996... It is strikingly obvious that Atlanta and Yorkville have broadly similar daily ozone peaks, some days Yorkville even exceeds Atlanta !!! This is despite much higher overall NO numbers in Atlanta, those car exhausts, with several very high peaks. Note the very high NO peaks do not shift the ozone peaks much, so it is hard to see a strong relationship between NO and ozone. So where does this leave the much trumpeted claim that a slight reduction in traffic during the Olympics could have caused lower ozone levels ? NO numbers for Yorkville are insignificant, just showing as the purple trace along the bottom of the graph. When will the EPA's start telling the truth about urban ozone?"

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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GLOBAL WARMING IS RACIST!

The Black Caucus says it is so it must be so

"A new study released by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation suggests rising temperatures will kill more black citizens than whites in the U.S., while claiming African-Americans are less responsible than others for causing so-called "global warming." The research, conducted by the Oakland, Calif.-based group Redefining Progress, is being billed as the first-ever comprehensive examination of the health and economic impact of climate change on the black population. "We are long past the point where global warming is considered a myth," said U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., chairman of the CBCF. "We are seeing its effects all around us."

The new report for the CBCF has three main findings:

America's black population will be disproportionately burdened by the health effects of global warming;

Blacks are less responsible for contributing to global warming than other Americans; and

Policies designed to mitigate global warming can generate large health and economic benefits for blacks, depending on their implementation.

"Time and again, the world's leading atmospheric scientists have warned us about the devastating impact of climate change," said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas. "We now have irrefutable proof of its impact on our economy, our way of life, our health and our children." The study alleges responsibility for the problem does not lie primarily with blacks, stating, "African-American households emit 20 percent less carbon dioxide than white households. Historically, this difference was even higher."...

"The most direct health effect of climate change will be intensifying heat waves that selectively impact poor and urban populations," according to the study, noting cities like New York, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia have large concentrations of blacks."

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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GREENIE CLIMATE MODELS NOW PROVEN WRONG

"Every climate model that is run with increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases produces some degree of warming at earth's surface and even greater warming above the surface, especially in the atmospheric layer between 5,000 to 30,000 feet in altitude (the troposphere). Models calculate this warming to be especially strong in the tropical half of the planet and weaker in a very small region around both poles.

Observations of real world temperature trends in the lower atmosphere don't confirm these model results and instead show that, generally, warming trends decline with altitude.

Why is this important? The atmosphere is an integrated whole. Temperature aloft is an important determinant of temperature at the surface. If the models have the "upstairs" wrong but have it right "downstairs" in the area near the surface, they've been pretty lucky. Some might say, pretty "adjusted."

The discrepancy between models and observations is the crux of one of the major arguments against the models and over reliance on them to anticipate future climate. If the models can't accurately portray present observations, they cannot be relied upon to predict the future.

The hypothesis that models continue to get it wrong is strongly supported by results from a research effort led by The University of Rochester's David Douglass and published in a pair of articles in Geophysical Research Letters (online on July 9, 2004). Two other scientists involved in the effort were Patrick Michaels and Paul Knappenberger, chief editor and technical supervisor of World Climate Alerts"......

In sum, the results of research presented in Douglass's two papers provide strong evidence for three important points:

1) The discrepancy between temperature trends measured at the earth's surface and those measured in the earth's lower atmosphere is real.

2) A large part of this discrepancy likely is caused by local, non-climatic influences on surface thermometers not by stratospheric contamination of the lower tropospheric data.

3) Climate models that include observed changes to known climate forcing agents (both natural and anthropogenic) are unable to replicate the observed behavior of the temperatures in the lower atmosphere. Furthermore, if local, non-climatic influences are largely responsible for the surface temperature trends, then the climate models are getting the surface trends right for the wrong reasons - indicating their failure at that level as well.

Such findings should give pause to anyone who relies on climate model output to inform their decision-making."

More here

"NATURAL" PRODUCTS CAN KILL YOU

Excerpt from an article in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" of July 25, 2004 -- not apparently online. The article was written by Daryl Passmore and appeared under the heading: "How that 'natural' pesticide harms us"

"Consumers had a mistaken notion that natural had to be better and safer, said Professor John Trumble... "In fact, these natural materials contain toxic chemicals that are often far more dangerous to humans and animals than the pesticides available from chemical companies". Hazards included skin diseases, exposure to carcinogens, mutagens, neurotoxins and substances known to cause organ failure.

The University of California insect expert will be one of the speakers at the International Congress on Entomology at the Brisbane Convention Centre from August 15 to 24. "Given the size of the market and an increasing interest in all things natural, it is not surprising that commercial products are being developed for a wide range of human and animal uses," he wrote in a paper for The American Entomologist. "Unfortunately, most natural products including those used for insect control are not always subject to rigorous testing." While some serious research was being done and some of the solutions worked as promised, he was alarmed by the lack of scientific work to back up many claims. "For a scientist, reading the new-age literature or some of the holistic writing is roughly equivalent of suddenly entering a parallel universe where the rules of physics and chemistry do not apply. Biology is replaced by mysticism," Professor Trumble said. "Plants contain many toxins ... Some of these toxins can cause significant human or animal health effects and many deaths have been reported."

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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TOP AUSTRALIAN SCIENTIST KNOCKS GLOBAL WARMING

"A former head of the National Climate Centre has challenged forecasts of dramatically higher temperatures in the Murray Darling basin which underpin Victoria's radical water-reform policies. Victoria was using "unrealistic" CSIRO projections based on flawed international forecasts, according to consultant climatologist William Kininmonth. The scepticism comes as fractures emerge within the Bracks Government between those pushing for immediate action on greenhouse issues and those seeking to defend the state's manufacturing base.

Mr Kininmonth, who headed the Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre between 1986 and 1998, said predictions of warming of two degrees in the Murray Darling basin within 25 years were unrealistic. The forecasts are the key scientific basis for Victoria's white paper on water reforms, released earlier this month, which are also likely to influence other Labor states.

Based on CSIRO models, the white paper says water supplies will decline in the Murray Darling basin because temperatures will rise by up to two degrees centigrade by 2030 and six degrees by 2070. Any such increase would be a dramatic shift in the pattern of temperatures rising in Australia.

The mean temperature has risen by 0.9 degrees in the past 100 years, according to work by the Bureau of Meteorology, and there was no agreement on whether that change was from natural or man-made influences. The CSIRO forecasts are based on those given by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which simulate a range of future scenarios.

Mr Kininmonth said the IPCC forecasts were flawed because the different models did not properly represent the radiation exchange between the atmosphere and the earth's surface. "(The IPCC and CSIRO forecasts) do not adequately reflect the dynamics of the atmosphere and the oceans. This leads to errors in the radiation physics," he said. "They are forecasting conditions which I don't believe are really achievable under these conditions."

More here

One of the journalists who wrote the article excerpted above also wrote another much longer article for a magazine section in the same issue of the same newspaper -- in which she interviewed not one but SIX of Australia's leading climate scientists about possible warming of the Australian climate. That article is also excerpted below. Note that NOT ONE of the six was prepared to assert that there was anything but natural temperature variation going on.

A change in the weather?

Extremes like a drought aren't reliable indicators of global warming, reports Michelle Gilchrist

"The official record of one of Australia's worst droughts is depressingly familiar. "The five years had been intermittently dry over most of the country ... very dry conditions set in across eastern Australia during the spring, and became entrenched over the following months," the Bureau of Meteorology reports. "The long drought and its severe climax had devastated stock numbers, and began focusing attention on planning for irrigation, especially in the three states through which the Murray River flows."

To rural Australians, these words are no surprise. But the report is an official history of the great drought, which lasted from 1896 to 1901 .... Mathematicians and meteorologists say extreme events give little useful information about long-term climate change ... "Statistically speaking, looking at extremes is not the right thing to do if you are concerned with long-term changes," says Kevin Judd, of the University of Western Australia. "Extremes don't tell you much. Nothing may have changed yet you might get some extreme [events] occurring." Using everyday weather - high and low temperatures, their mean or average over time - can provide more useful information in a much shorter period....

"We are really, in many ways, at the very early stage of understanding the variability of the weather system," says William Kininmonth, a former head of the Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre. "We understand the overall annual weather cycle, and we know quite a lot about the seasons and some of their variability. But there are other subtle factors that we don't really know." Kininmonth says new technology compounds the confusion. "We have started to develop computer models and people believe such models can tell us the answer. But they are ... only simulations," he says.

Australia's former chief meteorologist John Zillman agrees that the study of longterm weather remains a nascent science. "The atmosphere is a tricky and complex creature." says Zillman. "The climate is hugely variable and every now and again we do get extremes that go way beyond the previous records we have in Australia." Queensland in 1994 recorded almost 8OOmm of rain in one month, with figures off the scale for Brisbane. "If we had, say, another 300 years of highly reliable rainfall records for Australia, say back until the 1500s, we would perhaps be able to say it falls within the range of natural variability," Zillman says. "But we don't have those records and we therefore cannot say things like that. The shortage of records limits us."

Those claiming weather patterns have changed beyond natural variation turn to work by Bureau of Meteorology researcher Neville Nicholls, who argues the 2002-03 drought is at least the worst since the 1950s. Last month Nicholls wrote that the previous drought was a triple whammy of high mean temperatures, high evaporation rates and very low rainfall figures. especially in the Murray/Darling Basin. In 2002, the mean daily temperature in that region was 0.7C higher than previous records; and more than 1C warmer than the droughts of 1982 and 1994. Importantly, though, the Nicholls paper does not say the 2002-03 drought is the worst on record; instead, it can only say that the weather appears to have changed during the past 50 years....

Average rainfall in the southwestern corner of Western Australia has dipped by 10 percent to 20 percent since the '70s, puzzling meteorologists and scientists. "With rainfall, more so than temperature, you get very large year to year variations and these shifts mean we need much longer records before you can unequivocally say we have had a significant shift", says Neil Plummer of the Bureau of Meteorology.

Kininmonth agrees the climate has changed but believes it is for natural, not man-made, reasons. "All of the evidence points to the fact that the globe has warmed slightly over the past 100 years. That's something almost everybody agrees on. Whether that's unusual or not is what becomes debatable."

Plummer says the rise in mean temperatures may be within normal variability but adds that it appears to be unusual... Climate-change sceptic Warwick Hughes questions that data, arguing that the bureau's long-term mean temperature trend is tweaked. "My belief is that a true Australian trend has less warming than they show and their time series should extend a few decades back to cover the warm spell in the late 19th century." he says. Hughes argues the mean temperature trends also disregard the recent effect of 'urban heat islands" - cities such as Sydney and Melbourne and even smaller places such as Canberra, which create their own heat and raise ground temperatures."

More here

It should be noted that Australia is a large country (roughly the same size as the United States) and is one of only four large Southern hemisphere land-masses. So if there is no warming going on in Australia, it would be most odd if there was warming going on in the Southern hemisphere generally. And in one of the other large Southern land-masses (Antarctica) significant cooling (as signified by recent thickening in the West Antarctic ice sheet) seems to be going on at the moment

RECORD SNOWFALLS IN AUSTRALIA

And to top it off, here is an excerpt from another Australian report that should help to make the Greenie's yoghurt go sour

"In the alpine village of Falls Creek, nestled amongst the snowgums in Victoria's high country, they call this gentle slope the Drover's Dream. But after some of the best early-season snowfalls ever recorded in the region, the mythical drover is not the only one fantasising about strapping on some skis.

With the mountains draped in powder and the sky a piercing blue, Ramona Bruland and Chris Hockey yesterday lapped up the idyllic conditions before the weekend onslaught of skiers and snowboarders. With an average snow depth of 101cm, Falls Creek, as with all Australian alpine resorts, is attracting record numbers of visitors.

Colin Hackworth, managing director of Australian Alpine Resorts, which runs Falls Creek and the neighbouring Mt Hotham resort, said the past three seasons - including 2004 - were some of the most successful in terms of numbers. "The good snow conditions are the driver. On this day last year we had a 40cm base of snow," Mr Hackworth said. "And it's true of all Australian resorts. There's not a rock to be seen. It's has never looked better."

And the broad smiles have not been confined to Victoria. At Thredbo in NSW, where snow falls are measured at the 1820m Spencers Creek station, the snow depth is 125.5cm. And there has been a 15 per cent rise on last year's record booking rate to match. "For early July, we've just seen the best falls in memory," a Thredbo spokeswoman said.

And at Perisher, where all 50 lifts are open, resort operators are boasting the same cover".

Also from an article in "The Australian" of 24 July, 2004. Apparently online to subscribers only. It is found under the heading "Snowfalls deliver a dream run at ski resorts" on P. 4 and was written by Drew Warne-Smith

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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GREENIE RELIGIOUS DOGMATISM

"The scene was a scientific workshop set up to discuss the science of global warming. It took place in a non-Western country and was convened by the country's Academy of Sciences. Delegates came from all over the world. Yet the delegation from one major Western power behaved in a most undiplomatic fashion. The way the science was being presented was inconvenient to their political agenda, so they tried to get the scientists they disagreed with silenced. The organizers refused, so the delegation went to its government to exert political pressure. The organizers still refused, so the delegation disrupted the conference. When it became apparent they weren't going to get their way, they walked out.

Yet another example of arrogant America disrupting the world's attempts to solve the climate change program? No. The delegation in question was that of the United Kingdom, and the conference was that held last week in Moscow, hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The British delegation was led by Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to Her Majesty's government. Sir David has gone on record as saying that, "Global warming is worse than terrorism." ... The religious fervor with which Tony Blair's government is acting on this belief has many Britons unnerved. Dr. David Bellamy, one of the titans of the British environmental movement, wrote in the Daily Mail that he considers global warming alarmism "poppycock." Analysts predict a 40 percent rise in electricity prices as a result of the government's energy suppression policies. British manufacturers foresee having to put thousands out of work as they lose out in competitiveness to overseas suppliers. The Times's economics editor has written that the environmentalists pushing these policies "are like the medieval monks who favored self-flagellation as the road to virtue. For a Government to enshrine such thinking in policy is truly perverse."

In equally medieval fashion, adherents of the environmentalist religion have launched an inquisition against scientific views that they consider heretical. Hence, Sir David's outrageous behavior at the Moscow conference..... Sir David apparently walked out with his delegation in mid-answer to one question. Commenting on this display, Illarionov said, "It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened, but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government, and the reputation of the title 'Sir' has sustained heavy damage."

If Americans had behaved this way, the world would be full of stories charging America with arrogance, boorishness, and disdain for the spirit of free inquiry. Yet Sir David King continues on his way, the Torquemada of the global-warming inquisition."

More here

The Russian scientists of course think global warming is poppycock too -- even though they wish it was real! And there has never been anything wrong with Russian science. Russians have the brains even if they never seem to have good government

STATE GOVERNMENT A.G.'S TRY TO SET NATIONAL GLOBAL WARMING POLICIES

From the National Center for Public Policy Research:

"According to a press release announcing the events, "New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, New Jersey Attorney General Peter C. Harvey, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch, Vermont Attorney General William H. Sorrell and the office of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will announce on July 21, 2004 the filing of a major lawsuit to curb global warming in the United States, in conjunction with the attorneys general of California, Iowa and Wisconsin.".....

According to a July 20 Associated Press article by Mark Johnson, "Eight states and New York City intend to sue five of the country's largest power producers to demand they cut carbon dioxide emissions, which are believed to be linked to global warming. The attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, as well as New York City's corporation counsel, will file a public nuisance lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, according to a draft news release...

The states contend carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced by increasing efficiency at coal-burning plants, switching from coal to cleaner burning fuels, investing in energy conservation, and using clean energy sources such as wind and solar power.

Environmental policies properly are established by legislators voting in view of the public, not by lawyers in courtrooms. As the New York Attorney General's office describes it, "the Attorney General serves as the guardian of the legal rights of the citizens." What happened to the citizens' right to be governed by a legislature it selects?

"Global warming" -- the theory that behavior by human beings is causing the Earth to warm significantly -- is highly contested scientific issue, one on which many climate scientists disagree. Even those scientists who believe human behavior is causing the planet to warm disagree significantly about causes and degree.

Scientists furthermore differ on the impact global warming would have on the Earth. Some expect global warming would cause sea levels to rise. Others believe it could cause sea levels to lower -- as increased amounts of water vapor in the air result in more snow congregating at the still-frozen poles.

Some global warming debaters stress the possibility that global warming could hurt plants, while others note the beneficial effect of increased carbon dioxide levels on plant life (carbon dioxide is, roughly speaking, to plants what oxygen is to human beings).

Court decisions are blunt instruments and ill-suited for determining policies on such matters as global warming, where opinions are constantly undergoing change as new scientific knowledge is gained. The judicial branch, unlike the legislative, is not designed to accommodate the easy repeal or amendment of flawed policies."


I suspect this might be a blessing in disguise. As long as the courts are unbiased (a big ask) the result should be to show that the evidence for global warming does not stack up

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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THE BEST DATA SHOW NO RECENT RISE AT ALL IN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE

And even crooked science cannot make it

Those awkward satellites: "A study of global temperature data in the May 5 issue of Nature claims to solve a discrepancy between surface-station temperature readings and global temperature readings taken from orbital satellites. Experts reviewing the Nature study, however, say it fails to impugn the satellite readings. Ever since the first temperature-reading satellite was launched in 1979, scientists have tried to explain the discrepancy between satellite and ground-based readings of global temperatures." Satellite readings have shown virtually no warming trend since 1979, while ground-based readings have registered significant warming.

According to scientific studies, the discrepancy results from an urban heat island effect. Concrete, factories, office buildings, and automobiles produce heat in and around cities, causing temperatures to be somewhat warmer than the surrounding region. Moderate warming trends at land-based weather stations, typically located at airports in and around growing cities, merely reflect the growing population of the nearby city, studies show.

The recent Nature study attempts to contest the urban heat island evidence and cast doubt on the satellite readings. To support their theory, the study's authors introduced a "fudge factor" that attempts to explain and dismiss a significant amount of documented atmospheric cooling. The fudge factor, say experts, is where the Nature authors go wrong.

"You can't subtract more signal than is there, but that's what they've done," said Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). The problem, said Spencer, is that the study's fudge factor removes more stratospheric cooling than actually appears in the data, thus creating a spurious warming signal.

"Simply put, this method overcorrects for stratospheric cooling," said Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at UAH and director of the ESSC. "We tried this same technique in the early 1990s but it didn't work. "This kind of mistake would not get published with adequate peer review of manuscripts submitted for publication," observed Spencer.