Beating The (Gore) Devil

Alexander Cockburn, who writes the Beat the Devil column for The Nation, absolutely body-slams the dogma of the new global warming theocracy. Cockburn is anything but a tool of the right. His leftist credentials are impeccable and he is virulently against the First Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of Global Warming®. (I've linked to something Cockburn wrote on this subject once before.)

Now read Dr. Jeffrey Glassman, applied physicist and engineer, retired from California's academic and corporate sectors, who provides an elegant demonstration of how the CO2 solubility pump in the Earth's oceans controls atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and how the increase in atmospheric CO2 is the consequence of temperature increase, not the cause.

Move to that bane of the fearmongers, Dr. Patrick Michaels, on sabbatical from the University of Virginia, now at the Cato Institute, who has presented in papers and recently his book Meltdown demolitions of almost every claim made by the greenhousers, particularly regarding hurricanes, tornadoes, sea rise, disappearing ice caps, drought and floods. Michaels is often slammed as a hired gun for the fossil fuel industry, but I haven't seen significant dents made in his scientific critiques.

One of the best essays on greenhouse myth-making from a left perspective comes from Denis Rancourt, an environmental science researcher and professor of physics at the University of Ottawa. I recommend his February 2007 essay "Global Warming: Truth or Dare?" on his website, Activist Teacher, which has also featured fine work by David Noble on the greenhouse lobby.

The Achilles' heel of the computer models, the cornerstone of CO2 fearmongering, is their failure to deal with water. As vapor, it's a more important greenhouse gas than CO2 by a factor of twenty, yet models have proven incapable of dealing with it. The global water cycle is complicated, with at least as much unknown as is known. Water starts by evaporating from oceans, rivers, lakes and moist ground, enters the atmosphere as water vapor, condenses into clouds and precipitates as rain or snow. Each step is influenced by temperature and each water form has an enormous impact on global heat processes. Clouds have a huge, inaccurately quantified effect on heat received from the sun. Water on the Earth's surface has different effects on the retention of the sun's heat, depending on whether it's liquid, which is quite absorbent; ice, which is reflective; or snow, which is more reflective than ice. Such factors cause huge swings in the Earth's heat balance and interact in ways that are beyond the ability of computer climate models to predict.

Read the whole thing. Cockburn's point here is that the entire "global warming" lobby is changing one corporate boss for another - only they really are the same boss. Because the existing energy companies are simply co-opting the "green good, oil bad" rhetoric and are off to the money-making races. Go read this then re-read all the dirty little secrets that have been leaking out about the rampant fraud and corruption in the UN-sponsored "mitigation" schemes. Look again at who is buying tickets for the global warming express. Look closely at the sanctimoniously hypocritical Saint Al of Gore and his massive energy consumption and his private jet set, indulgence-peddling lifestyle.

You sure you want to meet that particular new boss?

UPDATE: Well, thanks to Quilly Mammoth, I was made aware that the original title to this post may have confused a few people, so I've changed it. (And taken a shower).

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  By Quilly Mammoth, Sunday, 10 June , 2007 @ 10:02 am

  Oh, Gaius, are you going to get some interesting traffic with the title of this post! LOL. I’m assuming that you aren’t aware that the word “Gorean” refers to the world and culture of John Norman’s Gor series?

  I’m pretty sure that a detailed description of the Gorean Philosophy wouldn’t pass muster here. So I would simply advise you to Google it. And after you read the Wikipedia article and ask yourself: “are there really people like that?” let me say that in my involvement in the Science Fiction world as both a fan and a writer not a Convention goes by that I don’t see a devotee.

  May I suggest Goreian?

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  By Gaius, Sunday, 10 June , 2007 @ 1:59 pm

  Well, thanks for pointing that one out. Yeesh.

Other Links to this Post

1. Maggie's Farm — Sunday, 10 June , 2007 @ 2:51 pm