In a bizarre Memorial Day editorial, the Washington Post criticized climate skeptics for using the Freedom of Information Act to pry documents concerning Climategater Michael Mann from the University of Virginia.
The Post labeled the skeptics’ FOIA efforts as “harrassing” and “nuisance tactics.”
The Post, however, has been entirely silent on Greenpeace’s efforts to FOIA documents from the University of Virginia concerning Pat Michaels, University of Delaware concerning David Legates and from Harvard University concerning Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas — efforts that are truly “harrassing” and “nuisance” in nature as Greenpeace acted entirely in retaliation to the FOIA request concerning Mann.
The editorial is especially gross coming on the day when America commemorates those who died to preserve everyone’s freedoms — not just those of the politically correct.
Thanks to everyone for wonderful comments; not hyperbolic rants! A friend, who I still can’t name because he has been threatened with removal from his state sponsored job, presented a beautiful analysis of the effects of CO2 and H2O. His conclusion was that at most 25% of the warming during 1900-2000 could be attributed to human activity. The other 75% could not be researched due to the poisonous environmental movement political “climate.”
Some other effects that some day a researcher might be permitted to look into. Solar constant is not a constant — NASA reports solar irradiance has been dropping for the last 30 years. the Sun is late starting Solar Cycle 24. Why is it called Cycle 24? Because prior to the 1700 there were no sunspot cycles and possibly no solar max and solar min. The Earth’s magnetic field appears to be shifting from N to S -; a process that one earth core model suggests takes 300-600 years and according to the British Royal Navy has been under way for the last 150 years — NASA reports the Earth’s magnetic field (and magnetosphere) have declined 30% in 30 years and may hit zero by 2100. What effect do these phenomena have on global climate? No one is allowed to do the research to find out. Hopefully the AGW folks have had their decade and science can be unshackled to do science again.
Let’s not get all “conspiracy theory” here. We know the enviros fund CAGW “research” because it’s their religion, and politicians fund it because they stand to gain more power.
Sure, there are many folks in other regions of the world (and in some parts of our White House) who would love to see the US knocked down a peg or two. Still, the more devious a plan is, and the more steps removed an action is from the desired result, then the more likely it is the whole thing will fail. People who are actually in a position to put their own money down to influence events know this, and shy away. Too risky, too many ways for it to go wrong.
Nick’s closely reasoned rebuttal: “Oh, yeah? Well, you’re one, too.”
I haven’t heard that one since 5th grade.
Jason,
Agree and disagree. Agree that mainstream environmentalists spend most of their time dictating from the ivory tower instead of giving us the straight skinney from the field. Also agree that those who work the land understand best how it works. However, that does not mean they always do right by it. The logging industry is about growing trees as fast as possible. This does not necessarily mean they create a good forest. Ranchers do not always allow their stock to come to market as simple grass-fed beasts, that would be best for the beef consumer. They may be given growth hormones and fed corn to fatten them up before slaughter. And farmers, god bless them, are pumping lots of nitrogen fertilizer runoff down the Mississippi and creating a dead zone in the Gulf. This is not true everywhere but does show that our loggers, ranchers, and farmers are capitalists, making the most profit for the least investment. They will, most likely, only do what is “right” (a debatable term) when the playing field is leveled by national regulation. I hate to see that but it is probably true. Keeping the regs minimal and meaningful is the key.
BTW – the radical enviros are doing the cause of true environmentalism a extreme disservice by their bloviating, elitist posturing on CAGW.
I know of no particular position that FNC is asserting on CAGW. Was that to your question?
As is Fox.
Your point?
Al Gore lives in a 10,000 sq ft house, and he sees fit to lecture ME on global warming? My house is 885 sq ft, I don’t own a dryer (God can dry the clothes for me on the line), and I heat with a woodstove here in northern NJ (sure, the stove emits carbon, but the wood is a local, renewable resource–is that green enough, or will the enviro-nazis be coming after me for that soon?).
I don’t even know how big 10,000 sq ft is. That’s commercial space, a sign along the highway that says there’s 10,000 sq ft of space for lease or rent. My whole house is the size of his master bathroom.
I spoke to Don Easterbrook Jan. 2010 and asked him if I should start stocking up on wood because his website has some very clear research that not only has the warming stopped but that we are heading into a cooling period and that, among geologists, odds are on a cooling like the Dalton Minimum. His answer? “Yes.” I bought 2 cords last summer and am buying 3 cords this summer.
It’s over, folks; the warming is over. We’re heading into a cool period being brought on by the natural fluctuation of the PDO (among several other variables). Already these past three winters here in the Northeast (and across the whole northern tier, actually), towns and even states have ripped through their snow removal budgets by Dec or Jan. Guess they’re going to have to start budgeting more as the winters get colder. The severe tornado outbreaks this spring are the worst since 1953, according to The Weather Channel. What was happening in 1953? We were 8 years into the cool period that began in 1945 and continued until 1978. And what’s happening right now? We’re in the midst of a cool period that some indications show began in 1998. Dust off the heavy, winter coats and hope it IS a minimum like the Dalton and not like the Maunder, as some Russian scientists are calling for. The Maunder Minimum was stinking cold.
Bill Strong says the big investors in “green energy” are set to make Billions, if not Trillions, off Co2 taxes and CO2 “exchanges .”
Trillions, it is.
The projected price of the fascist fraud become mass-hysteria become state-mandated godless religious cult become most massive scam ever become Emissions’ Trading Industrial Complex is calculated at Fifteen Trillion Dollars.
Al-Fredo Gore-leone included, around the Earth, those who most aggressively push for their respective countries and international Emissions’ Trading scams of one kind or another are those positioned for and/or whose cohorts and cronies are positioned for the greatest gains.
Ahh the old pay for results scam , which is exactly what climate gate was about . Truth is water vapor has more to do with global warming than carbon dioxide , yet water vapor cannot be controlled by man and therefore there is no profit to be made with water vapor . So they needed something they could tax and make a profit on , thus the carbon blame game . Have you heard any of those pushing for a carbon tax say anything about growing more plants to offset carbon dioxide ? No ! With only 3 molecules of carbon dioxide per 10,000 molecules of air any drastic reduction and plants would begin to die as would people.
As with everything involving the government follow the money, that is to say who are the big investors in green energy and who is set to make billions if not trillions off carbon taxes and carbon exchanges . Those answers will lead to the truth of the scam being shoved down our throats and by whom .
Geof Barrington says he doesn’t know why he is convinced “big money people” are” not the friends” of the common man.
Dear Geof – In one word, here is why:
Prohibition.
In a few more words here’s why that’s true. Once upon a time Good Men did Good things and became rich and invested their money in Good ways.
Those were the Good Old Days.
Since Prohibition steered all of the really big money into the hands of the world’s Most Evil (which group includes half of south and central America’s, most south-east Asia’s governments and North Korea’s, Russia’s, Peking’s predators and the vast RICO-racketeering criminal enterprises trading as the “Democratic” potty) the world’s Most Evil first bought all of the world’s politicians (witness the recidivist treasonous lying looting thieving mass-murdering co-serial-rapist Blythe (“Clinton”) “administration”) and, with those governments’ willing assistance, laundered all of that evilly-gotten money into ownership, operation and control of ever bigger companies, organizations, institutions, industries, corporations and governments.
Which brings you to your intuitive sense the “big money people” are “not the friends” of the common man. Spot on!
Lysenkoism
Lysenkoism refers to an episode in Russian science featuring a non-scientific peasant plant-breeder named Trofim Denisovich Lysenko [1898-1976]. Lysenko was the leading proponent of Michurianism during the Lenin/Stalin years. I. V. Michurin, in turn, was a proponent of Lamarckism. Lamarck was an 18th century French scientist who argued for a theory of evolution long before Darwin. Lamarck’s theory, however, has been rejected by evolutionary scientists because it is not nearly as powerful an explanation of evolution as natural selection
In any case, Michurin’s views on evolution found favor with the party leadership in the Soviet Union. When the rest of the scientific world were pursuing the ideas of Mendel and developing the new science of genetics, Russia led the way in the effort to prevent the new science from being developed in the Soviet Union. Thus, while the rest of the scientific world could not conceive of understanding evolution without genetics, the Soviet Union used its political power to make sure that none of their scientists would advocate a genetic role in evolution.
It was due to Lysenko’s efforts that many real scientists, those who were geneticists or who rejected Lamarckism in favor of natural selection, were sent to the gulags or simply disappeared from the USSR. Lysenko rose to dominance at a 1948 conference in Russia where he delivered a passionate address denouncing Mendelian thought as “reactionary and decadent” and declared such thinkers to be “enemies of the Soviet people” (Gardner 1957). He also announced that his speech had been approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Scientists either groveled, writing public letters confessing the errors of their way and the righteousness of the wisdom of the Party, or they were dismissed. Some were sent to labor camps. Some were never heard from again.
Under Lysenko’s guidance, science was guided not by the most likely theories, backed by appropriately controlled experiments, but by the desired ideology. Science was practiced in the service of the State, or more precisely, in the service of ideology. The results were predictable: the steady deterioration of Soviet biology. Lysenko’s methods were not condemned by the Soviet scientific community until 1965, more than a decade after Stalin’s death.
Parorchesta: I do not have one citation that documents the several ladies who wrote huge checks to found Scripps, but the newspaper heiress was the first and several others got in line on seeing Keeling’s “We’re all gonna die!” presentation. If you go to my http://adrianvance.blogspot.com and input “Keeling” or “global warming” to the search routine you will get a lot of interesting stuff with documentation, etc.
the warmers always talk about co2 as if it were dangerous and an increase of a few parts per million would do us , the earth and all our future generations harm . in fact if the co2 level was 5 or ten times higher i dont think it would do much harm . this opinion is truly an un -educated one .just what i believe . i wonder how close to the truth it is ?
read Ron Arnolds book Undue Influence . he tells who it is that is funding thre enviro groups . they are the same people funding the media .
Ron Arnold does not talk specificaly about big oil . he talks about big business . any big business . and i believe that it is big business exerting pressure on politicians the world over to fight the enviro fight .i dont know why but im convinced that these big money people are not the friends of the common man
In case there are people not aware of it, Greenpeace USA and its current director Phil Radford were rather heavily involved in what I call the epicenter of the ’96-to-present smear of skeptic scientists, which relies so heavily on a coal industry memo that is never shown in its full context by anyone making the accusation. Click on my name here to be taken to a series of articles & blogs on that.
Plus, our own Steve Milloy was among the first to point out ( https://junkscience.com/2011/04/19/ross-gelbspan-still-not-a-pulitzer-winner/ ) that one of the central figures promulgating the smear, anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan, was not the Pulitzer winner everyone said he was, including Al Gore. Steve also helps me point to an inconvenient contradiction in Gore’s own ‘Gelbspan narrative’ with this handy link; http://junksciencesidebar.com/2011/05/24/ozone-als-propaganda-has-a-long-history/
Adrian – do you have references or web ref please? Thanks. What you have revealed is very important.
I don’t know if Ron used it, but the Keeling Curve, which built the Scripps Institute in San Diego entirely with rich widows checks was a total fraud. I was an undergrad about the time Keeling was doing his work and had to do a gas analysis like his gizmo as our final project. There were six of us remaining from a starting class of 30 and we never could make the ugly thing work, much less reliably and did a “Mission Impossible” kind of operation to steal the unknown answers so we could graduate. I now think the profs were really teaching us how science is really done, i.e. fraudulently.
Let us hope the out come is the same as the war with Japan. With that said I will retire to the music room and learn a few more licks and songs. .
As Japan was losing WW2, they became desperate and sent out the Kamakazi pilots, Kamakazi submarines and launched the incendary “barrage baloons” at the US.
The Global Warming crowd is becoming desperate and are launching similar, desperate, last ditch stand measures.
The Washington Post’s editorial is the height of hypocrisy! While we’re on the subject of environmentalists, we must remember that the true environmentalists are loggers, ranchers, farmers, or anyone else who actually works the land–not a bunch of spoiled, pampered trust fund kids who went on a camping trip and then decided that THEY know all there is to know about the environment.
Absolutely. But instead of “Big Oil”, it’s “Big Government”. The only “scientists” who are convinced of CAGW are those on the government dole, such as the many at the nearby Oak Ridge National Lab. The feds have put far more money behind the anti-coal/oil movement in terms of green subsidies, grants and DOE studies (such as Alstom’s CCS Mountaineer effort) than Big Oil/Coal has combined.
We should be looking at who is really funding the news media- is it foreign oil cartells owned and operated by Middle East interests that want to destroy our country.
US based oil interest have nothing to gain by destroying this country ,but Middle East and Chinesses companyes do.
according to Ron Arnold in his book Undue Influence , the enviro movement is spearheaded by BIG money , including just about all of the trust funds .
it is almost as if these people are conspirering to cause this “green revolution ” . and of course they are the ones who own the media and use it to form the perceptions of the people (otherwise know as sheeple)
“Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side. (…) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. (…) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula.” (Excerpted from Mein Kampf) As the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment was to Nazi Germany, so is WaPo and other media elite outlets to the Green Nazi movement. WaPo is following the Nazi propaganda playbook to the letter.
There is so much money and power driving anthropogenic global warming with young Ph.D.s paying off their loans with government grants livelihoods are at stake. It is just that simple. So far they have gotten $106 billion and that is a lot of money to the few thousand schools able to grant higher degrees. They have corrupted the whole system.
For political analysis,physical science and humor see The Two Minute Conservative at: http://adrianvance.blogspot.com Now on Kindle.
We’re all equal, but some are more equal than others.
The Wash Post has turned into a lib, commie rag and will soon be broke and out of business, as will all lib rags. This is real change and we can believe it’s coming.