Energy Probe

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
January 10, 2009

My day usually begins and ends watching BBC World News. Along the way, I generally catch both CBC and CTV news, and CNN and MSNBC, too. I commend these all to you, but I especially commend the gold standard in television news and commentary, the one TV channel indispensable to obtaining an understanding of the events of the day: FOX News.

If you don’t watch FOX News Channel regularly, this advice may surprise you. Most people I know can’t refer to FOX without sneering. Outstanding journalists including the National Post’s own Robert Fulford have lambasted FOX. Democratic presidential candidates spent most of the presidential race boycotting FOX. During his campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly dissed FOX, and in particular Sean Hannity, the co-host of the No. 2 rated show in cable news, Hannity and Colmes.

I can understand none of these critics, aside from Obama, who had good reason to go after Hannity. No one was more partisan or more relentless in attacking Obama, or more effective. Hannity was the one who first broke the story about Obama’s inflammatory pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and when the rest of the media studiously ignored the story, Hannity repeated his Wright attack ad nauseum. It ultimately became a major controversy in the presidential campaign, forcing Obama to explain himself to the voters.

Does the presence of pit-bull Hannity, also one of the biggest names in conservative talk radio, discredit FOX’s claim to be “Fair and Balanced?” Not to anyone who has seen the “Colmes” of Hannity and Colmes in action. Co-host Alan Colmes, one of the most popular hosts in liberal talk radio, is every bit as tough and partisan as Hannity.

FOX’s Bill O’Reilly, the boisterous and opinionated host of The O’Reilly Factor, is even more reviled than Hannity. But those who identify O’Reilly as a knee-jerk conservative have come to knee-jerk conclusions of their own. O’Reilly does not pigeon-hole easily. He campaigns against greed on Wall Street. He especially campaigns against Big Oil, believing the oil majors manipulate supply to gouge consumers. He wants government to be pro-active on the environment, calling people who deny global warming “idiots.”

Watch him and you will come to realize why his show has been rated No. 1 in cable news for 97 consecutive months now. He is a gifted questioner, deceptively so because of his unslick, working class demeanour. I’ve never seen him ask a gotcha question. To the contrary, rather than try to trip up a guest, he often frames questions by restating his guest’s views, a technique that gives guests a jumping off point from which they can elaborate their views, rather than merely restating them themselves.

Who watches O’Reilly? According to Pew Research Center, his viewers are the most knowledgeable on the air, only 17% of them considered to have a low knowledge level. By comparison, Pew found that the audience of Newshour with Jim Lehrer, the high-brow flagship news show at PBS, had 28% with low knowledge levels.

FOX not only has the No. 1 and No. 2 shows in cable news, it has the No. 3 show and 12 of the top 15 shows, making it far and away the most popular news channel, a position it has held for seven years now. FOX dominates not because it appeals to those on the political right – only 38% of FOX viewers consider themselves Republicans – but because it appeals to people across the political spectrum. More people who identify themselves as Democrats watch FOX than watch CNN, the No. 2 news channel. In fact, FOX’s non-conservative viewership exceeds CNN’s entire viewership.

But good as the rough and tumble opinion shows are, I even more appreciate those at FOX that present calm analysis. The FOX formula – to always provide balance via hosts and/or guests with competing viewpoints – attracts high-calibre analysts of the left and right who are willing and able to civilly challenge each other. The upshot for the viewer: superior information due to a wider exposure to expert opinion.

To take a current example, only recently have mainstream journalists in goodly numbers begun to question the rash of stimulus packages that began with President Bush’s $700-billion bailout package of September; FOX viewers were immediately and consistently exposed to informed scepticism. A second example: FOX viewers knew that the Surge in Iraq was working weeks if not months ahead of those of rival networks. A third: Only FOX did not skew its presidential reportage in favour of Obama, according to Pew, which found that only FOX treated both John Mc-Cain and Barack Obama similarly.

In another measure of FOX’s objectivity, of all the debates that occurred in the presidential primaries, FOX’s hosting of the Republican primary debate is generally seen to have posed the toughest and smartest questions. And in yet another, FOX analyst Scott Rasmussen, a pollster with a remarkable record for accuracy, was bang-on in forecasting a 52% to 46% win for Obama. The FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll proved almost as impressive, coming to within one point in predicting the margin of victory. In contrast, polls from media outlets with an axe to grind, such as the CBS/New York Times and Newsweek, gave Obama an 11 and 12 point margin of victory.

My advice to FOX’s critics: Try it before you slam it. You will soon learn what the other networks don’t report. And you can then decide to watch FOX or not, in a fair and balanced way.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers.

B.P. Terpstra
tcsdaily.com (Technology/Commerce/Society)
January 8, 2009

There appears to be a great spiritual thirst for predicting great catastrophes. I call it Armageddon chic. In Lawrence Solomon‘s 2008 book, The Deniers, however, we hear from a good many moderate voices. There are no sensational prophecies, but there are many reasons to take a deep yoga breath.

Here are four:

Notably, the former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Sciences, Dr. Edward Wegman, for example, exposed the “hockey stick” rot behind the catastrophic global warming narrative, in spite of attacks from all directions.

The president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology, Dr. David Bromwich openly believes that “it’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now.”

The chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases, Prof. Paul Reiter from the influential Pasteur Institute acknowledges that Al Gore’s stated view that “global” warming catastrophes and “mosquito-borne diseases” are partners is not taken seriously in specialist circles.

And, not surprisingly, the director of research, from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, Prof. Hendrik Tennekes, maintains that “there exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies” to justify catastrophic warming forecasts.

The Deniers also calls readers to think outside the so-called consensus box. Is there really a consensus on the consensus? And, if so, how wise is it to present science as a show of hands? In it, Solomon, a Canadian columnist raises the issue of politics in all of this. Page 183: “Headline horrors make great scapegoats. There’s no more egregious or vicious example than governments using global warming to cover up their own failures to prevent the resurgence of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.”

The dynamics of the global warming issue are changing, too. From Jimmy Carter’s campaign against “global cooling” and his faith in the National Climate Program Act to Hollywood’s An Inconvenient Truth, Solomon’s text is also a cautionary tale about embracing extreme theories. But rather than deleting historical records, and simply inserting ourselves in a catastrophic motion picture, The Deniers also attempts to draw our attention to the big-picture arguments.

Page 171: “For millions of years, the geologic record shows, Earth has experienced an ongoing cycle of ice ages, each typically lasting about 100,000 years, and punctured by brief, warmer periods called interglacials, such as we are now in,” Solomon argues. “The current period of global warming actually constitutes additional indication of the ice age to come.” Thus, there is no reason to blame the “evil” robber barons. Or live like Hobbits.

With so much talk about the role of politics in business (an important argument, no doubt), it’s no wonder so many of us forget just how political the “independent” United Nations and other public intuitions are. And, where, pray tell is the infamous hockey stick today? Page 21: “The IPCC has dropped it from the Summary for Policymakers for its 2007 Report,” notes Solomon. “But the hockey stick did its main work years ago and is still very widely cited by advocates of the science-is-settled position.”

Ron Smith

January 7, 2009

Despite what this newspaper’s editorialists aver (“A New Year’s resolution,” Jan. 2, 2009), there is no scientific proof that “time is running out for mankind to take the needed actions to thwart the most disastrous effects of climate change.” Nor is it anything more than an unproven assertion to argue that “the relevant scientific community has reached a clear consensus: Many decades of unchecked fossil fuel consumption has pushed the planet far beyond the natural cycle, and the impact of this enhanced warming, especially the forecast rise in sea level this century, could ultimately lead to human suffering on an epic scale.”

The Baltimore Sun confidently urges the next president to avoid the temptation of postponing drastic action on this matter because of other pressing problems, such as the worldwide economic slowdown, our wars in Eurasia, etc. – the most important thing in the long term is to “reduce global warming.” To this I say: “Nonsense.” Oops, that makes me a “flat-earth type,” and an all-around bad person, perhaps allied with “certain deep-pocketed traditional energy interests such as coal producers.” As you probably know, proponents of global warming are very well funded as well, but space is limited, so let us move on to the idea of scientific consensus, which is oxymoronic.

Michael Crichton put it this way in a 2003 speech: “Let’s be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

The talismanic word consensus is hauled out and used to beat skeptics about the head and shoulders only in cases where the science is far from convincing. Besides, the consensus is not actually there. Search for the book The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution and Fraud and you’ll find a list of some of the scientists who depart from the supposed consensus.

The idea that we can predict anything at all about what the next century has in store for us and further generations is patently ludicrous. We don’t know what the weather will be like over the next two weeks, yet the global warming crowd insists that computer modeling shows imminent disaster and actions must be taken immediately, no matter the cost, to avert it.

S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery wrote a book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, a New York Times best-seller, providing details on scientific studies that disprove the arguments put forth by Al Gore (and The Baltimore Sun) about human activity causing climate change. The 1,500-year cycle of climate change is not based on unproven, theoretical computer modeling, but on actual ice core sampling and satellite measurement of the sun’s varying rays. The evidence from the actual measurements is that variation in solar activity – sun spots – is what causes global warming and cooling.

The fact is that the latest global warming began about 18,000 years ago, long before man started spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. At that time, thick layers of ice covered much of the Earth. The even bigger picture to keep in mind shows that for several million years, the dominant climate on this planet has been that of ice ages, which last approximately 100,000 years and which are interrupted by far briefer periods of warming, called interglacial periods, lasting for about 15,000 to 20,000 years. The current one in which we humans and other species developed and thrived should last a while longer before the extreme, life-unfriendly deep freeze returns. Warming is what enables and enhances life and is therefore something to be welcomed, not something to be feared.

Ron Smith can be heard weekdays, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., on 1090 WBAL-AM and WBAL.com. His column appears Wednesdays in The Baltimore Sun.

Lawrence Solomon

December 14, 2008

A debate over whether the science of climate change is ‘settled’ turned into an unsettling exchange.

It was a global warming debate hosted by a pillar of the American establishment and my opponent was a respected scientist representing one of the most authoritative organizations in the field. I was there to dispute the conventional wisdom that the science is settled on climate.

No sooner did the debate start than I felt as if I had stumbled onto a set for Alice in Wonderland.

“I really detest phrases like the science is settled,” asserted Dr. Jay Gulledge, a climate specialist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in his opening statement. “To characterize myself and the Pew Center as viewing the science as settled is a bit of a red herring.”

What an odd way for Jay to begin a debate, I thought (Jay and I were on a first-name basis). The only ones who claim that the science is settled are Al Gore and those who side with him — not the sceptics. Is Jay saying he detests the arguments made by those on his side of the debate?

But Jay’s comments were stranger still to anyone who knows the Pew Center. Like just everyone else on his side of the debate — from the world governments meeting this week at Poznan, Poland to the authors of the Ontario Climate Change Action Plan — the Pew Center paints the science as settled by claiming that an overwhelming number of scientists are overwhelmingly in agreement on the need for dramatic action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the exception being scientists in the pay of industry.

The debate was hosted by the National Chamber Foundation, a wing of the United States Chamber of Commerce, which every year selects and promotes 10 “Books That Drive the Debate.” Earlier this year the foundation gave this honour to my book, The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution and fraud, and those who are too fearful to do so. At my suggestion, the National Chamber Foundation decided to arrange a formal debate with someone who believed that the science is settled on climate change. It asked the Pew Center to participate and it agreed.

Jay’s opening statement continued his line of attack, which was that I was employing red herrings and straw men, leading to confusions in the debate on climate change. “For instance, a claimed link between hurricane activity and global warming,” he went on. “There’s never been any statement of consensus on this. It’s widely acknowledged within the media and within the scientific community that that is a very active area of debate within science.”

How odd, I again thought. When Kevin Trenberth of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change held a press conference in 2004 to link hurricane activity and global warming, it made headlines around the world. The Reuters headline was typical: “Global warming effects faster than feared — experts.” The news reports then and since linking hurricane activity and global warming said nothing about this issue being “a very active area of debate.”

But Jay is wrong about more than the existence of a widespread public debate here — he has it backwards as concerns the science. There actually was a consensus on the relationship between hurricane activity and global warming. This consensus appeared in the IPCC’s own reports, and was expressed by its own chief expert, Chris Landsea, who protested the 2004 press conference.

“Where is the science, the refereed publications, that substantiate these pronouncements?” an exasperated Landsea wrote to top IPCC officials following the press conference. “What studies are being alluded to that have shown a connection between observed warming trends on the Earth and long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity? As far as I know, there are none … the evidence just is not there with hurricanes, no matter how much it is trumped up for the media and the public.”

But Jay had more Alice-in-Wonderland oddities, or straw men, to announce.

“No one has claimed that anthropogenic global warming is melting ice in the Antarctic,” he asserted. What can he possibly be thinking of, I wondered? Most see the melting of Antarctica as one of the greatest potential climate change threats to the planet, and who hasn’t seen the dramatic footage of Antarctic ice shelves breaking off from the continent?

But the biggest straw man in my book, Jay claimed, involves my book’s “unstated” focus on the claims that global warming could lead to catastrophes. “There’s a doomsday case that he’s tearing down,” Jay complained, as if the doomsayer case was some side issue that was not worth discussing.

There is nothing “unstated” about the doomsayer case in The Deniers. My book explicitly and entirely focuses on the doomsayer case — it has been the fear of catastrophe, not the fear of a mild warming, that has spawned environmental protests around the world, that has led world governments to hammer out the Kyoto Protocol, that forced businesses to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to reinvent the economy, that caused citizens to pay more for their heating fuel, electricity and gasoline.

Jay’s positions flabbergasted me and others too, as evidenced by a question from the audience. “We’re making decisions now based on a catastrophe, both in government and also in businesses. So when I’m hearing somebody on the side of global warming saying, well the science isn’t settled, that’s kind of unsettling,” the questioner began.

“We’re firing people, now. We’re laying off people because we’ve got to make new products and we have to retool to make greener products. Don’t you think it’s pretty doggone important for people to understand that it isn’t settled?” Jay’s response was other-worldly, as if the climate change policies that he and others advocated had no consequences. “Since we haven’t implemented any policies regarding climate change or limiting carbon emissions nothing that’s happening now is the result of those policies,” he demurred.

During the debate, I came to realize that Jay, like most everyone else, has been taken in. The press and public believe that there is a consensus on climate change for only one reason — the widely repeated claim that 2500 scientists associated with the IPCC’s reports had endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions.

When I explained that the 2500 were merely peer reviewers and not endorsers of the final report — and that the Secretariat of the IPCC had confirmed this to me — Jay nevertheless claimed I was wrong, insisting that the 2500 were authors of the various chapters in the report.

To my amazement, he even claimed that he personally had counted the authors, and that people in the audience could confirm this by going to the IPCC’s website and counting them for themselves.

“Very factual and very verifiable,” he insisted. I invite readers to verify by visiting the IPCC website. They will see that the IPCC itself describes the 2500 as reviewers. Moreover, almost none of the 2500 reviewed the entire study and a large number of reviewers disagreed with the science that they did review.

Jay was wrong, in fact, on every single point of fact that he raised to contradict my book. The claim that sticks with me most, however, involves his treatment of geophysicst Syun Akasofu, the discoverer of the causes of the storms of the aurora borealis, twice named one of the “1000 Most Cited Scientists,” and founding director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, an organization created in 1998 with the mission, as Science magazine put it, “to plumb the consequences of climate change in the Far North.”

Jay refused to accept Akasofu’s climate change credentials, despite his extensive work in the area, claiming that Akasofu’s reputation rests on being a space physicist.

How audacious, to dismiss so easily so storied a scientist as Dr. Akasofu, who for two decades had led one of the world’s most important Arctic research centres. And yet, how necessary, if the case that the science is settled is to be sustained.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

For some references on the debate, see here.

Sources:

The IPCC Can’t Count

The IPCC 4th Assessment Report is coming out: A picture of climate change – the current state of understanding

December 13, 2008

Jay Lehr
Capitalism Magazine
December 5, 2008

Lawrence Solomon, a longtime environmental activist, began wondering a few years ago how it could be that some scientists were questioning the apparently solid consensus that humans are causing a global warming crisis. He began seeking them out, and interviewing them on the topic.

Before long, Solomon came to realize a substantial number of the world’s leading scientists are making a very strong case that humans are not causing any sort of global warming crisis.

In 2006 he began publishing his interviews with these leading scientists in Canada’s National Post newspaper. In his outstanding new book, The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud (Richard Vigilante Books, 2008, 240 pages), Solomon presents the best of these interviews, while sharing additional insights for which his newspaper columns did not have room. Solomon’s book breaks new ground in the global warming discussion, presenting the most important scientific evidence in the words of the scientists themselves.

The Deniers is not just a series of interviews and vignettes, however. Solomon carefully divides the information gleaned from his prestigious dissenters into chapters asking the very questions most of us have on our minds, and he allows the scientists’ own words to answer the questions collectively.

Scientists Persecuted

All of the “dissenters” profiled in the book are recognized leaders in their fields, with many even active in the official body that oversees most of the world’s climate change research, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Thus the book provides absorbing insight into both the scientific issues and the ferocious political and media battles being waged about global warming.

Solomon shows how noble scientists have suffered for their integrity and how attack dogs have mounted an all-out campaign against these scientists, portraying them as hacks bought by profit-mad oil companies or as non-credentialed cranks and lunatics.

Elite Scientific Resumes

The book offers well-written brief biographies of each of their illustrious careers. Here is a sample of the dozens of scientists the author interviewed, with a very condensed indication of who they are and what they believe:

Claude Allegre, Ph.D.

A member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science, Allegre was among the first scientists to sound the alarm on potential dangers from global warming. His view now: “The cause of this climate change is unknown.”

Richard Lindzen, Ph.D.

A professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Lindzen says global warming alarmists “are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn’t happen even if the models were right.”

Habibullo Abdussamatov, Ph.D.

Head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science’s Pulkova Observatory and head of the International Space Station’s Astrometria Project, Abdussamatov reports, “the common view that man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from misinterpretation of cause and effect relations.”

Richard Toi, Ph.D.

Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit and adjunct professor at the Carnegie Mellon University Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Toi calls the IPCC reports “preposterous … alarmist and incompetent.”

Sami Solanki, Ph.D.

Director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, Solanki argues changes in the sun’s state, not human activity, may be the principal cause of global warming. Says Solanki, “The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.”

Freeman Dyson, Ph.D.

A professor at Princeton University and one of the most eminent physicists in the world, Dyson reports the models used to justify global warming are “full of fudge factors” and “do not begin to describe the real world.”

Eigil Friis-Christensen, Ph.D.

Director of the Danish National Space Center and vice president of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, Friis-Christensen argues changes in the sun’s behavior could very well account for most of the warming during the past century.

Necessary Second Opinion

Global warming has become a critical question for citizens who must decide whether the cures being bandied about are not in fact worse than the disease.

In matters of health, most intelligent citizens seek a second opinion before undergoing a serious medical procedure, but in the case of global warming, a second opinion is exactly what global warming activists do not want you to seek, for fear it will reduce the effectiveness of their fear-mongering. Therefore, we are treated to a continuous drumbeat of the words, “the science is settled.”

All the scientists Solomon interviews in his book are prominent in climate science and are not just nitpicking over the interpretation of some small piece of data. Throughout the book Solomon artistically includes boxes of highlighted quotes from his subjects, taken from their own publications. Here is one from Lindzen:

“How can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes? The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism.

“Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policymakers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes.”

Worthless Computer Models

In his interview, Dyson points out from long experience that models packed with numerous “fudge factors” are worthless.

As a mathematician and physicist, Dyson is known for the unification of three versions of quantum electrodynamics, as well as for contributions to space flight and the development of a safe nuclear reactor used today by hospitals and universities around the world. But today he is known more widely as a scientific heretic for disagreeing with claims of a central human role in global warming.

In his 2005 winter commencement address at the University of Michigan, Dyson said the mathematical computer models on which the alarmist claims are based “do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry, and the biology of fields, farms, and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in.”

Solar Influence Ignored

In Solomon’s interview with Friis-Christensen, the scientist states he was originally optimistic about the work IPCC would do in studying the sun’s influence on climate change. To his surprise, however, IPCC refused to consider the sun’s effect on the Earth’s climate as a topic worthy of investigation. IPCC conceived its task only as investigating potential human causes of climate change.

That is a huge omission, Abdussamatov points out. He notes there has been global warming on other planets and moons in the solar system, and this demonstrates other forces may be at work regarding the Earth’s moderate recent warming. “Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians,” he observes.

Abdussamatov, at the pinnacle of Russia’s scientific establishment, is one of the world’s most eminent critics of the notion carbon dioxide is driving global warming. He argues these “parallel global-warmings observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth–can only be a straight line consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance.”

Cooling Coming Soon

Abdussamatov believes the recent global warming will be short-lived and that we are actually on the brink of a global cooling, and likely a severe one. He argues Earth has hit its temperature ceiling, demonstrated by cooling currently occurring in the upper layers of the world’s oceans.

In addition, Abddussamatov notes, solar irradiance has begun to fall, likely ushering in a protracted cooling period beginning in 2012-2015.

The lowest depth of the solar irradiance reaching Earth will occur around 2041 (plus or minus 11 years), Abdussamatov estimates, and will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-60. The freeze will last into the twenty-second century before temperatures rise again. For now, he says, “we continue to bask in the remains of heat that the planet accumulated over the twentieth century.”
This is an excellent book. It is written for non-scientists, and I guarantee you will understand every word. It will inspire you as you witness the courage of the deniers to take a stand and endure the wrath of global warming activists for having the audacity to report sound science.

Dr. Jay Lehr is science director of The Heartland Institute and editor of several leading scientific reference books, including McGraw-Hill’s Handbook on Environmental Science, Health and Technology.