global climate change

Where did all the global warming hurricanes go? (My Forbes article)

by Michael Fumento on December 30, 2009

in Global Warming

The cover of Al Gore’s new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, features a satellite image of the globe showing four major hurricanes – results, we’re meant to believe, of man-made global warming. All four were photoshopped. Which is nice symbolism, because in a sense the whole hurricane aspect of warming has been photoshopped.

As I note in my article in Forbes, it was all really based on just two data points – with the names “Katrina” and “Rita.”

Now with both greenhouse gas emissions and levels in the atmosphere are at their highest, but this year had the fewest hurricanes since 1997, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For the first time since 2006 no hurricanes even made landfall in the U.S.; indeed hurricane activity is at a 30-year low.

Whoops! So much for Gore’s cover and all the hullabaloo.

In a 2005 column, I gave what now proves an interesting retrospective.

“The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name was global warming.” So wrote environmental activist Ross Gelbspan in a New York Times op-ed that one commentator aptly described as “almost giddy.” The green group Friends of the Earth linked Katrina to global warming, as did Germany’s Green Party Environment Minister.

The most celebrated of these commentaries was Chris Mooney’s 2007 book Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics and the Battle Over Global Warming. Mooney, for the record, is also author of the best-selling book The Republican War on Science.

Yet there were top scientists in 2005 such as Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, publishing data showing the Rita-Katrina blowhards had no business building a case around two anomalies. But his paper was squelched by Kevin Trenbarth of “Climategate” fame.

It’s fascinating stuff. Read it!

Santa to move headquarters to Palm Springs!

by Michael Fumento on December 15, 2009

in Global Warming, Odds & Ends

Or somewhere new, anyway. By necessity. So says Al Gore.

In a speech at the Copenhagen climate summit he declared: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

We’re talking a massive relocation of elves, folks.

In a curious twist, Dr. Maslowski thereupon claimed that Gore had distorted his views. ““It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” he told the Times of London. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Another Gore fibbery! But apparently not.

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano obtained a Danish government handout citing the Monterey, California professor’s modeling and reaching the same conclusion as Gore. “Projecting the trend into the future indicates that autumn could become near ice free between 2011 and 2016 (Maslowski, 2009).”

Which simply means Gore didn’t intentionally misrepresent Maslowski, not that either the professor or the former veep is right. Still, you can’t blame Santa for being just a bit nervous.

EPA moves to bypass climate change legislation

by Michael Fumento on December 9, 2009 · 1 comment

in Global Warming

While climate experts were off at the Copenhagen summit working on their tans (in sunny Copenhagen), the EPA pulled a fast one. As the Washington Post noted in an article that was actually quite good in providing the negatives, the agency formally announced that six gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, pose a danger to the environment and the health of Americans and said it would begin drafting regulations to reduce those emissions.

So if you think the recent poll showing most Americans reject the basis of global warming legislation, plus the scandal over “climategate,” may have derailed the Waxman-Markey legislation you may be right. But you’d be wrong in thinking the crisis has passed. The EPA was explicitly given the power by the Supreme Court to regulate greenhouse gases and could produce a web of regulations far worse than Waxman-Markey. The only recourse of opponents would be in the courts (see previous sentence) or via Congress cutting funding to the agency. And would this Congress really do that?

For more, see this Forbes piece on the issue published before the EPA announcement, and the EPA press release. This is bad news, folks!

“Show Me the Warming,” my piece in Forbes Online

by Michael Fumento on December 3, 2009 · 1 comment

in Global Warming

From the thousands of email and other documents that comprise “Climategate,” this is one of the most interesting: It’s a “travesty” that “we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment.” (Emphasis added.) Further, “any consideration of geoengineering [is] quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not!”

What does “at the moment” actually mean? Would you guess the past 10 years! That’s right; no warming in the past decade even as so-called “greenhouse gas emissions” and ambient concentrations are at historical highs! Does this prove global warming is a “hoax”? No. But it proves the simple equation of “more greenhouse gases = more warming” is false. Read about it in my new Forbes Online piece, “Show Me the Warming.”

Daily Show’s Jon Stewart on Climategate rejection of “inconvenient” data

by Michael Fumento on December 2, 2009 · 2 comments

in Global Warming

After playing a news clip stating, “University scientists say raw data from the 1980s was thrown out” Daily Show host Jon Stewart declared, “Why would you throw out raw data from the ’80s? I still have Penthouses from the ’70s! Laminated!”

Where did the global warming-caused hurricanes go?

by Michael Fumento on December 1, 2009 · 3 comments

in Environment, Features, Global Warming, Zeitgeist

Whoa! Did we just have a hurricane season? Doesn’t seem that way. “2009 hurricane season ends quietly with fewest storms since 1997,” declares one headline. “The season featured nine named storms, the fewest since 1997, and for the first time since 2006 no hurricanes made landfall in the United States,” states the article.

That’s quite a change since 2005, when the coincidence of two major hurricanes striking the U.S. and causing lots of damage, Katrina and Rita, led to a storm of allegations that global warming was causing cyclones to rise up in revenge against man. Most notable was far-left science writer Chris Mooney’s Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, which Amazon.com informs us is “bargain-priced” and probably for good reason. Mooney not coincidentally is also author of “The Republican War on Science” and “Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future.” Perhaps it threatens our future, but in the meantime it’s very good for his wallet.

Not that Mooney was alone by any means. In my 2005 Scripps Howard column “Green Hotheads Exploit Hurricane Tragedy,” I provided what in retrospect proves an interesting blast from the past.

“The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name was global warming.” So wrote environmental activist Ross Gelbspan in a Boston Globe op-ed that one commentator aptly described as “almost giddy.” The green group Friends of the Earth linked Katrina to global warming, as did Germany’s Green Party Environment Minister.

Granted, as I’ve written recently there’s been no warming in the last decade. But there’s been no cooling since 2005, either. Same temperatures, far fewer hurricanes.

So as the Kingston Trio might sing, “Where have all the hurricanes gone . . . ? And where are all these blowhards now? Presumably blaming global warming for some sort of disastrous problem caused by a lack of hurricanes.

Global warming email scandal: Will the real Kevin Trenberth please stand up?

by Michael Fumento on November 26, 2009

in Environment, Global Warming

It has become evident that the planet is running a “fever” and the prognosis is that it is apt to get much worse. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and it is “very likely” due to human activities. This is the verdict of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), known as AR4 . . . . Warming of the climate system is unequivocal as is now clear from an increasing body of evidence showing discernible physically consistent changes.

- Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research and a lead author of the warmist bible, the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, congressional testimony of February 2007.

“We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,” and “any consideration of geoengineering [is] quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not!”

- Kevin Trenberth, unintentionally released email to various recipients, October 14, 2009.

Lack of global warming is “hot” issue

by Michael Fumento on November 23, 2009

in Global Warming, Odds & Ends

“Climatologists baffled by Global Warming Time-Out” declares the headline in Germany’s Spiegel online. “Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.”

Whatever the cause, it remains that there’s been no time out in the production of so-called “greenhouse gases.” More are being pumped out worldwide and the atmospheric concentration is higher than ever. Yet even while “The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s,” it’s gone nowhere since then.

It what may a poor choice of words, Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, told Spiegel, “”It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community.”

Poll shows belief in man-made warming down, but why?

by Michael Fumento on October 23, 2009

in Global Warming

A new poll shows a sharp decline over the last year in the percentage of Americans who see solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. According to the survey by the highly-reputable Pew Research Center, while 44% of respondents saw global warming as a very serious problem in April 2008, that’s down to just 35% now.

Of course, all things are relative. With the economy and unemployment such as it is, despite that miraculous stimulus bill, you can see how a problem that’s not supposed to truly impact us for a while to come might slide down the pecking order.

BUT, the survey also shows that now just 36% of Americans say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, down from 47% last year. That’s a scientific belief, independent of the economy right?

I’d argue otherwise. Wild speculation about man-made impact on the environment is a rich man’s game. It’s true that the warming we’ve seen until about a decade ago when it stopped – though exactly why and for how long is debated – either is or isn’t partly man-made, regardless of the economy or regardless of what the public thinks. But when you don’t feel so rich, somehow scientific evidence that seemed so compelling before simply isn’t now.

Enviros trying to wipe out soft toilet paper!

by Michael Fumento on September 27, 2009

in Environment, Global Warming

Okay, this time they’ve gone too far!

Now, says the Washington Post, environmentalists are trying to wipe out plush toilet paper!

They say that’s because plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made from older trees – though not what’s defined as “old growth” by any means. And older trees, they say, are better for absorbing carbon dioxide and thereby slowing global warming.

(Have you noticed that there’s nothing that can’t be tied into global warming?)

They want us Americans to wipe with the same stuff Europeans use, made from recycled paper goods.

Well, I’ve been to Europe a lot and while I’m no xenophobe I must say their toilet paper is just one grade above sandpaper. No, ifs, ands, or butts about it.

They’ll get my soft toilet paper when they pry it from my cold dead hands!

(Though I really don’t want to be found dead sitting on “the throne” . . . )

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