Calgary Herald Division of Canwest Publishing Inc.
Today is Saturday May 23, 2009

Global warming another unfulfilled government promise?

By SCOOP77 05-22-2009 Nigel Hannaford

After the Narnian winter we’ve just had, a reasonable person could
easily agree with controversial Friends of Science spokesman Dr. Tim
Ball on this much: Global warming is just another unfulfilled
government promise. (Good line.)

So, why are we still preparing to spend money on it? (Good question.)

Ball is controversial because the retired science professor bucks the
prevailing wisdom on global warming, calls the science behind it
wrong, and questions the good faith of the governmental agencies
promoting it. He gets flak. He also gives it, as he did Thursday to a
crowd of 400 at Calgary’s Metropolitan Centre, in an event sponsored
by a reinvigorated Friends of Science, and the Frontier Centre for
Public Policy. For instance, the idea that carbon dioxide generated by
human activity is unnaturally warming the atmosphere through some
supposed greenhouse effect is not (and never was) supported by facts
that were reasonably easy to obtain. Want to know where the problem
is? It’s cycles related to solar activity.

At the risk of *******izing a sophisticated presentation, the dots
join like this. The sun is constantly emitting cosmic rays: Those that
reach the Earth stimulate cloud creation, which has a cooling effect.
But, when the sunspot cycle is active, the flow of cosmic rays is
disrupted, fewer reach Earth’s atmosphere, cloud cover is diminished,
and the Earth warms.

It was seven years ago that local Friends advocate Albert Jacobs laid
this out for the Herald editorial board. At that point, it was more of
a prediction, as the solar cycle was popping and some interpretations
of global temperature data suggested ambient temperatures were rising.
Since then though, the sun has gone quiet and the last seven years of
satellite data show a distinct cooling trend — even as CO2 levels
continue to rise.

Yes, there’s still melting in the Arctic. But is that more of a
delayed reaction, not unlike a cast iron frying pan that stays hot for
a while after it has been removed from the heat?

Could be. Not a bad evidence-based prediction, anyway. And before
Canada diverts billions of dollars to CO2 reduction, you’d think it
would make reasonably sure.

So, the Friends are back after a few years of discouraged retirement,
trying to reopen the warming-science debate their opponents say should
remain forever closed.

Most of the Calgary-based group of geologists are old enough to have
lived through a few distinct eras of climate change themselves. Some
can even remember the celebrated patrols through the Northwest Passage
of the RCMP schooner St. Roch during the Second World War, which is
another way of saying that the Earth’s climate being as prone to
change as it is, this isn’t the first time the Arctic has thawed
sufficiently to be navigable. (Indeed, Norwegian explorer Roald
Amundsen made it through in 1903-06, and the Vikings got as far as
Ellesmere Island a thousand years ago, before things cooled again.)

Initially, the group got traction. At that ed-board meeting, Jacobs
pointed out that core samples from ancient ice packs showed
atmospheric CO2 levels trailed, rather than preceded a rise in
temperatu The bubbles you see in boiling water are the release of
air held in solution at lower temperatures, and as the seas warm, they
too give up dissolved gases, CO2 included.

And, did we know the global-warming crowd relied on computer modelling
more than observation, and that the guide for policy-makers prepared
by the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change was written by
bureaucrats, and was not in fact the lowest common denominator of the
views of 1,700 scientists, just the ones the bureaucrats liked? We did
not, but it sounded possible: We had just learned Canada’s Kyoto
targets had been decided by "think of a number" methods intended to
embarrass the Yanks at an international gathering.

The Friends, in short, made a good case and while I didn’t feel
qualified to adjudicate it, it seemed to me that somebody who was,
should.

But, that never happened. Instead, a well-funded global warming lobby
steamrollered the world’s governments and mainstream media, Canada’s
among them.

Indeed, it became professionally suspect to be a "climate-change
denier." Oil companies one might have expected to argue the science,
rolled over: Business is business. The provincial government listened,
once, but figured they couldn’t fight the gathering consensus and in
Ottawa, the new Conservative government quickly realized that in any
contest between ice-cores and cuddly polar bear cubs, the votes were
with the bears.

And after that, there was the inconvenient Al Gore who, despite
fostering a film loaded with misinformed or dangerously stretched
data, rode the wave of future rising sea levels to an Oscar.

"It was," Ball told a Calgary audience Thursday, "the greatest
scientific deception in history."

The Friends want to raise $500,000 to take their show to the airwaves.

I wish ’em luck.

And a fair hearing.

PS: On an entirely personal basis, and completely not to the point of
anything political, among the Friends of Science who showed up at that
original 2002 ed board was Art Patterson, who enthused about the
evidence of cyclical advances and recession to be observed on the
higher ground at Lake O'Hara. (There's a small tarn up there that is
exposed when the ice cap pulls back, and covered as the ice cap
advances. All this clearly demonstrable from core samples and
indicative that climate change is nothing new.) So enthusiastic was
Art, that I took my then girl-friend, now wife Judy, to this
absolutely stunning place, right when the larches turned yellow. We
never did get up to the tarn, but had an amazing day anyway. All of
which is to say you never know what will come out of an editorial
board, and even global warming has its uses,

"So, why are we still preparing to spend money on it? (Good question.)
"

Guys! Guys! No need for dueling articles! The question is already
over. It doesn't matter that the IPCC arctic expedition to measure
anthropogenic global warming nearly froze to death or that MIT has a
new way of massaging data to double the shocking numbers from previous
data massages. The EPA and the IPCC have declared that global warming
is real and caused by mankind (especially in the industrial first
world). There is no further argument possible. The time has come to
start charging for "carbon footprints". Just get out your wallet and
pay. Of course "Sam Wormley" will be paying too, but we're thinking he
expects some kind of rebate later...

PS. please note that while vast amounts will be spent on "carbon
footprints" that will do nothing to discover and model the true
underlying causes of Global Warming should such climate change prove
real. Hopefully the time bought by the carbon scam will afford climate
change time to reach the "tipping point" before science can come up
with anything significant to stop the disaster. But hey, if ya gotta
die, why not die rich?

On Sat, 23 May 2009 19:18:48 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

Calgary Herald Division of Canwest Publishing Inc.
Today is Saturday May 23, 2009


Here is a partial list (2009) of aliases this person has used while
posting to sci.environment.

From: "A thoughtful mourner" mantrap@
From:
From:
From: "Barack Obama"
From:
From: "Dr Crypto"
From: "Edmund Fitzgerald" mantrap@
From: "Eric Swanson" mantrap@
From: "Ian St. John"
From: "kiloVolts" mantrap@
From: "kilovolts" mantrap@
From: "kiloVolts"
From: "Leon"
From: "Leon Trollski"
From: "Mike Vandeman"
From: "Mike Vandeman" mantrap@
From: "milliAmperes"
From: "Ms. 2"
From: "Ms. 2" mantrap@
From: "Nicovar Inc."
From:
From: "Ravocin"
From: "Sarah Palin"
From: "Sanity"
From:

and now, this Calgary, Canada Based Fossil Fuel Troll claims to be..

From:


This carbon addicted troll has stated in Message-ID:

"ENVIRONMENTALISM IS A HATE CRIME!"


Needless to say.. this person is mentally unbalanced..

On Sat, 23 May 2009 19:18:48 -0700, TKeating wrote:

After the Narnian winter we’ve just had, a reasonable person could
easily agree with controversial Friends of Science spokesman Dr. Tim
Ball on this much: Global warming is just another unfulfilled government
promise....

"Narnian winter"? How cool! Someone is actually reading books. Big
books. Even books with big, sometimes obscure, words. That's good
practice. I suggest reading one which defines the difference between
"climate" and "weather", and maybe one on control systems theory.

Let's face it:

There is something happening here. The temperature of the troposphere is
increasing slightly, and that in turn will bring about some other changes.

This would happen sooner or later, human agency notwithstanding. It has
in the past. Repeatedly. We are *not* all going to die, but the Earth's
weather patterns and coastlines will change somewhat, and this in turn
will affect us, some for the better and some for the worse.

I am *not* getting into a detailed analysis of climate change. Those are
already available to anyone willing to expend the effort necessary to
understand them, and were done by people far more astute than myself.

But this is worth noting:

Oversimplifying the situation, or hyping disaster scenarios that won't
occur, or spin-doctoring the issue to death, is of no value. None.

All the effort of promulgating easily refuted disaster scenarios and all
the amused and sophomoric heckling about said disaster scenarios likely
originate from the same camp: someone who is afraid they'll be blamed for
climate change and wishes to deflect attention elsewhere.

In so doing, they're distracting many people from the established fact of
climate change, through whatever agency, and from the fact that we have
to cope with it. To do so does a great disservice to their fellows.

Oh, and "Friends of Science"?

Give us a break, already. Much of this stuff is pure Karl Rove. Let's
hope this isn't the 21st Century's primary lesson to mankind, but rather
that we should anticipate our problems and prepare in advance to deal
with them. It's costs us far less that way.

-- RLW