Somebody forgot that he was looking at his “Who will be emitting the most in a few years?” list, instead of the one entitled “Who do we always make sure we beat up on in public?”:

“You need all major emitters to join in, including India, China and the United States,” said Japan’s chief climate negotiator, Mutsuyoshi Nishimura.

Oops.

China’s emissions will exceed those of the US this year.

Though I could not find any direct reference, I would think that India is no more than a decade behind. India could move to Number 1 if it stays truer to capitalist principles than still-Communist China (i.e., if it prospers more).

It also appears, based on the bolded portion of the following excerpt, that India’s emissions have been under-tabulated:

19 per cent of India’s global warming emissions from large dams, says study

NEW DELHI: Latest scientific estimates show that large dams in India are responsible for about a fifth of the countries’ (sic; should be “country’s”) total global warming impact.

The estimates also reveal that Indian dams are the largest global warming contributors compared to all other nations.

….. The study estimates that emission of methane from all the reservoirs of the world could be around 120 mt per annum. This means that of the total global emissions of methane due to all human activities, contribution from large dams alone could be around 24 per cent. The study does not include the emission of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide from large dams. If all these were included, the global warming impact of large reservoirs would go up further.

The methane emission from India ‘s dams is estimated at 27.86 per cent of the methane emission from all the large dams of the world, which is more than the share of any other country of the world.

….. “It is unfortunate that Lima ‘s study has come too late to be included in the recent reports from the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” said Patrick McCully, Director of the International Rivers Network.

Without a compelling reason, nobody should be telling countries with hundreds of millions of people in grinding poverty that they must stay that way, which is exactly what capping China’s and India’s emissions would do. And besides, until someone tells me why Fred Singer’s point about global satellite temperature readings is wrong, there’s no compelling reason to, because, absent refutation, it’s all, well, globaloney.

BizzyBlog isn’t against advertisers with contrary opinions expressed civilly. Hence the new Blogad, appropriately found in the *left* adstrip. Go to its link. If you have any reax to share, feel free to comment.

Don Surber, as you might expect, has a strong opinion.

I’m still waiting for someone to tell me why Fred Singer, as noted here in mid-March, is wrong. If Singer’s right, there isn’t even a need to worry about “National Security and Climate Change.”

Stated briefly, Reason’s Ronald Bailey (HT Ace) notes that the actual scientific consensus about the safety of genetically modified foods gets no respect from the hard-line anti-technology and anti-capitalist left — while the faux globaloney consensus is said to be deserving of the utmost in respect by many of those very same folks.

You see, the “good consensus” on climate change also “just happens” to be hard-line anti-technology and anti-capitalist.

I would call that a convenient consistency.

I don’t agree with the Times’ concession in its editorial from today that climate change is a serious issue (a previous post shows why I’m just not buying it), but it certainly does a good job of calling out the hysterical opportunists (bolds are mine):

Every group is entitled to lobby hard for its cause. But to jump on a band-wagon and blame everything on climate change is neither good science nor sound lobbying. China’s deserts have been threatening its cities for hundreds of years. Africa cannot be simultaneously threatened by endless droughts and by a rapid increase in malaria. Children are threatened by global warming, but they have also been helped by the economic development that some lobbyists seem to regard as a criminal activity. Tens of millions of children in India and China who would have died 30 years ago are not dying because increased wealth (i.e., capitalism — Ed.) has brought better food, cleaner water and improved access to healthcare.

Companies and individuals have a responsibility to examine their behaviour and reduce their impact on the planet. But that self-examination should be rational and real and not debased by left-leaning fear-mongers, whose social agendas are recipes for impoverishment and hardship.

The real danger of the zealots is that they brook no argument. This does not mean that scientists should take a myopic view of figures that point to danger, such as the rise in carbon dioxide levels to about 380 parts per million, far exceeding the “natural” range for the past 650,000 years. But even to ask what is the natural range is regarded as some sort of heresy, and to ask questions about the precise contribution of anthropogenic influences is to commit a thought crime. There have already been examples of environmental scientists hounded out of their jobs for daring to question the prevailing orthodoxy. The IPCC summary is inevitably a political narrative, one in which each word and phrase will be endlessly and selectively parsed by the likes of Greenpeace and friends.

The planet deserves the benefit of the doubt. Climate change is serious and must be a political priority. But the arguments must be subject to free and rigorous debate and the facts separated from fanciful predictions — the environment is too important to be bequeathed to the hysterical.

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UPDATE, April 8: A little more in the way of sane analysis — at last.

Back on March 3, Townhall’s Tom Borelli got in some good whacks at the “Corporate Social Responsibility” movement and one of its craven collaborators that will not go unnoticed at this blog:

Karl Marx once remarked, “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” However, Marx had no idea the rope would be corporate social responsibility (CSR) and not greed.

In keeping with CSR doctrine, CEOs are opening their doors to activist groups with great fanfare in hopes of maximizing both “the social good” and corporate profits. Regrettably, these CEO’s are maximizing neither.

Social activists are not concerned with corporate profits, shareholder returns or economic growth. Their sole mission is to transform corporations into agents to advance their social and political agenda.

By allowing social activists to influence business decisions, CEOs are choosing socialism over capitalism and by doing so; they are undermining the very foundations of our free society.

….. Not taking any chances with the free-market system, (General Electric CEO Jeff) Immelt wants government regulation to guarantee (GE’s “green” subsidiary) Ecomagination’s success. GE is a member of the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – a coalition of corporations and environmental activist groups “that have come together to call on the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Immelt’s rent seeking math is simple: limits on carbon dioxide will drive sales for his products and the Left will adore him like Al Gore.

So now Inmelt has joined the globaloney chorus for cravenly obvious reasons, giving it an aura of legitimacy it doesn’t deserve. Borelli properly notes that any gains GE achieves by allowing itself to be co-opted by the enviros will first, hurt many of its other businesses (Borelli believes this is already occurring), and second, hurt corporate economic performance in general — leading to yet more temptations of CEOs at other companies to sell out for short-term PR gain.

The tradeoff is a stark one — short-term acclaim for the cynical few in return for longer-term stagnation — or worse. Frankly, Jeff Inmelt has no moral right to make that deal.

The IBD editorial just nails it, so just read it.

The downplaying by enviros of the sun’s probable role, and likely dominant role, in global warming (if it is indeed even occurring) is indicative of their mindset that the evidence must be made to fit the desired conclusion.

THEIR attitude is, at bottom, while pretending otherwise, “Science, schmience.”

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UPDATE: Here’s a globaloney artist with a really active imagination and a phony persecution complex.

The Washington Times covered poor, pitiful NASA globaloney globalarmist James Hansen’s congressional testimony last week, where this howler was brought forth (bold is mine):

A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he’d done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years.

James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public Radio interview because they didn’t want his message to get out.

But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced.

“We have over 1,400 opportunities that you’ve availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.

Hansen should start his own globaloney consulting firm if he finds the mostly imagined constraints of government work to be too severe.

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Previous Post:
- March 4 — Globaloney and Globalarmism: Consensus, Conschmensus

Because if they get in a real debate, they lose ground:

Wednesday night, with the Park Avenue Fahrenheit still at 66.9, several hundred well-dressed New Yorkers packed an auditorium at the Asia Society to watch a three-on-three panel debate the proposition: “Global warming is not a crisis.”

….. None of the panelists disputed the assertion that the world’s climate is changing or that humans are partly responsible. Those things, all agreed, always have been true.

“The weather is very different today,” said Crichton, a Roslyn High School graduate. “On Long Island, we used to get off for school for hurricanes.”

But that’s where the comity stopped. The no-crisis panelists argued strenuously that the catastrophe is nowhere near and that efforts to solve the alleged crisis will only make thing worse. That’s the thing to be alarmed about, they said.

The yes-it-is-a-crisis debaters said the deniers were only kidding themselves. Fossil fuels and other byproducts of modern life, they argued, are seriously threatening the health of the Earth. The longer we wait to act, they said, the worse the damage will be.

….. Before the debate, not-a-crisis got 30 percent of the vote. After, the number rose to 46 percent. The is-a-crisis tally dropped from 57 to 42. The undecideds dipped slightly, from 13 to 12.

I’m not as convinced of the “warming is occurring” arguments (see the satellite temps reference at this previous post). But the 15-point turn in one evening is evidence that when the light of truth is allowed to shine through, the globalonists get taken down.

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UPDATE: I get the sense that a significant segment of the “scientific community” (difficult term, given how fractured things are) is trying to start walking back globaloney as far as it possibly can. This latest link talks of supporters for the two scientists who criticized the “Hollywoodisation” of global warming a few days ago.

Crushing climate change dissent at RealClimate.org (HT Amy Ridenour, who makes a dare that won’t be addressed):

[lengthy excerpt eliminated. readers can go to this link if they like. But lets not pretend this is honest information; this is an industry-funded disinformation site]

Real Climate’s about page says (bold mine):

RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary.

Quick indeed, to edit out anything that doesn’t conform to globaloney and the globalarmist agenda.

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Meanwhile, a two word reaction to this warning (HT CCnet e-mail): Too, late.

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Debate-is-over Debunker: Add this guy to the “Consensus, Conschmensus” list. Oh, and these guys (HT Porkopolis).

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Really good question — Cornell McCleary wonders why the black community, and especially key black political leaders, are so uncritical of Ohio’s new governor. Specifically, no one is objecting strenuously, if at all, to Governor Strickland’s plans to put the kibosh on any future growth in the state’s school voucher program, and to gut privately-run charter school efforts, even though the less well-off are the targeted beneficiaries.

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Radio Equalizer: Attention would-be looters of inner-city charities: New York is the place to be!

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Skeptical Optimist: We’re still on track for a “balanced budget” (which I have noted frequently, is not a term I buy into because it uses the Social Security surplus to get there) in June 2008. Coming just ahead of the political conventions, that would be, to say the least, interesting timing.

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Most of the public thinks the news leans left, according to Zogby. Willisms reminds us why: Conservatives are 7% of the newsroom contingent in the national press, and 12% in the local press. The claim by most of the rest of those in the newsrooms that they are “moderate” is dubious at best.

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Evidence (as if needed) that the news leans left: You don’t see pictures like the ones here (warning: strong language), which can be obtained at many antiwar rallies, and almost any that are sponsored by International ANSWER, in the newspapers. Does anyone doubt that prowar demonstrators carrying signs with similarly profane or hateful messages would see pics of them in the papers?

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Further Evidence (as if needed) that the news leans left: This will get the “no big deal, move along now” treatment from most of the Formerly Mainstream Media.

Too bad this is a subscription-only link; it’s about two-thirds of the third item there:

The Academy awards ceremony may have hailed Al Gore as a prophetic hero, but history will treat him as the personification of an incredible delusion: the idea that carbon dioxide emissions fundamentally affect the Earth’s weather patterns.

While much of the media treats this theory as catastrophic fact, the fact is it ain’t–it’s an unproved theory. Over the last few decades carbon dioxide emissions have risen, and there has been a slight increase in the Earth’s temperature. Ergo, goes the theory, it must be cause and effect and–ergo, ergo–we must take draconian measures to reduce the emissions, even if that means sharply cutting our standard of living and massively increasing bureaucratic controls over our lives.

Green socialism has now replaced the Red variety.

As near as anyone can figure, the Earth’s surface temperature increased 1 degree Fahrenheit in the 20th century. But about half of that increase came before 1940, when carbon dioxide emissions were a fraction of the level they are today. Temperatures declined slightly after 1940 until the mid-1970s, even though emissions were increasing. In the real world this would be pretty flimsy proof of a cause-effect relationship. But human beings are prey to hysteria and delusions. Gore-ites have taken to calling doubters of their apocalyptic vision “global-warming deniers,” a demagogic allusion to “Holocaust deniers.” Doubting climatologists are often hounded in government and in academia.

You’d never know from all the shrill hullabaloo that weather patterns have been changing for about as long as the Earth has existed. From about A.D. 900 to 1300 the Earth’s temperatures were even warmer than they are today, which is one reason Greenland was named Greenland. Southern England in those years was a wine-growing region. Last we looked, however, there was no evidence of knights in shining armor having ridden around medieval Europe in SUVs.

….. This hysterical belief in unproved theories is not new. ….. In the 1970s most experts were convinced the Earth faced imminent mass famine. In the first half of the 20th century many educated people believed in eugenics …..

Thankfully, despite all the widespread misconceptions about weather, we are not going to submit to Gore-ite socialist global government regulations. In fact, some good may come out of this: a major push for nuclear power–a proved, ultraclean, nonemitting energy producer.

I wish I could be as sure as Forbes is that “we are not going to submit to Gore-ite socialist global government regulations.”

It’s also a good thing Forbes put “may” into his last sentence. Despite its widespread use in France and other countries, the hard-core leadership of the enviro movement in the US isn’t about to concede to nuclear power being employed in the US after decades of preventing even the thought of it. That’s because to them it’s not about finding workable solutions — it’s about freezing us in time (or worse) and stopping all development, the consequences be damned.

From a PBS Frontline interview with Dr. S. Fred Singer (described at the link as “an atmospheric physicist at George Mason University and founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a think tank on climate and environmental issues”; bolds are mine):

SINGER: Take an example. Take the UN Science Advisory Group, the IPCC. In their report–which is a very good report, by the way…which is close to 600 pages without an index, so no one really reads it except dedicated people like me–there’s a five-page summary of the report that everyone reads, including politicians and the media. And if you look through the summary, you will find no mention of the fact that the weather satellite observations of the last twenty years show no global warming. In fact, a slight cooling. In fact, you will not even find satellites mentioned in the summary.

Now, why is that? These are the only global observations we have. These are the best observations we have. They cover the whole globe. The surface observations don’t cover the whole globe. They leave out large chunks of the globe. They don’t cover the oceans very well, which is 70 percent of the globe. So you see, the summary uses data selectively, or at least it suppresses data that are inconvenient, that disagree with the paradigm, with what they’re trying to prove. This happens often, unfortunately.

Now, you’ll also notice that people who are skeptical about global warming generally do not have government support for their work. They don’t have to write proposals to government agencies to get money. They tend to be people who have other sources of income. They might even be retired and live on pensions, or they might [have] other sources of income that do not depend on writing research proposals to federal agencies. And if you look at research proposals to federal agencies, you will find that people who write a proposal saying, “I’m going to do research to show that global warming is not a real threat”…they’re not likely to get funding from any of the government agencies.

FRONTLINE: Do you think, then, this is no longer operating as “normal” science, that there’s some kind of pathological mechanism here?

SINGER: I think climate science is on its way to becoming pathological, to becoming abnormal in the sense that it is being guided by the money that’s being made available to people.

One of the most tiresome arguments the globalonists use to try to marginalize skeptics is that the skeptics are funded by corporate money or have some other personal ax to grind. The tactic should be considered out of order, but since they used it first, and have used it hundreds of times already, the question should be turned around: How objective are you if your very ability to make a living as a “climate scientist” depends on getting grants from a government that appears to be dominated by globalarmists?

Consensus, Conschmensus Update — NY Times Notes Globaloney and Globalarmism Skeptics. Ace has a healthy portion of the text (probably requires free registration; HT Dan Riehl) for the inevitable disappearance behind the Times’ subscription firewall.

As Ace noted, they do try to water it down (the Times’ home page tease reads “Scientists argue that parts of Al Gore’s film may be exaggerated” — yeah, and I “may be” over 20 years old), but the strong criticism still seeps through:

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for “getting the message out,” Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.”

Typically, the concern is not over the existence of climate change, or the idea that the human production of heat-trapping gases is partly or largely to blame for the globe’s recent warming. The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence.

….. So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period. (question for NYT: How can the accepted earlier higher temperatures only “seem to contradict” his “highest in the past millennium” claim? — Ed.)

….. “Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog.

How “inconvenient” that the New York Times can’t even ignore the lack of “consensus.” There’s lots more at the Times link while it remains accessible, and at Ace’s place.

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Name a Country That Has Had 15 Years of Uninterrupted Economic Growth.

OK, probably both China and India.

But here is a surprise (to most people) member of that club: Australia, which is not only on track for Year 16 in 2007 — but is also in acceleration mode (requires free registration).

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Mark Tapscott is reporting that it “Looks Like Bush Has Caved on Earmarks”:

Now this morning, word is circulating on the Hill that the Bush administration is going to release only a limited database of earmarks later today or maybe no database at all, but just aggregate or summary data.

Seems the White House legislative staff fears releasing the database would offend members of the appropriation committees in Congress. So, the public gets the shaft, again, on a topic on which there is no doubt where the American people stand.

People want earmarks ended and Bush promised in his State of the Union address to join the campaign to abolish the key to what Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, calls the “gateway drug on federal spending addiction.”

If congresspersons don’t want their bleeping feelings hurt, they should get their snouts out of the trough. (Update, Mar. 14 — A Tapscott update at the same link indicates that the Office of Management and Budget is a willing accomplice in the coverup).

Given who is in control of Congress now, this is a bi-partisan outrage (you would think that since this relates to the FY 2005 budget, the Dems would want to deliver a deserved jab at those who were in charge in 2005, and would be raising a stink), especially, as Tapscott notes, during Sunshine Week.

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The German homeschooling/state kidnapping situation in Germany has taken a serious turn for the worse (HT WND, which also has a quick rundown of the story background for those who are new to it).

NOTE: This post, and the one that now follows it, were moved to the top for the rest of the evening because of the importance of the topic.

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Narrowly understandable perhaps, but NOT progress (WSJ Energy Blog appears to be free for now; HT e-mailer Kevin; bolds are in original):

Bank of America Going Green

Bank of America, the No. 2 U.S. bank by assets after Citigroup, announced a 10-year, $20 billion initiative to fight global warming with an array of environmentally friendly projects and products.

It promised to spend $18 billion encouraging business customers to develop green technologies. It also promised to “launch the capability to trade carbon-emissions credits in order to enable clients to achieve carbon-emission neutrality.” BAC said it plans to spend more than $1.5 billion to reduce its own carbon footprint.

The bank will also develop several consumer products in the next year, including a credit card that, when used, will trigger spending by the bank on projects that cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

Bank of America joins a growing list of companies — including the private equity firms that bid recently for Texas utility TXU — who recognize that it’s actually much easier being green than fighting a groundswell of public worry about global warming. “The word ‘green,’ while it’s still relevant, is no longer the main driver of many decisions to become more environmentally friendly,” Andrew Hoffman, a business professor at the University of Michigan Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, told Reuters. “It’s just smart business.”

Translation: The public has been duped and companies like B of A can’t fight it alone — so they’ll join it. I don’t deny that it makes “business sense” in the current hysterical political environment, or that the Bank probably needs to do what they are doing to be “competitive” (after all, the risks of being targeted as a “bad guy” are substantial), or that there aren’t environment-friendly projects that justify themselves on the numbers (utility costs saved, etc.) — but B of A’s announcement taken as a whole is a sad commentary on just how effective the globaloney (and it IS globaloney) and globalarmism (and it IS globlarmism) have been.

This is not progress.

It should also be noted that B of A is quite selective when deciding which “public groundswell” it will pay attention to. There’s been a huge outcry against issuing credit cards to illegal immigrants on grounds relating to fairness to citizens and ethnic opportunism, but B of A has decided that they can ignore that one — and they will. Zheesh.

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UPDATE: Obviously, we need more people like this to break through the globaloney.

UPDATE 2: Maybe B of A should be more concerned, along with a lot of the other financial-services firms, with its mail footprint. The industry’s “mail footprint” for credit-card solicitations went up 30% just last year. One WSJ commenter says, “I’ll believe this when I stop receiving 10 mail requests for credit cards for them each month. I figure they waste one tree per year just for me.” Maybe they’ll invent “credit-card offer offsets” so they’ll feel as guilt-free as Al Gore obviously does about his outsized energy consumption.

In light of the growing intimidation of skeptics by financially conflicted globaloney globalarmists (HT Anchoress), it seems quite timely — indeed, important — to post this quaint little reminder:

….. over 17,000 scientists declare that global warming is a lie with no scientific basis whatsoever.

The global warming hypothesis has failed every relevant experimental test. It lives on only in the dreams of anti-technologists and population reduction advocates. The United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and of technologies that depend upon coal, oil, and natural gas and some other organic compounds.

This (Kyoto) treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.

If your mind isn’t closed and you’ve got the time, there’s a great 52-minute lecture here that busts the globaloney wide open. The lecturer isn’t Mr. Excitement, but that’s not the point.

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SPECIAL UPDATE, March 8: Especially in response to Comment 2 below and other disinfo, this description (HT Eye Hacker) of the signers and the nature of the project is worthy of note –

Signers of this petition also include 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences ….. make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth’s plant and animal life.

Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields. In addition to these 17,100, approximately 2,400 individuals have signed the petition who are trained in fields other than science or whose field of specialization was not specified on their returned petition.

Of the 19,700 signatures that the project has received in total so far, 17,800 have been independently verified and the other 1,900 have not yet been independently verified. Of those signers holding the degree of PhD, 95% have now been independently verified.

The costs of this petition project have been paid entirely by private donations. No industrial funding or money from sources within the coal, oil, natural gas or related industries has been utilized. The petition’s organizers, who include some faculty members and staff of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, do not otherwise receive funds from such sources. The Institute itself has no such funding. Also, no funds of tax-exempt organizations have been used for this project.

The signatures and the text of the petition stand alone and speak for themselves. These scientists have signed this specific document. They are not associated with any particular organization. Their signatures represent a strong statement about this important issue by many of the best scientific minds in the United States.

I must officially “call BS” on Comment 2 and the source referred to (though of course not the commenter, who appears to be unfortunately duped, although I must add that I found no evidence of any podiatrists).

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UPDATE: More on how unhinged the “debate” (which of course globalarmists want to say is “settled” and therefore should be shut down) has become from the underlying data.

UPDATE 2: Anchoress (a)weighs in, and also via Kim at Wizbang, points to a British Channel 4 documentary on March 8 that promises to blast “The Great Global Warming Swindle.”

UPDATE 3: An unncessary (see comment 2 below) but “what the heck, I’ll do it anyway” challenge has in effect been issued to show climatologists and climate researchers who don’t buy into globaloney. Okey-dokey; in only 10 minutes or so the following names were found:

• David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA).
• Timothy Ball, PhD in Climatology — “Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn’t exist.”

Thomas Sowell identified a half dozen a few weeks ago without working up much of a sweat:

• Dr. S. Fred Singer, who set up the American weather satellite system, and who published some years ago a book titled “Hot Talk, Cold Science.”
• A professor of meteorology at MIT, Richard S. Lindzen
• A professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, Patrick J. Michaels
• A professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, David R. Legates
• Skeptical experts in other countries around the world include Duncan Wingham, a professor of climate physics at the University College, London, and Nigel Weiss of Cambridge University.

Obviously all lightweights (/sarcasm).

UPDATE 3A, March 5: I know it’s not football season any more, but let’s just pile it on anyway (courtesy POS 51) from the NRSP (National Resources Stewardship Project) –

• Dr. Ian Clark, Professor of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
• Dr. Tim Patterson, Professor of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa
• Dr. Vincent Gray, Expert Reviewer for the IPCC and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of ‘Climate Change 2001′, Wellington, New Zealand
• Dr. Sallie Baliunas, astrophysicist and climate researcher, Boston, Massachusetts
• Dr. Fred Michel, Director, Institute of Environmental Science and Associate Professor of Earth Sciences, Carleton University
• Dr. R.M. Carter, Australia, Research Professor at James Cook University (Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia)

UPDATE 4: A bonus — A Perspective on what 90% Certainty Means in Science

UPDATE 5: Second Bonus (HT The Other Club) — “Fire and Ice — Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can’t decide weather we face an ice age or warming.” That goes for scientists, too.

UPDATE 6, March 5: Here’s an interesting parallel, considering the comments in this post — Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics (HT NixGuy) skewers the “Jesus Tomb” claim and does it on this basis –

Scientific method demands a careful, systematic weighing of all the evidence, for and against. The documentarians have not done this. They have systematically ignored the unfavorable evidence: (1) they ignored those who should not be in the tomb, (2) they did not properly consider those who should be in the tomb; (3) they ignored the strong likelihood that Jesus could not be buried in the tomb. Their method is essentially, “Evidence that favors the theory is included. The rest is excluded.”

This is how a freak accident becomes a sure thing.

Let’s analogize, shall we?

Scientific method demands a careful, systematic weighing of all the evidence, for and against. Globalarmists have not done this. They have systematically ignored the unfavorable evidence (examples abound, including the Medieval Warm Period, the bogusness of the hockey stick, etc., etc. — Ed.). Their method is essentially, “Evidence that favors the theory is included. The rest is excluded.”

Now, back to Jay Cost for a paragraph that fits both scams to a T:

What they offer here is not science, but pseudo-science — polemic dressed in scientific language. Numbers and “tests” are trotted out, but only for the sake of appearance. The hypothesis is never actually in danger because the falsifying evidence is excised before the evaluation begins. In other words, the rules of the game are: heads they win, tails you lose. The game was rigged from the start.

This is how a possibly interesting theory becomes a sure thing.

UPDATE 7, March 5: The Canada Free Press site is being weighed down by a Drudge link that says “Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming – Now a Skeptic…” UPDATE 7A: Okay now that the link is accessible –

(Dr. Claude Allegre’s) break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” in l’ Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro’s retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. “The cause of this climate change is unknown,” he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the “science is settled.”

Dr. Allegre’s skepticism is noteworthy in several respects. For one, he is an exalted member of France’s political establishment, a friend of former Socialist president Lionel Jospin, and, from 1997 to 2000, his minister of education, research and technology, charged with improving the quality of government research through closer co-operation with France’s educational institutions. For another, Dr. Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution. His break with scientific dogma over global warming came at a personal cost: Colleagues in both the governmental and environmental spheres were aghast that he could publicly question the science behind climate change.

But Dr. Allegre had allegiances to more than his socialist and environmental colleagues. He is, above all, a scientist of the first order, the architect of isotope geodynamics, which showed that the atmosphere was primarily formed early in the history of the Earth, and the geochemical modeller of the early solar system. Because of his path-breaking cosmochemical research, NASA asked Dr. Allegre to participate in the Apollo lunar program, where he helped determine the age of the Moon. Matching his scientific accomplishments in the cosmos are his accomplishments at home: Dr. Allegre is perhaps best known for his research on the structural and geochemical evolution of the Earth’s crust and the creation of its mountains, explaining both the title of his article in l’ Express and his revulsion at the nihilistic nature of the climate research debate.

UPDATE 8, March 5: Last Thursday, Don Luskin (Smart Money, Blog) assigned partial blame for the early-week stock market decline to (with a bit of humor) …. Al Gore.

UPDATE 9, March 5: The National Post has a 13-part (at this point) series on “The Deniers,” of which the Allegre piece cited in Update 7A above is the latest.

UPDATE 10, March 6: A number of links that I have received from this Climate Audit post from last year remind me that much of the “science” supposedly backing up global warming has gone through an inadequate “peer review” process that, as noted in late 2005, is grievously deficient in fact-checking and disclosure, and therefore way, way short of being reliable.

UPDATE 11, March 6: There is a timely book, by Christopher C. Horner at the Competitive Enterprise Institute — “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.” The publisher says that “This latest installment in the Politically Incorrect Guide series provides a provocative, entertaining, and well-documented expose of some of the most shamelessly politicized pseudo-science we are likely to see in our relatively cool lifetimes.”

UPDATE 12, March 7: Don Surber (HT Instapundit) detects globaloney affecting routine reports about weather extremes. If it’s very cold, even record-breaking cold, it doesn’t get attention outside the immediate area. If it’s warm, it’s tied to …. you know.

UPDATE 13, March 11: The Empire (Attempts to) Strike Back — by going stone-cold crazy with the predictions from “a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press.” I believe the word “draft” will become important. We’ll see.

UPDATE 14, March 11: This was inevitable, given the hysteria — “Scientists threatened for ‘climate denial’.” Wait a minute: Why is this happening if there is “consensus”? Oh, and the only reason that outfits like the IPCC have “consensus” is that they expel those who don’t agree with the “consensus.”

UPDATE 15, March 12: And the “consensus”-busting goes on — this is from Philip Stott, an Emeritus Professor from the University of London, UK, who for the last 18 years was the editor of the Journal of Biogeography. In an opinion piece at ABC News, he makes huge points about concentrating on what’s important — and it’s not globaloney (bolds are mine):

Herein lies the moral danger behind global warming hysteria. Each day, 20,000 people in the world die of waterborne diseases. Half a billion people go hungry. A child is orphaned by AIDS every seven seconds. This does not have to happen. We allow it while fretting about “saving the planet.” What is wrong with us that we downplay this human misery before our eyes and focus on events that will probably not happen even a hundred years hence? We know that the greatest cause of environmental degradation is poverty; on this, we can and must act.

The global warming “crisis” is misguided. In hubristically seeking to “control” climate, we foolishly abandon age-old adaptations to inexorable change. There is no way we can predictably manage this most complex of coupled, nonlinear chaotic systems. The inconvenient truth is that “doing something” (emitting gases) at the margins and “not doing something” (not emitting gases) are equally unpredictable.

Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.