global warming hoax

Cold, bitter winter is “proof” of global warming

by Michael Fumento on January 28, 2010 · 2 comments

in Global Warming

“Winter offered as proof of warming” declares a headline in the print edition of the Washington Post, although perhaps the irony of that  later struck the editors and they softened it a bit in the online edition to “Harsh winter a sign of disruptive climate change, report says.”

Nothing especially outrageous here. The enviros have been doing this for years; indeed, it’s why they adopted the term “global climate change” so that any change in climate or even just weather – which obviously this is – can be portrayed as a result of man’s nefarious activities in putting greenhouse gases into the air. The report, incidentally, is from the National Wildlife Federation that makes money by promoting global warming in the same way that GM makes money selling trucks.

But folks are having trouble buying it. A poll released Mondaypoll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press asked respondents to rank 21 issues in terms of priority. Global warming came in dead last. It’s come in last before, but this time just 28 percent of those surveyed list global warming as a top priority, down from 35 percent in 2008.

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!

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.