Category: Miscellaneous

A funny thing happened on the New York Times’ way to climate alarmism today — a paragraph of debunking facts.

In an above-the-fold, front-page story, the Times’ Leslie Kaufman tried to tell a sad tale about global warming-induced sea-level rise wreaking havoc in Norfolk, VA.

If the moon is going to be full the night before Hazel Peck needs her car, for example, she parks it on a parallel block, away from the river. The next morning, she walks through a neighbor’s backyard to avoid the two-to-three-foot-deep puddle that routinely accumulates on her street after high tides.

For Ms. Peck and her neighbors, it is the only way to live with the encroaching sea.

As sea levels rise, tidal flooding is increasingly disrupting life here and all along the East Coast, a development many climate scientists link to global warming.

And of course, what tale of global warming would be complete without an “expert”?

Many Norfolk residents hope their problems will serve as a warning.

“We are the front lines of climate change,” said Jim Schultz, a science and technology writer who lives on Richmond Crescent near Ms. Peck. “No one who has a house here is a skeptic.”

Kaufman’s tale of woe then ends with the “bitter reality” of global warming:

“The fact is that there is not enough engineering to go around to mitigate the rising sea,” he said. “For us, it is the bitter reality of trying to live in a world that is getting warmer and wetter.”

Unfortunately for the Times, Kaufman and Schultz, some editor (with an ironic sense of humor) inserted the following text into the middle of the story:

Like many other cities, Norfolk was built on filled-in marsh. Now that fill is settling and compacting. In addition, the city is in an area where significant natural sinking of land is occurring. The result is that Norfolk has experienced the highest relative increase in sea level on the East Coast — 14.5 inches since 1930, according to readings by the Sewells Point naval station here.

So climate alarmism and Norfolk have much in common. Both were built in on a faulty foundation. Not unexpectedly, both are now sinking.

What’s remarkable about the Times’ coverage of both is that facts — even when printed in plain English in the middle of the story — just don’t matter.

Al Gore admitted today that corn ethanol was “not a good policy,” according to Reuters — but that’s not the end of the story.

Though he campaigned for ethanol in the past, Gore said,

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol… First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small… It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going… One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president… The size, the percentage of corn particularly, which is now being (used for) first generation ethanol definitely has an impact on food prices… The competition with food prices is real.”

Gore then went on to support so-called second generation technologies which do not compete with food, for example cellulosic technologies which use chemicals or enzymes to extract sugar from fiber in wood, waste or grass. He said,

“I do think second and third generation that don’t compete with food prices will play an increasing role, certainly with aviation fuels.”

Is this a genuine mea culpa on the part of Gore or crocodile tears?

If we turn to the investment portfolio of the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers (KPCB) where Al Gore is a partner, we find that KPCB has invested in Mascoma Corporation, whose business is cellulosic ethanol. Here’s how KPCB’s web site describes Mascoma,

Leading in the development of bio and process technology for cost-effective production of cellulosic ethanol, an inexpensive and source of renewable energy. Cambridge, MA

In 2008, Mascoma received $61 million in financing from a group that included KPCB. In 2006, KPCB was part of a $30 million financing package for Mascoma.

And who knows what other cellulosic ethanol ventures KPCB and Gore have going?

The Reuters reporters didn’t ask Al Gore about his cellulosic ethanol business interests and, of course, Honest Al Gore didn’t volunteer those revealing tidbits either.

So while Al Gore appears to be lamenting bad policy that he supported, instead he is really just trashing corn ethanol in hopes of advancing cellulosic ethanol and his investment in Mascoma.

I see a black road and I want it painted white.

In a Washington Post op-ed today, that “septical environmentalist,” Bjorn Lomborg, advocated whitewashing roof-tops and streets to reflect sunlight in hopes of reducing the alleged warming impacts of manmade greenhouse gas emissions.

In support of his proposal, Lomborg cited a recernt paper by Hashem Akbari estimating that every 100 square feet of black surface painted white would offset one ton of carbon dioxide emitted. Akbari estimates that if all urban roof-tops and streets were painted white, about 44 billion tons of CO2-equivalent would be offset. Akbari claims this would offset the effect of the growth in emissions rates for 11 years.

Akbari estimates that roof-tops and streets cover about 910 billion square meters of the Earth’s surface. Given the coverage of a gallon of paint (about 400 square feet or 37.2 square meters), it would only take about 27 billion cans of paint (allowing for 10 percent waste) to do the job. This would be great for the paint industry which only sells about 630 million gallons of paint annually in the U.S. And of course, once we finish painting the world white, it will be time for another coat. BTW, it costs about $8 per gallon to dispose of paint, about $20 billion for the amount of paint at issue.

Lomborg concludes his op-ed with,

Obviously, whether it involves dikes or buckets of white paint, adaptation is not a long-term solution to global warming. Rather, it will enable us to get by while we figure out the best way to address the root causes of man-made climate change. This may not seem like much, but at a time when fears of a supposedly imminent apocalypse threaten to swamp rational debate about climate policy, it’s worth noting that coping with climate change is something we know how to do.

So Lomborg apparently wants us to spend trillions of dollars continually whitewashing the world while “we” figure out how to address those “root causes of man-made climate change.” Of course, Lomborg has already decided what needs to be done:

Ultimately, we’re not going to solve any of these problems until we figure out a way to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Meet the new Al Gore. Same as the old Al Gore.

Self-proclaimed “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg is uttering untruths about genuine skeptics while promoting his new movie “Cool It.”

Appearing on Fox Business Channel last Friday, Lomborg was asked by host Stuart Varney whether humans were causing [catastrophic] global warming. “Is it us? Is human beings who are doing this?,” implored Varney.

The skeptical environmentalist replied,

I’m an economist. If you look, if you ask some of the smartest scientists, even very skeptical scientists like Dick Lindzen from MIT or Pat Michaels, they tell us global warming is happening and it is manmade. But the point is it’s not the end of the world as it’s been told.

Surprised to hear that the ranks of the skeptics had been thinned of two of its stars, I checked wth Lindzen and Michaels.

Lindzen told me,

My statement has always been that there has probably been some increase in global mean temperature anomaly and that man’s activities make some contribution to this. From what I’ve seen, Lomborg probably doesn’t understand that this is profoundly different from what he claims I am saying.

Michaels told me that while he has always believed that manmade greenhouse gas emissions have some effect on global climate, that effect is not great or even necessarily harmful.

Being an economist, as Lomborg claims, does not excuse him from culpability for such a flagrant misstatement.

The reality about Lomborg is that he is more like Al Gore in relevant part than not. Gore believes that manmade CO2 emissions are a problem and need to be reduced/eliminated. So does Lomborg. Gore says untrue things about skeptics. So does Lomborg. Lomborg says that alarmists should stop scaring children about global warming. Accordingly, in “Cool It,” he seems to have produced little more than “An Inconvenient Truth (Children’s Edition)”.

Here’s how I distinguish Gore from Lomborg. Gore is a scowling, straight, fat carnivore with dark hair. Lomborg is not.

Lomborg’s schtick is glibly surfing the global warming alarmist wave as a T-shirted, Scandanavian Greenpeace-turncoat-cum-skeptic-poseur. So far, only genuine skeptics have clued into to his scam, but no longer. As Hearst movie reviewer Amy Biancolli put it,

But it’s also hard to shake the sense that Lomborg is promoting more than just a different perspective on climate debate. He’s promoting his book – and himself.

You can watch Varney’s interview with Lomborg below:

by Steve Milloy
November 15, 2010, Human Events

Getting a grip on the Environmental Protection Agency must be at the top of the upcoming Republican-controlled House’s “To Do” list.

Of immediate concern are the EPA rules for regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Unless stopped by a federal court, the Obama EPA will implement on Jan. 2 a flagrantly illegal scheme to regulate emissions from power plants and other large emitters. This enactment will kill jobs and raise the prices of energy, and thus of all good and services.

The Obama administration originally designed the scheme as a regulatory sword of Damocles to pressure Congress and industry into agreeing on a cap-and-trade framework.

But cap-and-trade reached its high-water mark in June 2009 when the House barely passed the controversial Waxman-Markey bill. Cap-and-trade’s prospects then deteriorated quite rapidly, placing the Obama administration in the position of having to make good on its threat to unleash the EPA’s carbon dogs on America.

The Obama EPA bootstrapped itself into the carbon regulation business with its December 2009 “endangerment finding,” decreeing that GHG emissions threaten the public welfare. The EPA based its finding on a 2007 report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—a report that, while always controversial, came under even more fire as a result of the November 2009 Climategate scandal.

Already on shaky legal ground, the EPA ventured clearly into law-breaking territory with its June 2010 “tailoring rule.” Under the Clean Air Act, if the EPA regulates a “pollutant,” it must regulate all sources that emit as little as 100 tons per year.

Implementing this requirement for GHGs would put the EPA in the impossible position of having to regulate virtually every small business and multi-family residential complex—a total of more than 6.1 million sources nationwide. The EPA estimated it would require 1.4 billion work hours costing $63 billion over three years to accomplish that task.

Rather than comply with the law, the habitually rogue EPA went totally outlaw in unilaterally deciding to raise the permitting threshold to sources emitting 75,000 tons per year, cutting the number of regulated sources to a more manageable 20,000.
Congressional Democrats have so far blocked efforts to rein in the EPA. Last June, Senate Democrats narrowly defeated the so-called Murkowski resolution to block the EPA from regulating GHGs. Though Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D–WV) proposed to delay EPA regulation for two years, there is no indication his effort will advance during the lame duck session.

Congressional failure has left enforcement of the law to private parties and to states such as Alabama, Texas, and Virginia, which have filed a number of lawsuits against the EPA. And while it is possible that some federal judge may enjoin the EPA from acting before Jan. 2, we shouldn’t hold our breaths waiting.

The federal judiciary is politicized, unpredictable, and not necessarily tethered to traditional notions of law and fact. Current federal law and existing Supreme Court decisions make it difficult to challenge the EPA successfully. And while the lawyers for the parties suing the EPA no doubt know the law as well as the opposing counsel does, there is a question of motivation to consider.

The Obama administration lawyers are ideologically motivated, backed by the force of an aggressive government, have nothing to lose, and, consequently, are out to win at all costs. They will be facing off against plaintiffs’ lawyers who represent firms that are squishy, politically-sensitive, and bipartisan, as well as trade associations with a variety of agendas, a fear of angering the government or of upsetting the Democrats’ hierarchical chain of command. It would be a shock to see these lawyers break any china to on behalf of their clients.

While our hearts should be with those who are suing the EPA, our money should be on the likelihood of seeing lousy lawyering and worse judging involved in addressing their cause.

This sad finding brings us to our last best chance for getting the EPA under control: the Republican-dominated House. From denying the EPA funding for its programs, particularly the agency’s air and enforcement offices, to oversight investigations of the White House and the EPA, the House can throw much-needed monkey wrenches into the Obama administration’s jihad against GHG emissions and our economy.

With its mandate to end government profligacy and abuses of power, and to revive our economy, the House GOP needs to be fully engaged in the battle against the EPA, starting promptly on Jan. 2.

Mr. Milloy is the founder and publisher of JunkScience.com. His columns and op-ed pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of “Green Hell,” a new book from Regnery Publishing.

By Steve Milloy
November 4, 2010, GreenHellBlog.com

Radical environmentalists and unscrupulous profiteers have put together a perpetual junk science machine in hopes of driving the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) to extinction. That machine includes a gullible/sympathetic media that hopes to get away with telling the public only part of the story. Consider a Nov. 2 report by Science News’ Janet Raloff, “Skin is no barrier to BPA study shows; Finding suggests store receipts could be significant source of exposures.”

Raloff starts her story by quoting the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Frederick vom Saal (more on him later), who says that

“The new study [by Daniel Zalko et al. and published in Chemosphere] is now unequivocal in showing that yes, BPA can go through human skin.”

While no one disputes that some BPA can be absorbed through the skin, the question is how much and is this harmful?

As Zalko admits in his study, BPA is metabolized to highly water soluble metabolites that are known to be estrogen inactive. This downplayed fact is, of course, devastating to the underlying scare, which relies on the hypothesis that absorbed BPA acts like an estrogen.

To get around this problem, Raloff obliquely acknowledges it by stating,

“Though such transformations are often assumed to render a chemical nontoxic…”

She then offers a naked claim by Zalko in contradiction:

“’that would be a false assumption,’ Zalko says, ‘because any compound that has been conjugated can be deconjugated’.”

But while Zalko claims that these metabolites can be converted back into BPA in the body, this is pure speculation (wishful thinking?) on his part as there is no data to support the claim.

Raloff then tells us that,

The role of metabolites in BPA’s potential toxicity is complicated, vom Saal says, because the body can — and regularly does — conjugate and deconjugate compounds. “It’s well known,” for instance, “that the body is full of desulfating enzymes, which play a role regulating estrogen levels during pregnancy.”

There is no doubt that the body is full of many chemicals that have a variety of roles — but there remains no evidence that the body converts any non-estrogenic BPA metabolites back into BPA.

Raloff’s article then goes on to discuss another earlier Zalko study involving application of BPA to the ears of dead pigs. Zalko reports that after three days, more than half of the applied BPA diffused through the skins of the pig ears.

But who cares about how much BPA can be absorbed by the ears of dead pigs? We have data from real human beings. As pointed out on this blog earlier:

A June 2010 study published in the journal Annals of Bioanalysis and Chemistry by Swiss food regulators reported that a person repeatedly touching thermal printer paper for 10 hours/day, such as at a cash register, would absorb 42 times less BPA than permitted by current safety regulations, which already have a very significant margin of safety. No workers or consumers would normally be exposed to even such infinitesimal amounts.

A February 2010 study from the University of Zurich’s Centre for Xenobiotic Risk Research reported that, “Dermal absorption (that is, absorption through the skin), is therefore at most a secondary absorption route for bisphenol A. The primary absorption route is still dietary intake. For this route, daily total amounts of bisphenol A around 10,000 times higher are considered harmless for adults.”

Raloff relies heavily on vom Saal to validate Zalko’s claims and insinuations. But she omits mention of two salient facts about vom Saal:

1. He is a long-time and reality-free advocate against BPA; and
2. His scientific claims against BPA have not been replicated by independent scientists.

Raloff concludes her article by pointing out that Appleton Papers is poised to rush to market BPA-free receipt paper for the upcoming holiday season. No doubt Raloff’s Science News hatchet-job will accompany Appleton’s marketing pitches — a perfect accompaniment as it contains not a single skeptical or dissenting voice.

BPA may be targeted for extinction but here’s why the rest of us ought not let that happen.

BPA is the test case for the bogus theory of endocrine disrupters. If the radical greens get away with destroying BPA’s reputation based on that never-validated hypothesis, they will proceed to use that scam against a host of other chemicals. The battle for BPA is not really about BPA. It’s about whether we will use science or circuses to determine chemical safety.

For more on BPA, check out Debunkosaurus.com.

By Steve Milloy
October 28, 2010, GreenHellBlog.com

A Kaiser Permanente-sponsored study of 514 Chinese workers reports that urinary levels of chemical bisphenol A (BPA) were associated with decreased sperm concentration, total sperm count, sperm vitality and sperm motility. The study was published in the journal of Fertility and Sterility. It may as well have been published in the journal of Futility and Stupidity.

First, the statistical associations are quite dubious. None of the reported associations between urinary BPA levels and semen quality are statistically significant. None of the p-values were reported, so it can be presumed that they all exceed the standard significance requirement of P =< 0.05. The confidence intervals (i.e., margins of error) are all quite wide — i.e., 160-200+% greater than the size of the reported association.

Next, the statistical associations were supposedly adjusted for age, education, history of chronic disease, previous history of exposure to other chemicals and metals, employment history, marital status, age at first intercourse, smoking, drinking and study site. But all these “data” were self-reported by the workers and the researchers made no effort to verify or validate any of it. Assuming for the sake of argument, for example, that smoking, drinking, and “exposure to other chemicals and metals” are true confounding factors for semen quality, no information was collected on the levels of such exposures. No doubt there are many other risk factors for reduced semen quality, but they weren’t considered. The researchers claim that study subjects complied with a 7-day sexual abstinence requirement but how certain can they be?

Also, the study population was not randomly selected. Of the 888 workers eligible to participate, only 514 did. Were these 514 the less healthy ones who opted for a free medical exam?

This effort was not designed or conducted so as to study the relationship of BPA exposure to semen quality. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t.

BPA has been used for more than 50 years with no real-world indication that it has ever harmed anyone. That’s why the anti-chemcial activists are forced to stoop to the depths of such junk science.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery 2009).

For more on BPA, check out JunkScience.com’s Debunkosaurus.

By Steve Milloy
October 27, 2010 GreenHellBlog

A new study from Sweden reports that “cash receipts could be a major source of exposure to the long-used but newly controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA).”

Study author Tomas Östberg of the Swedish Jegrelius Institute reported in early October that receipts he analyzed contained an average of around 1.4 percent BPA. Östberg then leapt to the conclusion that, “Because there is a risk that this may be a health hazard, the use of thermal paper that contains bisphenol A should be minimized.” News of the study was picked up by European media, including the Stuttgarter Zeitung (Oct. 16), which advised readers in a headline to “Steer clear of receipts.”

Östberg’s study, however, is a long way from constituting evidence that cash receipts present any sort of risk to workers or consumers.

First, as Östberg obliquely admits, it is not at all certain that BPA presents any sort of health risk at all, even if it is present in receipts, albeit to a very small degree. It is important to keep in mind that BPA has been used commercially for more than 50 years, and despite all that use and exposure, there are no published scientific studies or reports of workers or consumers being actually harmed by BPA.

Though BPA has become the subject of much controversy recently, that has mainly been due to unsubstantiated claims of BPA being a so-called “endocrine disrupter” at low doses. None of these claims have been verified, validated or vindicated and only continue to resound because of constant repetition by anti-chemical activist groups and a sympathetic-to-ignorant news media. Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority deem BPA to be perfectly safe at existing exposure levels.

Östberg’s study merely exploits the ongoing BPA controversy by reporting the presence of BPA in receipts — as if the existence of controversy makes BPA’s presence in receipts dangerous.

Östberg fails to mention two recent studies that essentially debunk his own. It’s not important that receipts contain BPA so much as how much of the BPA is typically absorbed from handling them.

A June 2010 study published in the journal Annals of Bioanalysis and Chemistry by Swiss food regulators reported that a person repeatedly touching thermal printer paper for 10 hours/day, such as at a cash register, would absorb 42 times less BPA than permitted by current safety regulations, which already have a very significant margin of safety. No workers or consumers would normally be exposed to even such infinitesimal amounts.

A February 2010 study from the University of Zurich’s Centre for Xenobiotic Risk Research reported that, “Dermal absorption (that is, absorption through the skin), is therefore at most a secondary absorption route for bisphenol A. The primary absorption route is still dietary intake. For this route, daily total amounts of bisphenol A around 10,000 times higher are considered harmless for adults.”

What can we conclude from these scientific studies? It is quite clear that the BPA-in-receipts controversy is just another scare contrived by anti-chemical activists.

But why not simply short-circuit the controversy and replace BPA with another chemical as some have tried with so-called “BPA-free” receipts?

Aside from the fact that BPA-free receipts are more expensive, while providing no discernible health or safety benefits, there is the issue of allowing anti-chemical activists to get away with using junk science and fear to smear a perfectly safe technology. Few chemicals have been as heavily scrutinized as BPA, after all, and still there is no direct evidence indicating it poses any risk to health whatsoever.

BPA is a test case for the activists. If they get away with establishing vanishingly small exposures to BPA as a health hazard, they will use the precedent to systematically eliminate other beneficial chemicals from society on an arbitrary basis. In the US, class action lawsuits involving BPA asking for billions of dollars in compensatory damages have already been filed.

Chemicals have helped give western society the highest and healthiest standard of living it has ever enjoyed. We have regulatory systems that ensure these chemicals are used safely. Those proven safeguards should not be abandoned in favor of wild allegations from irresponsible activists whose agenda is not to educate the public, but to cause maximal alarm and fear, to undermine public confidence in the regulatory process — and to make money for themselves.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery 2009).

For more debunking of BPA scares, please visit JunkScience.com’s Debunkosaurus.

by Steve Milloy
October 21, 2010, Human Events

The New York Times’ editorial writers have apparently spent the last 11 months in a Rip Van Winkle-like state of unconsciousness when it comes to climate change.

Monday‘s lead editorial, “In Climate Denial Again,” railed about the 19 of 20 or so Republican Senate candidates who do not “accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming.” The Times contrasted those deniers with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 report, the group’s “most definitive statement on the human contribution to climate change,” and a 2000 promise by George W. Bush to cap carbon dioxide emissions

But nowhere in the editorial did the Times recall Climategate or the other related global warming-related “gates” that the November 2009 scandal touched off—all of which, no doubt, helped make skeptics of 95% of Republican Senate candidates. So here’s a quick recap of what happened over the past year to the legendary scientific “consensus” on global warming.

Last November, a host of private and candid e-mails between climate alarmist-scientists stored at the University of East Anglia (UK) somehow made its way into the public domain and history. Like a shot heard around the world, the e-mails instantaneously validated what the climate skeptics had been saying for more than a decade about the alarmists — that they had cooked the books on global warming science and then conspired to silence and belittle their critics.

Most famously, the e-mails revealed that the alarmist community was aware and, indeed, even proud of the scientific fraud known as the “hockey stick” — a graph purporting to show that global temperatures had been stable over the last millennium and then had spiked upwards during the 20th Century, impliedly due to human activities. All this was expressed in an e-mail that featured the infamous Climategate phrase “Mike’s trick… to hide the decline.”

As it turns out, the reason a “trick” was needed to “hide the decline” was that, in reality, the hockey stick data used to show global temperatures spiking during the 20th Century actually showed a decline in the later part of the 20th Century — the precise opposite phenomena that the alarmists claimed to have occurred. But the inconvenient data was intentionally deleted and replaced with other, more cooperative data.

This fraud is what prompted Virginia Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli to launch an investigation into whether Virginia taxpayers were defrauded by hockey stick inventor and former University of Virginia researcher Michael Mann.

Perhaps the real significance of Climategate is that it opened the floodgates of pent-up global skepticism. Climategate was followed in rapid succession by glacier-gate, rainforest-gate, Pachauri-gate and NASA-gate.

Glacier-gate exposed the much-repeated and IPCC-official falsehood that global warming was going to cause the disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035. This myth was used by Sen. John Kerry to whip up frenzy about Himalayan melting leading to regional water shortages and, ultimately, war between India and Pakistan.

As it turns out though, there never was any scientific study or evidence that the glaciers were going anywhere soon. The IPCC claim about the glaciers was based on a mere 1998 telephone interview with an obscure Indian scientist that was reported in the New Scientist magazine, which by the way, is not anywhere close to a peer-reviewed science journal.

Amazon-gate involved another IPCC claim that global warming was going to destroy 40% of the Amazon rainforest. Once again the sourcing of the factoid was dubious. It came from a report put together by the World Wildlife Fund, a radical green activist group. The report had not been independently peer-reviewed or validated.

Glacier-gate and Amazon-gate opened up the IPCC and its chief Rajendra Pachauri to a great deal of criticism and made Pachauri vulnerable to inquiries about his various conflicts of interest.

Though he positioned himself as the impartial head of the Nobel Peace prize winning IPCC, in reality Pachauri has had ties to many energy companies, including companies that planned on profiting from carbon trading. Reminiscent of another major UN scandal — oil-for-food — Pachauri-gate helps explain how glacier-gate and Amazon-gate happened.

The still ongoing NASA-gate involves the systematic distortion of global temperature readings by the U.S. government. As revealed by a team of skeptics riding the Climategate wave, NASA researchers were exposed as improperly manipulating temperature data to produce claims such as “2005 was the warmest year on record.”

The researchers showed how NASA had been gradually trimming the number of temperature stations (from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,000 now) and then averaging temperature data in such a way as to produce synthetically warmer temperatures. The 2005-warmest-temperature-claim was, in fact, based on a temperature “data base” that had no original temperature data.

A fascinating aspect the past year’s meltdown in climate alarmism is that most of the facts underlying the developments weren’t newly discovered — at least to climate skeptics.

Glacier-gate, for example, was flagged at my web site JunkScience.com in 1998 when the claim was first made. The hockey stick had been publicly exposed and debunked in 2006, including in congressional hearings and by the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council. NASA’s skewing of temperature data was also a familiar topic of concern among skeptics.

Climategate was the straw that broke the alarmists’ back. The rapid-fire succession of glacier-gate, Amazon-gate and Pachauri-gate left global warming alarmism reeling. It now seems that the deniers are those who insist that Climategate and its progeny have not smashed the public confidence in the 50-year-old climate alarmism hypothesis.

But there is one lesson in physical science that the New York Times and its fellow alarmists will learn when they wake up from their stupor of denial — it takes a lot less time to pop a bubble that it does to create one.

Mr. Milloy is the founder and publisher of JunkScience.com. His columns and op-ed pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of “Green Hell,” a new book from Regnery Publishing.

Poor, poor pitiful Michael Mann. Check out his op-ed in last Friday’s Washington Post — our comments in bracketed bold.

Get the anti-science bent out of politics
By Michael E. Mann
Friday, October 8, 2010; A17

As a scientist [Wanna poll that assertion?], I shouldn’t have a stake in the upcoming midterm elections, but unfortunately, it seems that I — and indeed all my fellow climate scientists — do. [Republicans = Inquisition, don’t ya know…]

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has threatened that, if he becomes chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he will launch what would be a hostile investigation of climate science. The focus would be on e-mails stolen [There’s no evidence that the e-mails were “stolen.”] from scientists at the University of East Anglia in Britain last fall that climate-change deniers have falsely claimed demonstrate wrongdoing by scientists, including me. [As between so-called climate-change deniers” and Michael Mann, “falsely” and “wrongdoing” only apply to Mann.] Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) may do the same if he takes over a committee on climate change and energy security.

My employer, Penn State University, exonerated me [False: PSU never really investigated Mann; it more or less just took his word that he had done nothing wrong. Since there was no genuine investigation, he could not have been genuinely “exonerated.”] after a thorough investigation [LOL!] of my e-mails in the East Anglia archive. Five independent investigations in Britain and the United States, and a thorough recent review by the Environmental Protection Agency, also have cleared the scientists of accusations of impropriety. [All were as whitewashey as PSU’s. “Independent” is probably not the right adjective to describe the investigations; “staged” is much more accurate.]

Nonetheless, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is investigating my previous employer, the University of Virginia, based on the stolen e-mails. [Even if the e-mails were stolen, how exactly does that exonerate Mann? BTW, Daniel Ellsberg stole files (Pentagon Papers) and he was/is a hero of the Left.] A judge rejected his initial subpoena, finding that Cuccinelli had failed to provide objective evidence of wrongdoing. [The judge said that Cuccinelli was within his rights to file such subpoenas and that he needed to be more specific as to what he was looking for.] Undeterred, Cuccinelli appealed the decision to the Virginia Supreme Court and this week issued a new civil subpoena.

What could Issa, Sensenbrenner and Cuccinelli possibly think they might uncover now, a year after the e-mails were published? [Evidence of f-r-a-u-d.]

The truth is that they don’t expect to uncover anything. Instead, they want to continue a 20-year assault on climate research, questioning basic science and promoting doubt where there is none. [No, they are just questioning whether the hockey stick was a fraud and whether a fraud was perpetrated on taxpayers.]

Cuccinelli, in fact, rests his case largely on discredited claims that Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) made during hearings in 2005 at which he attacked me and my fellow researchers. [Discredited? By who? When? Where? Any names? Details?] Then-Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) had the courage and character to challenge Barton’s attacks. We need more political leaders like him today. [Boehlert = RINO]

We have lived through the pseudo-science that questioned the link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer [Tobacco company hijinks = Michael Mann innocence?], and the false claims questioning the science of acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer. [What false claims is he referring to? Does he know anything about either? Or is this just more guilt by Mann-uendo?] The same dynamics and many of the same players are still hard at work, questioning the reality of climate change. [No one questions “the reality of climate change”; it’s the causes and drivers that are being debated.]

The basic physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide and other human-produced greenhouse gases trap heat in the lower atmosphere have been understood for nearly two centuries. Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers and raising sea levels. It is leading to more widespread drought, more frequent heat waves and more powerful hurricanes. Even without my work, or that of the entire sub-field of studying past climates, scientists are in broad agreement on the reality of these changes and their near-certain link to human activity.[These last three sentences are disputed by skeptics.]

Burying our heads in the sand would leave future generations at the mercy of potentially dangerous changes in our climate. [Humans have always been at the mercy of nature. Fossil fuels have greatly lessened our vulnerability.] The only sure way to mitigate these threats is to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions dramatically over the next few decades. [Really? No more bad weather if we reduce CO2 levels?] But even if we don’t reduce emissions, the reality of adapting to climate change will require responses from government at all levels. [There is no evidence that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will have any discernible effect at all on the climate.]

Challenges to policy proposals for how to deal with this problem should be welcome — indeed, a good-faith debate is essential for wise public policymaking. [Quite a statement from someone who tried to silence critics.]

But the attacks against the science must stop. [No one is attacking science. We’re attacking junk science.] They are not good-faith questioning of scientific research. They are anti-science. [Mann accuses his opponents of what he is doing — an old trick of narcissists and Communists.]

How can I assure young researchers in climate science that if they make a breakthrough in our understanding about how human activity is altering our climate that they, too, will not be dragged through a show trial at a congressional hearing? [Easy… tell them not to engage in junk science or fraud.]

America has led the world in science for decades. It has benefited our culture, our economy and our understanding of the world. [No thanks to Michael Mann and his kind.]

My fellow scientists and I must be ready to stand up to blatant abuse from politicians who seek to mislead and distract the public. They are hurting American science. And their failure to accept the reality of climate change will hurt our children and grandchildren, too. [If Michael Mann wants to “stand up” to something, why doesn’t he stand up for a debate against a skeptical climate scientist? I think we all know the asnwer to that one.]

Michael E. Mann, the author of “Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming,” is a professor in the meteorology department at Penn State University and director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. [PSU’s continued employment of Mann gives a whole new meaning to Nittany lion.]

We urge people to move to Virginia just so they can vote for Ken Cuccinelli in future elections.

Democrats haven’t done much to earn anyone’s trust lately, but here’s West Virginia Governor and U.S. Senate candidate Joe Manchin trying to make amends in a TV ad where Manchin literally shoots a cap-and-trade bill. Manchin gets an A+ for this effort.

C’mon John Raese… let’s see you top Manchin’s ad!

Last week’s exploding kids video was not a one-of-a-kind twisted green ad. Below is an ad from ACT-Responsible:

Time for a name change for Act-Responsible.