With the likelihood of our being confronted with a lame duck Congress in November, a Congress with nothing left to lose and a liberal agenda that includes climate change, Cap and Trade, and energy policy still unfulfilled, we felt it was appropriate to update readers on recent developments in the field of climate change science.  We will make every effort not to bring up “climategate,” as this new information makes that unnecessary.

 

Let’s begin with the findings of a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, where we learn that a team of scientists have reconstructed the earth’s climate belts as they existed in the late Ordovician Period, which was between 445 million and 460 million years ago.  Without going into details we don’t understand and you’d probably not read, these scientists studied the global distribution of certain common fossils, and found patterns of glaciation, where glaciers gave way to more temperate waters, were very similar to the patterns found today.  In other words, the global temperature patterns 460 million years ago were about like those we know now.

 

And oh, lest we forget, they also found that atmospheric carbon levels during that period were only four to five times what they are today.

 

“This ‘modern-looking’ pattern suggests that those ancient carbon dioxide levels could not have been as high as previously thought, but were more modest, at about five times current levels.”

 

These scientists included Mark Williams (tel. 0116 252 3642 , email mri@le.ac.uk) and Jan Zalasiewicz (0116 2523928, jaz1@le.ac.uk) of the Geology Department of the University of Leicester, and was led by Dr. Thijs Vandenbroucke (contact information not provided), formerly of Leicester and now at the University of Lille 1 (France).  Give them a call if you need more details.

Then there’s Roy Spencer, whose work The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled The World’s Top Climate Scientists presents solid evidence in an easily read format (perhaps a Hayride book review is in order) that indicates more than 75% of the warming scientists have observed since the beginning of the 20^th century is a result of natural processes.  He goes into great detail regarding one of these processes, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and how it operates in the “real world.” 

 

The PDO is a heat transfer process between the oceans and the atmosphere similar to El Niño and La Niña except it takes longer.  Cloud cover diminishes during its positive phase, thus more sunlight reaches the earth and its thermal component is stored in the oceans as heat.  During its negative phase, the cycle reverses.  This reportedly occurs in 32 year cycles, and carbon levels fluctuate along with these cycles.  Spencer concludes that our global climate is largely insensitive to man-made CO₂, and that proponents of anthropogenic global warming have made a fundamental error of confusing cause and effect.

 

High levels of carbon in the atmosphere don’t cause global warming.  Global warming causes increased levels of carbon in the atmosphere.

 

Lastly, and on a much lighter note, there’s the case of the climate change scientists who verbally rebelled.  This section is largely derived from a post at Climate Depot, and it will be littered with quotes we’ll not credit again.

 

That scientist is Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, formerly a professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, who recently released a video in which he declares that the entire anthropogenic global warming movement is a

“corrupt social phenomenon.” “It is as much psychological and social phenomenon as anything else,”

 

“I argue that by far the most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, or at best neutralized,” Rancourt said.

“Global warming is strictly an imaginary problem of the First World middleclass,” he stated.

Rancourt goes on, discussing how he is unable to hold a reasonable discussion on the subject of global warming with friends and colleagues, they shun him, as the community of climate scientists is self-censoring.

“When I tell environmental activists that global warming is not something to be concerned about, they attack me — they shun me, they do not allow me to have my materials published in their magazines,”

 

On Al Gore

“Gore strikes me as someone working for someone — as someone who will financially benefit from this. He does not give me impression of someone who genuinely cares about environmental or social justice.”

 

On Cap and Trade

“Someone is going to make a lot of money from these schemes. I have great distrust for it. It is not motivated by true concern for social justice and the environment. It can only be about powerful financiers. I see it as an horrendous scam,”

On his former colleagues

“They are all virtually all service intellectuals. They will not truly critique, in a way that could threaten the power interests that keep them in their jobs. The tenure track is just a process to make docile and obedient intellectuals that will then train other intellectuals.”

“You have this army of university scientists and they have to pretend like they are doing important research without ever criticizing the powerful interests in a real way. So what do they look for, they look for elusive sanitized things like acid rain, global warming,” he added. This entire process “helps to neutralize any kind of dissent.”

“When you do find something bad, you quickly learn and are told you better toe the line on this — your career depends on it.”

On the business of scientific research

“Environmental scientists naively and knowingly work hand in hand with finance-corporate shysters, mainstream media, politicians, and state and international bureaucrats to mask real problems and to create profit opportunities for select power elites.

 “Global warming is strictly an imaginary problem of the First World middleclass.”

Dr. Rancourt can be reached at claude.cde@gmail.com.

Dr. Rancourt is not the only prominent figure to have recently revolted against the climate change movement, but he is certainly among the more entertaining.

But there you have it – two new theories and an outspoken but respected scientist, all of which further discredit the need to be concerned about man-made, carbon induced global warming.  Keep that in mind should Congress begin anew to debate any form of Cap and Trade legislation, written in part by Enron and British Petroleum, during a lame duck session.