Obama to NASA: We don’t have liftoff

WND

Seeks global-warming data on Earth rather than moon mission

Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium online newsletter published by the current No. 1 best-selling author, WND staff writer and columnist. Red Alert subscriptions are $99 a year or $9.95 per month for credit card users. Annual subscribers will receive a free autographed copy of “The Late Great USA,” a book about the careful deceptions of a powerful elite who want to undermine our nation’s sovereignty.

The Obama administration plans to ax NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon, according to anticipated 2011 federal budget the White House aims to release to Congress in the first week of February, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.

Instead, the administration plans to reorient NASA to a much more terrestrial mission – monitoring earth climate changes in an effort to document global warming.

Forget about the moon

An article in the Orlando Sentinel reported the Obama administration 2011 budget would eliminate money for the constellation program that was supposed to return Americans to the moon by 2020.

Also cut by the Obama administration were two rockets key to the NASA plan to return to the moon – the Ares I rocket to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space stations orbiting the earth and the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies to take humans back to the moon.

“There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no constellation program at all,” Robert Block and Mark Matthews of the Orlando Sentinel wrote. “In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects – principally, researching and monitoring climate change.”

CIA to investigate global warming

WND has previously reported on the Obama administration’s determination to pursue an ideologically driven global-warming agenda, despite Climategate disclosures that the science underlying the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was fraudulently contrived.

Despite terrorist attacks against the United States recurring with the Fort Hood shooting and the December underwear bomber, President Obama has tasked the CIA with investigating global warming.

The CIA’s environmental surveillance, Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis, or MEDEA, operating out of the CIA’s National Reconnaissance Office, has now been tasked by the Obama administration to supply classified satellite intelligence to a group of government-chosen scientists to measure climate changes, including Arctic sea ice.

While Democrats in the Senate appear to be backing off Obama’s efforts to pass cap-and-trade legislation, the Obama administration has decided to reduce carbon emissions through bureaucratic measures, utilizing the existing Clean Air Act to have the Environmental Protection Agency declare carbon dioxide to be a harmful chemical and to implement stricter smog standards.

Obama science czar favors ‘geo-engineering’

Red Alert has previously reported that despite evidence the earth is cooling, White House science czar John Holdren favors geo-engineering the climate to save the planet.

In a videotaped interview with the Associated Press archived on YouTube, Holdren made clear that “we have to keep geo-engineering on the table because we might get desperate enough to want to use it.”

Red Alert warns readers that President Obama is an ideologue who can be expected to pursue a global-warming agenda to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions despite evidence that the science behind climate hysteria has been fabricated.

Red Alert’s author, whose books “The Obama Nation” and “Unfit for Command” have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.

In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.

For financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, “The Obama Nation.“

For full immediate access to Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, subscribe now.

Subscribe to Jerome Corsi’s new weekly economic newsletter, Red Alert, for one year and, for a limited time get “The Late Great USA” free. (This offer applies only to annual subscriptions for $99.)

Why the world will never run out of energy

WND

Oil, nuclear power remain abundantly available

Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium online newsletter published by the current No. 1 best-selling author, WND staff writer and columnist. This week, he is including a Chapter Three excerpt from his book, “America for Sale.” Red Alert subscriptions are $99 a year or $9.95 per month for credit card users. Annual subscribers will receive a free autographed copy of “The Late Great USA,” a book about the careful deceptions of a powerful elite who want to undermine our nation’s sovereignty.

Oil remains so abundant that it is unlikely the world will ever run out, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.

Economist Julian Simon, former professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, was famous for taking a contrarian position on energy resources, arguing that our perception of scarcity was not validated by the current or historical factual record of energy abundance.

In an essay titled “When Will We Run Out of Oil? Never!” Simon argued against Malthusian fears that peak oil theorists were right and sooner or later the pumps would run dry, as environmental alarmist Paul Ehrlich frequently argued.

Simon traced fears of energy resource exhaustion back to an 1865 book published in London by W. Stanley Jevons, one of the 19th century’s greatest social scientists, titled “The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal-mines.” Jevons argued that Great Britain’s industrial progress would grind to a halt because industry would soon use all available coal. Jevons further concluded that there was no chance oil would be an alternative resource able to solve the problem.

“What happened?” Simon asked.

His answer: “Because of the perceived future need for coal and because of the potential profit in meeting that need, prospectors searched out new deposits of coal, investors discovered better ways to get coal out of the earth, and transportation engineers developed cheaper ways to move the coal.”

Similarly, Simon traced the fears in the United States back to an 1885 U.S. geological survey that declared there was “little or no chance” oil would ever be found in California. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior argued U.S. oil resources would be exhausted in 13 years. Then, when that prediction proved a false alarm, the Department of the Interior revised its estimate and declared that it was from 1951 that U.S. oil would be exhausted in 13 years.

Simon argued gloomy predictions about running out of oil, coal or any other energy resource including natural gas, were typically wrong for several reasons, including the following:

• Typically the energy resources exist on earth in quantities much larger than initially estimated;

• Advances in technology make exploration and recovery of previously difficult to develop energy resources more efficient and economically affordable;

• Improvements in productivity lead to more efficient use of energy resources over time;

• Alternative sources of energy are found, even while predominately used energy resources remain abundant.

• Previously dominant energy resources, such as coal, become less dominant as more efficient energy resources, such as oil, become more understood and utilized – a process Simon believed would continue as liquefied natural gas replaces oil applications, culminating in nuclear energy replacing many current applications of oil and natural gas.

“Simon’s energy resource analysis essentially maintains that we will be running automobiles with nuclear batteries long before we run out of oil,” Corsi wrote. “Another point consistent with Simon’s analysis is that technologies have been developed permitting the clean burning of coal, while coal resources in the United States yet remain among the most abundant on the earth. In the final analysis, nuclear power is the final inexhaustible energy resource.

“Moreover, the development of nuclear power plants to provide electricity to U.S. cities on a scale developed in nations such as France would serve the dual purpose of providing infrastructure jobs that conceivably could match the jobs created by President Eisenhower’s decision to build the interstate highway system, while providing cheap, safe and efficient energy to satisfy our municipal needs indefinitely.”

Today, the U.S. Navy runs ships around the world predominately on nuclear power, without a history of life- or environmental-threatening accidents.

Simon wrote: “Of course nuclear power can replace coal and oil entirely, which constitutes an increase in efficiency so great that it is beyond my powers to portray the entire process on a single graph based on physical units.”

Corsi noted that the one energy resource that is truly renewable and sufficiently robust to produce the energy required in the 21st century is nuclear power.

He said the example environmentalists and radical global warming alarmists typically neglect is France, a country that since the 1980s has built a network of modern nuclear power plants needed to power France’s major cities for the foreseeable future. Today, approximately 80 percent of France’s electricity is generated by 59 nuclear plants across the country that are at least a generation more advanced that the nuclear power plants operating today in the United States.

“As with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the nightmare scenarios with nuclear power are now decades old,” Corsi wrote. “The Three Mile Island accident occurred in Pennsylvania in 1979, and the Chernobyl reactor meltdown occurred in the Soviet Union in 1986. The world has experienced no similar incidents with nuclear energy since then.”

Red Alert’s author, whose books “The Obama Nation” and “Unfit for Command” have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.

In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.

For financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by  the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, “The Obama Nation.“

For full immediate access to Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, subscribe now.

Subscribe to Jerome Corsi’s new weekly economic newsletter, Red Alert, for one year and, for a limited time get “The Late Great USA” free. (This offer applies only to annual subscriptions for $99.)

Shocker! Ice melt lowest in 30 years

WND

NASA downplays Antarctic snow record, blames ozone depletion, ocean dynamics

By Chelsea Schilling

Ice melt on the world’s coldest continent was the lowest in 30 years during the 2008-2009 melt season, according to new research.

The finding was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters last month by Marco Tedesco, a research scientist at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, cooperatively managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; and Andrew Monaghan, National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist.

“A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008–2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980-2009,” their abstract states. “Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008–2009 melt season.”

World Climate Report posted the following line graph to illustrate the Antarctic snow melt index (October-January) from 1980-2009:

The report included a list of NASA stories that highlight record high amounts of ice melting across Greenland. In recent years, NASA has written extensively on increasing snow melt and published findings by scientist Marco Tedesco.

A May 2007 NASA report declared, “In 2006, Greenland experienced more days of melting snow and at higher altitudes than average over the past 18 years, according to a new NASA-funded project using satellite observations.”

On Sept. 25, 2007, NASA reported once again that Greenland snow melt hit record highs.

NASA also reported extensive snowmelt in Antarctica in 2007 and 2008.

“On the world’s coldest continent of Antarctica, the landscape is so vast and varied that only satellites can fully capture the extent of changes in the snow melting across its valleys, mountains, glaciers and ice shelves,” NASA reported. “In a new NASA study, researchers using 20 years of data from space-based sensors have confirmed that Antarctic snow is melting farther inland from the coast over time, melting at higher altitudes than ever and increasingly melting on Antarctica’s largest ice shelf.”

NASA warns that “Antarctica contains 90 percent of Earth’s fresh water, making it the largest potential source of sea level rise.”

In March 2008, NASA reported the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated, something it said was “an indication of warming temperatures in the region.”

But now that Tadesco and Monaghan confirm a 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record, NASA has published research from scientists who claim increasing sea ice could be due to ozone depletion, changing ocean dynamics or the flooding of sea ice.

“Since the ozone hole began developing, researchers believe the Antarctic stratosphere has cooled between 2°C and 6°C (3.6°F and 10.8°F),” NASA reports. “Such cooling changes the dynamics between the stratosphere and lower layers of the atmosphere and strengthens Antarctica’s already fierce winds.”

The fierce winds are said to produce sustained periods of freezing temperatures unlike any other place in the world.

“The new model suggests that colder, stormier, and faster winds are rushing over the waters encircling Antarctic – especially the Ross Sea, where ice growth has been the most rapid,” NASA wrote in a September report. “The winds create areas of open water near the coast – known as polynyas – that promote sea ice production.”

According to the NASA report, changes in ocean circulation may also play a role.

“If global air temperatures warm, the model indicates that the amount of rain and snowfall could increase, and surface waters could freshen,” it states. “Since fresh water is less dense and less apt to mix with the heavier, saltier, and warmer water below, the layer at the ocean’s surface could become more stratified and mix less. This, in turn, would reduce the amount of heat flowing upward, allowing surface ice to expand.”

Another possibility, according to NASA, could be that accumulating snow is pressing down on the sea ice until it’s nearly submerged.

“When that happens, waves cause ocean water to spill on top of the ice and into the snow, forming a layer that eventually freezes and becomes ‘snow ice,’” NASA reported.

World Climate Report questioned why NASA wouldn’t report specifically on Tedesco and Monaghan’s findings concerning a 30-year record low for ice melt.

“[T]his time around, nothing, nada, zippo from NASA when their ice melt go-to guy Marco Tedesco reports that Antarctica has set a record for the lack of surface ice melt (even more interestingly coming on the heels of a near-record low ice-melt year last summer),” World Climate Report states. “So, seriously, NASA, what gives? If ice melt is an important enough topic to warrant annual updates of the goings-on across Greenland, it is not important enough to elucidate the history and recent behavior across Antarctica?”

Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away

News.Com.Au

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.
The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent’s western coast.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth’s ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water, The Australian reports. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.

However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.

East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week’s meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown “significant cooling in recent decades”.

Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.

“Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally,” Dr Allison said.

The melting of sea ice – fast ice and pack ice – does not cause sea levels to rise because the ice is in the water. Sea levels may rise with losses from freshwater ice sheets on the polar caps. In Antarctica, these losses are in the form of icebergs calved from ice shelves formed by glacial movements on the mainland.

Last week, federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett said experts predicted sea level rises of up to 6m from Antarctic melting by 2100, but the worst case scenario foreshadowed by the SCAR report was a 1.25m rise.

Mr Garrett insisted global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. “I don’t think there’s any doubt it is contributing to what we’ve seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica,” he said.

Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. “The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west,” he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.

“Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off – I’m talking 100km or 200km long – every 10 or 20 or 50 years.”

Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia’s Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.

A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.

Europe’s $57 billion plan to put windmills in the ocean

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Paris – Wind is the fastest growing renewable energy in Europe – making up a third of new energy here, with 20 turbines added every working day in 2008, according to EU statistics.

What the European wind energy industry now wants is to expand – offshore. Ocean winds are a stronger and more predictable form of energy than the ones on land, and the industry is pushing a $57 billion investment to allow broad-winged turbines to spin at sea.

Offshore wind is “absolutely” a significant new resource, argues Walt Patterson, an associate at Chatham House and author of “Keeping the Lights On,” adding that “the big question mark is not sticking the stuff in the ocean, but how to get the electricity ashore.”

A report released in Stockholm Monday by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) argues that offshore turbines could provide 10 percent of Europe’s energy by 2020 – avoiding some 200 tons of C02 emissions.

Currently, 11 sets of the wind-powered turbines are circling off Europe’s shores, with 21 under construction, mostly in Great Britain. At the moment they only contribute about .02 percent of Europe’s electricity needs.

EU energy czar Andris Piebalgs backed the EWEA’s ambitious plans to harness ocean winds, saying in Stockholm that the European commission is “committed to doing everything we can to support offshore wind developers and make sure their… projects come to fruition.”

The EWEA Stockholm wind conference, called “Oceans of Opportunity,” comes at a time when Europe is focusing on climate control and job creation. Offshore turbines are also seen as a solution to complaints from Europeans who do not want the gargantuan turbines in their backyards.

Complaints and hurdles
But people also have complaints about turbines at sea. Complaints that the turbines ruin ocean views have slowed US efforts to get a project started off the coast of Massachusetts. The US has virtually no offshore wind energy, though the Obama administration has started to work on the issue.

There are also economic limitations, since electricity produced by offshore turbines is more expensive to deliver to consumers. There are also maintenance concerns involving storms at sea and corrosion from salt water. Mr. Patterson says the biggest hurdle is making the power deliverable.

“It’s a chicken and egg question, really,” says Patterson. “If you are the industry, do you wait for the cables to be laid on the ocean floor, or do you build the fields and then hope they are laid?”

The industry was boosted by a recent EU law requiring that 20 percent of Europe’s energy be obtained fromrenewable sources by 2020. Some 15 European states are planning offshore projects, according to the EWEA report. “There is huge developer interest in offshore wind power,” Arthuros Zervos, president of EWEA, said in a statement Monday. “The scale of planned projects is far greater than most people realize.”

Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported on Monday that Germany is about to begin construction of a wind farm 12 miles off its Baltic coast that German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee said would produce 12,000 megawatts of electricity, bringing Germany “closer to our goal of producing 25,000 megawatts offshore by 2030.”

This week the American electric giant GE, which produces nearly a quarter of the turbines for wind power worldwide, said it will enter the offshore market for the first time.

The Financial Times reported Monday that GE is expected to invest “hundreds of millions” in developing offshore turbines. The FT reported that GE “is also buying ScanWind, a small Norwegian-Swedish turbine company for 18 million, giving it access to new turbine technology, tested in harsh conditions on the coast of Norway.”

The EWEA in Stockholm presented data asserting that all of Europe’s energy needs could one day be met by eight fields of turbines roughly the size of 10,000 square kilometers, off the coasts of EU states.

Another Ice Age?

TIME

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada’s wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone’s recollection.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere -from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds -the so-called circumpolar vortex-that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa’s drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms-the Midwest’s recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.

Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth’s surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth’s tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere-thereby altering the earth’s climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.

Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin’s Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.

Climatic Balance. Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service’s long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth’s climate. Indeed, it is to gain such knowledge that 38 ships and 13 aircraft, carrying scientists from almost 70 nations, are now assembling in the Atlantic and elsewhere for a massive 100-day study of the effects of the tropical seas and atmosphere on worldwide weather. The study itself is only part of an international scientific effort known acronymically as GARP (for Global Atmospheric Research Program).

Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth’s surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

The earth’s current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries-the U.S., Canada and Australia -global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: “I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.”

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Top physics group shows crack in warming ‘consensus’

FROM WND

Editor counters leadership, acknowledging many scientists don’t believe man is cause

In another strike against the conventional assertion of a consensus on global warming, a publication of an organization representing more than 50,000 physicists acknowledges many members of the scientific community don’t believe humans are the primary cause of climate change.

The editor of Physics & Society, a newsletter of the American Physical Society, says that with his July issue he wants to kick off a debate concerning one of the main conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC.

The IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year along with former Vice President Al Gore for sounding the alarm about alleged man-made global warming. Yesterday, in a speech at Constitution Hall in Washington, Gore challenged the U.S. to make a “man on the moon” effort to produce all of the country’s electricity from renewable resources within 10 years.

But Physics & Society Editor Jeffrey Marque says there’s a “considerable presence within the scientific community” of experts who don’t agree with the IPCC’s contention human-produced CO2 emissions likely are the primary cause of global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.The publication’s July issue features a paper by Lord Christopher Monckton, the science advisor to Britain’s Margaret Thatcher administration. Monckton concludes the IPCC’s modeling has grossly overstated the rate of temperature change caused by greenhouse gas.

Monkton’s paper is preceded by a disclaimer, however, that states: “The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.”

Also, the American Physical Society responded to a report by the Daily Tech blog today that said the society had reversed its stance on global warming.

On its website, the society said the society reaffirms the position on climate change adopted Nov. 18 by its governing body, the APS Council: “Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”

Monckton insists there is substantial support for his results in peer-reviewed literature, the Daily Tech reported.

He concludes in his paper that the IPCC’s modeling has grossly overstated the rate of temperature change caused by greenhouse gas.

Monckton, who believes natural variability is the cause of most recent warming, told the DailyTech he was “dismayed” to discover the IPCC’s 2001 and 2007 reports did not properly explain the method used to reach its conclusions.

“When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method,” he said.

Larry Gould, professor of physics at the University of Hartford and chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton’s paper an “expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and “extensive errors,” the DailyTech said.

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31,000 Scientists Reject ‘Global Warming’ Agenda

More than 31,000 scientists across the United States, including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in fields including atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialties, have signed a petition rejecting “global warming,” the assumption that the human production of greenhouse gases is damaging Earth’s climate.

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate,” the petition states. “Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

The Petition Project actually was launched nearly 10 years ago, when the first few thousand signatures were assembled. Then between 1999 and 2007, the list of signatures grew gradually without any special effort or campaign.

But now, a new effort has been conducted because of an “escalation of the claims of ‘consensus,’ release of the movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘ by Mr. Al Gore, and related events,” according to officials with the project.

“Mr. Gore’s movie, asserting a ‘consensus’ and ‘settled science’ in agreement about human-caused global warming, conveyed the claims about human-caused global warming to ordinary movie goers and to public school children, to whom the film was widely distributed. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore’s movie contains many very serious incorrect claims which no informed, honest scientist could endorse,” said project spokesman and founder Art Robinson.

WND submitted a request to Al Gore’s office for comment, but did not get a response.

Robinson said the dire warnings about “global warming” have gone far beyond semantics or scientific discussion now to the point they are actually endangering people.

“The campaign to severely ration hydrocarbon energy technology has now been markedly expanded,” he said. “In the course of this campaign, many scientifically invalid claims about impending climate emergencies are being made. Simultaneously, proposed political actions to severely reduce hydrocarbon use now threaten the prosperity of Americans and the very existence of hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries,” he said.

In just the past few weeks, there have been various allegations that both shark attacks and typhoons have been sparked by “global warming.”

The late Professor Frederick Seitz, the past president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and winner of the National Medal of Science, wrote in a letter promoting the petition, “The United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and of technologies that depend upon coal, oil, and natural gas and some other organic compounds.”

“This treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is enviromentally helpful,” he wrote.

Accompanying the letter sent to scientists was a 12-page summary and review of research on “global warming,” officials said.

“The proposed agreement would have very negative effects upon the technology of nations throughout the world, especially those that are currently attempting to lift from poverty and provide opportunities to the over 4 billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries,” Seitz wrote.

Robinson said the project targets scientists because, “It is especially important for America to hear from its citizens who have the training necessary to evaluate the relevant data and offer sound advice.’

He said the “global warming agreement,” written in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, and other plans “would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.”

“Yet,” he said, “the United Nations and other vocal political interests say the U.S. must enact new laws that will sharply reduce domestic energy production and raise energy prices even higher.”

“The inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness include the right of access to life-giving and life-enhancing technology. This is especially true of access to the most basic of all technologies: energy. These human rights have been extensively and wrongly abridged,” he continued. “During the past two generations in the U.S., a system of high taxation, extensive regulation, and ubiquitous litigation has arisen that prevents the accumulation of sufficient capital and the exercise of sufficient freedom to build and preserve needed modern technology.

“These unfavorable political trends have severely damaged our energy production, where lack of industrial progress has left our country dependent upon foreign sources for 30 percent of the energy required to maintain our current level of prosperity,” he said. “Moreover, the transfer of other U.S. industries abroad as a result of these same trends has left U.S. citizens with too few goods and services to trade for the energy that they do not produce. A huge and unsustainable trade deficit and rapidly rising energy prices have been the result.”

“The necessary hydrocarbon and nuclear energy production technologies have been available to U.S. engineers for many decades. We can develop these resources without harm to people or the environment. There is absolutely no technical, resource, or environmental reason for the U.S. to be a net importer of energy. The U.S. should, in fact, be a net exporter of energy,” he said.

He told WND the issue has nothing to do with energy itself, but everything to do with power, control and money, which the United Nations is seeking. He accused the U.N. of violating human rights in its campaign to ban much energy research, exploration and development.

“In order to alleviate the current energy emergency and prevent future emergencies, we need to remove the governmental restrictions that have caused this problem. Fundamental human rights require that U.S. citizens and their industries be free to produce and use the low cost, abundant energy that they need. As the 31,000 signatories of this petition emphasize, environmental science supports this freedom,” he said.

The Petition Project website today said there actually are 31,072 scientists who have signed up, and Robinson said more names continue to come in.

In terms of PhD scientists alone, it already has 15 times more scientists than are seriously involved in the United Nations’ campaign to vilify hydrocarbons, officials told WND.

“The very large number of petition signers demonstrates that, if there is a consensus among American scientists, it is in opposition to the human-caused global warming hypothesis rather than in favor of it,” the organization noted.

The project was set up by a team of physicists and physical chemists who do research at several American institutions and collects signatures when donations provide the resources to mail out more letters.

“In a group of more than 30,000 people, there are many individuals with names similar or identical to other signatories, or to non-signatories – real or fictional. Opponents of the petition project sometimes use this statistical fact in efforts to discredit the project. For examples, Perry Mason and Michael Fox are scientists who have signed the petition – who happen also to have names identical to fictional or real non-scientists,” the website said.

The petition is needed, supporters said, simply because Gore and others “have claimed that the ‘science is settled’ – that an overwhelming ‘consensus’ of scientists agrees with the hypothesis of human-caused global warming, with only a handful of skeptical scientists in disagreement.”

The list of scientists includes 9,021 PhDs, 6,961 at the master’s level, 2,240 medical doctors, and 12,850 carrying a bachelor of science or equivalent academic degree.

The Petition Project’s website includes both a list of scientists by name as well as a list of scientists by state.

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