New Op-ed: No Global Warming Crisis
My newest op-ed is up at Fox News. This is the first piece in what will be a regular weekly column at Fox News.
UPDATE: At the conference in New York that I write about in the above piece, the Founder of the Weather Channel talks about the "fraud of global warming" here.
John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton all promise massive new regulations that will cost trillions of dollars to combat global warming. McCain says that it will be his first task if he wins the presidency. After consulting with Al Gore, Obama feels the problem is so imminent that it is not even really possible to wait until he becomes president.
Ironically, this political unanimity is occurring as global temperatures have been cooling dramatically over the last decade. . . .
UPDATE: At the conference in New York that I write about in the above piece, the Founder of the Weather Channel talks about the "fraud of global warming" here.
Labels: Environment, GlobalWarming, op-ed
posted by John Lott at 5:44 PM
13 Comments:
It's great to hear the truth about the global warming myth. This myth is impacting building codes which mandate costly items and design to save energy. If we are willing to pay for the energy, what is the problem?
Al Gore ran with the Global warming un scientific fact and the Liberal Democrats are loving every minute of it because it puts tax payers money in there pocket. As none will come to the fact the global warming and global cooling is a cycle of the planet. And even as the moon begins its journey moving away from the earth the earth will begin to wobble on its axes changing the climate yet again around the world. I wonder who was responsible for the Ice Age a billion years ago. Liberals are what is bad for this world.
John,
Thank you for a non-hysterical analysis of this issue. When the conversation turns to global warming with educated Manhattan people they lose all rationality and scream about how we are all going to die from this, or our children will at a minimum. When I point out that Islamic terrorism deserves more attention as an immediate threat they pooh-pooh it. They have already forgotten 9/11.
How can anyone believe that global warming is a myth? Having worked at environmental NGOs, having attended congressional hearings, having taken the trouble to read the IPCC reports, as well as climate change reports from all over the world, including Canada, India, and Brazil, I join the vast majority of scientists who believe that global warming is occurring beyond any reasonable doubt.
Your article cites 100 scientists, but what about the 99% of scientists who DO believe that global warming is occurring? What about the fact that the tiny minority of scientists who disagree are often paid by republican organizations (upwards of 10,000) to sign reports discrediting global climate change? What is more likely, that 99% of scientists and countries around the world are engaged in a massive global conspiracy to make everyone wore off, or that a minority of business people who stand to lose something in the face of regulations against global warming are waging a disinformation campaign?
Appealing to Occam's razor, I think that people are warranted in concluding the latter, even if they did not go through the trouble of actually reading the reports themselves (which, as part of my job, I was required to do).
Fact:
A 2004 article by geologist and historian of science Naomi Oreskes summarized a study of the scientific literature on climate change.[30] The essay concluded that there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. The author analyzed 928 abstracts of papers from refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, listed with the keywords "global climate change". Oreskes divided the abstracts into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. 75% of the abstracts were placed in the first three categories, thus either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, thus taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change; none of the abstracts disagreed with the consensus position, which the author found to be "remarkable". According to the report, "authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point."
I have never seen anything so ignorant since reading the story of the Salem witch trails. 'Global warming good', '35mpg as good as 30', 'rising sea levels not that bad'. This column is as bad as the president of Iran saying that the "holocaust did not happen".
The conference was organized by the Heartland institute, http://www.heartland.org/
It's an openly conservative thinktank (their website is a joke) which receives quite a bit of funding from ExxonMobile
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=41
You're an insult to academia, Mr. Lott. Why don't you just leave the university and join one of the countless Exxon funded thinktanks? I'm sure it'd be more lucrative.
I can think about anything I want to, yet, I do not have the Phd.
However, I do have as much expertise in the matter of Global Warming/Climate change as Mr Lott. This post seemed unbalanced to me in several areas.
- John Rust
It would be difficult to criticize the rise in public awareness if it were done so with honest intensions through evidence and logic. This has clearly not been the case and I can only conclude that the waters have been muddied by personal gains such as environmental grants, government appropriations, publicity for politicians, its use as a political wedge, “green” marketing, and on and on.
The well-intentioned ill-informed public will cut off their nose to spite their face in the name of man made GW
Dear John Rust:
Thanks for weighing in. Since you ask, I have taught environmental regulation at such places as the Wharton Business School. I have done some research in academic journals regarding environmental issues.
Hi John,
That's got a few wound up. Interesting that some make it a conservative v liberal thing...
Others still believe all studies are born equal...(poor things)
I've just been reading the extended abstract for a paper presented by Jonathon Poulter, a PHD student at Leeds university to my local Geological Society. In it he describes Eocene (tertiary Period) large leaved temperate vegetation remains from Svarlbad, in the Norwegian arctic. Most of these are from Fagacea (oak and beech family).
At that time Tropical vegetation and fauna extended as far as southern England.
Although that period corresponded with the opening of the north Atlantic and consequent high CO2 and CH4 levels in the atmosphere, I don't think anyone is suggesting that the earth somehow became a dusty fireball at that time.
During interglacials in the Quaternary, the climate has been warm enough for African fauna such as hippo to be present in the English Pennine hills, and rubified soils to form.
Strangely, I don't think Conservative politics can be blamed for any of those...
Joking aside, the Climate varies, and even in the Quaternary, it has gone way hotter than at present.
Do I think that man made CO2 is the main forcing mechanism?
No, the last 10 years of stability are not what would be expected of a stressed system, and although it is too early to know if the recent dramatic drop will be a continuing trend, the movement is the opposite to what would be expected for a system exposed to increasing upward pressure.
The forcing mechanism is something else.
I don't expect anything to convince Josh, VN and various anonymous. Presumably if you are a true believer, any change or lack of change can be added to the body of evidence supporting their belief.
Time they watched "the life of Brian" again
Keep up the good work
Keith
Some follow up notes:
The trends...
1) CO2 is up (human caused).
2) Temps are up (consensus - human caused).
Whole ecosystems will have to migrate hundreds of miles North in a few decades. Probably not possible without severe disruption to natural communities. Plants and animals take centuries or more to migrate into new regions.
People may be able to adapt... maybe... maybe not.
John Rust
As you see John the uneducated weigh in on something they no nothing about but only what they read.
And fact is that 90% of the climate readings around the world had there meters next to Ac-units, generators..etc… that put out heat. The climate has been changing for billions of years and there is not a damn thing we humans can do about it but to live and survive it or end up like the ones before us like the dinosaurs. The climate is changing and it is coming from many things that are not even on the earth. Just as I wrote about before just a 2 degree wobble at the poles the climate is going to change dramatically just as it has done before. I wonder what they will say when the star that heats this planet begins its burnout. That will be mans fault also…If we as humans do not get off this planet and find a new home then we as humans will be where the dinosaurs are. The sun will not last forever it will do as all stars do run out of fuel and begins its ending journey. There is scientific evidence that where the deserts are there was once snow and ice. Wonder how that got there. We live on drifting tectonic plates that are forever moving and as they move into a new climate things are going to change. As I said there is numeral reasons for climate change and none of them have to do with humans. Just as humans life cycle changes so does the earth. Earth is a living thing that has cycles also. Liberals will say anything and everything that they have no idea about. Al Gore wants to save the planet. Maybe he should start at home! Here is one for ya. If someone farts in a room that you can’t get out of what happens. Yes it stinks and it is nasty but you eventually adapt to the climate that is now around you as man and animals have done for billions of years, But the liberals would put a plug in the mans butt and cause more problems then is needed. Does that help the uneducated with the experiment I just presented? LOL
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