THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 152, August 9, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
PROBABLY NOT THE "HOTTEST YEAR"
By Dennis T. Avery
LEFTWING POLITICS, THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT, & THE PSEUDO-SCIENCE OF HUMAN-INDUCED GLOBAL
WARMING: THE ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AGENDA OF THE LIBERAL-ENVIRONMENTALIST COALITION --
IMPOSE HIGH ENERGY TAXES ON AMERICANS IN ORDER TO MAKE FOSSIL FUELS SO EXPENSIVE THAT WE WILL STOP USING
THEM, THEREBY ENDING & REVERSING THE MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING TREND -- WHAT IS KNOCKING THE PROPS OUT
FROM UNDER THE GLOBAL WARMING PROPAGANDA: THE PRESENTATION OF DATA INDICATING THAT THE EARTH'S
TEMPERATURES ARE CURRENTLY TRENDING DOWNWARD &, FOR DECADES, WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO
FULL STORY:
James E. Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Science and an ardent believer in man-made global
warming, announced recently:
“The 12-month running mean global temperature in the
Goddard Space Institute analysis has reached a new
record in 2010 . . . NASA, June 3, 2010. The main factor
is our estimated temperature change for the Arctic
region.”
The GISS figures, according to Hansen, show that recent temperatures in the Arctic have been up to four degrees
Celsius warmer than the longterm mean.
Should we be alarmed? Probably not very.
My esteemed colleague Art Horn, at the Energy Tribune blog, has blown the whistle on Hansen and GISS. He
points out that GISS has no thermometers in the Arctic! It has hardly thermometers that are even near the Arctic Circle.
GISS estimates its arctic temperatures from land-based thermometers, each of which supposedly represents the
temperatures over 1200 square kilometers. That’s a pretty heroic assumption.
Meanwhile, the Danish Meteorological Institute is publishing sea-surface temperatures from the Arctic showing a
cooling trend in the Arctic oceans during melt season since about 1993. Clearly, we have no accurate measure of the
real temperatures and trends in the Arctic at this moment. Probably that’s not very important. The Russians say that
the Arctic has its own 70-year climate cycle. The files of the New York Times, in fact, are filled with stories from
the 1920s and 1930s, clearly showing that the Arctic was as warm then as now.
But this is the moment when proposed energy taxes would start to scuttle 85 percent of the energy which powers the
modern world and its lifestyles. Global climate alarmists, Hansen among them, are playing a desperate and
short-sighted game of “pass the energy taxes.”
U.S. President Barack Obama says energy taxes are a high priority — perhaps high enough to ramp up his “health
care reform” strategy. In a lame-duck session of Congress, after the November elections, members of Congress who
have already lost their seats may vote to saddle America with energy taxes that will triple our electric bills and,
according to a Harvard University study, drive gasoline prices to $7 per gallon.
The energy taxes are intended to make fossil fuels expensive! The idea is to deliberately drive fossil fuel prices high
enough to force us to stop using them. Then, we’re supposed to depend on costly and erratic solar and wind power.
(Biomass can never produce much energy: biofuel crops would take too much land, and we can’t make ethanol out of
cellulose sources.)
The man-made global warming believers have invested 20 years in their campaign to convince us of CO2-driven
climate calamity. To their chagrin, the earth’s temperatures started to trend downward in 2007.
The sunspot index, which has a much stronger correlation with our thermometer record than CO2 (79% versus 22%)
started predicting the cooling in 2000. The sun is still in a long cold-predicting minimum.
In 2008, NASA itself told us that the Pacific had shifted into its cooling mode. The history of the Pacific Decadal
Oscillation indicates a 30-year cooling phase, the opposite of the 1976-1998 warming trend.
They’re panicked about losing the whole ball game. They feel they must get an energy tax on the books before the
earth has a chance to resume the recent and predicted cooling trend. They imagine that, if the law gets on the books,
a restart of the cooling wouldn’t push the next Congress to repeal the energy tax!
They might even be right, though it seems a stretch, given the American people’s already massive Obama-debt and
the demonstrated history that tax cuts grow the economy and tax increases strangle it.
It’s a desperate time, not for the earth, but for the global warming campaigners.
SOURCES:
James E. Hansen et al., “Global Surface Temperature Change,” draft paper released for comment, to be submitted to
Reviewers of Geophysics.
Art Horn, “Last June was the Hottest Ever?” Energy Tribune.com; August 5, 2010.
DMI Center for Ocean and Ice; http://Ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy
Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is an environmental economist. He
was formerly a senior analyst for the U.S. Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable
Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at P.O. Box 202, Churchville, Virginia, 24421, or
send him email at cgfi@hughes.net
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity