Posted on 12/26/2014 7:45:49 AM PST by Kaslin
Editor's note: This article was co-authored by Chris Skates.
In a recent interview with National Public Radio host Diane Rehm, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said his company “has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on facts. And the facts of climate change are not in question anymore. Everyone understands climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. We should not be aligned with such people. They’re just literally lying.”
While he didn’t vilify us by name, Mr. Schmidt was certainly targeting us, the climate scientists who collect and summarize thousands of articles for the NIPCC’s Climate Change Reconsidered reports, the hundreds who participate in Heartland Institute climate conferences, and the 31,487 US scientists who have signed the Oregon Petition, attesting that there is no convincing scientific evidence that humans are causing catastrophic warming or climate disruption.
All of us are firm skeptics of claims that humans are causing catastrophic global warming and climate change. We are not climate change “deniers.” We know Earth’s climate and weather are constantly in flux, undergoing recurrent fluctuations that range from flood and drought cycles to periods of low or intense hurricane and tornado activity, to the Medieval Warm Period (950-1250 AD) and Little Ice Age (1350-1850) – and even to Pleistocene glaciers that repeatedly buried continents under a mile of ice.
What we deny is the notion that humans can prevent these fluctuations, by ending fossil fuel use and emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide, which plays only an insignificant role in climate change.
The real deniers are people who think our climate was and should remain static and unchanging, such as 1900-1970, supposedly – during which time Earth actually warmed and then cooled, endured the Dust Bowl, and experienced periods of devastating hurricanes and tornadoes.
The real deniers refuse to recognize that natural forces dictate weather and climate events. They deny that computer model predictions are completely at odds with real world events, that there has been no warming since 1995, and that several recent winters have been among the coldest in centuries in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, despite steadily rising CO2 levels. They refuse to acknowledge that, as of December 25, it’s been 3,347 days since a Category 3-5 hurricane hit the US mainland; this is by far the longest such stretch since record-keeping began in 1900, if not since the American Civil War.
Worst of all, they deny that their “solutions” hurt our children and grandchildren, by driving up energy prices, threatening electricity reliability, thwarting job creation, and limiting economic growth in poor nations to what can be sustained via expensive wind, solar, biofuel and geothermal energy. Google’s corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.” From our perspective, perpetuating poverty, misery, disease and premature death in poor African and Asian countries – in the name or preventing climate change – is evil.
It is truly disturbing that Mr. Schmidt could make a statement so thoroughly flawed in its basic premise. He runs a multi-billion dollar company that uses vast quantities of electricity to disseminate information throughout the world. Perhaps he should speak out on issues he actually understands. Perhaps he would be willing to debate us or Roy Spencer, David Legates, Pat Michaels and other climate experts.
Setting aside the irrational loyalty of alarmists like Schmidt to a failed “dangerous manmade climate change” hypothesis, equally disturbing is the money wasted because of it. Consider an article written for the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers’ summit website by Google engineers Ross Koningstein and David Fork, who worked on Google’s “RE<C” renewable energy initiative.
Beginning in 2007, they say, “Google committed significant resources to tackle the world’s climate and energy problems. A few of these efforts proved very successful: Google deployed some of the most energy efficient data centers in the world, purchased large amounts of renewable energy, and offset what remained of its carbon footprint.”
It’s wonderful that the company improved the energy efficiency of its power-hungry data centers. But the project spent untold millions of dollars and countless man hours. To what actual benefits? To address precisely what climate and energy problems? And how exactly did Google offset its carbon footprint? By buying “carbon credits” from outfits like the New Forests Company, which drove impoverished Ugandan villagers out of their homes, set fire to their houses and burned a young boy to death?
What if, as skeptics like us posit and actual evidence reflects, man-made climate change is not in fact occurring? That would mean there is no threat to humans or our planet, and lowering Google’s CO2 footprint would bring no benefits. In fact, it would keep poor nations poverty stricken and deprived of modern technologies – and thus unable to adapt to climate change. Imagine what Google could have accomplished if its resources had been channeled to solving actual problems with actual solutions!
In 2011, the company decided its RE<C project would not meet its goals. Google shut it down. In their article, Koningstein and Fork admit that the real result of all of their costly research was to reach the following conclusion: “green energy is simply not economically, viable and resources that we as a society waste in trying to make it so would be better used to improve the efficiencies in established energy technologies like coal.”
Skeptics like us reached that conclusion long ago. It is the primary reason for our impassioned pleas that that the United States and other developed nations stop making energy policy decisions based on the flawed climate change hypothesis. However, the article’s most breathtaking statement was this:
“Climate scientists have definitively shown that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses a looming danger.... A 2008 paper by James Hansen, former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies… showed the true gravity of the situation. In it, Hansen set out to determine what level of atmospheric CO2 society should aim for ‘if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.’ His climate models showed that exceeding 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere would likely have catastrophic effects. We’ve already blown past that limit. Right now, environmental monitoring shows concentrations around 400 ppm.…”
We would never presume to question the sincerity, intellect, dedication or talent of these two authors. However, this statement presents a stunning failure in applying Aristotelian logic. Even a quick reading would make the following logical conclusions instantly obvious:
1. Hansen theorized that 350 ppm of atmospheric CO2 would have catastrophic results.
2. CO2 did indeed reach, and then exceed, this level by a significant amount.
3. There were no consequences, much less catastrophic results, as our earlier points make clear.
4. Therefore, real-world evidence clearly demonstrates that Hansen’s hypothesis is wrong.
This kind of reasoning (the scientific method) has served progress and civilization well since the Seventeenth Century. But the Google team has failed to apply it. Instead, they resorted to repeating the “slash fossil fuel use or Earth and humanity are doomed” tautology, without regard for logic or facts – while Mr. Schmidt impugned our intelligence, character and ethics as CAGW skeptics.
We enthusiastically support Eric Schmidt’s admonition that our nation base its policy decisions on facts, even when those facts do not support an apocalyptic environmental worldview. We also support President Obama’s advice that people should not “engage in self-censorship,” because of bullying or “because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of someone whose sensibilities probably need to be offended.”
In fact, we will keep speaking out, regardless of what Messsrs. Schmidt, Hansen and Obama might say.
” This certainly demonstrates that becoming a billionaire in no way guarantees either Inteligence or wisdom.”
History is full of people who have been deranged by suddenly gaining vast wealth and/or power. They have cut huge paths of destruction and woe through the little people who have either worshipped them or stood in their way.
You forgot the most important belief of a progressive. Liberals are smarter than consevatives. And, all conservatives are stupid. The proof is of course, Barney Frank is liberal and smart, (sounds smart anyway). This my brother always used for proof why republicans are stupid.
“And the facts of climate change are not in question anymore. “
LOL, they should then explain the Ice Ages, and the climate the dinosaurs lived in.
Look up your favorite liberal on google,
then look up your favorite conservative.
You’ll immediately see, on the conservatives,
the “liberal perspective” ie. Media Matters, on the conservatives.
It’s totally rigged.
I use Startpage. It does not record any information about your searches. The searches themselves use Google-type technology but without the intrusion of data collection.
You guys are assuming he was sincere when he said these things. He knows what the truth is. Just like Obama, just like Satan - they are simply propagating a lie so as to manipulate the masses.
Remember - it’s redistribution and restructuring of economies world-wide. So until that is accomplished, they and Kerry (who served in Vietnam) and others like them will continue the manipulative lies.
Such smart people... yet they follow the herd.
That is a compartmentalization mentality.Whether done intentionally or subconsciously by temperament,it is a very common libtard phenomenon.
Truth hurts. Don't drink the Liberal kool-aid.
They are engaging in Stalinist tactics to demonize the opposition. Their scampaign of hysteria (a "Green Scare") is a deliberate lie to silence opposition.
Good grief. Your brother uses Barney Frank as an icon for intelligence. My condolences.
You are so RIGHT!
I left out the most important thing!
Thank You!
Merry Christmas, FRiend!:-)
It is their religion. It is impossible to prove them wrong or right because of the earths’ history of climate change.
They have a religious belief and they act upon it because it is the currency of their personal redemption.
They have accepted certain premises, like
There is no God.
or
I am God.
Everything devolves from there.
The simple answer to your question is: those smarties are hoping the rest of us will not discover their sham and will sheeple in line all the while feeding their folly.
OMG! They found me out. I really do want to hurt their children. I want to kick their butts. Push them down on the playground. Take away their lunch money. Tell then there is no Santa Claus. I want to bully them. Make them eat dirt. Sell them into slavery with ISIS. Send them all to Super Max prisons.
Heh heh heh. I'm a Climate Change Denier. Ain't I evil?
You may be right.
There are over 600 sciences. Strangely enough...only one science....is settled. That fact draws one to a strange conclusion....the vast number of sciences cannot be concluded and settled, inviting the question of WHY? Why can’t we settle alethiology (the study or science of “truth”)? We could close the book and be done with it as a science then. Could we not move some of these brilliant global climate change scientist over to another field and use their expertise to close down other sciences?
Don’t Be Evil
Why?!
All you have to do is move.
Now, I am just an old codger with a basic early sixties high school education, but I think, in my not so humble opinion that more food and fuel for MORE power plants are just what a growing population needs.
PS; I am from Fairbanks, Alaska and I support global warming.
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