Global Warming Not Affecting Chicago?

The central thesis of global warming theory is that as concentrations of atmospheric CO₂ rise then so does global temperature. Unfortunately for Al Gore and the AGW alarmist crowd, global temperatures have remained steady or have been declining since 2003 despite the fact that CO₂ concentrations have been rising (thanks to the industrial efforts of China and India whom the leftists want to exempt from any type of carbon restrictions).

The city of Chicago is feeling the effects of this period of Global Cooling:

The cloudy, chilly and rainy open to June here has been the talk of the town. So far this June is running more than 12 degrees cooler than last year, and the clouds, rain and chilly lake winds have been persistent. The average temperature at O'Hare International Airport through Friday has been only 59.5 degrees: nearly 7 degrees below normal and the coldest since records there began 50 years ago.

If the Global Warming alarmists were correct, temperatures should have gone up, not down. That would be true for the temperature in the Great Lakes as well as in the atmosphere.

Global Warming theory has once again failed it own test.

You can access the complete entry on-line here:

So Far, June's Chill Is One For The Records
Steve Kahn
WGN Weather Center
June 12, 2009

Manipulating The Terminology To Confuse People About Climate Change

So, when "global warming" turns out to be "global cooling" what is a leftist activist to do? The main thing they try to do is to muddle the argument by changing the terminology they use to describe their agenda and the reasons for their agenda.

The is why the United Nation talks about "climate change" rather than "global warming." When it became clear that the earth was in fact cooling down and the people of this planet were witnessing record snowfalls and record cold temperatures, the left-wing climate activists knew they had made a mistake with the "global warming" theory and needed a way to tidy things up so that they wouldn't lose their cause nor the millions of dollars in donations they use to pay their own salaries.



From the New York Times:

The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.” The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington. Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

That's right. Instead of admitting that they've bought into a flawed and scientifically untenable theory, they try to confuse people with new terminology in the hopes that the new words will somehow make people believe in the cause again.

And here is how they are doing it:

EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations by someone who sat in this week on a briefing intended for government officials and environmental leaders. Asked about the summary, ecoAmerica’s president and founder, Robert M. Perkowitz, requested that it not be reported until the formal release of the firm’s full paper later this month, but acknowledged that its wide distribution now made compliance with his request unlikely.

Not only are they doing research on how to make the issue more confusing, they do it in secret so that no one would have a chance to analyze what was really going on.

But why are they scrambling to do this? What changed so radically that they have to make this radical adjustment in their language?

Read on:

Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists.

Despite shrill claims that the oil and coal lobbies are causing this, the truth is that Americans can look outside their windows and see what is really happening. They do not see a world getting warmer as the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) alarmists predicted. They see a world getting cooler and are trying to find the real answers as to why. That is what scares the left-wing environmentalists the most: that the truth might actually be revealed by legitimate scientists.

And how far has this gone?

The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. “Energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.” In fact, the group’s surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.” “Another key finding: remember to speak in TALKING POINTS aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology,” said the e-mail account of the group’s study. Mr. Perkowitz and allies in the environmental movement have been briefing officials in Congress and the administration in the hope of using the findings to change the terms of the debate now under way in Washington.

I hope you notice the following clause from EcoAmerica's quote: "... while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology."

They want to avoid the science behind the issue. The studies of climatology, meteorology and astrophysics are not to be allowed into the debate. Why would they want these aspects kept out of the discussion? Because it would allow people access to more information and more data, most of which shows that global warming, global cooling and climate change are natural phenomena rather than man-made.

Also note that they are briefing members of Congress to use the same words and terminology, just like trained parrots.

You can access an excellent webpage with loads of answers to questions about the global warming/cooling and/or climate change debate here:

The Real 'Inconvenient Truth'
JunkScience.org
August 2007

And you can access the New York Times article on-line here:

Seeking To Save The Planet, With A Thesaurus
John M. Broder
New York Times
May 1, 2009

Global Warming On Hold? Discovery Channel Thinks So

Every now and then, you can find a nugget of truth buried in the hype about global warming. Discovery has printed such a nugget in an article that asks why global warming predictions have not come true:

Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat. "This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one."

Oh, this current cooling trend does have a cause, if the people at the Discovery Channel would only look in the right place to find it:

Vanishing Sun Spots A Prelude To Global Cooling?
Michael Asher
International Climate Science Coalition
February 9, 2008

2008 Ends Spotless And With 266 Spotless Days, The #2 Least Active Year Since 1900, Portends Cooling
Joseph D’Aleo CCM, AMS Fellow via WattsUpWithThat Blog
December 31, 2008

But the Discovery article ignores all of this and instead tries to stir more climate fears by making a completely unsupported prediction that warming will return in about 30 years and be coming on stronger than ever.

Maybe someone should try telling that to our sun.

You can access the original article on-line here:

Global Warming On Hold?
Michael Reilly
Discovery News
March 2, 2009

Global Warming Reality Check: The Predictions Are Not Coming True

More and more evidence mounts that the idea of man-made global warming is nothing more than hype for the sake of hype. Not only that, but there are political implications here where governments (particularly those controlled by leftist socialists) are using the fear-mongering angle of the issue as an excuse for grabbing more power.

Writing for the Houston Chronicle, Robert L. Bradley shines some light on the issue and looks at the temperature trends of the past 100 years, the prediciations that pseudo-scientists have made concerning global warming and how those predictions fared against reality.

From his column:

The new century has cooled the case for climate alarmism. Global warming has stalled — not accelerated as expected. Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have increased, but temperatures have been flat for the last eight years and have slightly fallen since 1998's El Nino-driven temperature spike. If the cool-off continues until 2015, as could be the case according to a study published in Nature magazine, we will have had a see-saw of global warming (1900-45), global cooling (1945-75), global warming (1975-98), and flatness (1998-2015). Where does all of this leave us coming out of the Little Ice Age that ended in the mid-18th century — and after a century of greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere? Today's temperature is about 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer, and in a naturally warmer climate cycle. Compare this to Al Gore's scary talk about an 11-degree man-made temperature rise this century under business as usual.

I remember the predictions from the 1980's that said Canada and Russia would be the world's leading food producers by now and the mid-West of the North American continent would be a desert. Instead, we are having record cold temperatures, record snow falls and Artic sea-ice now extends out further than it did in 1979.

More:

Of course the climate is changing — always has and always will — and there may very well be a distinct human influence on climate. Carbon dioxide is a warming agent, as are the other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere from human activities. But the good news is that so far the observed climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases is much less than what some climate models predict. ... The recent temperature reversal comes on top of falsified climate mini-scares. One headline-grabber was that ocean circulation patterns disrupted by global warming would freeze over North America and Western Europe. "False alarm," Science magazine would later declare to little fanfare. Hurricane Katrina was featured in Al Gore's book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth, as if man, not nature, were to blame. But subsequent research has painted a very mixed picture about hurricanes in a warmer world. Most research predicts fewer tropical storms will develop, and changed wind patterns might cancel out the effect of warmer waters on hurricane strength. There is more agreement that extra-tropical storms are lessened from warming because of a diminished temperature gradient between the poles.

That's right. Cold air from the arctic below and warm air from the tropics above. When they meet, they cause storms. The greater the temperature difference between the two, the more violent the storms. The National Oceanic & Atomospheric Administration (NOAA) actually tracked the number of tornadoes in the American mid-West during the past fifty years and found that when the temperature differential was greater (i.e. a cooler arctic region), more tornadoes formed. This runs counter to the global warming theory that warmer weather leads to more storms. The scientific data suggests that a warmer climate means fewer and less severe storms.

Bradley goes on:

Gore's scenario about a 20-foot sea-level rise in man's future has also not sat well with science. The modest sea-level rise of recent decades — continuing a trend of the past centuries for reasons that are not well understood — is expected to continue. While Greenland is losing ice, Antarctica is gaining ice. Melting Arctic sea ice, meanwhile, does not affect sea level — nor does the growth of sea ice in the southern ocean — for the same reason that melting ice cubes do not cause a drink to spill. The sea-level debate concerns inches, not feet, for future decades and even centuries.

Rememeber the claims that barrier islands such as the Outer Banks of North Carolina would be underwater by now? Well, the barrier islands are still there.

Evidence continues to mount that global warming alrmists have pulled a huge multi-billion dollar hoax. That money could have been better spent elsewhere.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Climate-Change Alarmism Runs Into A Reality Check
Robert L. Bradley
Houston Chronicle
January 8, 2009

Both The Remote Sensing Systems Of Santa Rosa And University Of Alabama (Huntsville) Dataset Show Temperature Going Down

See the two above graphs? They both show that the earth has been in a cyclical cooling trend for the past several years. Although no one can accurately predict what the trends will be for the years to come, both of the data representations show that all of the hype about the world coming to an end because of man-made "greenhouse" gases is nothing more than ... well ... a bunch of hype.

Greenhouse gas theory holds that as greenhouse gas emissions increase, global temperatures go up. Since 2000, greenhouse gas emissions have indeed gone up thanks to China and India, but as the data shows, temperatures have gone down. The theory has failed its own major test.

Also note the UAH graph has detail explanations with regards to certain outlier events (the eruption of Mount Pinatubo and the cycling of El Nino) in addition to a fourth-order polynomial fit to show what the trends are. No global warming alarmist would ever mention such natural causes nor such contrary evidence in any of their arguments.