More Junk Science

It's becomming more and more obvious that our government and our news media and most university intellectuals are determined to snowball the American people into a socialist state. The goal has been renamed from socialism and is now called "sustainable development." The political tool that will be used to get us there is global warming (GW).

Steven Milloy at Junk Science.com has an article on how Senator Pete Domenici is stacking panelists to testify before the Senate Committee on Natural Resources. Evidently, most of the 29 panelists are of the anti-capitalist, anti-free market mindset so of course they are all gung-ho for the global warming is all man's fault mantra.

Next week when the testimony is over, the media will no doubt report there is a "consensus" that GW is all mans' fault and is a crises. An uninformed and not to be informed public will reluctantly agree to give up more of their money and freedoms to "save the planet."

On Friday Mar.24th. the Detroit Free Press ran a news article from the Cox News Service titled "Arctic sea levels could surge with warming." In it scientists Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona, said that sea level rising "'...will become irreversible sometime in the second half of the 21st Century unsless something is done to reduce human emmisions of greenhouse gas emmissions'..."

In my casual study of earth's climate history I have yet to find any climate event that is "irreversible." The earth has gone from a near snowball-almost covered in ice-to completely ice free, even at the poles. Nothing is irreversible in the climate although the sun will someday burn out and that is irreversible.

To say that sea level rise will become irreversible is to say that we will not have another glaciation. Since we are in the middle of a Glacial Epoch--a period where ice grows from the poles towards the equator, then recedes back again, such a statement is utterly rediculous. In my judgement, Mr. Overpeck is a junk scientist whose opinion has no credibility.

The article also says things like "And if it {warming} continues, by 2100, the Arctic will be at least as warm as it was nearly 130,000 years ago."
What evidence does he have to support the idea that it will continue? None. Just his own speculation. There is reason to believe it won't. The earth's climate history, which is one of to and fro: sea levels rise then fall, the planet warms then cools, there are floods then drought, high periods of hurricane activity then low, back and forth like a pendulum. At the very most, man might, maybe, possibly be able to extend the inter-glacial we are in now by a hundred or so years but only by increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is a big maybe.

The reason it's not likely to happen is that a Glacial Epoch is heavily weighted in favor of glaciations. Glaciations last a long time, usually 100,000 years. Inter-glacials are very short, about 15 to 20,000 years. We are in one now and man's 1/3 of one percent contribution to greenhouse gasses just isn't significant enough to stop the forces of nature. For a good snap shot of earth's climate go to Paleoclimatology.

World Climate Report also has an analysis of Mr. Overpeck's report here.

So we see politicians like Sen Domenici stacking his witness panels with pro-warming people and scientists like Overpeck trying to scare the public into being true believers. When you see tactics like these used by scientists and politicians, you can be sure the science behind it is suspect. If it were real, the facts could be presented to the people openly. There would be no need for deceit.