Climate “Consensus” Con Game: Desperate Effort Before Release of UN Report

Climate “Consensus” Con Game: Desperate Effort Before Release of UN Report

Written by William F. Jasper, The New American  5/22/13

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is in trouble, and climate alarmists are hoping the much-ballyhooed report by Australian activist John Cook, released last week, will convince the public to be very afraid of global warming.

The last few years have not been kind to the global-warming alarmists. In the 17th century, François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld is credited with famously quipping, “There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts.”

Unfortunately, for the climate catastrophists, their pet theory (though hardly beautiful) has been slaughtered many times over by a brutal and relentless onslaught of facts. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, however, the global-warming alarmists keep coming back like the undead in a B-grade horror flick. The fanatical proponents of anthropogenic (human caused) global warming, or AGW, have powerful supporters with deep pockets who keep resuscitating them. They have a massive institutional base among Big Government, Big Media, Big Foundations, Big Business, and Big Green, all of which have huge incentives to perpetuate AGW alarmism. No matter how many times the AGW fearmongers’ predictions are shot down, they are resurrected and sent back to frighten more voters/taxpayers into submission to global policies, taxes, and controls. Utilizing brute power and deception, they intend to reverse de La Rochefoucauld’s prediction and see the facts murdered by their own triumphant theory.

As we have reported ("Global Warming 'Consensus': Cooking the Books") AGW activist John Cook has been the recipient of a media promotion bonanza for his recent study claiming that 97 percent of climate scientists endorse the global-warming alarmist position. President Obama and Big Media turned it into a claim that 97 percent of all scientists endorse the AGW position. Both claims are wrong. Stung by numerous setbacks, the AGW lobby is desperately attempting to regain ground through a giant bluff, hoping that their false claim of the near unanimity of all scientists will convince politicians and the public to give them the global power and funding they crave.

Among the many fatal blows the climate alarmists have sustained along the way and managed to bounce back from are: Climategate (see here, here, here, and here), Climategate 2, Glaciergate, Polar beargate (see here and here), Himalayagate, Amazongate, Sea levelgate, Hockey stickgate, and more than 120 additional scandals that have repeatedly exposed the discredited premises, fraudulent research, and faulty computer models on which the AGW fright pedaling empire has been built. 

The Next Big IPCC Propaganda Push

Now the United Nations’ IPCC is getting set to release the first of three installments of its latest Assessment Report. And the powers that be are obviously concerned that they do not have sufficient public support in the United States to get Congress to enact the type of trillion-dollar transfers and the “complete transformation of the world” envisioned. The IPCC is scheduled to release its Working Group I (WGI) report on the physical science basis of its latest Assessment in September, and they are desperate to gain support for it. In addition to the main stumbling block of American public resistance, they are also running into problems with European countries that once appeared to be locked in as supporters, but which are now revolting due to the crushing costs of alternative “green energy” and their own mounting debt and fiscal problems. Many of these countries are jumping ship and now want to switch to the more affordable natural gas that is flooding the global market, thanks to new “fracking” technology. This has the UN and the globalists in a dither. Last September, Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the UN’s International Energy Agency, warned that “governments are feeling more and more uncomfortable to put money in renewables especially in the days of austerity, and some governments are cutting their support."

"The availability of cheap or lower gas prices are putting additional pressure on renewable energies," Birol said. This is a bad thing, said the UN economist. Reuters gave this report on Birol’s apocalyptic warning regarding these developments: 

Birol said that any reduction in investment in renewable energy would increase the risk of an increase in global temperatures by 6 degree Celsius this century, describing the current trend as "catastrophic."

"If there are no urgent and bold policies put in place the door to a 2 degrees trajectory, the door to a normal life for us and for our children, will be closed and will be closed forever," he said. 

The “increase in global temperatures by 6 degree Celsius this century” is one of the many absurd — and persistent — claims made by AGW fanatics. Dr. William Happer, one of America’s preeminent physicists and a professor of physics at Princeton University, explains here why the six-degree increase bogeyman is ridiculous and completely without foundation in science. (A less technical layman’s version of the Happer article is available here.)

Many of the world’s leading authorities in climatology, meteorology, atmospheric physics, paleo-geology, and many other disciplines (see below) have been weighing in on the skeptical/realist side over the past few years and taking the position that it is beyond irresponsible for scientists and politicians to burden humanity with enormous and unprecedented tax and regulatory burdens based merely on frightening computer model scenarios that cannot sustain critical scientific examination.

In science, facts and truth are discovered by measurement and experiment, independent of surveys, opinion, popularity contests, and “consensus.” A fact remains a fact whether or not one percent, 97 percent, or 100 percent of scientists believe it to be a fact. And, conversely, a falsehood remains false even if 97 percent or even 100 percent of scientists believe it to be true. The history of science is littered with many discarded falsehoods that were once universally embraced by the scientific consensus of the day. Nevertheless, a credible claim of a consensus of  97 percent  — near unanimity — of scientists specializing in climate research (or any area of science) is not one that the common layman can, or should, lightly dismiss. After all, we laymen must rely on expert scientific opinion, on specialists, for many important issues involving health, medicine, energy, national defense, etc. And if virtually all scientists say something is true, we would be foolish to challenge their claims — unless we have extraordinary evidence to the contrary. 

There are key words and questions involved here: Do we have a “credible claim of consensus of 97%,” or is there “extraordinary evidence to the contrary”? The answer to the former is a resounding “No,” and to the latter an equally resounding “Yes.”

Crash Goes the Phony Consensus

One of the biggest lies of the AGW alarmist camp has been that virtually all scientists of any stature and expertise support the claims of AGW activists. Only old dinosaurs unfamiliar with modern climate research or corrupt scientists bought off by the fossil fuel industry disagree, goes their argument. The truth is strikingly at odds with this claim. As we noted last year (“'Climate Science' in Shambles: Real Scientists Battle UN Agenda") two of the most important AGW scientist activists have jumped ship and now battle against the cause they once supported: James Lovelock (photo above), the British inventor, NASA scientist, author, and originator of the Gaia Hypothesis; and Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, a founding father of Germany’s environmental movement and a director of one of Europe’s largest alternative energy companies. But that dynamic duo comprises only a minute fraction of the thousands of distinguished scientists who take issue with the AGW activists. In the same article last year, we noted that some of the IPCC’s severest critics are scientists who have served as lead authors and expert reviewers of IPCC reports and have witnessed from the inside the blatant bias and politics masquerading as science. Former and current IPCC experts who have spoken out against the IPCC’s abuse of science include such prominent scientists as:

• Dr. Judith Curry, chair of the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; 

• Mike Hulme, professor of climate science at East Anglia University where the Climategate e-mails were hacked;

• Dr. Richard Lindzen, MIT climate physicist and Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences;

• Dr. John Christy, climatologist of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and NASA;

• Dr. Lee C. Gerhard, past director and state geologist with the Kansas Geological Society and senior scientist emeritus of the University of Kansas;

• Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, former Virginia State climatologist, a UN IPCC reviewer, and University of Virginia professor of environmental sciences;

• Dr. Vincent Gray, New Zealand chemist and climate researcher;

• Dr. Tom V. Segalstad, geologist/geochemist, head of the Geological Museum in Norway; and

• Dr. John T. Everett, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) senior manager and project manager for the UN Atlas of the Oceans.

In 2010, Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com published an important 321-page report featuring the statements of more than 1,000 renowned scientists worldwide who have challenged the IPCC’s manmade global-warming claims. (The full report may be downloaded for free, as a PDF, here.) The 1,000+ lineup of scientists reads like a Who’s Who of the global scientific community. It includes:

• Dr. Willie Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center astrophysicist;

• Dr. William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Bracket professor of physics, Princeton University;

• Dr. Leonard Weinstein, 35 years at the NASA Langley Research Center and presently a senior research fellow at the National Institute of Aerospace;

• Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel Prize-winning Stanford University physicist, formerly a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory;

• Dr. Anatoly Levitin, the head of the geomagnetic variations laboratory at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences;

• Dr. Hans Jelbring, Swedish climatologist of the Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics Unit at Stockholm University;

• Burt Rutan, renowned engineer, inventor, and aviation/space pioneer;

• Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, emeritus professor of physics, and founding director, International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks;

• Dr. Bjarne Andresen, physicist, and professor, The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; and

• Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor, isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology, University of Ottawa, Canada. 

And if still more proof is needed that the science is not “settled” — as Al Gore, the IPCC, the UN, and other members of the alarmist choir claim — more than 31,000 scientists in the United States have signed a petition urging the U.S. government to reject the types of actions that have been proposed at UN forums in Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cancun, and Rio. The Petition Project, organized by Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and Dr. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates a resounding rejection of claims that there is any kind of "overwhelming consensus" that anthropogenic global warming is a crisis or serious threat.The petition reads, in part: 

The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. 

Many of the scientists cited above, as well as hundreds more among those featured in the ClimateDepot study cited, have published peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, but as our report on the Cook study noted, these articles by skeptic/realist authors have been systematically filtered out of the lists of accepted studies, with the obvious intent of supporting the thesis that published scientists overwhelmingly subscribe to the manmade global warming thesis. The Cook study claimed to be able to find only 78 published studies that supported the skeptical viewpoint. However, PopularTechnology.net published a list of “1100+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm,” which, again, underscores the shoddy (or intentionally censorious and dishonest) research involved in the celebrated Cook study. 

Censorship Exposed

Since we've mentioned censorship, it is worthy of note that the 2009 Climategate e-mail scandal at East Anglia University exposed a vicious and seamy side of the climate-change fraternity that outraged even many of the alarmists’ supporters. As shown here, here, and here, some of the most famous scientists, journals, and institutions promoting AGW alarmism have unethically and maliciously blocked (and/or attempted to block) the publication of papers by fellow scientists who were considered to be opponents of AGW, or who were considered to be simply insufficiently alarmist. Some of the alarmists went even further, attempting to destroy the reputations of skeptics and/or get them fired. If they can’t achieve their “consensus” one way, they’ll get it another.

As we draw closer to the release of the IPCC’s WGI report in September, we can expect that the campaign of climate-alarmist misinformation and disinformation will intensify.

Related articles:

Climate-change Computer Models Fail Again — and Again, and Again

New Report: Man-made Global Warming Is a Farce (“Extreme Weather” 2012)

Blaming Climate Change for Hurricane Sandy

CFR Pushes End to Sovereignty at UN's Doha Climate Summit

UN Climateers and the “Complete Transformation of the World”

Global Climate Warming Stopped 15 Years Ago, UK Met Office Admits

IPCC's Bogus Claims About Melting Glaciers

What Consensus? Public, Scientists Doubt Climate Crisis

“Climate Science” in Shambles: Real Scientists Battle UN Agenda

"Skeptic" Climate Conference Challenges UN

Scientists Say 'Whoa!' on Climate Legislation

Scientists Challenge Global Warming “Crisis”

H/T Greenie Watch