Unfortunately, some misuse science. Some of their intentions, are far from benevolent. They see science as a mechanism for political power and control. There is great danger from those who would use science for political control over us.

How do they do this? They instill, and then continuously magnify, fear. Fear is the most effective instrument of totalitarian control.

Chet Richards, physicist,

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/science_in_an_age_of_fear.html

Monday 19 May 2014

Should teachers use the classroom for campaigning on climate change?


'Is the teaching of basic skills and basic knowledge not hard enough without adding the complication of deliberate political manipulation into the mix? Are teachers to be the willing servants of whichever government or ideological position happens to be currently fashionable or empowered? Are they also to willingly intervene between parents and their children in ways which seem intended to weaken the special bonds within a family?
I am particularly concerned with climate change and the associated wish of some powerful groups, not least in international agencies and NGOs, to make use of children as political tools with which to promote fundamental views about life, and even lifestyle and political choices, on to their parents. There are materials out there aimed at scaring children about their future, and surveys show that many are in fact living with a fear that they may not survive thanks to environmental catastrophes heading their way. There are materials aimed at distancing children from their own parents by persuading them, the children, that their parents are part of ‘the problem’ and need to be changed.
This combination of fear about the future and separation from previous sources of trust and guidance, are basic elements of brainwashing as described by Sowell (1993) in his book ‘Inside American Education’ where he provides several examples of such ‘stripping away of defences’ in schools in a range of programmes.
Andrew Montford and I have written a report entitled ‘Climate Control: Brainwashing in schools’ (GWPF, 2014) in which we focus on eco-alarms in general, and climate-related ones in particular. This was reported on here on the Schools Improvement Net (2014), where it attracted a few generally disparaging comments. None addressed our concerns that there may be widespread targeting of children in our schools with what amounts to eco-propaganda or, at the very least, inadequate treatment of important topics. But why should teachers be engaged at all with such campaigning in their classrooms and in extra-curricular events for their pupils? By all means, let them campaign with other adults, and engage them in debate on controversial issues. But surely it should be beneath them to seek to take advantage of their position in the classroom to try to persuade their pupils of their views?'

Extract from a guest post on the Schools Improvement site: http://schoolsimprovement.net/guest-post-teachers-classroom-campaigning-climate-change/

Friday 9 May 2014

'Too many of today's "educators" see students as a captive audience for them to manipulate and propagandize.'

'There was a time when common sense and common decency counted for something. Educators felt a responsibility to equip students with solid skills that could take them anywhere they wanted to go in later life -- enable them to become doctors, engineers or whatever they wanted to be.

Too many of today's "educators" see students as a captive audience for them to manipulate and propagandize.'



The quotes above, and in the title of this post, are from an article by the scholar Thomas Sowell, published two days ago at Townhall.com under the title 'Moral Bankruptcy'.  The article is not about climate alarm or other eco-campaigning in schools, but it could have been.  It is about forced visits of children from a low income district of New York to a private school somewhere wealthier.  Sowell points out that this part of a shocking waste of educational time.  He notes:

 'When the low-income youngsters visited the posh private school, "they were just overwhelmed" by it, according to the New York Times. "One kid ran crying off campus." Apparently others felt "so disheartened about their own circumstances."
What earthly good did that do for these young people? Thank heaven no one was calloused enough to take me on a tour of a posh private school when I was growing up in Harlem.'
One imagines it was the brainwave of some determined campaigner for something or other who saw an opportunity to exploit the children for his or her own ends.  Let us note that surveys have shown anxious and despondent children scared by climate alarmism.  They too are no doubt 'disheartened about their own circumstances'.  Sowell was not impressed:
'No doubt those adults who believe in envy and resentment get their jollies from doing things like this -- and from feeling that they are creating future envy and resentment voters to forward the ideological agenda of the big government left.
But at the expense of kids?'
This was part of a programme which paired children from each of the two schools.  It not only upset some of them, but as Sowell points out, it wasted the time of the poor kids in particular:
'This school visit was not just an isolated event. It was part of a whole program of pairing individual youngsters from a poverty-stricken neighborhood with youngsters from families that can pay 43 grand a year for their schooling.
What do these kids do? They tell each other stories based on their young lives' unripened judgment. They go to a big park in the Bronx together and take part in a garden project there. They talk about issues like gun violence and race relations.
They have a whole lifetime ahead of them to talk about such issues. But poor kids, especially, have just one time, during their school years, to equip their minds with math, science and other solid skills that will give them a shot at a better life.
To squander their time on rap sessions and navel-gazing is unconscionable.
This is just one of many programs dreamed up by "educators" who seem determined to do anything except educate. They see school children as guinea pigs for their pet notions.'
The same kind of callousness or detachment from reality must be found in those who insist on scaring children into being political activists for 'sustainable development' or some other climate-scare driven activity.  Sowell finishes with these words, which could readily be applied to no end of climate-related materials and events aimed at school-children on and around climate alarms:
'At a time when American youngsters are consistently outperformed on international tests by youngsters in other countries, do we have the luxury of spending our children's time on things that will do absolutely nothing for them in the years ahead? Are children just playthings for adults?
Maybe the affluent kids can afford to waste their time this way, because they will be taken care of, one way or another, in later life.
But to squander the time of poor kids, for whom education is often their only hope of escaping poverty, is truly an irresponsible self-indulgence by adults who should know better, and it is one more sign of the moral bankruptcy of too many people in our schools.'

Thursday 1 May 2014

Standpoint: 'Global warming orthodoxy is not merely irrational. It is wicked.'



Nigel Lawson
    This is a powerful, wide-ranging essay by Nigel Lawson, firmly based on his own experience as a participant in the 'climate change debate', and provides a devastating indictment of those who have so shamelessly promoted climate alarmism.  As he notes at the end, their belief system 'is not merely irrational.  It is wicked.'.   I urge all readers who come this way to visit Standpoint Magazine and get hold of the entire text for themselves. which published the essay.  I especially hope that teachers will refer to it for their own background reading and for sharing with at least their senior pupils who might benefit from this overview.
    Extracts are given below (omitted sections are denoted by '...'). [The entire text of the article is now reproduced below, with permission.] I have added the emboldening at the end for the sentence which I used in the title of this post and for the sentence used as a title for the article. (original title is 'Cool It')





Climate change alarmism is a belief system, and needs to be evaluated as such.
'There is something odd about the global warming debate — or the climate change debate, as we are now expected to call it, since global warming has for the time being come to a halt.

I have never shied away from controversy, nor — for example, as Chancellor — worried about being unpopular if I believed that what I was saying and doing was in the public interest.

But I have never in my life experienced the extremes of personal hostility, vituperation and vilification which I — along with other dissenters, of course — have received for my views on global warming and global warming policies.

For example, according to the Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, the global warming dissenters are, without exception, "wilfully ignorant" and in the view of the Prince of Wales we are "headless chickens". Not that "dissenter" is a term they use. We are regularly referred to as "climate change deniers", a phrase deliberately designed to echo "Holocaust denier" — as if questioning present policies and forecasts of the future is equivalent to casting malign doubt about a historical fact.

The heir to the throne and the minister are senior public figures, who watch their language. The abuse I received after appearing on the BBC's Today programme last February was far less restrained. Both the BBC and I received an orchestrated barrage of complaints to the effect that it was an outrage that I was allowed to discuss the issue on the programme at all. And even the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons shamefully joined the chorus of those who seek to suppress debate.

In fact, despite having written a thoroughly documented book about global warming more than five years ago, which happily became something of a bestseller, and having founded a think tank on the subject — the Global Warming Policy Foundation — the following year, and despite frequently being invited on Today to discuss economic issues, this was the first time I had ever been asked to discuss climate change. I strongly suspect it will also be the last time.

The BBC received a well-organised deluge of complaints — some of them, inevitably, from those with a vested interest in renewable energy — accusing me, among other things, of being a geriatric retired politician and not a climate scientist, and so wholly unqualified to discuss the issue.

Perhaps, in passing, I should address the frequent accusation from those who violently object to any challenge to any aspect of the prevailing climate change doctrine, that the Global Warming Policy Foundation's non-disclosure of the names of our donors is proof that we are a thoroughly sinister organisation and a front for the fossil fuel industry.

As I have pointed out on a number of occasions, the Foundation's Board of Trustees decided, from the outset, that it would neither solicit nor accept any money from the energy industry or from anyone with a significant interest in the energy industry. And to those who are not-regrettably-prepared to accept my word, I would point out that among our trustees are a bishop of the Church of England, a former private secretary to the Queen, and a former head of the Civil Service. Anyone who imagines that we are all engaged in a conspiracy to lie is clearly in an advanced stage of paranoia.

The reason why we do not reveal the names of our donors, who are private citizens of a philanthropic disposition, is in fact pretty obvious. Were we to do so, they, too, would be likely to be subject to the vilification and abuse I mentioned earlier. And that is something which, understandably, they can do without.

That said, I must admit I am strongly tempted to agree that, since I am not a climate scientist, I should from now on remain silent on the subject — on the clear understanding, of course, that everyone else plays by the same rules. No more statements by Ed Davey, or indeed any other politician, including Ed Milliband, Lord Deben and Al Gore. Nothing more from the Prince of Wales, or from Lord Stern. What bliss!

But of course this is not going to happen. Nor should it; for at bottom this is not a scientific issue. That is to say, the issue is not climate change but climate change alarmism, and the hugely damaging policies that are advocated, and in some cases put in place, in its name. And alarmism is a feature not of the physical world, which is what climate scientists study, but of human behaviour; the province, in other words, of economists, historians, sociologists, psychologists and — dare I say it — politicians.

And en passant, the problem for dissenting politicians, and indeed for dissenting climate scientists for that matter, who certainly exist, is that dissent can be career-threatening. The advantage of being geriatric is that my career is behind me: there is nothing left to threaten.

But to return: the climate changes all the time, in different and unpredictable (certainly unpredicted) ways, and indeed often in different ways in different parts of the world. It always has done and no doubt it always will. The issue is whether that is a cause for alarm — and not just moderate alarm. According to the alarmists it is the greatest threat facing humankind today: far worse than any of the manifold evils we see around the globe which stem from what Pope called "man's inhumanity to man".

Climate change alarmism is a belief system, and needs to be evaluated as such.

There is, indeed, an accepted scientific theory which I do not dispute and which, the alarmists claim, justifies their belief and their alarm.

This is the so-called greenhouse effect: the fact that the earth's atmosphere contains so-called greenhouse gases (of which water vapour is overwhelmingly the most important, but carbon dioxide is another) which, in effect, trap some of the heat we receive from the sun and prevent it from bouncing back into space.

Without the greenhouse effect, the planet would be so cold as to be uninhabitable. But, by burning fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — we are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and thus, other things being equal, increasing the earth's temperature.

But four questions immediately arise, all of which need to be addressed, coolly and rationally.

First, other things being equal, how much can increased atmospheric CO2 be expected to warm the earth? (This is known to scientists as climate sensitivity, or sometimes the climate sensitivity of carbon.) This is highly uncertain, not least because clouds have an important role to play, and the science of clouds is little understood. Until recently, the majority opinion among climate scientists had been that clouds greatly amplify the basic greenhouse effect. But there is a significant minority, including some of the most eminent climate scientists, who strongly dispute this.

Second, are other things equal, anyway? We know that, over millennia, the temperature of the earth has varied a great deal, long before the arrival of fossil fuels. To take only the past thousand years, a thousand years ago we were benefiting from the so-called medieval warm period, when temperatures are thought to have been at least as warm, if not warmer, than they are today. And during the Baroque era we were grimly suffering the cold of the so-called Little Ice Age, when the Thames frequently froze in winter and substantial ice fairs were held on it, which have been immortalised in contemporary prints.

Third, even if the earth were to warm, so far from this necessarily being a cause for alarm, does it matter? It would, after all, be surprising if the planet were on a happy but precarious temperature knife-edge, from which any change in either direction would be a major disaster. In fact, we know that, if there were to be any future warming (and for the reasons already given, "if" is correct) there would be both benefits and what the economists call disbenefits. I shall discuss later where the balance might lie.

And fourth, to the extent that there is a problem, what should we, calmly and rationally, do about it?

It is probably best to take the first two questions together.

According to the temperature records kept by the UK Met Office (and other series are much the same), over the past 150 years (that is, from the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution), mean global temperature has increased by a little under a degree centigrade — according to the Met Office, 0.8ºC. This has happened in fits and starts, which are not fully understood. To begin with, to the extent that anyone noticed it, it was seen as a welcome and natural recovery from the rigours of the Little Ice Age. But the great bulk of it — 0.5ºC out of the 0.8ºC — occurred during the last quarter of the 20th century. It was then that global warming alarmism was born.

But since then, and wholly contrary to the expectations of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, who confidently predicted that global warming would not merely continue but would accelerate, given the unprecedented growth of global carbon emissions, as China's coal-based economy has grown by leaps and bounds, there has been no further warming at all. To be precise, the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a deeply flawed body whose non-scientist chairman is a committed climate alarmist, reckons that global warming has latterly been occurring at the rate of — wait for it — 0.05ºC per decade, plus or minus 0.1ºC. Their figures, not mine. In other words, the observed rate of warming is less than the margin of error.

And that margin of error, it must be said, is implausibly small. After all, calculating mean global temperature from the records of weather stations and maritime observations around the world, of varying quality, is a pretty heroic task in the first place. Not to mention the fact that there is a considerable difference between daytime and night-time temperatures. In any event, to produce a figure accurate to hundredths of a degree is palpably absurd.

The lessons of the unpredicted 15-year global temperature standstill (or hiatus as the IPCC calls it) are clear. In the first place, the so-called Integrated Assessment Models which the climate science community uses to predict the global temperature increase which is likely to occur over the next 100 years are almost certainly mistaken, in that climate sensitivity is almost certainly significantly less than they once thought, and thus the models exaggerate the likely temperature rise over the next hundred years.

But the need for a rethink does not stop there. As the noted climate scientist Professor Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, recently observed in written testimony to the US Senate:

Anthropogenic global warming is a proposed theory whose basic mechnism is well understood, but whose magnitude is highly uncertain. The growing evidence that climate models are too sensitive to CO2 has implications for the attribution of late-20th-century warming and projections of 21st-century climate. If the recent warming hiatus is caused by natural variability, then this raises the question as to what extent the warming between 1975 and 2000 can also be explained by natural climate variability.

It is true that most members of the climate science establishment are reluctant to accept this, and argue that the missing heat has for the time being gone into the (very cold) ocean depths, only to be released later. This is, however, highly conjectural. Assessing the mean global temperature of the ocean depths is — unsurprisingly — even less reliable, by a long way, than the surface temperature record. And in any event most scientists reckon that it will take thousands of years for this "missing heat" to be released to the surface.

In short, the CO2 effect on the earth's temperature is probably less than was previously thought, and other things — that is, natural variability and possibly solar influences — are relatively more significant than has hitherto been assumed.
But let us assume that the global temperature hiatus does, at some point, come to an end, and a modest degree of global warming resumes. How much does this matter?

The answer must be that it matters very little. There are plainly both advantages and disadvantages from a warmer temperature, and these will vary from region to region depending to some extent on the existing temperature in the region concerned. And it is helpful in this context that the climate scientists believe that the global warming they expect from increased atmospheric CO2 will be greatest in the cold polar regions and least in the warm tropical regions, and will be greater at night than in the day, and greater in winter than in summer. Be that as it may, studies have clearly shown that, overall, the warming that the climate models are now predicting for most of this century (I referred to these models earlier, and will come back to them later) is likely to do more good than harm.

This is particularly true in the case of human health, a rather important dimension of wellbeing. It is no accident that, if you look at migration for climate reasons in the world today, it is far easier to find those who choose to move to a warmer climate than those who choose to move to a colder climate. And it is well documented that excessive cold causes far more illnesses and deaths around the world than excessive warmth does.

The latest (2013-14) IPCC Assessment Report does its best to ramp up the alarmism in a desperate, and almost certainly vain, attempt to scare the governments of the world into concluding a binding global decarbonisation agreement at the crunch UN climate conference due to be held in Paris next year. Yet a careful reading of the report shows that the evidence to justify the alarm simply isn't there.

On health, for example, it lamely concludes that "the world-wide burden of human ill-health from climate change is relatively small compared with effects of other stressors and is not well quantified" — adding that so far as tropical diseases (which preoccupied earlier IPCC reports) are concerned, "Concerns over large increases in vector-borne diseases such as dengue as a result of rising temperatures are unfounded and unsupported by the scientific literature."

Moreover, the IPCC conspicuously fails to take proper account of what is almost certainly far and away the most important dimension of the health issue. And that is, quite simply, that the biggest health risk in the world today, particularly of course in the developing world, is poverty.

We use fossil fuels not because we love them, or because we are in thrall to the multinational oil companies, but simply because they provide far and away the cheapest source of large-scale energy, and will continue to do so, no doubt not forever, but for the foreseeable future. And using the cheapest source of energy means achieving the fastest practicable rate of economic development, and thus the fastest elimination of poverty in the developing world. In a nutshell, and on balance, global warming is good for you.

The IPCC does its best to contest this by claiming that warming is bad for food production: in its own words, "negative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than positive impacts". But not only does it fail to acknowledge that the main negative impact on crop yields has been not climate change but climate change policy, as farmland has been turned over to the production of biofuels rather than food crops. It also understates the net benefit for food production from the warming it expects to occur, in two distinct ways.

In the first place, it explicitly takes no account of any future developments in bio-engineering and genetic modification, which are likely to enable farmers to plant drought-resistant crops designed to thrive at warmer temperatures, should these occur. Second, and equally important, it takes no account whatever of another effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, and one which is more certain and better documented than the warming effect. Namely, the stimulus to plant growth: what the scientists call the "fertilisation effect". Over the past 30 years or so, the earth has become observably greener, and this has even affected most parts of the Sahel. It is generally agreed that a major contributor to this has been the growth in atmospheric CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels.

This should not come as a surprise. Biologists have always known that carbon dioxide is essential for plant growth, and of course without plants there would be very little animal life, and no human life, on the planet. The climate alarmists have done their best to obscure this basic scientific truth by insisting on describing carbon emissions as "pollution" — which, whether or not they warm the planet they most certainly are not — and deliberately mislabelling forms of energy which produce these emissions as "dirty".

In the same way, they like to label renewable energy as "clean", seemingly oblivious to the fact that by far the largest source of renewable energy in the world today is biomass, and in particular the burning of dung, which is the major source of indoor pollution in the developing world and is reckoned to cause at least a million deaths a year.

Compared with the likely benefits to both human health and food production from CO2-induced global warming, the possible disadvantages from, say, a slight increase in either the frequency or the intensity of extreme weather events is very small beer. It is, in fact, still uncertain whether there is any impact on extreme weather events as a result of warming (increased carbon emissions, which have certainly occurred, cannot on their own affect the weather: it is only warming which might). The unusual persistence of heavy rainfall over the UK during February, which led to considerable flooding, is believed by the scientists to have been caused by the wayward behaviour of the jetstream; and there is no credible scientific theory that links this behaviour to the fact that the earth's surface is some 0.8ºC warmer than it was 150 years ago.

That has not stopped some climate scientists, such as the publicity-hungry chief scientist at the UK Met Office, Dame Julia Slingo, from telling the media that it is likely that "climate change" (by which they mean warming) is partly to blame. Usually, however, the climate scientists take refuge in the weasel words that any topical extreme weather event, whatever the extreme weather may be, whether the recent UK rainfall or last year's typhoon in the Philippines, "is consistent with what we would expect from climate change".

So what? It is also consistent with the theory that it is a punishment from the Almighty for our sins (the prevailing explanation of extreme weather events throughout most of human history). But that does not mean that there is the slightest truth in it. Indeed, it would be helpful if the climate scientists would tell us what weather pattern would not be consistent with the current climate orthodoxy. If they cannot do so, then we would do well to recall the important insight of Karl Popper — that any theory that is incapable of falsification cannot be considered scientific.

Moreover, as the latest IPCC report makes clear, careful studies have shown that, while extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and tropical storms, have always occurred, overall there has been no increase in either their frequency or their severity. That may, of course, be because there has so far been very little global warming indeed: the fear is the possible consequences of what is projected to lie ahead of us. And even in climate science, cause has to precede effect: it is impossible for future warming to affect events in the present.

Of course, it doesn't seem like that. Partly because of sensitivity to the climate change doctrine, and partly simply as a result of the explosion of global communications, we are far more aware of extreme weather events around the world than we used to be. And it is perfectly true that many more people are affected by extreme weather events than ever before. But that is simply because of the great growth in world population: there are many more people around. It is also true, as the insurance companies like to point out, that there has been a great increase in the damage caused by extreme weather events. But that is simply because, just as there are more people around, so there is more property around to be damaged.

The fact remains that the most careful empirical studies show that, so far at least, there has been no perceptible increase, globally, in either the number or the severity of extreme weather events. And, as a happy coda, these studies also show that, thanks to scientific and material progress, there has been a massive reduction, worldwide, in deaths from extreme weather events.

It is relevant to note at this point that there is an important distinction between science and scientists. I have the greatest respect for science, whose development has transformed the world for the better. But scientists are no better and no worse than anyone else. There are good scientists and there are bad scientists. Many scientists are outstanding people working long hours to produce important results. They must be frustrated that political activists then turn those results into propaganda. Yet they dare not speak out for fear of losing their funding.

Indeed, a case can be made for the proposition that today's climate science establishment is betraying science itself. During the period justly known as the Enlightenment, science achieved the breakthroughs which have so benefited us all by rejecting the claims of authority — which at that time largely meant the authority of the church — and adopting an overarching scepticism, insisting that our understanding of the external world must be based exclusively on observation and empirical investigation. Yet today all too many climate scientists, in particular in the UK, come close to claiming that they need to be respected as the voice of authority on the subject — the very claim that was once the province of the church.

If I have been critical of the latest IPCC report, let me add that it is many respects a significant improvement on its predecessors. It explicitly concedes, for example, that "climate change may be beneficial for moderate climate change" — and moderate climate change is all that it expects to see for the rest of this century — and that "Estimates for the aggregate economic impact of climate change are relatively small . . . For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers." So much for the unique existential planetary threat.

What it conspicuously fails to do, however, is to make any assessment of the unequivocally adverse economic impact of the decarbonisation policy it continues to advocate, which (if implemented) would be far worse than any adverse impact from global warming.

Even here, however, the new report concedes for the first time that the most important response to the threat of climate change must be how mankind has always responded, throughout the ages: namely, intelligent adaptation. Indeed, the "impacts" section of the latest report is explicitly entitled "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability". In previous IPCC reports adaptation was scarcely referred to at all, and then only dismissively.

This leads directly to the last of my four questions. To the extent that there is a problem, what should we, calmly and rationally, do about it?

The answer is — or should be — a no-brainer: adapt. I mentioned earlier that a resumption of global warming, should it occur (and of course it might) would bring both benefits and costs. The sensible course is clearly to pocket the benefits while seeking to minimise the costs. And that is all the more so since the costs, should they arise, will not be anything new: they will merely be the slight exacerbation of problems that have always afflicted mankind.

Like the weather, for example — whether we are talking about rainfall and flooding (or droughts for that matter) in the UK, or hurricanes and typhoons in the tropics. The weather has always varied, and it always will. There have always been extremes, and there always will be. That being so, it clearly makes sense to make ourselves more resilient and robust in the face of extreme weather events, whether or not there is a slight increase in the frequency or severity of such events.

This means measures such as flood defences and sea defences, together with water storage to minimise the adverse effects of drought, in the UK; and better storm warnings, the building of levees, and more robust construction in the tropics.

The same is equally true in the field of health. Tropical diseases — and malaria is frequently (if inaccurately) mentioned in this context — are a mortal menace in much of the developing world. It clearly makes sense to seek to eradicate these diseases — and in the case of malaria (which used to be endemic in Europe) we know perfectly well how to do it — whether or not warming might lead to an increase in the incidence of such diseases.

And the same applies to all the other possible adverse consequences of global warming. Moreover, this makes sense whatever the cause of any future warming, whether it is man-made or natural. Happily, too, as economies grow and technology develops, our ability to adapt successfully to any problems which warming may bring steadily increases.

Yet, astonishingly, this is not the course on which our leaders in the Western world generally, and the UK in particular, have embarked. They have decided that what we must do, at inordinate cost, is prevent the possibility (as they see it) of any further warming by abandoning the use of fossil fuels.

Even if this were attainable — a big "if", which I will discuss later — there is no way in which this could be remotely cost-effective. The cost to the world economy of moving from relatively cheap and reliable energy to much more expensive and much less reliable forms of energy-the so-called renewables, on which we had to rely before we were liberated by the fossil-fuel-driven Industrial Revolution — far exceeds any conceivable benefit.

It is true that the notorious Stern Review, widely promoted by a British prime minister with something of a messiah complex and an undoubted talent for PR, sought to demonstrate the reverse, and has become a bible for the economically illiterate.

But Stern's dodgy economics have been comprehensively demolished by the most distinguished economists on both sides of the Atlantic. So much so, in fact, that Lord Stern himself has been driven to complain that it is all the fault of the integrated assessment models, which — and I quote him — "come close to assuming directly that the impacts and costs will be modest, and close to excluding the possibility of catastrophic outcomes".

I suggested earlier that these elaborate models are scarcely worth the computer code they are written in, and certainly the divergence between their predictions and empirical observations has become ever wider. Nevertheless, it is a bit rich for Stern now to complain about them, when they remain the gospel of the climate science establishment in general and of the IPCC in particular.

But Stern is right in this sense: unless you assume that we may be heading for a CO2-induced planetary catastrophe, for which there is no scientific basis, a policy of decarbonisation cannot possibly make sense.

A similar, if slightly more sophisticated, case for current policies has been put forward by a distinctly better economist than Stern, Harvard's Professor Martin Weitzman, in what he likes to call his "dismal theorem". After demolishing Stern's cost-benefit analysis, he concludes that Stern is in fact right but for the wrong reasons. According to Weitzman, this is an area where cost-benefit analysis does not apply. Climate science is highly uncertain, and a catastrophic outcome which might even threaten the continuation of human life on this planet, cannot be entirely ruled out however unlikely it may be. It is therefore incumbent on us to do whatever we can, regardless of cost, to prevent this.

This is an extreme case of what is usually termed "the precautionary principle". I have often thought that the most important use of the precautionary principle is against the precautionary principle itself, since it can all too readily lead to absurd policy prescriptions. In this case, a moment's reflection would remind us that there are a number of possible catastrophes, many of them less unlikely than that caused by runaway warming, and all of them capable of occurring considerably sooner than the catastrophe feared by Weitzman; and there is no way we can afford the cost of unlimited spending to reduce the likelihood of all of them.

In particular, there is the risk that the earth may enter a new ice age. This was the fear expressed by the well-known astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle in his book Ice: The Ultimate Human Catastrophe, and there are several climate scientists today, particularly in Russia, concerned about this. It would be difficult, to say the least, to devote unlimited sums to both cooling and warming the planet at the same time.

At the end of the day, this comes down to judgment. Weitzman is clearly entitled to his; but I doubt if it is widely shared; and if the public were aware that it was on this slender basis that the entire case for current policies rested I would be surprised if they would have much support. Rightly so.

But there is another problem. Unlike intelligent adaptation to any warming that might occur, which in any case will mean different things in different regions of the world, and which requires no global agreement, decarbonisation can make no sense whatever in the absence of a global agreement. And there is no chance of any meaningful agreement being concluded. The very limited Kyoto accord of 1997 has come to an end; and although there is the declared intention of concluding a much more ambitious successor, with a UN-sponsored conference in Paris next year at which it is planned that this should happen, nothing of any significance is remotely likely.

And the reason is clear. For the developing world, the overriding priority is economic growth: improving the living standards of the people, which means among other things making full use of the cheapest available source of energy, fossil fuels.

The position of China, the largest of all the developing countries and the world's biggest (and fastest growing) emitter of carbon dioxide, is crucial. For very good reasons, there is no way that China is going to accept a binding limitation on its emissions. China has an overwhelmingly coal-based energy sector — indeed it has been building new coal-fired power stations at the rate of one a week — and although it is now rapidly developing its substantial indigenous shale gas resources (another fossil fuel), its renewable energy industry, both wind and solar, is essentially for export to the developed world.

It is true that China is planning to reduce its so-called "carbon intensity" quite substantially by 2020. But there is a world of difference between the sensible objective of using fossil fuels more efficiently, which is what this means, and the foolish policy of abandoning fossil fuels, which it has no intention of doing. China's total carbon emissions are projected to carry on rising — and rising substantially — as its economy grows.

This puts into perspective the UK's commitment, under the Climate Change Act, to near-total decarbonisation. The UK accounts for less than 2 per cent of global emissions: indeed, its total emissions are less than the annual increase in China's. Never mind, says Lord Deben, chairman of the government-appointed Climate Change Committee, we are in the business of setting an example to the world.

No doubt this sort of thing goes down well at meetings of the faithful, and enables him and them to feel good. But there is little point in setting an example, at great cost, if no one is going to follow it; and around the world governments are now gradually watering down or even abandoning their decarbonisation ambitions.  Indeed, it is even worse than that. Since the UK has abandoned the idea of having an energy policy in favour of having a decarbonisation policy, there is a growing risk that, before very long, our generating capacity will be inadequate to meet our energy needs. If so, we shall be setting an example all right: an example of what not to do.

So how is it that much of the Western world, and this country in particular, has succumbed to the self-harming collective madness that is climate change orthodoxy? It is difficult to escape the conclusion that climate change orthodoxy has in effect become a substitute religion, attended by all the intolerant zealotry that has so often marred religion in the past, and in some places still does so today.

Throughout the Western world, the two creeds that used to vie for popular support, Christianity and the atheistic belief system of Communism, are each clearly in decline. Yet people still feel the need both for the comfort and for the transcendent values that religion can provide. It is the quasi-religion of green alarmism and global salvationism, of which the climate change dogma is the prime example, which has filled the vacuum, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as little short of sacrilege.

The parallel goes deeper. As I mentioned earlier, throughout the ages the weather has been an important part of the religious narrative. In primitive societies it was customary for extreme weather events to be explained as punishment from the gods for the sins of the people; and there is no shortage of this theme in the Bible, either — particularly, but not exclusively, in the Old Testament. The contemporary version of this is that, as a result of heedless industrialisation within a framework of materialistic capitalism, we have directly (albeit not deliberately) perverted the weather, and will duly receive our comeuppance.

There is another aspect, too, which may account for the appeal of this so-called explanation. Throughout the ages, something deep in man's psyche has made him receptive to apocalyptic warnings that the end of the world is nigh. And almost all of us, whether we like it or not, are imbued with feelings of guilt and a sense of sin. How much less uncomfortable it is, how much more convenient, to divert attention away from our individual sins and reasons to feel guilty, and to sublimate them in collective guilt and collective sin.

Why does this matter? It matters, and matters a great deal, on two quite separate grounds. The first is that it has gone a long way towards ushering in a new age of unreason. It is a cruel irony that, while it was science which, more than anything else, was able by its great achievements, to establish the age of reason, it is all too many climate scientists and their hangers-on who have become the high priests of a new age of unreason.

But what moves me most is that the policies invoked in its name are grossly immoral. We have, in the UK, devised the most blatant transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich — and I am slightly surprised that it is so strongly supported by those who consider themselves to be the tribunes of the people and politically on the Left. I refer to our system of heavily subsidising wealthy landlords to have wind farms on their land, so that the poor can be supplied with one of the most expensive forms of electricity known to man.

This is also, of course, inflicting increasing damage on the British economy, to no useful purpose whatever. More serious morally, because it is on a much larger scale, is the perverse intergenerational transfer of wealth implied by orthodox climate change policies. It is not much in dispute that future generations — those yet unborn — will be far wealthier than those — ourselves, our children, and for many of us our grandchildren — alive today. This is the inevitable consequence of the projected economic growth which, on a "business as usual" basis, drives the increased carbon emissions which in turn determine the projected future warming. It is surely perverse that those alive today should be told that they must impoverish themselves, by abandoning what is far and away the cheapest source of energy, in order to ensure that those yet to be born, who will in any case be signally better off than they are, will be better off still, by escaping the disadvantages of any warming that might occur.

However, the greatest immorality of all concerns the masses in the developing world. It is excellent that, in so many parts of the developing world — the so-called emerging economies — economic growth is now firmly on the march, as they belatedly put in place the sort of economic policy framework that brought prosperity to the Western world. Inevitably, they already account for, and will increasingly account for, the lion's share of global carbon emissions.

But, despite their success, there are still hundreds of millions of people in these countries in dire poverty, suffering all the ills that this brings, in terms of malnutrition, preventable disease, and premature death. Asking these countries to abandon the cheapest available sources of energy is, at the very least, asking them to delay the conquest of malnutrition, to perpetuate the incidence of preventable disease, and to increase the numbers of premature deaths.

Global warming orthodoxy is not merely irrational. It is wicked.'

This essay is based on the text of a speech given to the Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment at the University of Bath.  It was published in Standpoint Magazine: http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/5541/full, where the full text can be found.  I will reproduce it here in full if I manage to get permission from Standpoint to do so.  In the meantime, I urge readers to follow the link and read the entire essay. [permission obtained].  It is a superb summary of where we are today, and a powerful, moving indictment of those who have done so much to get us to this sorry pass.  Their 'belief system' is a rotten one, and falls to pieces upon any sustained examination.  It is at the heart of the promotion of climate alarm in our schools.

PS Hat-tip Bishop Hill. A video is available of the Bath Speech: 
http://uniofbath.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=61f86168-3837-43a8-ae3d-37da91e0ea24

PPS I have had a chance to listen to the video, and in particular to the question and answer session of the final 30 minutes or so.  Here are my comments on that, as posted on Bishop Hill (on the post linked to in the PS hat-tip):
Not so much a video as a soundtrack since there is nothing to see other than Lord Lawson from a high angle in poor light. Note, if you will, how feeble the questions and points from the audience are. We are told the catastrophe is upon us or imminent, the science is settled, and the 'vast majority' of scientists are on board with it all. Yet where are the powerful arguments? Where is the convincing data? Where are the tough questions for those who declare their doubts about it all?
It is absolutely astonishing how far and how deeply the climate alarm spins have penetrated into society, and how inadequate our establishment's defences, such as a freely elected Parliament and a Royal Society which once upon a time held to Nullius in Verba, have been to it. The supine 'academy', of which I suspect this audience at Bath is not an outlier, has been particularly pathetic on this matter. We are in a bit of mess as a result. Perhaps something better will emerge from it.

Saturday 19 April 2014

Whatever next: high school students get to hear two sides of a global warming debate!

VALPARAISO | Hebron High School junior Kasie Sass said Thursday's World Affairs Conference held at Ivy Tech Community College was the first time she had heard both sides of the heated global warming issue.
"It was pretty interesting and I definitely heard a different perspective. I am so used to hearing all the propaganda from the other side," Sass said.
Chesterton High School junior Alyssa Bowker agreed.
"I learned a lot of facts that I'd never been told," she said.
Who can doubt that youngsters all around the world would say pretty  much the same thing?  If only they could get a similar chance of seeing more than the scary propaganda they have been exposed to for their entire lives.  So many of them get a mess of potage at school, not least 'An Inconvenient Truth', rather than a decent education about climate variation and what we know about its various possible causes.  
More details of the debate in the report from the North West Indiana Times from whose Valparaiso section the above extract was taken (April 17, 2014 12:12 pm). I added the emboldening.

(hat-tip: Climate Depot )

Tuesday 15 April 2014

Climate Brainwashing of Children: a rough guide to spotting it happening.

Way back in 1992, Thomas Sowell wrote about brainwashing going on in the American education system, and he defined what he meant by that emotive term.  As I shall show below, his insights are relevant today when examining materials aimed at children about climate.  Extracts from Chapter 3:


Amazon
"A variety of programs used in classrooms across the country not only share the general goals of brainwashing - that is, changing fundamental attitudes, values, and belief by psychological-conditioning methods - but also use classic brainwashing techniques developed in totalitarian countries:

1. Emotional stress, shock, or de-sensitization, to break down both intellectual and emotional resistance

2. Isolation, whether physical or emotional, from familiar sources of emotional support in resistance

3. Cross-examining pre-existing values, often by manipulating peer pressure

4. Stripping the individual of normal defences, such as reserve, dignity, a sense of privacy, or the ability to decline to participate

5. Rewarding acceptance of the new attitudes, values, and beliefs - a reward which can be simply release from the pressures inflicted on those who resist, or may take other symbolic or tangible form."



I will illustrate these using an odious book for children called 'How to Turn Your Parents Green', first published in 2007.  Extracts from the book are shown in italics, and the techniques from Sowell's list are shown in bold:

Amazon
1. Emotional stress, shock, or de-sensitization, to break down both intellectual and emotional resistance
‘The weather’s gone weird.  The polar bears are anxious. Ghastly Global Warming is here.’  There are more examples of this sort of thing, but it will all too familiar to anyone with even a passing acquaintance such material. It is the bog-standard.

2. Isolation, whether physical or emotional, from familiar sources of emotional support in resistance
For children, these familiar sources are usually their parents.  Russell’s book sees them as stupid, selfish, ignorant people who are to be punished rather than seen as a source of advice or support:

‘…Only you can make the Groans behave because only you can make their lives a misery if they don’t.  We’ll help you draw up a Glorious Green Charter for them sign, and show you how to punish them – oh yes – if they don’t change their Grumbelicious ways.  Don’t be an Eco-Worrier, be an Eco-Warrior. And turn your parents Green.’

So, don't look to your parents for support, they are, after all quite wicked, and therefore you should 'make their lives a misery'.  

3. Cross-examining pre-existing values, often by manipulating peer pressure
‘The main aim of a Groan’s life is to exploit as much of the planet as possible before someone else does.  Even before Ghastly Global Warming, this philosophy was making the world a sadder place.  Fiendish Fertilizers and Pestilential Pesticides have killed off wild flowers, birds, bees and hedgehogs.  Our rivers and seas are horribly polluted.  Most of us live surrounded by the noise, dirt, and danger of traffic.  Groans think all this is fine and natural.  So what if the hedgehog becomes extinct? So what if climate change kills millions of people?  So what if  kids have nowhere to play because there are too many cars?  People die, they say with a shrug.  Species disappear.  Kids can play computer games.’

This is course is a parody of ‘pre-existing values’ but it serves his purpose.  Maybe a child's pre-existing values included holding their parents in great esteem, but here they are portrayed as heartless exploiters.  Maybe a child's pre-existing values included thinking the world was a source of wonder and delight, but here it is being made sadder, horribly polluted, noisy, dirty, and dangerous, with heartless adults ruining it.

4. Stripping the individual of normal defences, such as reserve, dignity, a sense of privacy, or the ability to decline to participate
Any child following the prescriptions of the book, would indeed be stripped of reserve, dignity and a sense of privacy.  They are being encouraged to be interfering busybodies in the lives of others, as well as of their own a according the author's inane prescriptions.  There is no option but to participate or else bad things will happen:
'Only you can do it, because only you can make the culprits change their ways.  Only you can nag, pester, bug, torment and punish the people who are merrily wrecking your world.'
‘Of course, it isn’t easy being Green.  We’re only human, after all. But if you follow Groan philosophy you’ll be unhappy, stressed, overweight and, quite possibly, under water.’

5. Rewarding acceptance of the new attitudes, values, and beliefs - a reward which can be simply release from the pressures inflicted on those who resist, or may take other symbolic or tangible form."
Mercifully, there seem to be no rewards on offer, but any children taken in by this trashy book are liable to get a sense of pressure to conform to its numerous prescriptions.  Of course, it is only a book and as such can scarcely offer tangible rewards.  They are more likely to come from organisations.  Eco-Schools anyone?  


Classical brainwashing such as recorded in the Korean war for example, was implemented while the victims were in the complete control of their tormentors in places such as prison-camps, and there over many months the techniques could be applied relentlessly every day.  Even then, there is evidence that it was rarely as successful as hoped.  But why should we tolerate even the attempt of trying some of these techniques on children?  Who wants them to be scared, alienated, and told what to think, what to believe, and what to do by strangers writing books, or by eco-campaigners visiting their schools, or by DVDs imposed on them by the previous government of the UK?   All for political ends, the pursuit of which through children involves first frightening them, then distancing them from their parents, dissing some of their society's great achievements such as affordable energy, and pushing the burden of reform, or even mere surival, on to their shoulders.  You can see why ruthless people want to try brainwashing others.  Fortunately for us all, it seems to be harder than they might think.

Tuesday 8 April 2014

Parents check on your children, Governments check on your schools – brainwashing the young with climate scares needs to be resisted before even more harm is done to them.

CLIMATE CONTROL: Brainwashing in Schools is the title of a report published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).  

It was a huge privilege for me to work on this report with Andrew Montford, whose writings on climate matters I have long admired.  The GWPF in general, and Benny Peiser in particular, proved to be good to work with as well, as they provided critical reviews of our drafts over the past few months and generally encouraged our efforts.  I think of my blog here as mostly howling at the Moon, with some potentially worthwhile archiving of relevant information in the various reference pages I keep here.  But Andrew and Benny want a lot more than that.  Howling is not nearly good enough for them.  They want direct engagement with the mostly hostile or slumbering establishments of government, of scientific institutions, of all levels of education, of the mass media and political classes, and with the general public as well.  Without their drive, this report would not have appeared.  It was their idea, and I was pleased to help pursue it and help get it done.  I hope it will be widely read, and reacted to, and that much good may come of it.


Here is the text of the press release issued by the GWPF:

'London, 8 April: A new report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation is calling for Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, to institute an official inquiry into the way environmentalism and in particular climate change are being taught in schools.
In the report, authors Andrew Montford and John Shade describe how environmentalism has come to permeate school curricula across the UK, featuring in an astonishing variety of subjects, from geography to religious education to modern languages. Passing examinations will now usually involve the ability to recite green mantras rather than understanding the subtle questions of science and economics involved.
The authors review in detail the climate change teaching materials currently used in British schools, with disturbing results. There is ample evidence of unscientific statements, manipulated graphs, and activist materials used in class and even found in textbooks.
The report also describes how activist teachers try to make children become the footsoldiers of the green movement, encouraging them to harass their schoolmates and pester their parents to bring about “behaviour change”.
The use of fear of climate change to alter children’s behaviour is also highlighted. This is undoubtedly having harmful consequences on children’s development and surveys indicate that fear of the future is widespread. The report quotes one child as saying:
“I worry about [global warming] because I don’t want to die.”
Author Andrew Montford says: “The brainwashing of our children for political ends is shameful. Those responsible for education in the UK need to take action and take it quickly” '

This blog is about to go through the 10,000 page visits a month mark.  Not much compared to the big-hitters, but a progress nevertheless that I am pleased with.  But of course it matters little unless further actions arise from it.  If you, gentle reader, find this report worthwhile and important, please consider passing it on to every school in your area, to every teacher you may know, to parent-teacher groups, to educational authorities, and so on.  The effective life of such a pamphlet is probably quite short, a few weeks or months at best perhaps, so the more use you can make of it, the better.  You can download the free pdf here.  You might get printed copies from the GWPF (I don’t yet know what the price of them would be).


Post Script
James Delingpole has just written about the report here: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/08/Schoolchildren-terrorized-and-brainwashed-by-green-propaganda-says-damning-survey
Andrew had written about it earlier, and has attracted many favourable and informative comments: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/4/8/climate-control.html

Added 13 April 2014
The journalist Christopher Booker has referred to our report in a hard-hitting article today in the Sunday Telegraph.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10761597/No-A-level-for-climate-change-denier.html (the online version is accompanied with a picture with this caption: 'Schoolchildren are taught a one-sided Greenpeace-type view of the global warming scare'.  Unfortunately the photograph, a different one, in the print edition has this caption: 'Propaganda: the education system has been hijacked by global-warming believers'.  That is very seriously misleading.  For example, I think there is reasonably convincing evidence of some global warming in the 20thC, and should therefore be described as a 'global warming believer'.)
He includes reference to the Education Secretary's earlier response to the report, covered here: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/08/Teachers-Acting-Illegally-Over-Climate-Change

Added 27 May 2014
A newly published study into the responses of young people in China to an online survey (response rate c. 19%), points to some impact of a government programme to modify indoctrination in Chinese schools (nowhere does the study refer to previous levels of indoctrination efforts) which was introduced in a staggered way thereby encouraging the authors in their pursuit of evidence of an effect.  In a nutshell, they found that the indoctrination had an identifiable effect in most areas, but not on one of the stated government objectives concerning the environment.  See: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/05/the-power-and-limits-of-indoctrination.php  (hat-tip Instapundit).  The report is available here: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20112  The authors conclude that 'Our findings
suggest that alongside other mechanisms of social and political control, political elites, indeed, can
shape students’ attitudes by choosing the content of the education system.'

Monday 7 April 2014

A parent reacts to his children's 'flimsy', 'one-sided' education on global warming.

In 2011, a concerned parent, Seth Forman, was so disturbed by the superficial and one-sided education his children were getting in the United States about climate that he decided to assemble a set of bullet-points to explain 'Why I am a Global-Warming Skeptic (and You Should Be)'.  Notice that he does not dispute that global warming has occurred in the 20th Century - he is clearly using the term 'Global-Warming', as many do, as a shorthand for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW).

I reproduce some of it here as an illustrative example of what parents can do without having a scientific background themselves.  Forman is a university professor in government and public policy, and a writer on various political and historical topics (http://www.mrformansplanet.com/index_files/Page358.htm).

He has clearly studied readily available materials, and prepared his own notes on the history of this particular eco-scare, then highlighting some of the controversies associated with it beginning with the Climategate revelations of 2009, before finishing with some 14 points to substantiate challenging the standard 'global warming narrative'.  He has the talents and skills of an established academic researcher and writer, but he is a layman as far as climate science is concerned.  But since that science has penetrated into public policy, and associated proselytising has penetrated into schools, he has sufficient cause to make his own examination of the issues involved.

Imagine what an organised group of parents could achieve, over say 12 months, if they set out to do the same.  Imagine how well they then be able to protect their own children, and perhaps others as well,  from inadequate teaching on climate matters, and from the numerous scare stories that have been promoted for decades now.

Extracts from his article: 
(bold typeface added by me in the first paragraph)

'I live in a wonderful suburban community on Long Island. My three children attend the excellent public schools in our district. As the two oldest children have made their way through middle school, though, I've been bothered by the rather flimsy instruction they've received on the subject of "global warming." Despite widespread divergence among scientists and reports of questionable scholarship in landmark global warming studies, my children (and, presumably, their classmates and millions of other young students) have been taught a standard, one-sided view of "global warming." Both my 14 year-old daughter and 11 year-old son have been shown Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth in sixth grade, but have been given nothing to suggest that some of the information in the movie is either controversial or misleading. So I've decided to put together this bullet point compendium of information discussing the current status of the "global warming" debate.


The History
1. Global warming is when near surface and water temperatures on earth rise. Scientists believe there are many factors involved in the earth's temperature changes, many of which are natural and have little or nothing to do with human activity (e.g. atmospheric processes like clouds and precipitation systems, the variability associated with phenomena like El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation). But an approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in average temperatures over the last 100 years has put the focus of scientists and funding agencies on "greenhouse gases" (carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane), some of which are emitted by humans. These gases can trap heat and light from the sun in the earth's atmosphere, which increases the temperature.
2. The claim that the earth is warming, that the warming is due to man's emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), and that continued emissions will lead to catastrophe gained major media attention during the hearings of then-U.S. Senator Al Gore's Committee on Science, Technology and Space in 1988. At those hearings Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies James Hansen claimed with" 99 percent certainty" that temperatures were rising due to a human-influenced "greenhouse effect."
...
[the article provides 4 more points under this heading]
The Controversy
1. In mid-November of 2009 there appeared a file on the internet containing thousands of emails and other documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain (CRU). The CRU supplied many of the authors for the IPCC reports. The file was quickly authenticated and provided unambiguous evidence that the CRU and associated research scientists throughout the world engaged in the unethical suppression of information and opposing viewpoints, data manipulation, and collusion. This event has become known as "climategate."
2. Climategate has mushroomed into a crisis affecting an entire scientific discipline. At the heart of this crisis is the "hockey stick" graph produced by Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University, a co-conspirator in the leaked emails. After being given data by another scientist showing a mid-to-late 20th century decline in temperatures, Mann responded in a September 22, 1999 email to the CRU, that it was a "problem and a potential distraction/detraction." So Mann deleted the embarrassing post-1960 portion of the data. The CRU's director Phil Jones applauded Mann's deceptions in an e-mail in which he crowed over "Mike's Nature trick," which also included a "method" of flat lining the medieval "warming period."
3. An independent study by a team of mathematicians was requested by the U.S. congress and headed by Dr. Edward J. Wegman. The Wegman study thoroughly discredited the Mann "hockey stick" research because of invalid use of statistical techniques and found that the conclusions by Mann could not be supported.
...
[there are 6 more points under this heading in the article]
Scientific Data That Challenges the Global Warming Narrative
1. CO2 is a benign gas essential to life, occurring in past eras at five times present levels. Changes in atmospheric CO2 do not correlate with human emissions of CO2, the latter being entirely trivial in the global balance. Oceans are the primary contributors of CO2 in the atmosphere.
2. According to Larry Bell, a professor at the University of Houston and the author of Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax, the abnormally high temperatures experienced on earth in the last century has been going on for 15,000 to 18,000 years, a life-friendly period known as an interglacial cycle, long before man-made inventions of agriculture, smokestacks, and SUVs.
3. Prof. Bell explains that temperatures are probably about the same today as during a "Roman Warm Period" slightly more than 2,000 years ago, and much warmer than the "Dark Ages" that followed. They are cooler than the "Medieval Warm Period" about 1,000 years ago when Eric the Red and his Icelandic Viking tribe settled on grasslands of Greenland's southwestern coast, and much warmer than about 400 years ago when the Northern Hemisphere plunged into depths of a "Little Ice Age."
4. According to Robert B. Laughlin, co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics: climate change over geologic time is something the earth has done "on its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself." Glacial episodes have occurred "at regular intervals of 100,000 years," always "a slow, steady cooling followed by abrupt warming back to conditions similar to today's."
5. The past century witnessed two distinct warming periods, one occurred from 1900-1945, and another from 1975-1998. About half of that total warming occurred before the mid-1940s. Recordsfrom land stations and ships indicate that the global mean surface temperature warmed by about 0.9 Fahrenheit since 1880*. These records indicate a near level trend in temperatures from 1880 to about 1910, a rise to 1945, a slight decline to about 1975, and a rise to 1998.
6. While CO2 levels have continued to rise, there hasn't been statistically significant warming since 1998.
...
[there are 8 more points under this heading in the article]'
*Comment. 0.9F looks to be on the low side.  The EPA site linked to by the author talks of modern warming at about 1.4F per century.  Perhaps the author meant to write 0.9C.  See: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/weather-climate/temperature.html
The article is linked to in my first paragraph, but here is the link again for convenience: