Posted on 07/09/2002 10:40:14 AM PDT by gordgekko
As heat makes life on the East Coast insufferable, the latest Big Lie is that "Alaska, No Longer So Frigid, Starts to Crack, Burn and Sag." This article by veteran Northwest correspondent Timothy Egan got a lot of attention because, unfortunately, anything that is published by The New York Times gets lots of attention. When it comes to science, however, the Times is not merely inaccurate, it has engaged in a pattern of deception that goes back over a decade.
Suffice it to say that the Alaska Climate Research Center immediately rebutted the claim. Gerd Wendler of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute wrote "In the last twenty years very little warming, for some stations even a slight cooling, has been observed." What warming had occurred in Alaska mostly occurred in the 1970s. Ironically, during the 1970's, environmentalists were writing books and articles claiming that a new Ice Age was coming.
The New York Times has lied about "global warming" for a long time. From 1991 to 1996, William K. Stevens, a so-called "science reporter", published 125 articles all testifying to the horrors of a global warming that was not happening. When several thousand scientists joined together to sign a petition debunking this greatest hoax of our times, the Times went to some lengths to ridicule them.
On August 19, 2000, The New York Times reported that the North Pole was melting, noting that this was "evidence that global warming may be real and already affecting climate." Ten days later they took a stab at telling the truth because, by then, it was public knowledge that during a typical summer, about 90 percent of the high Arctic is covered with ice, but about 10 percent is open water over the North Pole.
It confers far too much dignity upon the Science News section of The New York Times to wrap garbage in it. It is garbage. First Stevens and then Andrew C. Revkin have flogged the story of climate change ever since the United Nations Rio Treaty was foisted on the world in the 1990s. Stevens wrote apoplectically about the UN Kyoto Treaty on climate change. The US Senate voted unanimously to never ratify this treaty, aimed at undermining the economy of the United States.
Only a fool would read The New York Times expecting the truth. It is the American version of the former Soviet Union's Pravda, a newspaper published to deceive Russians into believing Communism was the future. That lie crashed along with the Berlin Wall. The Times needs to change its motto to "All the lies we deem fit to print."
Alan Caruba is the founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about scare campaigns designed to influence public opinion and policy. The Center maintains an Internet site at www.anxietycenter.com. (c) Alan Caruba, 2002
So all this Kyoto and CO2 and the SUV taxes are the doing of this person and the New York Times. Is this a pseudonym of Osama? [They seem to use pseudonyms a lot.]
The Environmental movement is the New Left in this country. It has become obvious to these communists and left-socialists that the American people are never going to voluntarily choose Communism, so their only hope is to gain control subversively - using, as their pretext phony environmental science. In this way, they can erode your freedoms, appropriate or make otherwise useless your private property, restrict your choice of purchases to only those goods deemed OK by Central Planning, control energy policy, expand taxation to confiscatory levels to "fund environmental goals and programs" (which includes welfare and other income redistribution schemes), and to gain power and control over the means of production of the US economy under the guise of protecting the environment.
It's incrementalism, to be sure, but that's their goal. The over-arching state control over its peoples.
I just got back from Alaska and found it a delightful place. You can go view glaciers, and even the National Park Service literature and maps show you that any warming (that shows up in glacial recessions) is measured primarily since the 1700's - not as a modern-day man-made phenomenon. The most fun I had on the trip was a tour on a fossil-fuel-consuming turbine helicopter up to a glacier, where I spent an hour riding around on dogsleds powered by fat-consuming Alaskan Huskies. What a rush.
In other words, "Alaska is Melting" is not playing IN Alaska, where people know better.
Michael
Alan's words of wisdom are very explicit when he covers the constant lies of the "NY Slimes":
Only a fool would read The New York Times expecting the truth. It is the American version of the former Soviet Union's Pravda, a newspaper published to deceive Russians into believing Communism was the future. That lie crashed along with the Berlin Wall. The Times needs to change its motto to "All the lies we deem fit to print."
We all need to bookmark this great oped to have ready when someone tries to post Bravo Sierra from the Slimes as reality.
What does the NY Times gain by this propaganda?
This would be neat to have at every school:
Available from the website:
They get another chance to further the grand, interconnected, socialist agenda.
Got it?
"What on earth do these doomsday "global warming" fanatics expect to gain? What is in it for the NYT and the rest of these losers?"
Michael's excellent response: The Environmental movement is the New Left in this country. It has become obvious to these communists and left-socialists that the American people are never going to voluntarily choose Communism, so their only hope is to gain control subversively - using, as their pretext phony environmental science. In this way, they can erode your freedoms, appropriate or make otherwise useless your private property, restrict your choice of purchases to only those goods deemed OK by Central Planning, control energy policy, expand taxation to confiscatory levels to "fund environmental goals and programs" (which includes welfare and other income redistribution schemes), and to gain power and control over the means of production of the US economy under the guise of protecting the environment.
I would add that the NY Slimes has been in bed with the Opecker Princes since the days of the first phoney oil crisis. I'm sure that the Opecker Princes have bought a lot of advertising in payment for the increased dependency on Opecker Oil thanks to the Slimes, the enviral whackos and Senators like Da$$hole who need the Slimes and envirals to be elected.
Kudos to Michael for his excellent response to your question and Scruffdog's ? re what does the NY Slimes get out of these lies and why do they lie!
Given that the ability to gain personal control of commons is based upon the ability to make a political sale, there are several prerequisites:
* A simple justification to maximize the applicability of the claim to individual perceptions and desires.
* A majority perception that acquisition comes at minimal personal cost.
* Collective benefits that are difficult to measure or long deferred.
* Powerful beneficiaries with sufficient personal interest and resources to fund and execute the taking.
* Control of communications media to influence majority opinion then becomes the cheapest means to control factors of production and the key to controlling wealth.
Does the need to maintain a sense of crisis lead to shortsighted decisions? Does it lead to the unconscious realization of self-fulfilling prophecies? Does it create a smokescreen for the exercise of corrupt intent? Does it overtax the ability to generate capital? If we adopt an ill-conceived plan, could such an exercise irreversibly damage the resource? Could the repeated application of mechanics like this lead to the unwitting vengeance of self-destruction?
There are those who have come to regard the exercise of external claims upon private property as a structural evil, a distorted exercise in "ends" justification for personal gratification disguised as altruism. It is truly curious that the same people, who warn us that the cause of ecological problems is a lack of individual motivation to care for commons, propose solutions that are in structural antipathy to maximizing the value of the assets. The very act of collectivizing the factors of production has historically destroyed their value. That loss can propagate rapidly. People get desperate because the process of political acquisition of private property is unsustainable.
Now, for ten points, why the socialist agenda?
Is it possible that property rights, as a matter of natural law and as protected by the Fifth Amendment, are really that important? If the price for the control of land resources is but the deflection of the winds of political fashion, the available wealth to support, defend, and nurture the land is minimized. What ends up forgotten in the political acquisition of "commons" is the need to maximize the economic value of these goods to the land. With the declining public perception of marginal benefit is a declining marginal value of the land itself. You can plot the price on a graph, as you will see in Part II.Emphasis added. That was from page 19. Sigh.Ecological issues are seldom simple. They vary considerably with different situations and over time. They often involve enormous costs to a few individuals and have public benefits that are difficult to measure. The enormous economic value to those individuals who would gain political control of private resources provides motive to invest in making the political sale regardless of the technical or ecological compromises. It thus becomes unlikely that, in the heat of political and legal battle, the solutions offered will adhere to the principles of the scientific method.
Any democratic system is manipulated by the politically dominant. It comes as no surprise that the ownership systems the politically dominant propose are to be "collectivized" among the people, but administered by an agency dedicated to their interests. Under such a system, that frightened mob may well get the environmental crisis that they so greatly fear.
kelly IN alaska
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The article "Alaska, No Longer So Frigid, Starts to Crack, Burn, and Sag" written by Timothy Egan, stated that the average temperature has risen seven degrees in the last 30 years. This statement was repeated in an editorial by Bob Herbert of 24 June 2002. This statement is incorrect. The correct warming for Alaska is about 1/3 of the quoted amount for the last climatological mean 1971 to 2000 (see table below). It should be pointed out that the table presents data from first class weather stations, which are professionaly maintained and generate high quality data. The three stations, Barrow, Fairbanks, and Anchorage, represent a cross section of Alaska from north to south. Further, Barrow, situated in Northern Alaska, which gave the largest temperature increase, is the only long-term first class meteorological weather station in Northern Alaska. All changes are based upon the time period 1971 to 2000 and are compiled from a linear trend.
Compiled by Brian Hartmann and Gerd Wendler
24 June 2002
If you have any questions, please contact Prof. Gerd Wendler at gerd@gi.alaska.edu
Return to the Alaska Climate Research Center
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