'Alarmist' Global Warming Claims Unfounded Says Climatolgist

CNSNews.com ^ | 7/14/03 | Marc Morano

[kattracks]

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - Climatologist Patrick J. Michaels told a Capitol Hill luncheon Friday that the fears of catastrophic global warming are scientifically unfounded and 'alarmist.' Michaels also declared that any climate change that does occur would not impact the earth or its inhabitants in any significant way.

"The science is settled in a very non-alarmist way," Michaels told CNSNews.com. Michaels predicted that his message would not be well received by many in the climate debate.

"A non-alarmist way is politically very unpopular in Washington, D.C.," he said.

Michaels, author of the book Satanic Gasses: Clearing the Air about Global Warmingand an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia, was the featured speaker at a luncheon sponsored by the Cato Institute on Friday.

"Scientific data really tells us how much it is going to warm over the next 100 years, and it's going to be at the low end of the projections, and people will adapt as long as their economies are free. We have been adapting for a long time," Michaels explained.

Michaels said he expects a negligible warm-up and pointed to the past 100 years as proof that any effects of potential increased global temperatures are going to be negligible.

"As the planet warmed up about one degree Fahrenheit in the last 100 years, the life span in the industrialized democracies went from 40 to 80 [years], and crop yields doubled. Global warming did not cause that, but it didn't stop it either," Michaels said.

Instead of being concerned about potential climate change, people should "worry about something that is really a serious problem," he added.

The whole climate change debate is over, according to Michaels.

"You would think I would tire of shooting fish in barrels, but it's still fun and that is what's going on here [with the climate debate]," Michaels said.

'Heads in the sand'

Debbie Boger, an energy expert with the Sierra Club, dismissed Michaels' claims that the global warming debate is over.

"We need to remember both the National Academy of Sciences and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have both come out with reports saying global warming is a real phenomenon, caused by human-made emissions and will have real consequences," Boger told CNSNews.com.

"To say there will be not be consequences is putting our heads in the sand," she added.

Michaels called the persistent belief in catastrophic global warming "a religion" and said that is why he has faced so much opposition to his scientific work.

"If you say something against a religion, people yell out at you. People wonder why I drive a [low emission] hybrid car -- they would never blow up a hybrid car," he said to laughter.

'A couple billion dollars'

Michaels outlined three periods of atmospheric change in the last 100 years of U.S. history, noting a warming in the first part of the 20th century, a cooling in the middle part of the century and a warming in the latter part of the century.

"There is the cooling of the mid-20th century that gave rise to congressional hearings in the mid-1970s about the coming ice age, and [scientists were asked], 'Could you use a couple billion dollars to study this?'" Michaels said.

The money politicized the scientific process and "consume[d] billions of dollars of your money," he said.

"The more money you throw at [climate science], the less certainty you get. If you shut off all the money, the scientists would probably all agree," he added.

The real scientific proof that man could not impact our environment with greenhouse gas emissions in any catastrophic way already exits, Michaels believes.

Paleo records indicate that the concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was up to 14 times higher than it is today when the Earth was but 8 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today," Michaels said, referring to the climate of millions of years ago.

There is no way we can get the Earth that hot again, he said -- even "if we burn everything as fast as we could," he added.

And the Earth was not unpleasant during the period of high CO2 concentrations and higher temperatures, according to Michaels.

"The planet was greener than a [casino] crap table. That is where all that coal came from that we are burning now," he explained.

Michaels does not expect the media to portray climate change as anything but catastrophic. "The media are either very untrained in the field or really are looking the other way," Michaels said.

"Unfortunately, they have pumped this [alarmist] mindset up so much that it is very clear that people are beginning to get...apocalyptic fatigue," he added.

'Plutonian global warming'


Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the free-market environmental think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, attended the luncheon and pointed to the recent scientific indications that the planet Pluto is warming up despite moving away from the sun.

"Pluto's warm-up is a reminder that no matter where you are climate happens. It always has, it always will -- with or without SUVs. And it should remind us to continue taking with an ever-increasing grain of salt these claims that your car acts as a weather machine," Horner said.

Horner also predicted that it would not be long before environmentalists came up with a theory on why Pluto was warming.

"There will be inevitably and likely imminent claims that mankind is also causing Plutonian global warming," he said.

See Related Articles:
New Harvard Study Heats up 'Global Warming' Debate (8 April 2003)
Environmentalist Says Blizzard Consistent with 'Global Warming' Trend (20 Feb. 2003)

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[George W. Bush]

"The more money you throw at [climate science], the less certainty you get. If you shut off all the money, the scientists would probably all agree," he added.

There's always a snake-oil salesman in a lab coat who needs your tax dollars.

[Support Free Republic]

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[Ole Okie]

Michaels does not expect the media to portray climate change as anything but catastrophic. "The media are either very untrained in the field or really are looking the other way," Michaels said.

Beautiful.

The man speaks truth, and no scientifically naive media types (virtually all are this) want to hear it.

Catastrophe is always much more Pulitzer-adherent than non-catastrophe.

[Noachian]

I've heard other climatologists say the same things as Michaels is saying, but you rarely see them quoted in the media. The same old global warming scientists are trotted out again and again without any challenges to their data.


Several years ago the problem was another ice age, now it's global warming. Disasters get high ratings, and there's just too much catastrophic drama in global warming for the liberal media to let the story die.

There is no significant proof of global warming or cooling, but if there were I'd rather have palm trees in Chicago than glaciers in Atlanta.

[livius]

Hysteria is the most fun of all. Especially if you can get government dollars for it.

[goldstategop]

Gosh..... we've had an unusually cool spring with overcast days and low temperatures. And we've yet to see 100 plus days yet in my part of California. "Global Warming?" LMAO! If the apocalypse predicted by the enviro wackos ever happens it won't really matter to me.

[alloysteel]

OK, kids, pop quiz. Take out paper, and write down what you believe to be the one greenhouse gas that has the most effect on earth climate.

[alloysteel]

The right answer, of course, is "water vapor". No other atmospheric gas has the temperature-transferring capabilities of gaseous H2O, and the amount of energy required to convert from solid (as ice) to liquid, the energy required per gram to change temperature of the liquid by each degree of heat, and the amount of additional energy to convert the liquid (at any temperature) to water vapor. Water is totally unique in these properties, which are shared with few other substances. The closest analog of water is ammonia, NH3, which has even greater energy transfer on changing from solid to liquid to gas phases, but does not exist in free form for long in earth's atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, CO2, the gas generally regarded and the 'culprit' in global warming, remains at a nearly steady but low level at all times throughout the long periods of times during which it is measured. There are occasional local spikes, but CO2 is readily absorbed by cold water and growing plant life.

[Maria S]

What global warming DOES have to do with are sustainable communities, the wildlands project, and Agenda 21. Thanks, United Nations.

[sergeantdave]

 
One of the most odious propagandists of the global warming gang was given the boot from his United Nations perch last summer. This bum’s heave-ho gives America a great opening to toss the irritating, ungrateful Europeans out with the rest of the globalist garbage and win trusted friends and allies who actually like us.

Patrick Michaels, one of America’s premier climate scientists, reported that member nations of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s most influential body on the subject of global warming, threw out the current head, Robert T. Watson, and replaced him with Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer from India.

Third World nations lined up with the United States against the European socialists, propeller-head utopians and whining weasels to trounce Watson and give Pachauri 76 winning votes.

Michaels noted that many of the world’s developing nations are questioning the global warming garbage trotted out by the doom and gloom chicken littles, led by hen-pecker Watson. These nations are starting to see the trick behind the curtain - a power grab by the Lenin/Marxist new world order crowd.

Watson was notorious with his carping against the United States and ignoring science in favor of looney left wing politics. He hooted against capitalist free enterprise societies while embracing Soviet communist style planned economies and government control of private property, more commonly known as fascism.

On the day of President George Bush’s inauguration, Watson stood on the blood-stained stones of the world’s most vicious communist nation and bleated: “A country like China has done more, in my opinion, than a country like the United States to move forward in economic development while remaining environmentally sensitive.”

The choking, polluted air hanging over Shanghai and Beijing argues otherwise, said Michaels.

It was in China where the yammering idiot Watson told the asinine whopper that the earth would warm 11 degrees.

“Those of us in the scientific community who reviewed the document never saw this outlandish projection because it was inserted after our peer review,” said Michaels.

This Goebbles-inspired fabrication written in the dark of night, away from the eyes of the public and Watson’s peers, is where left wing totalitarians and cockroaches work. The New York Times, whose real slogan is “All the news that fits our propaganda agenda,” never reported the lie. These so-called reporters have set up camp with America-haters, collectivists and the resurrected German blood and soil nature worship cult.

At the time, the U.N. also made 244 other temperature forecasts, all cooler. But the jaundice-eyed Watson manufactured the lie and told the press that it “adds impetus for governments to live up to their commitments [under the Kyoto Protocol] to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.” Naturally, the “press” reported this lie.

John Christy, the Alabama scientist who has developed the satellite temperature history (which shows very little warming) subsequently told a hearing chaired by Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, “This is one forecast that isn’t going to happen.” This the “press” never reported.

[Pikachu_Dad]

Um, alloy, I'll take dihyrogen monoxide as number one. (ie Water).

carbon dioxide as number two.

and cow burped methane gas for number three.

[thepainster]

In my latest Scientific American magazine I read no less than three articles in which is was casually stated as fact that green house gas emissions were causing global warming. I am now ready to do my part for global warming by burning this magazine!

[SW6906]

Now, keep those pencils out and answer another question: write down what you believe to be the one greenhouse gas that none of the leading climate models that predict "global warming" take into account in their modeling of the atmosphere.....

[thepainster]

Very vell said sarge....

[thepainster]

H2O?

[SW6906]

The dynamics of water vapor over the oceans are not very well understood and nearly impossible to model, so they just leave them out of the models. Do you think that water vapor (clouds) might have some effect on "global warming"?

[teeman8r]

"The planet was greener than a [casino] crap table. That is where all that coal came from that we are burning now," he explained."

i gotta remember this line, it sums up the argument beautifully, that the earth was warmer back then...

teeman

[wjcsux]

The money politicized the scientific process and "consume[d] billions of dollars of your money," he said.
Bingo!

[P-Marlowe]

How does this guy know there are no SUV's on Pluto?