Posted on 12/07/2006 7:07:08 AM PST by COUNTrecount
Media Shows Irrational Hysteria on Global Warming
"The Public Has Been Vastly Misinformed," NCPA's Deming Tells Senate Committee To: National Desk
Contact: Sean Tuffnell of the National Center for Policy Analysis, 972-308-6481 or sean.tuffnell@ncpa.org
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), testified this morning at a special hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The hearing examined climate change and the media. Bellow are excerpts from his prepared remarks.
"In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.
"I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." "The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. ... The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."
"In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the "hockey stick," because of the shape of the temperature graph. "Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.
"There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed."
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The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D. C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. NCPA depends on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share our mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
David Deming will probably be subjected to threats from Senators and others. The leftists are making legitimate scientific arguements against their global warming religion out to be the same as denying the holacaust.
I would replace Irrational with Intentional.
mark for later read
The left has accused Deming of being a shill for the oil companies.
It's getting hotter: we've got to enact socialism right now!
That was a half hour well spent, thanks.
This is news?
Penn & Teller's show BS is just great. Too bad more people can't see it since it is on pay cable but that piece on enviromentalism was just wonderful. I LOVED the parts where they were going around getting signatures on a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide, that's water for you people from Rio Linda,(it causes people to urinate! major corporations USE it! etc) Funny stuff.
I watched "The Little Ice Age" on cable the other day and of course near the end, came the statement nearly all scientists agree the man is the cause of the present warming.
Otherwise a good show.
Ping
Don't you just love it when these people make statements like "nearly all of... etc"? What a crock of you know what. What they are saying is that nearly all of the(fill in the blank) that they LISTENED to and AGREEED with or ASKED. Now those people know where to go to get the answers they are LOOKING for. Simple as that.
Isn't it amazing...and sad.
Yep. We're doomed.
But that's just me, I guess.
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