Global Warming: Man or Nature?

Stanton Friedman

Stanton Friedman

Kathy Marden

Kathy Marden

[disinformation ed.’s note: The following is a chapter from the new book by Stanton T. Friedman & Kathleen Marden, Science Was Wrong: Startling Truths About Cures, Theories, and Inventions, courtesy of New Page Books.]

Rarely has a subject received so much attention as has the notion of “global warming,” especially since the publication of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, the Nobel Peace Prize award received by him and the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 2007, and the media hype. If one were to believe the propaganda, CO2 (carbon dioxide) is public enemy number-one. Its increasing production by the world is leading to disastrous consequences, and hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent as soon as possible to reduce the warming and all the damage that will be accompanying it. Use of fossil fuels must be reduced or eliminated. Countries must sign agreements to reduce their emission of carbon dioxide no matter what it costs. Higher performance cars must be devised. Full subsidies must be given for solar and wind power. If these measures aren’t taken, then, the words of Chicken Little, “The sky is falling.”

While there is nothing simple about predicting the weather or evaluation of the myriad of statistics available about it, here are some of the assumptions on which the calls to action are based:

  1. All scientists have reached a consensus that Gore and the IPCC are correct.
  2. The world is rapidly heating up.
  3. The major cause of the supposedly increasing temperature is mankind’s increasing production of evil CO2. Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), which is caused by people, is to blame and Mother Nature is innocent.
  4. Action must be taken immediately or we are doomed.
  5. Primary threats include rising of the world’s ocean levels by as much as 20 feet as a result of the melting of various glaciers, especially on Greenland and in the Antarctic, leading to a huge loss of lives and habitats for residents of low-lying coastal areas, such as Bangladesh and Manhattan.
  6. An increased number of very destructive hurricanes, cyclones, tornados—all as a result of global warming—will occur
  7. Polar bears are decreasing in number because of the melting ice, and they need to swim greater distances to find food.
  8. Islands, such as the Maldives Southwest of India, are slowly sinking as the ocean rises.

As it happens, in the real world, all of these assumptions are seriously being called into question by a growing number of so-called “deniers.” Though still difficult, it has become easier to publish papers that seek to replace widely held myths with facts in refereed scientific journals. A turning point may have occurred when BBC News published an article by Paul Hudson in October 2009, entitled “What Happened to Global Warming?” The BBC had previously been fully behind the “Kill CO2” movement. Hudson noted that for the last eleven years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures and that the global climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. Note that, simply put, the temperature of the world has not risen for eleven years.

Hudson noted that according to research conducted in November 2008, by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated. He says that they warm and cool cyclically. The most important cycle, is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). This was in a positive cycle (warmer than usual) for much of the 1980s and 1990s, and global temperatures were warmer too. In the past, the cycles have lasted for about thirty years, with the period from 1945 to 1977 coinciding with one of the cool Pacific cycles. Now it is again in a cooling mode. In September 2009, Mojib Latif, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, wrote that we may indeed be in a period of cooling that could last another ten to twenty years. The current level of CO2 is about 380ppm. Some believe that we must do all we can to bring it back to 350. We know despite the fact that it has been higher in the past, we have survived.

Everybody knows that the weather changes from day to day and season to season, and that even local forecasts a day in advance can be wrong. The notion that the “sophisticated” computer models used to predict climate change over the next twenty to fifty years for our entire planet are accurate is mind boggling. They all have fudge factors. There are a number of reasons. Weather depends on many factors, including what happens in uninhabited land areas and over the oceans, which cover about three quarters of the planet. There are external factors, such as sunspots, cosmic rays, variations in the energy output of the sun, El Nino, Ocean Decadal motions, volcanic eruptions, pollution of the atmosphere, about which we are slowly beginning to learn. It seems strange, but we sometimes forget that CO2 is not the most abundant greenhouse gas. Water vapor has a much higher concentration. Evaporation of water vapor is also dependent on many factors, which include cloud cover, changes in the surface characteristics of water and ice, winds, and temperature. There are the chlorofluorocarbons which were used in spray cans, methane from farm animals, exhausts from jet aircraft, radio waves bouncing off the ionosphere, ozone, and so on. In addition, we haven’t had many, many years’ worth of good data as to what the actual surface temperatures have been across the planet. Satellite measurements can be very useful, but obviously haven’t been available for many decades.

There is considerable concern with the effects of local factors on the surface measuring devices, especially near cities which tend to hold in heat, and even near structures out in the country. Some devices have even been moved to different locations, though not noted in their compilations. Many devices previously located in the country have been moved to airports.

There are, of course, some indirect means of trying to get a handle on past temperatures, such as the use of tree rings. Cores are taken and the thicknesses of the tree rings each year have a close, but certainly not perfect relation to the overall temperatures that year at the location of the tree. However, not surprisingly, tree rings and tree growth are influenced by other factors besides temperature. Rainfall, shade, root nutrition are among these. One almost bizarre example of the difficulty of using dendrochronology is when a dozen trees at one location were used (even though many more had been examined). Though all were growing in the same area, the results were nowhere near identical. There was also some indication that the data was cherry picked, so that only those trees giving certain results were used. This is not surprising for propaganda and politics, but is surely not the way of science.

There should be no surprise that politics has been such an important part of the global-warming warnings. Al Gore, after all, is not a scientist, but a politician. Likewise, the IPCCC is a much politicized body. The members are supported by their home governments. The actions that are being discussed all involve politics: How much should we reduce our CO2 production, as though passing a law would accomplish the reduction? How many hundreds of billions of dollars should be spent on ameliorating CO2 production? How much should the developed countries give to the undeveloped ones to assist in their attack on C02?

Most CO2 is produced by the burning of fossil fuels in power plants. No government will tell its people to keep their houses much colder in the winter and turn off air conditioning in the summer, that industry should reduce its output, or that cities should be darkened. Closing all coal-fired power plants would be disastrous in many places, though some extremists have demanded such an action. One gets votes, after all, by making promises that one hopes will be forgotten once it’s seen that they cannot be kept. Politics has also been very important in determining the awarding of research contracts. The worse the situation is made to seem, the more research must be done. Thus, most publications discussed in the media provide a range of values for how much the temperature or sea level will increase. The focus is always on the high and usually unrealistic end. For example, some have claimed the sea will rise twenty feet; current rates are about a millimeter a year.

Not surprisingly, one doesn’t hear much about the benefits of higher CO2 levels, such as increased plant growth and crop yields. Controlled experiments have demonstrated that increased CO2 levels lead to increased crop yields. Many countries, such as Russia, would prefer to have a warmer climate. There has been great politicizing in what papers get submitted for publication, because contrarians risk losing their jobs or being denied future research grants if they speak out. A polar bear expert, Mitchell Taylor, who had attended a special conference of polar bear experts every years since 1981, had his paper rejected in 2009, because it didn’t follow the party line as to how much danger the bears were in from global warming. He wasn’t even permitted to attend and was replaced by people knowing nothing about polar bears.

Politically, it isn’t accepted to talk about the fact that water vapor is the most prominent green house gas, much more so than CO2. However, it is very much more difficult to predict accurately the effect of water vapor on planetary temperatures. Far more of the planet is covered with water and ice than with power plants. When water evaporates into the atmosphere, clouds form, and they are blown by unpredictable winds. Clouds keep some solar radiation from reaching the planet by reflecting it back out to space, thus cooling the planet. However, the clouds also absorb some of the heat emitted by the ground and help heat the atmosphere.

It is certainly clear that there have been warmer periods of time than the present, which could not have been caused by CO2, because so little industrialization existed then. There have also been lengthy cooler periods, which also obviously had nothing to do with CO2. The famous “hockey stick” graph shows what seems to be level temperatures for a long time and then a steady increase because of CO2. More careful and honest work shows that the curve just happens to omit periods of higher and lower temperature that could not have been influenced by the production of CO2 and has discretely been left out of recent IPCC publications.

The history of environmental movements certainly includes examples of bandwagon jumping to take care of a perceived problem, often with severe and unplanned consequences. One of the better examples is the banning of the pesticide DDT in 1972. This was directly the result of the hue and cry stemming from Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring. Apparently, egg shells of predatory birds, such as hawks, were thinner because of DDT. The problem is that DDT was by far the most effective, inexpensive, and safe weapon against the anopheles mosquito that spreads malaria. Because of the banning, there have been literally millions of deaths, especially amongst young children in Africa. One might wonder if this is a fair trade off.

A much more recent example involves the production of biofuel to reduce the use of imported oil. Producing corn to be converted to biofuel greatly increased the income of farmers, but, unfortunately though predictably, substantially raised the cost and reduced the supply of food for people. In addition, more detailed calculations have indicated that sometimes more production of CO2 was produced by all the activities associated with the farming and the extraction of the biofuel than would have been produced using the equivalent amount of oil.

In addition, the pressure for non–CO2 producing (renewable) power plants, such as solar and wind power, has been dependent on major government financing, incentives, and subsidies. Because of these it has been profitable to build large solar and wind facilities, but operating them requires much higher expenditures than using non renewable resources. It was found in California, which does have abundant sunlight, that people bought solar swimming pool heaters when substantial tax and subsidy benefits were provided. They stopped when the benefits were eliminated, causing many companies to go out of business. Much repair and servicing of the solar heating systems could not be provided.

There are other strange aspects of the anti-CO2 war. A number of anti-nuclear groups have loudly proclaimed the need to avoid building new nuclear plants and hopefully to shut down old ones. They are also against CO2. But the nuclear power plants produce far, far less, CO2 than do any other major sources of power production. Some countries in Europe, such as Germany and Belgium, have recently delayed earlier mandates to close their existing nuclear power plants by ten or more years because there aren’t reasonably affordable alternatives. Somebody has to pay the bill, though not the activists.

It should not be surprising, considering the examples given in other chapters, that there have been unexpected but significant new scientific developments concerning the factors that control global warming. It was announced on October 18, 2009, that the New Phytologist Journal (184:545-551, November, 2009) had published an article, “A Relationship between Galactic Cosmic Radiation and Tree Rings” by Sigrid Dengel, Dominik Aeby, and John Grace, concerning an evaluation of tree-ring growth rates as a function of various parameters, such as temperature and precipitation. It turns out that there was no significant correlation with temperature or precipitation. However, there was a significant correlation with galactic cosmic radiation. All the trees that were used, Sitka spruce, had been planted in 1953 and cut in 2006. Felling protocols had been laid out by Forest Research; North and West directions were marked on the bark and the discs were frozen as soon as returned to the research station. The rings were counted in their frozen state; otherwise discs can shrink and crack. To quote the authors so as not to bias the reporting: “There was a consistent and statistically significant relationship between growth of the trees and the flux density of galactic cosmic radiation. Moreover there was an underlying periodicity in growth with four minima since 1961, resembling the period cycle of galactic cosmic radiation.” They postulate that what might explain this correlation could be the tendency of galactic cosmic radiation to produce cloud condensation nuclei, which in turn increases the diffuse component of solar radiation, and thus increases the photosynthesis of the forest canopy. Diffuse radiation penetrates the canopy more than direct sunlight.

They found no correlation between temperature or precipitation and growth rates. It would seem that CO2 had nothing to do with the growth rates since it had slowly and steadily increased during the period of growth. One can safely predict that the “warmists” will attack or ignore these results. It is also likely that the “deniers,” who have been getting more and more publicity, will cite these results.

It is interesting that the apparent hoax involving the flight in Colorado of a helium filled balloon, supposedly with a 6-year-old boy on board, receive world-wide attention in October 2009. In contrast, the hoax aspects of global warming have received very little attention. Senator Orinn G. Hatch of Utah did, however, compile a large number of anti-AGW statements by scientists, most of them actually involved with the IPCC. It was reprinted by The Science and Public Policy Institute in their SPPI Reprint Series dated September 18, 2009. The title is “UN Climate Scientists Speak out on Global Warming,” selected and edited by Hatch from the Senate Minority Report. It includes comments from 101 individual scientists sorted by backgrounds as follows:

  • UN IPCC Authors: 9
  • UN IPCC Scientists: 7
  • UN IPCC Expert Reviewers: 12
  • NASA: 10
  • Other Government Scientists: 6
  • State Climatologists: 9
  • Academies of Science: l0
  • Avowed Environmentalists: 4
  • Noted Scientists: 27
  • Other Nobel Prize Winners: 3

Hatch, in his introduction, states that the statements prove there is not a consensus, even at the UN, on the widely touted IPCC conclusion: “Greenhouse gas forcing has likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last fifty years.” Hatch notes that the chapter of the IPCC report making that conclusion was reviewed by only 62 scientists, not the 2500 scientist reviewers of the IPCC reports.

A very detailed report, “Climate Change Reconsidered: 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” refutes the IPCC conclusions. A PDF file of this 880-page volume can be downloaded at Printed copies are also available. It probably won’t be a best seller, but it includes the names of 31,478 scientists who signed a petition circulated to thousands of scientists, with a cover note by Dr. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences. In his note, Seitz said, “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. The 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. The proposed agreement would have very negative effects upon the technology of nations throughout the world, especially those that are currently attempting to lift from poverty and provide opportunities to the over four billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries.” These are strong words indeed.

Here are some comments from the petition that was signed:



Obviously, the number of signers far outweighs the 2500 IPCC people. None of the circulation funding came from oil or gas companies or other interested parties. Among the signers were many physicists, chemists, climatologists and other scientists. It is certain that the widely repeated notion that the science of climate change is settled, and that the unquestioned consensus of the scientific community is that CO2 is responsible for a rapidly growing worldwide temperature and must be stopped at all costs, is clearly not true.

A very important and detailed study was published by Dr. Habibulto Abdussamatov, head of Space Research Laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory near St. Petersburg, Russia. The observatory was built in 1839, was destroyed in World War II, and then rebuilt. For some time, it had the largest telescope in the world. He and his colleagues have done a detailed review of the data we have on sunspots and other activities on the sun. Dr. Abdussamatov’s focus was on the sun and solar radiation emission as a function of time. There is data on sunspot numbers going back to 1611. Its provocative title is “The Sun Defines the Climate”; the entire paper can be found at An except reads, “Experts of the United Nations in regular reports publish data said to show that the Earth is approaching a catastrophic global warming, caused by increasing emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However, observations of the Sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is ‘not guilty’ and as for what lies ahead in the upcoming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global and very prolonged temperature drop.”

These are strong words backed up by a great deal of information. A key point is that it had been thought that the amount of energy emitted by the sun was constant in time. Better measurements have shown this isn’t the case and there is a periodicity in the energy output of the sun. It had been known since the middle of the 19th century that the number of sunspots on the surface of the sun varies in an 11-year cycle. An English astronomer, Walter Maunder, in 1893, discovered that from 1645 to 1715, sunspots had been essentially absent. Only 50 spots were noted in that period, whereas it would have been normal for 50,000 sunspots to have appeared in that time period. We know now that there have been such minima many times in the past. He also noted that the Maunder Minimum included the coldest dip in temperatures that had been noted for thousands of years.

In 1976, an American astrophysicist, John Eddy, noted that there was a correlation between periods of significant change in the number of sunspots in the past millennium and large changes in the climate. In 1988, a soviet geophysicist, Eugene Borisenko, showed that in each of 18 deep minima of solar activity, there have been periods of global cooling. There were periods of global warming during periods of high sunspot activity. About every 200 years, there are such minima and maxima. It is this bicentennial variation in climate that is so important, even more so than the 11-year solar sunspot level. The primary factor here is that it has been discovered that the TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) is not, as has been thought, a constant, but rather varies in time in a periodical fashion. According to Dr. Habibulto Abdussamatov, the sun is a variable star, which changes its parameters under short and long cycles. The sun is never found in a steady state of energetic and mechanical equilibrium. He points out that an entirely new instrument, a solar Limbograph, is to be installed in the Russian Section of the International Space Station in 2011. It should be able to make the most accurate measurements ever of the radius and energy output of the sun, which will allow for much more precise predictions of climate than are now possible. He also points out that the gradual growth of ice caps at the poles has already begun, not the melting that some expected.

According to an announcement on October 27, 2009, NASA is also planning on much improved observations of the sun when it launches, probably by the end of 2010, a new instrument named EVE “The Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment” on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Though the sun appears from Earth to be a consistent quite placid surface, in extreme ultraviolet frequencies, it is a seething caldron of storms and prominences and sunspots and faculae.

Two important events took place near the end of 2009. One involved the determination by careful observation by meteorologists that 90 percent of the 1100 official surface measuring thermometers in the United States did not meet official regulations as to their locations not being near sources of heat. The bias was almost always found to raise the apparent temperatures. The second problem was the hacking into the files of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University and the subsequent release of over a thousand e-mails. This has been described as an enormous scandal because they provide clear evidence of bias, deception, misrepresentation, and suppression of dissent by the CRU. Chairman Jones resigned at the beginning of December, as an outside committee will review the situation. Major media outlets, such as the New York Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail, McLeans magazine and even CBC Radio’s “As it Happens” program, who had previously gone along with the warmists, have paid attention to the new information. How much impact these revelations will have on the looming Copenhagen International Climate Conference is not known.

Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from Science Was Wrong: Startling Truths About Cures, Theories, and Inventions © 2010 Stanton T. Friedman and Kathleen Marden. Published by New Page Books a division of Career Press, Pompton Plains, NJ. 800-227-3371. All rights reserved.

About The Authors

Stanton T. Friedman has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Physics from the University of Chicago. He has lectured on “Flying Saucers ARE Real!” to more than 700 college and professional audiences in 50 states, 9 provinces, and 16 other countries, and has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV programs including CBS Sunday Morning, Larry King Live, Nightline, and Unsolved Mysteries. Friedman has worked on classified, advanced technology programs for such companies as GE, GM, and Westinghouse. He has done research at 20 government document archives, authored TOP SECRET/MAJIC about Operation Majestic 12, and coauthored Crash at Corona: The Definitive Study of the Roswell Incident. He was the original civilian investigator of that very important event, and also coauthored Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience with Kathleen Marden, Betty Hill’s niece.

Educator and sociologist Kathleen Marden is Betty Hill’s niece and trustee of her estate. She has all of Hill’s papers and correspondence, and has transcribed the tapes of the Hills’ hypnosis sessions with psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Simon. Marden has also met with the numerous scientists who investigated the case. For the past 10 years, she has served on the Board of Directors of the Mutual UFO Network, the largest International UFO organization and as director of Field Investigator Training for MUFON. Marden lives in Stratham, New Hampshire.

Latest posts by Stanton Friedman (see all)

  • VoxMagi

    Congrats…a fine collection of the exaggerated worst case scenarios of the Global Warming camp…of course…there are just as many inaccuracies and exaggerations in your assertions.

    Climate Change is quite real…Global Warming is not…CO2 is less dangerous than people imagine…particulate pollutants are infinitely worse…the sea will not rise twenty feet…but less than a foot will ream millions of people along coastal areas worldwide. The world won't unilaterally heat up into a tropical swamp…the apportionment of rainfall versus evap is shifting in countless areas and will make crop health and productivity as well as freshwater resources harder to manage if we aren't prepared.

    Man made vs natural is irrelevant…unless you're trying to pin the price tag on someone else in court. To say we have no impact on our environment is to brush up against total insanity…but to claim that the earth can't make changes to cope with population is equally silly. The earth is ALWAYS changing and adapting…but our comfort and well being aren't priorities in this process.

    Al Gore is a veteran liar selling a swindle to make millions off of 'credits' that will enrich the brokers in this new market for a worthless product…

    …but that doesn't mean the snake oil salesmen for industry who are chanting 'change is unnecessary' and 'all is well' aren't lying bastards too. Given the mono-focus of your article and the negative references to anything other than fossil fuels, its pretty clear which side your championing…and I'm sure they're pleased with you…but they're every bit as bad as Gore and his bandwagon and should be hanged for the deceits they've perpetrated on the rest of us.

    (PS: ask Russia if they really want it warmer. It was 105 in Moscow, the fires are killing people from smog, and the permafrost in Siberia that people used to build roads on is turning into marshes for the first time since mammoths walked the earth. They're less thrilled about it than you seem to suggest. Lets hope that Ocean cooling trend kicks in quick…otherwise we're talking Northwest Passage and sea lanes in the Arctic. Maybe the people of Bangladesh can move there as they flee their sinking coastal nation?)

  • Connie Dobbs

    Easy answer – not as bad as they say, but worse than you think.

  • Your Mom

    Man _and_ nature.

    It's clear that humanity is having an effect on the environment and climate.

    But it's also clear that there's compelling evidence to suggest that things like sunspots and volcanos can have a major influence on the climate.

    There are extremists on both sides who overlook the larger picture because they're too busy pushing an agenda. And I agree with Michael Crichton that “consensus science” is unscientific … science should be based, as much as possible, on data, not on consensus building.

    • Haystack

      Science is driven by data. The data are published and subjected to a peer-review process where scientists collectively debate its meaning and significance, attempt to replicate one another's findings, to test falsifiable assertions, and so on. Its a rigorous process, guided by rules of evidence, and is integral to the scientific method.

      Michael Crichton needs to stick to being a hack writer and stop deluding himself that he has any kind of meaningful expertise.

      • dumbsaint

        Well he did stop, he's dead now.

      • FergalR

        Science gets corrupted like anything else in life.

        The data used to assert that the late 20th century was the warmest in 1,000 years was not published and neither was the code used to process it – when the algorithm was reverse-engineered it produced a hockey stick from red noise. Those who “peer-reviewed” it were buddies with the authors. All part of a clique who co-opted and perverted the subject then bullied science journal editors, journalists and legitimate researchers who stood in their way.

        “Its a rigorous process, guided by rules of evidence, and is integral to the scientific method.”
        That's not climate science you're describing, educate yourself:

        You don't see the hockey stick any more because it was total bullshit. Big Oil and its green-tech-bubble bastard child fund climatology.

  • RoscoeMG

    This is disinfo.

    • Triangleye

      If Stanton T. Friedman is involved, it is most certainly disinformation.

  • fuzzgun

    I'm open to believe that man-made global warming is a lie. But it does seem a little too convenient that global warming skepticism of all issues just so happens to be a key component of 911 Truth, The Tea Party, and ever other form of popular conspiracy disinfotainment hawked by the government. The only reason it's even called “climate change” right now is because PR firms back in the early 2000s thought it sounded less menacing to consumers than “global warming”. It seems to me that the government has been successfully guiding millions of dissidents into traditional conservative pro-establishment ideology(global warming fake.. healthcare bad.. god and guns good) by employing elementary-school-level reverse psychology in their disinformation since 911.

    • FergalR

      Actually, the reason why it's called “climate change” right now is because there's been no statistically significant warming for over a decade.

      Also; “climate change” can augment the number and severity of floods and droughts – simultaneously – and in magnitudes and configurations worse than ever before experienced. Ever.

      Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows it's obvious bullshit. But, hay, the oil companies are using the carbon credits they got for free from our tax money to build coal-fired power stations in China.


      They're stealing your money and laughing at you.

      • Zota

        “there's been no statistically significant warming for over a decade.”

        “They're stealing your money and laughing at you.”
        You're absolutely correct about that. You're just deeply confused about who “they” are…

        • FergalR

          Yeah, thanks, I'm not interested in what temperature Hansen thinks it is. In no other field of endeavor would someone be allowed to check their own results the way that nutjob is. Even a grocery clerk has someone watching over them.

          The other 3 main records – HadCRUT, UAH and RSS – agree with each other: 1998 has been warmer so far than this year. That was 12 years ago. Warming over the last 30 years has been about 0.15C per decade. That'd be 1.5C over 100 years except the radiative forcing of greenhouse gases is logarithmic so each new molecule warms slightly less than the last. Global warming is real, but it's damn near immeasurable.

          Big Oil funded climate science from the very start. BP and Shell bankrolled the climategate university, look at the bottom of their website here:

          ExxonMobil are giving at least $100 million to Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project:

          The energy conglomerates are making billions off the scam as we speak.

          Global Warming/Climate change/Apocalyptic Chaos was a confidence trick. You can open your eyes now.

          Some brave people stood up to it and saved you.

          • Zota

            Radiative forcing???? Those values are set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and their WHOLE AGENDA is right there in the NAME, man! You can fool some of the people with your allegedly logarithmic scale, but not those brave souls who see past the ILLUSION of your so called mathematics!

            And HadCRUT?? You're citing the University of East Anglia as an authority on climate change data??? Come on! Next you'll be telling me some LIE like that Russia will soon experience epic droughts and Siberia will be in flames. It will NEVER happen! The Arctic is frozen tundra and the polar bears are JUST FINE so take your East Anglia HadCRUT data points and send it out on an ice floe!

          • FergalR

            Um, contrary to popular belief the IPCC create reality through magic. Sorry I seem to have hit a nerve with you, since you've undergone some sort of atavistic CAPS LOCK EPISODE.

            My only intention is to educate. I don't need to convince anyone because you're the one in the minority. I'd type that in capitals if it would help convince you of this self-evident truth. It's as basic as the diminishing logarithmic effect of greenhouse gases.

            The heat in Siberia is weather. By an amazing coincidence the climatologists – who know what the weather will be like 100 years hence – failed to predict it. Because they don't know how the atmosphere works. He's a charming pregnant British lady to report (not forecast) the weather for you:

            Meanwhile, millions of fish are freezing to death in South American rivers. Is that due to carbon dioxide induced global warming too? Is Antarctic sea-ice at near record high extent due to global warming as well? That wouldn't make any sense. Because it's bullshit.

            Why does GISS diverge from HadleySST/CRUTemp and the two satellite measurements? It's 'cos Hansen needs to sell his books. He'll be ruined when the scam unravels.

            Some people, hopefully not yourself, have convinced themselves so deeply that they''ll never admit it was a confidence trick. The AGW scam will be a laughing stock in 6 months time. The weathermen can't predict 3 days ahead, but there's buoys measuring the Pacific right now and they can see the deepest La Nina since the ice-age scare of the 1970's bobbing about off the coast of Ecuador.

            He's a nice Italian gentleman to tell you why your pet cause will finally die in early 2011:

          • Zota

            Hey buddy. You can't fool me with NOAA data. There's no buoys! There's not even an “Ecuador”! You have totally bought in to the CON. How can fish be freezing in South America if there is no South America?? THINK about it!!!

          • FergalR

            I'm not your effing buddy.

            Your fringe belief that mankind is causing any sort of dangerous global warming is becoming more marginal by the day.

          • Zota

            Look, buddy. When you can empirically prove that your “South” America exists, then maybe someone will listen to you about climatology. Because your belief in some upside-down version of America that has winter in the middle of summer isn't gunna fly out here in the REAL America! Given that you cite this Bizzaro America as evidence, with its frozen rivers and people presumably walking around on their heads, its very hard to take anything you say seriously.

          • Tuna Ghost

            Hhahahahahahahah “fringe”. More and more you project your disconnection to social realities.

          • FergalR

            So. You don't even bother to argue that catastrophic global warming is possible. But you are sure that the majority of people are as ignorant as you. And you think anyone who doesn't believe the same obvious bullshit as you is suffering from some sort of psychological deficiency.

            I think you're a paid shill. No one capable of typing could be as stupid as you appear to be.

        • dumbsaint

          Don't bother Zota. This train goes go frothing crazy-town, I've been on it before.

          • Zota

            Yeah, I know man. But for the good of Humanity, I have to expose the media lie of so-called “South” America. Let the Truth be Told!

      • CO2hound

        The reason why it's called 'climate change' is because of Frank Luntz.

        Use your brain cells …. both of them!

  • Zota

    “Many countries, such as Russia, would prefer to have a warmer climate.”

    Wow. Nice timing on that one. I hope Russia is also enjoying the drought, crop failures, food shortages and wildfires…

  • WakeUp

    Let me see if I can understand this.
    Up until the 80's hunderds of thousands of barrels of industrial byproducts such as pure dioxin, PCB's, spent nuclear materials, synthetic chemicals, etc. were dumped in the ocean or buried underground, which has leached into our water tables, wells, soil, plants and vegetables.
    So….I am a bad guy since I drink water from plastic bottles? (should only be sold in glass)
    Because I drive a 4 cylinder explosive combustion engine (should have choice of implosion engine)
    Because I don't buy local products (95% of products in the shelves are made in China)
    Is the government here to help? They only help themselves and perpetuate the problem. It doesn't matter what system a country uses, what matters is that those running the country aren't corruptable.
    New World Order? New World Disorder. Ordo ab chao.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Sorry there, mi compadre, but you are just as wrong as wrong can be here. But I understand what's really going on. Your point was never really to convince us that Global Warming ISN'T going on — just to cast doubt on the FACT that it IS.

    Quote from this shambles of an article:

    So yer man has so much rhetorical gunpowder against it that you decide the best stuff is NOT to directly quote him, but rather the IPCC conclusion he's supposedly trying to refute? 'Tis to laugh. That sort of amateurish stuff is so common in the field of yellow journalism that it actually has a name: “Burying the lead.” That is, a practice that dodges the issue, burying the actual point in a sea of diarrhea born either of:

    1. Incompetence (relatively benign interpretation)
    2. Mendacity

    But does it really matter which of the two applies here? We have seen the failure here to observe the most basic tenet of journalistic integrity–gettin' to the frickin' point.

    And to that end, I offer an actual, sourced direct statement that is clear with my position vis-a-vis the strong consensus that Global Warming is for real: 97% of publishing scientists in the field agree. NINETY-SEVEN PCT.

    See at that link also the Anderegg study about the comparative expertise of those who agree vs. those who don't.

    But like I said, I recognize that your point is not really to convince. All you need to do in order to fulfill the mandate of your corporate patrons is stop any constructive activity by government. In the land of the blind, the man with the fattest wallet is king.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Okay, THIS is good!

    It is normally against policy to post more than once regarding an article so utterly lacking in merit. And usually I avoid posting links to biographical info re: the author because, technically it doesn't matter. What matters is the logical and ethical integrity of the author's work in itself. Which, as I posted at around 4:01pm EDLST, is pretty d*mn shabby.

    Here there IS a clear relevance to the guy's background. Following my link in 1st paragraph you will note: #1. The guy's a UFO-OLOGIST. I'm not saying “Call out the tin foil hat brigade!”–necessarily. But it goes to show that he's willing to give a large amount of credence to some very marginal utility/credibility endeavours. #2. The guy's resume is a proud march of megacorp interests: GE, General Motors, Westinghouse, McConnell Douglas. Sure some of them jobs required security clearances, but remember: Criminals of dodgy mental stability get 'em, too. Like G. Gordon Liddy, Watergate convictee and author of a plot to kill journalist Jack Anderson.

    Oh, yeah. Maybe even more relevant: The guy apparently spends his time theseadays as a corporate consultant. Maybe his gaff here was written to spec? Given how little was worth reading in relation to the total volume of his words, my guess is that he gets paid by the letter.

  • wfzlsster

    Thank you for putting this one out there. It will not be highlighted by main stream media because it does not fit their agenda.

    • Haystack

      On the contrary, guys like this get too much coverage because the media try to “balance” their coverage. Every time they have an expert on to represent the opinion of 95% of scientists, they feel like fairness demands that they present an opposing opinion from a self-promoting quack who represents the remaining 5%, thereby making the issue look more evenly-balanced than it is. Guys like Stanton Friedman (who posted this article himself) make money off of controversy in a way that is directly analogous to what Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh do.

      You get more money and attention writing what Friedman writes than you would if you took the mainstream position.

      • wfzlsster

        I don't ever listen to Limbaugh or Stern but what I have learned over the years is that keeping an open mind is the most important thing you can do. I used to believe in man made global warming but was swayed by the opinions and information presented by people like Mike Rivero and Jim McCanney. They are clearly not making money off this issue. There are lots of reasons to get away from hydrocarbon fuels but CO2 is not one of them. It seems clear that it is all about collecting many billions of dollars of new 'carbon' taxes and the people promoting it stands to benefit from those proceeds.

    • Zota

      Now if we can just expose the media LIE about this so-called “South” America.

      • FergalR

        What, this one?

        Sorry it's not in English, “Western” media isn't reporting it.

        • Zota

          If a YouTube clip of a corporate news broadcast is the best evidence you have, your so-called “South” America is an even weaker hypothesis than I thought!

          Look, buddy. I'll believe in your gonzo upside-down America when you haul it up to Real America and show it to us. Till then, we'll just have to agree then the evidence for your so-called “South” America is in dispute.

  • Simiantongue

    From the article.


    I thought, I may be wrong, that many of the non renewable resource power plants are also dependent on major government financing, incentives and subsidies. Is it only the development of renewable power sources like solar and wind power that are dependent on major government financing, incentives, and subsidies? That is not my impression. So what is the point there?

    I think there is an assumption there that people wouldn't be willing to pay a little more for energy if it would allow us to rely less on foreign oil. Also there may be a savings in health care as those energy sources are less polluting. On a macro scale industrial pollution from non renewable sources does cost us more in public health. The trade off is not exactly equal, renewable sources of energy are not going to suddenly make cripple people get up and walk lol, but we would certainly be better off with energy sources that invest in peoples health and happiness overall. I would agree that with non renewable energy there are some savings at the pump for instance. But it is the unseen costs in those sources that add up to social bankruptcy.

  • LucidDreamR

    I think if we could all set aside our egotistical tendencies and look at the big picture objectively we would all realize just how little of an effect we have as a species on this planet. The first example that always pops in my head are volcanoes: each one putting out way more of these “bad” gasses or particulate masses than we ever could. As far as I know they have been doing this since the creation of our planet; many scientists will even go as far as to say they helped CREATE our atmosphere. We've been here for a blink of an eye; meanwhile the earth has been through much more than we could ever imagine throwing at her. I believe NASA is right on focusing on the sun. As we begin to understand more about it's 'seasons' it's clear to me the very center of our known universe may just be more to 'blame' for any climate changes we may be facing. But I guess to the average mind each one of us on an individual level is the center of the universe…hell just read some of the comments left here for an example. High time we get over ourselves and give this great planet and all of her systems and cycles a bit more credit. She may shake us off like a bad case of fleas, but I assure you the cycles will continue. Maybe the real question we should ask ourselves is: do we even DESERVE to be here?

  • liquidself

    EcoAlert: 50 Million NASA Laser Readings Point to Sea Level Several Meters Higher

    Scientists are dramatically increasing forecasts of rising sea levels, and the results could rival science fiction. A new study, using 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, calculates changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges, where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003.

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    A rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration triggers feedback effects due to warming, desiccation and burning of vegetation, further releasing CO2. The onset of methane release from polar bogs and sediments is of major concern. Because CO2 is cumulative, with atmospheric residence time on the scale of centuries to millennia, stabilization of the climate through small incremental reduction in emission may not be sufficient to avoid runaway climate change and possible tipping points (Lenton et al., 2008).

    Sea level rise constitutes the definitive parameter reflecting all other components of climate change. Since the early 20th century the rate of sea level rise increased from about 1 mm/year to about 3.5 mm/year (1993 – 2009 mean rate 3.2+/-0.4 mm/year) (Rahmstorf, 2007), representing a nearly 4-fold increase in the rate of global warming since the onset of the industrial age. According to Overpeck et al. (2008) “Sea-level rise from melting of polar ice sheets is one of the largest potential threats of future climate change. Polar warming by the year 2100 may reach levels similar to those of 130,000 to 127,000 years ago that were associated with sea levels several meters above modern levels; both the Greenland Ice Sheet and portions of the Antarctic Ice Sheet may be vulnerable. The record of past ice-sheet melting indicates that the rate of future melting and related sea-level rise could be faster than widely thought.”

    The world is in a lag period, when increasing atmospheric energy is expressed by intense hurricanes, increased pressure at mid-latitude high pressure zones and shift of climate zones toward the poles. With ensuing desertification of temperate zones, i.e. southern Europe, southern Australia and southern Africa, the desiccated forests become prey to firestorms, such as in Victoria and California. Feeble attempts by civilization to mitigate the climate are drowning in a tide of medieval conspiracy theories by vested interests and fundamentalist man-overnature ideologues (Hamilton, 2010; Hoggan, 2009). There is nowhere the 6.5 billion of contemporary humans can go, not even the barren planets into the study of which space agencies have been pouring more funding than governments allocate for environmental mitigation to date. At 460 ppm CO2- equivalent, the climate is tracking above conditions which existed during the early and mid-Pliocene, raising sea levels by 25+/-12 meters (Haywood and Williams, 2005) and close to the upper stability limit of the Antarctic ice sheet, defined at approximately 500 ppm (Zachos et al. 2001, 2008; Royer, 2006). Once transcended, mitigation measures would be unable to re-form the cryosphere. Summing up, Hansen et al. (2008) state ”If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings. An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.”

    • Andrew

      My suspicion is that deforestation is a bigger culprit than CO2 emissions, but nobody can tell me the Asian Brown Cloud has no effect on the climate.

  • Anonymous

    So. You don’t even bother to argue that catastrophic global warming is possible. But you are sure that the majority of people are as ignorant as you. And you think anyone who doesn’t believe the same obvious bullshit as you is suffering from some sort of psychological deficiency.

    I think you’re a paid shill. No one capable of typing could be as stupid as you appear to be.