RE: "Climate of Fear" by Dr. Richard Lindzen (another radical Republican email-forward that found its way into my inbox.)
Does anyone ever research the writers who write these ridiculous opinions that contradict all of the major leading scientists and climatologists of the world? The propagandists in these email forwards are also contradicting the factual evidence. Like global temperatures, forest fires in Alaska in January, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and the list goes on.
Just follow the money and you'll see why Richard Lindzen is so against climate change. [Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.] At least find someone credible before you forward junk corporate propaganda. I'm sure you wouldn't agree with someone so immoral, unless you happen to own some stock in the oil companies yourselves, then we'd understand your motive.
Oil & gas= profit & pollution If you don't believe this check the earnnings of U.S. oil companies since the Bush administration took control in 2001. And if you don't believe oil creates pollution, put some in a glass of water and drink it. Better yet, put your face up to the tailpipe of your car while it's parked in your garage-- that'll prove it. And ask yourself, as you're coughing to death, who is profitting from global warming other than the children of the future? And ask yourself what harm the desire to live in a cleaner world really does? Global warming is a moral issue that we all need to pay attention to. Jesus certainly would not have sided with the mighty oil companies. Furthermore, these type of paid-off "Scientists" are the same ones who also told us (the American public) that DDT was a safe chemical to grow your vegetables in, and cigarettes were safe and good for your mind, and that atomic weapons testing in the western U.S. states was not harmful to nearby communities. All for MONEY. Believe what you wish.
Global Warming by the Numbers Some chilling statistics to think about:
1 - Rank of 2005 as hottest year on record (tied with 1998), according to NASA.
100 % - Increase in intensity and duration of hurricanes and tropical stormssince the 1970's, according to a 2005 MIT study.
$100 billion - Estimate of damage caused by hurricanes hitting the U.S. coast in 2005 alone, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
2030 - Year by which Glacier National Park will have no glaciers left, according to the U.S. Geological Survey predictions.
400,000 - Square miles of Arctic sea ice that have melted in the last 30 years (roughly the size of Texas), threatening polar bear habitats and further accelerating global warming worldwide, according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
15-37%- Amount of plant and animal species that global warming could wipe out by 2050.
1 - Rank of the United States as a global warming polluter compared to other large nations.
6- Number of former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency leaders who say the U.S. is not doing enough to fight global warming.
0- Number of bills passed by Congress to cut global warming pollution.
Number of times President Bush has mentioned the words "global warming," or "climate change" in previous State of the Union addresses.
2003 - Europe suffered worst heat wave in history where 27,000 people died
US and Australia didn't sign the Kyoto Treaty
It took 10 centuries for the oceans to rise as much as they did in the 20th century.
Sources: NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2005 Study, Nature Magazine January 2004, National Climatic Data Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
If you care about the Earth, please watch this preview!
http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=2&pmmsid=1521205
And how about WMD and terrorism? That's a climate of fear if I've ever seen one. We were attacked on 9/11 supposedly by Bin Laden-- a former business asssociate of the Bush family who was previously trained by the CIA. Let me stress that there were ample warnings of the threat including an August 6 2001 memo titled "Bin Laden determined to strike U.S." These threats were ignored. Go ahead and blame Clinton for the U.S.S. Cole or embassy bombings, he also stopped more than six separate attempts of largescale terrorism on U.S. soil including the LA airport bombing and the 2000 Millenium attempts. Maybe Clinton was doing other immoral things, but he certainly wasn't on vacation purposefully ignoring intelligence.
And then who could forget the WMD, links to terrorism, and expoitation of 9/11 to force an invasion of Iraq for no other purpose but to earn profit for Halliburton and the oil companies, which by the way are now on the top of the list for biggest most profitable U.S. corporations. So while you and I are contstantly manipulated into believing there will be another terrorist threat because of the terrorist attack THEY LET HAPPEN and while we pay the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history, our troops are dying for the profit of U.S. corporations in a war that has created terrorists. Hello!
For more read the chapter titled: ATTACK ON THE ENVIRONMENT
in my book Broken Nation available at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0741429780/sr=8-1/qid=1144944693/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-8200576-6922269?%5Fencoding=UTF8
From: maineiacga@aol.com
Subject: Climate Of Fear - Truth Abput Global Warming
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:27:16 -0400
Climate of FearGlobal-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
BY RICHARD LINDZEN
Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then Senator Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.M. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.
