MURDOCK: Warming up the laughs

BLOGGER'S NOTE: The article below, recently published in the Washington Times, is a stellar example of the type of horrendous rubbish published in today's popular press. It is an example of the unrelenting and irresponsible behavior of the press concerning a matter of vital importance to all of us. Note that really cold weather in the wintertime has become so unusual that now, whenever it does occur, it is claimed as proof positive that there is no global warming (were that that were true!).

And you gotta wonder where their brains are when they trot out that old meme that the Earth has cooled since 1998. The past ten years have been the warmest ever, even if 2008 was not as warm as 1998.

At the bottom of the article, the so-called points 1 through 3 are simply ridiculous on their face.

And, last but certainly not least, Sen. Inhofe is trotted out as the final authority on this subject, when in fact he is known to be in the pocket of the oil companies, and he presents fiction as fact at every opportunity.

I commend George Monbiot for his creation of the Christopher Booker Prize. (See the post just below this one.)

For those of you interested in knowing more about just how warm the last 10 years really were, read on (from Tamino's Open Mind blog):

"Every year this century is among the top-10 hottest years on record. In fact the clustering of hottest years is even more lop-sided than that would indicate; by the end of 2006 it was noted that the 13 hottest years on record had all occurred since 1990 (and we’ve added a couple more to that list since then). How unlikely is that?

Precisely that question is addressed in “How unusual is the recent series of warm years?” (Zorita et al. 2008, Geophysical Research Letters 35, L24706 doi:10.1029/GL036228). The conclusion can be summed up in a phrase best said with a strong Maine accent: ’tain’t likely."

MURDOCK: Warming up the laughs

by Deroy Murdock, The Washington Times, February 4, 2009

COMMENTARY:

So-called “global warming” has shrunk from problem to punch line. And now, political leftists are laughing, too. It's hard not to chuckle at the idea of Earth boiling in a carbon cauldron when the news won't cooperate.

- Nearly 4 inches of snow blanketed the United Arab Emirates' Jebel Jais region for just the second time in recorded history on Jan. 24. Citizens were speechless. The local dialect has no word for snowfall.

- Dutchmen on ice skates sped past windmills as canals in Holland froze in mid-January for the first time since 1997. Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop, who inhabits a renovated 17th-century windmill, stumbled on the ice and fractured his wrist.

- January saw northern Minnesota's temperatures plunge to 38 below zero, forcing ski-resort closures. A Frazee, Minn., dog-sled race was canceled, due to excessive snow. Snow whitened Surf City, N.C., beaches. Days ago, ice glazed Florida's citrus groves.

As Earth faces global cooling, both troglodyte right-wingers and lachrymose left-wingers find Albert Gore's simmering-planet hypothesis increasingly hilarious:

(1) “In terms of [global warming's] capacity to cause the human species harm, I don't think it makes it into the top 10,” Robert Giegengack, former chairman of University of Pennsylvania's Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, told the Pennsylvania Gazette. Mr. Giegengack voted for Mr. Gore in 2000, and says he likely would again.

(2) Commentator Harold Ambler declared Jan. 3 on HuffingtonPost.com that he voted for Barack Obama “for a thousand times a thousand reasons.” He added that Mr. Gore “owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming.” He called Mr. Gore's assertion that “the science is in” on this issue “the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of mankind.”

(3) “Not only is it false that human activity has any significant effect on global warming or the weather in general, but for the record, global warming is over,” retired Navy meteorologist Martin Hertzberg wrote on carbon-sense.com. The physical chemist and self-described “scientist and lifelong liberal Democrat” added: “The average temperature of Earth's atmosphere has declined over the last 10 years. From the El Nino Year of 1998 until Jan. 2007, it dropped a quarter of a degree Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit). From January 2007 to the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping three-quarters of a degree Celsius (1.35 degrees Fahrenheit). Those data further prove that the fear-mongering hysteria about human-caused global warming is completely unjustified and is totally counterproductive to our Nation's essential needs and security.”

(4) “It is a tribute to the scientific ignorance of politicians and journalists that they keep regurgitating the nonsense about human-caused global warming,” veteran left-wing commentator and Nation magazine columnist Alexander Cockburn wrote. “The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind's sinful contribution - and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism, and greed.”

Some leftists believe the collective hallucination of warmism distracts from what they consider urgent progressive priorities:

(1) “The most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might,” University of Ottawa physics professor Denis Rancourt has written. “The global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth.”

(2) Social historian Dr. David Noble of Canada's York University concurs. He has lamented that warmism is “diverting attention from the radical challenges of the global justice movements.”

(3) Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, previously education minister in France's late-1990s Socialist government, denounced the “prophets of doom of global warming.” He sounded amused in a September 2006 L'Express article. “The ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people.”

”The so-called 'consensus' on man-made global warming is not holding up,” Sen. James Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, told his colleagues Jan. 8. “It is becoming increasingly clear that skepticism about man-made global warming fear is not a partisan left vs. right issue.”

So-called “global warming” has accomplished the impossible: It has united liberals and conservatives in laughter.

Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist and a media fellow with Stanford University's Hoover Institution.