Is Climate Change a Hoax?

We are told that the science has been done. That there is an overwhelming consensus among the experts in the field that man-made climate change is a Fact. And that if you are not a trained environmental scientist or climatologist, then you don’t get to have an opinion, because you don’t know what you are talking about.

Not surprisingly, there are those who are not prepared to take that sitting down.  Call them skeptics, call them deniers; it’s all the same.  They have a different view of the Climate Change theory and they are not bashful about coming forward with it.  It is my job to put their case before you.  I am not a scientist, so I am not going to try to assess the so-called scientific evidence presented by the scientists.  I will let the spokesmen and experts amongst the Deniers put their case, in their own words.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of genuine climate experts from around the world, the real heavyweights in the field, are all on the side of climate change, and, according to the Deniers, are willing participants in the Climate Change Hoax.  Here is what they say the lies are about:.

Argument 1:  It’s all about scientists getting grant money.  They’ll say anything to get govt. grant money,  and global warming is the issue du jour.  “In the end, it’s not about science; it’s about government (tax-payer) grant money.  Scientists live or die by grant money. A long time ago universities began to realize that there’s big money to be made in doing research for the government… Of course, they can be blamed when they (1) claim that they are doing real science, (2) there is no contrary evidence, and (3) what contrary evidence they do find they suppress it. So the next time someone dogmatically asserts that the majority of scientists believe in Global Warming, ask your antagonist how much grant money he’s getting? ”  Gary DeMar in  ‘Global Warming’ Fear is About Money Not Science posted online in his blog, “Godfather Politics”  26 August 2012 (Gary DeMar is an American writer, lecturer and the president of American Vision, an American Christian nonprofit organization. http://godfatherpolitics.com/6783/global-warming-fear-is-about-money-not-science/#ixzz26DJfxi2u

Argument 2:  The Planet isn’t warming

Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist for the University of Alabama and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.  “for some reason it stopped warming in the last 10 years, which is one of those dirty little secrets of global warming science”    22 March 2012

 Argument 3: Himalayan peaks are not melting.

Ethan A. Huff, staff writer,  Natural News.com   “…new research published in the journal Nature reveals that, contrary to popular belief, ice caps in the Himalayan mountains and many nearby peaks have not actually melted at all in the past ten years…At the same time, the researchers claim that lower-level ice melting is still occurring, and that the new findings do not negate existing theories on global warming. This declaration, however, appears to be more of a politically-charged opinion rather than a hypothesis based on the facts, as there simply is no concrete evidence that ice caps as a whole are melting any faster than usual, or that man is responsible for causing this if they are.”    http://www.naturalnews.com/034940_Himalayan_ice_global_warming.html#ixzz26DNq94jv

Argument 4:  The Scientists are being manipulated by politicians to spin their research findings to Suit a Political Agenda 

 Richard Lindzen,  American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I think the real problem is so many scientists have gone along with it without pointing out that what has been established reasonably well has nothing to do with the urgency that’s being promoted, which is largely a political matter.” 6 April 2011

John Mclean, Journalist ,  “Science a slave to expediency” The Australian

“The notion that human activity has an alarming influence on climate is based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and spurious claims about a scientific consensus… The single, pre-eminent force driving this distortion of science originates in the once-august UN. The UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change set the tone by linking climatic variations to the air and water pollution issues that it was quite reasonably addressing at the time. It ignored recognised natural climate forces and declared that recent variations in climate were attributable to human activity. Although the IPCC, which was set up by the UNFCCC to investigate the matter, backed away from the assertion that all modern climate change is man made, it nonetheless operates under a charter that considers only the risks of “human-induced” climate change.”  6 May 2009

Patrick Michaels, former state climatologist of Virginia and a Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute

– “Global warming forecasts confidently made by the UN in 1990 were clearly exaggerations…
– Climate scientists on the federal dole have a track record of punishing those who do not express alarmist views;
– Climate alarmism, public funding, and the growth of government and taxation create self-feeding mutual incentives.  2 February 2012

Paul Fraleigh: Is Global Warming a Hoax? Five Facts that Say it Is

• Fact #1: We are actually entering an ice age, not an age of global warming.  “I myself find it fascinating how the changing tilt of the Earth, its wobble, and the changing eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit over time, as well as the added effect of continental drift, determine ice ages, with the implications being, I think, much scarier than the global warming bugaboo stories. It also suggests, ironically, that if global warming were indeed true, it should be something to be welcomed rather than something to be alarmed about, because the temperature rise that such warming would supposedly cause might tend to offset the glacial advance.”

 

• Fact #2: Cosmic radiation has a much larger role in determining climate than CO2.  “In 1997, Danish scientists H. Svensmark and E. Friis-Christensen discovered that cosmic rays ionize air molecules, transforming them into condensation nuclei for water vapor, causing cloud formation, which in turn, causes cooling. When the solar wind emanating from the sun is strong, it tends to shield the Earth from the cosmic radiation, causing fewer clouds and warming of the Earth. When the solar wind is weak, more clouds form and the Earth tends to cool. The average length of solar activity cycles is 11 years. The current sunspot cycle is weaker than the preceding cycles, and the next two cycles (22 years) are expected to be even weaker, meaning more clouds and colder, not warmer, weather.”
• Fact # 3: There is no consensus among scientists that global warming exists. “Over 31,000 scientists have signed a petition stating that there is no convincing evidence showing that greenhouse gases are causing or will cause catastrophic heating of the Earth.”
• Fact # 4: The “Hockey Stick” Hoax. “American scientist Dr. Michael Mann was discovered to have faked the data to try to show that the 1990s was the warmest decade in history and totally eliminate from the climate record the well-documented medieval warming from 700 to 1300 AD, when temperatures were actually much warmer than now. The temperature curve from 1000 to 1900 AD in Mann’s reconstruction is relatively flat and then spikes upward like the bend in a hockey stick. The intent of the fakery was to demonstrate that human industrial activity caused the purported increase. The fakery was exposed by two Canadian scientists, McIntyre and McKitrick. McKitrick actually showed that Mann’s computer program generated hockey-stick curves even when random data were inserted.
• Fact # 5: Al Gore has been proven a fraud in a British court.  “There were in fact at least 35 lies that were found to be in Gore’s movie, although only nine of them were actually presented in court.”  (this was taken from Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, “35 Inconvenient Truths.” )   Paul Fraleigh lives in Montreal, Quebec and writes metrical poetry and non-fiction. He holds a B. A. in English, University of Waterloo

U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla)
Chairman, Committee on 
Environment and Public Works: “It’s also important to question whether global warming is even a problem for human existence. Thus far no one has seriously demonstrated any scientific proof that increased global temperatures would lead to the catastrophes predicted by alarmists. In fact, it appears that just the opposite is true: that increases in global temperatures may have a beneficial effect on how we live our lives. ”         28 July 2003

William Kininmonth The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition:  “There is rising recognition that introduction of a carbon tax under the guise of “cap and trade” will be personally costly, economically disruptive to society and tend to shift classes of jobs offshore.”         29 April 2009

(Nigel) Lord Lawson of The Global Warming Policy Foundation:  “…[we should not] persuade the world to impoverish itself by moving from relatively cheap carbon-based energy to much more expensive non-carbon energy… if there is a resumption of warming, the only rational course is to adapt to it, rather than to try (happily a lost cause) to persuade the world to impoverish itself ”   29 November 2011

This is not all of the arguments by any means, but it’s all I’m prepared to spend time on.  The point of it all is that the Climate Deniers base their position on the notion that the scientists, governments around the world, the United Nations, the mainstream media, and anyone else promoting the idea that climate change is real are all liars, perpetrating a huge hoax on the world.  The scientists are accused of falsifying data, governments and the UN are suppressing opposing information, the media are deliberately fostering the hoax for whatever reasons.  It’s all a giant conspiracy by greedy people.

I’m confused, frankly.  It seems to me that in a political environment where the notion that  climate change is a serious threat, governments are in deep doodoo over the issue and would far rather funnel money into research that would prove that there is not a threat.  I have not been able to work out what possible incentives governments would have to promote it as a threat.  Rather, the contrary would be more likely.  Likewise, why would scientists have a stake in providing scientific evidence to support such a hoax?   It just doesn’t make sense.  The only incentives I can identify anywhere in the debate would be incentives in the opposite direction.  Certainly those with vested interests in defeating any restrictions on carbon emissions have incentives to discredit the science, but I fail to see the incentives to create and maintain such a “hoax”.

Suellen Carey-Clarke

http://meanderingmatriarch.com