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—an hir series—
Historical
and Investigative Research – 30 June 2014 We document that the Western mass media appears
to have zero independence from the IPCC, for it repeats whatever it reads in
RealClimate, a blog set up by IPCC scientists. █ Introduction █ The mass media: A general assay █ Newsweek
Introduction Picture this from a media—from a spectacle—point
of view. Al Gore, famous politician, almost president of the
world superpower, traveling salesman for worldwide economic reforms. Stars in
his own movie. Wins Nobel Peace Prize. What? Not impressed? He wins an Oscar. This looks serious. Coming together in the United Nations as a kind of
‘world scientific Establishment,’ a coalition of the world’s most powerful
ruling elites give themselves the name Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC fully
endorses Gore’s movie and shares the Nobel Peace Prize.
IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri and Al Gore The Nobel. The almost president. The governments. Hollywood. Who can resist so much
Authority? And what is the message? That CO2—sustenance to the entire Plant Kingdom,
foundation of the World Food Chain, basis of all life on Earth—is poison. Even a tiny increment—the little
bit that we produce by burning ‘fossil fuels’ (nature produces 33 times
more)—is quite enough to give the planet a fever. Civilization—survival even—is on the line. Catastrophe
looms. Emergency worldwide reforms are imperative. Yes, they will impoverish
millions, but it must be done. This is the catastrophic, ‘anthropogenic’
global warming (CAGW) hypothesis. Hypothesis? This is fact, insist Al Gore and the IPCC. Some disagree (many of them top climate scientists). But Al
Gore refuses to debate skeptics in public. He refuses to allow presenters
trained by his Climate Reality Project to debate. He refuses to allow their presentations
to be videotaped.[0] Why? And what—according to Gore and the IPCC—establishes
the importance of CO2 to world temperatures? Al Gore’s movie, An
Inconvenient Truth, climaxes with the
crucial piece of evidence: the reconstruction—obtained by studying
bubbles in the Antarctic ice cores—of 650,000 years of fluctuating CO2 concentrations
and atmospheric temperatures. Gore struts in front of an impressive—truly
gigantic—graph showing two sawtooth curves and waves at it. Skeptics have questioned
whether the two curves “fit together.” Gore smirks at that. “Most ridiculous
thing I ever heard.” The audience laughs. The curves fit: “When there is more
carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer.”
Al Gore: “Most ridiculous thing I ever heard.” But hold on. Skeptics never said the curves don’t
fit. They say that Al Gore is reading the graph backwards. He says: “When there is more carbon dioxide, the
temperature gets warmer.” This is false. When temperature gets warmer, the
carbon dioxide then goes up. And
that’s the (perhaps inconvenient) truth. At every glacial termination
temperature rises first, and then—with an average lag of 800 years—rise the
CO2 concentrations. This is known as the CO2
lag (see Part 2). All of the
scientific studies that have examined the Antarctic ice-cores concur. Here is
a sampling: Fischer, H.,
Wahlen, M., Smith, J., Mastroianni, D., & Deck, B. (1999). Ice Core Records of Atmospheric CO2 Around the Last Three
Glacial Terminations. Science, 283, 1712 – 1714. Mudelsee, M.
(2001). The phase relations among atmospheric CO2 content, temperature and
global ice volume over the past 420 ka. Quaternary Science Reviews, 20,
583-589. Caillon, N.,
Severinghaus, J., Jouzel, P., Barnola, J.-M., Kang, J., & Lipenkov, V. Y.
(2003). Timing of atmospheric C02 and Antarctic temperature changes across
Termination III. Science, 299, 1728-1731. Siegenthaler
U. et al. (2005). Stable Carbon Cycle–Climate Relationship During the Late
Pleistocene. Science, 310(5752), 1313-1317. So the UN-approved, IPCC-advised, Nobel-laureate, Oscar-winning movie has presented the
key piece of evidence backwards. What? Yes. The Antarctic ice-core record contains
exactly zero evidence to support that CO2 matters to major temperature
changes. This key evidence supports, in fact, the opposite claim: that CO2 concentrations are a consequence—not a cause—of temperature
changes. Oops. But isn’t this a scandal? Imagine that you publish a newspaper. Wouldn’t you milk this for all it’s worth? Wouldn’t it be fun to embarrass Al Gore—especially
after his Nobel Peace Prize—for posing ever so smugly with the ice-core
graph? Wouldn’t it be satisfying to expose lies and manipulations by the most
powerful governments in the world? Isn’t this what news people live for—speaking Truth to Power? So I ask: Have the mainstream mass media capitalized
on this scandal and informed the public (as they should)? The
mass media: A general assay The Lexis-Nexis database archives the most important
mainstream news sources in the West. In March 2010 I asked for any mentions
of “CO2 lag,” or else for mentions of “ice core” together with number 800
(the average number of years that CO2 lags temperature changes). The CO2 lag was first documented in a Science paper published in March 1999, so my search covered an
11-year period. I asked Lexis-Nexis to search everywhere: “Major US and World
publications,” “News Wire Services,” and “TV and Radio Broadcast
Transcripts,” leaving out only the non-English language sources. How many articles mentioned the CO2 lag? Sixteen. That’s it. Here they are (in order). 2001 Coventry
Evening Telegraph: “…[D]ata from
the Greenland ice cores [shows] ...that the start of carbon dioxide increases
lagged behind the start of the temperature increases by up to 800 years. This means
that carbon dioxide levels are a result, not a cause, of global temperature
changes, so attempts to influence climate through emissions controls are
futile.”[1] 2002 Courier
Mail (Queensland (Australia): “...dramatic
temperature shifts... clearly cannot be explained in terms of changes in the
use of fossil fuels. Indeed, recent studies of Antarctic ice-core samples going
back over 400,000 years suggest that temperature rises precede increased
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”[2] 2004 Financial
Post (Canada): “Was CO2 ever
responsible for past climate warming? No. ...[C]areful analysis of
ancient atmospheres locked in the glacier ice cores shows that the dramatic
shifts from cold to warm climates in the past were followed by major
increases in CO2. The build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere consistently
lagged temperature increases by about 800 years. CO2 has never before shown
evidence that it can behave as a significant climate driver, despite large
variations in its concentration.”[3] 2005 Toronto
Sun: “In fact,
there’s no evidence that CO2 is damaging to nature. Also, there is solid
scientific evidence that CO2 lags average temperature rises by several
centuries.”[4] Christian
Science Monitor: “The triggers
for the changes in gas concentrations [CO2 and methane]
remain a mystery... They tend to lag the temperature record by some 800 to
1,000 years. Some have
argued that this gap rules out a connection between rising CO2 and the
warming climate.”[5] 2006 Al Gore’s famous film was released in 2006. In the
same year, PR Newswire wrote: “Antarctic ice
studies show global temperatures tracking closely with atmospheric CO2 levels
over the past 400,000 years. However, Singer and Avery note the studies also
show that temperature changes preceded the CO2 changes by about 800 years.
Thus, more warming has produced more atmospheric CO2, rather than more CO2
producing global warming. This makes sense, say the authors, because the
oceans hold vastly more CO2 than the air, and warming forces water to release
some its gases.”[6] The Financial
Post (Canada): “Gore repeatedly
labels carbon dioxide as ‘global warming pollution’ when, in reality, it is
no more pollution than is oxygen. CO2 is plant food, an ingredient essential
for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a lifeless, frozen ice ball. ...Over the intermediate
time scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don’t
precede, and therefore don’t cause, warming. Rather, they follow temperature
rise—by as much as 800 years.”[7] 2007 The Toronto
Sun reported on a rival film, The
Great Global Warming Swindle, which interviews top climate
experts who disagree with Al Gore and the IPCC. “Expert after
expert in this film blasts craters into the theory that CO2—which only makes
up 0.054% of the earth's atmosphere—has ever driven climate. Ice core records,
in fact, prove the opposite, that CO2 lags warming by as much as 800 years.”[8]
The Straits
Times (Singapore): “Mr Gore’s
knockout punch [is] a dramatic video based on the world’s climate record
preserved in ice cores. …IN HIS
presentation, Mr Gore shows how ice core data translate into a sawtooth graph of the
world’s temperature fluctuations from eons past. He then strategically places
below this graph yet another one of carbon level changes in the atmosphere
over the same period. The two graphs
obviously move in lockstep with each other, he says. With great panache, Mr
Gore concludes that when carbon goes up, temperature inevitably follows. ...Yet if the graphs are mapped
onto each other instead of being counterposed one above the other, as Mr Gore
does, it becomes very clear that, very consistently, every temperature rise
actually precedes the carbon rise by some 800 years. This
undeniable time lag is critical since what it says is that more carbon
[dioxide] in the air did not lead to global warming in times past. …If so, the
most fundamental assumption of the carbon theory of human-induced global
warming rests on shaky ground.”[9] Business
Wire reported on the book The Down to Earth Guide to Global Warming, which is “calculated to
terrify schoolchildren about ‘global warming’ … and intentionally designed to
propagandize unsuspecting school children who do not have enough knowledge to
know what is being done to them.” The book, wrote Business
Wire, contained “a fundamental scientific error,” as pointed out by a new
Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) paper.[10] The ‘error’ is quite amazing. This children’s
book presented a graph showing data from the Antarctic ice cores and mislabeled the curves of CO2 and temperature in order to claim that CO2
always rises before temperature. To ‘support’ their false claim that CO2
precedes temperature, they cited the Siegenthaler et al. (2005) paper
published in Science, which paper in fact says the exact opposite: that CO2 always lags
temperature. This has to be seen to be believed
(consult the footnote [11]). What this children’s book did is functionally
identical to the deception employed in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. The Washington
Times: “...Pointing to ice
core data, politicians have argued that past CO2 changes also caused large
temperature changes. They conveniently fail to mention that the scientists
who work on those ice cores know that the temperature changes actually
preceded the CO2 changes - by about 400 to 800 years.”[12] FOX-NEWS: “In the
1980’s, we dug up long ice cores from both Greenland and the Antarctic. ...Mr. Gore in his Antarctic scenario says
temperature and CO2 have moved radically and together through the last four
ice ages and that’s true. What he doesn't tell us is that the temperatures
changed 800 years before the CO2 levels.”[13] 2008 The Bristol
Evening Post wrote: “The
International Panel On Climate Change [IPCC] tells us that global warming is
brought about by man producing too much CO2—but many scientists say this is
not the case. People like Al
Gore will show you graphs of polar ice core records in which the rise and
fall of temperature and CO2 are directly related. It all looks as if this is
the proof we need. What he doesn’t tell you is
that the warming comes first, and up to 800 years later, the CO2 rises. So
CO2 is not the cause of warming, but more likely the result of warming.”[14] 2009 The Advertiser
(Australia): “Solar warming
[of] Earth’s oceans, seven miles deep, takes years. Close resolution analysis
of ice cores spanning 800,000 years shows atmospheric CO2 lags temperature by
400 to 800 years.”[15] The Sydney
Morning Herald (Australia) 2009: “The third
problem for the panel [IPCC] hypothesis is that CO2 lags behind
temperature in the Ice Age era, which has been explained by the delayed
release of stored CO2 from oceans, but the panel model has CO2
and temperature rising together since 1850. ‘Either temperature and CO2 go up
and down at the same time or they don’t ... You can’t have it one way during
the ice ages and another way today.’ ”[16] 2010 The Oil and Gas Journal: “The ice cores show
that every interglacial period started with a sharp increase of temperature,
followed, some 600-800 years later, by a sharp rise in atmospheric carbon
dioxide. Therefore, clearly, rising temperatures caused the rising levels of
carbon dioxide and not the other way around. Since carbon
dioxide is about two times more soluble at 0° C. than at 20° C., it is
obvious that rising temperatures caused it to outgas from the enormous
reservoir of seawater; later, decreasing temperatures returned it to
solution.”[17] How
much coverage is this? To put this all in perspective I remind you that
this issue should be a worldwide
scandal. The Antarctic ice-core reconstruction, the key evidence in Al Gore’s An
Inconvenient Truth—for which film he won an Oscar and shared a Nobel Peace
Prize with the IPCC scientists who advised him—was presented backwards. And yet in a period of 11 years there were a total
of just 16 mentions of the ‘CO2 lag’ in the English-language mainstream
media. This amounts to an average of less
than 2 articles per year. Moreover, the Coventry
Evening Telegraph and the Bristol
Evening Post are not precisely world media powerhouses. I looked in vain
for anything from The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Absent. The Wall Street Journal? Nothing. The Financial Times?
Nothing. The International Herald-Tribune? Nada. The Economist?
Zip. Of the major TV news services, only FOX appears in the results (and it
covered this only once, and lightly). What we have,
then, is the statistical equivalent of total,
absolute silence in the mainstream Western media. Obviously, the public is not aware. To understand what the public has been told, we need
to look at world media powerhouses. I do that below for the case of Newsweek. Newsweek Newsweek
senior editor Sharon Begley has been a prominent contributor to Newsweek on the topic of global
warming. She is presented as quite an authority on all matters scientific. Begley was recipient in 2004 of an “Honorary
Doctorate of Humane Letters for contributions to the public understanding of
science from the University of North Carolina”; she was author of the
‘Science Journal’ column at the Wall Street Journal for five years;
and, according to Newsweek, has become “widely known for her ability
to break down complex scientific theories and write about them in simple
prose.”[17a] With this kind of science-writer curriculum one
expects that Sharon Begley—Newsweek’s expert on global warming—will be
up-to-date on the implications of the ice-core data. Who better than Sharon
Begley—known for explaining “complex scientific theories” in “simple
prose”—to clarify the controversy over the CO2 lag?
In 1981, when research on the Antarctic ice cores
was just beginning, Begley wrote the following: [Quote from Newsweek
begins here] To the
scientists who work there, Antarctica is a figurative
deep freeze as well as a literal one: within its ice cores it preserves the record of
the world’s climatic past—the ice ages and the warm spells—and may hold clues
to future weather as well. ‘The best data on the world’s climate is
locked up in the ice sheets,’ says Edward Todd of the National Science Foundation
(NSF). ‘Antarctica exerts a greater
influence on the world’s environment than any other piece of real estate.’ Many scientists endure the
sounds of silence in the hope of answering two basic questions of Antarctic
research: is the ice sheet getting bigger or smaller [a proxy for colder or
warmer temperatures], and what effect do rising levels of atmospheric carbon
dioxide (CO2) have on it? ... Scientists can run computer models on these
possibilities until the next ice age, but they won’t really know how CO2
affects Antarctica’s 7 million cubic miles of ice until they understand how
it did so in the past. ‘Nature doesn’t pay attention to our models,’ says
Todd.
‘To get answers to whether Antarctica is growing
or shrinking, you have to go down there and make measurements.’ Echoes: Using precise
chemical tools, scientists will identify the kinds of gas trapped in the ice
to learn the composition of the ancient atmosphere.[18] [Quote from Newsweek
ends here] A couple of things are especially noteworthy here. First, the climate scientist interviewed by Begley
in 1981 made the same point we also made in Part 2 and Part 3: computer models of the climate, or
‘climate simulations,’ cannot tell us what the climate is actually like. They
are merely complex ways of exploring the implications of our hypotheses. “Nature doesn’t pay attention to our models.” Second: How then can we find out whether CO2 matters
or not to temperature changes? We must look to “the best data on the world’s
climate [which] is locked up in the ice sheets.” In 1981, Begley promised
that “Using precise chemical tools, scientists will identify the kinds of gas
trapped in the ice to learn the composition of the ancient atmosphere.” In 1999 that promised research returned an
unequivocal result: at every glacial
termination CO2 rises after—not before—temperature. So “the best data
on the world’s climate” has spoken clearly that CO2 has not been the agent of
world temperatures for the entire 650,000 years in the Antarctic ice-core
record. Now that the evidence was in, did Begley explain
this to her readers? She did not. In 2007, the year after Al Gore and the IPCC
misrepresented the Antarctic ice-core evidence, Begley wrote that there is
“90 percent certainty that man-made greenhouse gases have caused most of the
warming since 1950.” About ice cores, she said only this: “When
scientists measured a rise in Earth’s average temperature of 1 degree F over
the past 50 years, they... scurried to the record books, both man’s and
nature’s—that is, to historical weather archives as well as tree rings and
ice cores that preserve records of ancient temperatures—to search for
precedents. ...The temperature increase since the 1950s ‘is not like anything
seen in the paleoclimate data,’ says atmospheric scientist Joyce Penner of
the University of Michigan.”[19] Notice that “scientists... scurried to the record
books,” including the “ice cores that preserve records of ancient
temperatures.” And the ice cores, according to Begley’s own earlier quoted
scientist, contain “The best data on the world’s climate.” But even though
these “best data” say that CO2 plays no role in major temperature changes,
Begley, like Al Gore and the IPCC, is misleading readers into thinking that
the ice cores have spoken in favor
of the AGW hypothesis! And this is not the only thing Begley gets wrong. She claims these are the warmest temperatures on
record. False. Study of glacial ice
has found “a warm period centered around A.D. 1000, which was warmer than
the late 20th century by approximately 1°C” (emphasis added). This is the famous ‘Medieval Warm Period,’ and its
existence roundly denies that late-20th c. temperatures are shockingly high.[20]
This also shows (again) that warm temperatures can occur without any massive
burning of petroleum, because our Medieval ancestors were not doing that. Who might be educating Begley? This can be
established. I visited a question-and-answer online forum that Newsweek set up for Begley after she
launched a concerted attack against skeptics (whom she calls ‘deniers’).[21] One reader, Richard King, challenged the manner in
which Begley disparages skeptics: “We are told
that the debate is over. All scientists have agreed except for the deniers,
kooks and the misinformed. ...[But t]he very premise of science and the
scientific method is being ignored. The job of a scientist is to always
question and attempt to prove something to be false.” Here is Sharon Begley’s reply: “ ‘Skeptic’ is
a compliment, as far as I’m concerned. Scientists should be, and are,
skeptical, for the reasons you note. Notice I never said in this story or any
other that ‘the debate is over;’ in science, it never is. The question is
whether the science is sound, whether it has been converging on a single
conclusion, and finally whether the preponderance of evidence is sufficient
to justify policy steps... Also, it is wrong to think that the ‘skeptics’
arguments have gone unanswered. One group of climate researchers does this
very well, at http://www.realclimate.org/ ” Isn’t that interesting. According to Sharon Begley
the skeptics have been answered by the “climate researchers” at RealClimate,
who have done it “very well.”
As explained in Part 2, RealClimate was created by IPCC
scientists for the expressly stated purpose of educating journalists. It
seems they have accomplished their mission. In her question-and-answer with
readers, whenever Begley wished to support herself on any point she referred readers either to RealClimate or to IPCC
documents. Do the RealClimate/IPCC scientists respond to
skeptics “very well”? We showed in Part 2 that
RealClimate utterly failed to defend the AGW hypothesis from the
embarrassment of the ice-core data. The larger question is this: If Begley is basically
a mouthpiece for the IPCC, then where is the check? Where is the balance?
Where is the Fourth Estate? What has the public ‘learned’? That should be
obvious. Newsweek, unlike the Coventry Evening Telegraph or the Bristol Evening Post, reaches
millions of people all over the world. This goes a long way towards explaining why the
IPCC-agenda continues forward when it should have come to a screeching halt. And this brings us to the question of intent: Has this been a deliberate deception?
____________________________________________________________ Footnotes
and Further Reading [0] There has been one exception to the rule. You may
watch a video here of a Gore-trained presenter debating a skeptic, and see
for yourself who does better. [1] DRIVE TIME: MOTORING: Cars 'no threat to planet';
Coventry Evening Telegraph, May 11, 2001, 226 words, STEWART SMITH “WITH global
warming ‘stone cold dead’, road tax and fuel prices must fall, says the
Association of British Drivers. The ABD claims
research published earlier this year has killed the man- made global warming
theory. The suggestion
that man's activities are causing damaging warming to our planet has been in
doubt since a leading climate scientist described Tony Blair's prediction for
climate change as ‘the one that's not going to happen’. Now it has
been shown that global warming, as portrayed by politicians, isn't happening.
The ABD says
recent scientific research paper shows that, instead of causing higher
temperatures, higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually
follow rises in the Earth's surface temperature. Monnin studied
temperature changes from the last ice age to the present day using data from the
Greenland ice cores, and found that the start of carbon dioxide increases
lagged behind the start of the temperature increases by up to 800 years. This means
that carbon dioxide levels are a result, not a cause, of global temperature
changes, so attempts to influence climate through emissions controls are
futile. ABD
environment spokesman Bernard Abrams comments: ‘Under these now discredited
policies, private and business car drivers have seen the cost of motoring go
through the roof, with further rises in the pipeline.’ ” [2] Discount the doomsayers; Courier Mail (Queensland,
Australia), September 21, 2002, Saturday, FEATURES; Pg. 30, 986 words, Ron
Brunton. “Climatologists
argue about the causes of these dramatic temperature shifts, and whether they
might be a result of solar cycles or changes in the global oceanic
circulation, or other phenomena. But they clearly cannot be explained in
terms of changes in the use of fossil fuels. Indeed, recent studies of
Antarctic ice-core samples going back over 400,000 years suggest that
temperature rises precede increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.” [3] “Catastrophic predictions fade with the light of day:
Close correlation between solar activity and Earth's temperature”; National
Post's Financial Post & FP Investing (Canada), November 25, 2004
Thursday, FINANCIAL POST: COMMENT; Pg. FP13, 955 words, Ian Clark, Financial
Post. “Was CO2 ever
responsible for past climate warming? No. The ACIA report states that past
temperature increases were ‘associated with’ atmospheric CO2 levels, which
act as a climate driver. However, careful analysis of ancient atmospheres
locked in the glacier ice cores shows that the dramatic shifts from cold to
warm climates in the past were followed by major increases in CO2. The
build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere consistently lagged temperature increases
by about 800 years. CO2 has never before shown evidence that it can behave as
a significant climate driver, despite large variations in its concentration.
The tremendous fluctuations in global temperature over the millennia are
intimately linked to changes in the solar energy the Earth receives.
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have changed in response to temperature
changes through changes in the amount of terrestrial vegetation and the
uptake of CO2 by our vast oceans. But surely the
unprecedented increase in CO2 over the past century is responsible for the
Arctic warming today. Again, no. Research over the past decade has
demonstrated a very close correlation between solar activity and Earth's
temperature. A variety of real data sources from sunspot cycles and
measurements of cloudiness to tree rings and ice cores show that the rise in
temperature over the past 100 years, and in particular over the past three
decades, occurs at a time of greatly increased solar activity. So it seems
that global temperature has risen due to increased output of energy from the
sun, not only as visible light that we see, but also in the solar wind and
the solar magnetosphere which affect our climate. Even the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change has shown that CO2 is incapable of generating the
warming that has been observed. So what about
the predictions of catastrophic warming over the next century? The forecasts
of a 1.5 to 4.5 degreesC increase in global temperature are made by computer
models that are incapable of accurately modelling changes in the most
important greenhouse gas -- water vapour. Further, the warming that the
models generate with increased CO2 is minimal, and does not account for
present or future warming. The predictions of a warmer future are based on
the untested hypothesis that a little warming by CO2 generates much greater warming
by water vapour. Given that CO2 has never behaved in this way in the past,
and that these models cannot accurately model the complications of clouds and
aerosols (which reflect light energy back into space), the computer
simulations of future climates have very large uncertainties. Despite the
progress that has been made by the intrepid community of climate modellers,
their predictions remain highly speculative.” [4] “THE MYTH OF KYOTO; PETER WORTHINGTON SAYS GLOBAL
WARMING IS A LIB-LEFT FICTION”; The Toronto Sun, January 9, 2005 Sunday,
NEWS; Pg. 37, 740 words, BY PETER WORTHINGTON, TORONTO SUN “In fact,
there’s no evidence that CO2 is damaging to nature. Also, there is solid
scientific evidence that CO2 lags average temperature rises by several
centuries. CO2 levels were higher at the end of the last ice age (114,000
years ago) than during the much warmer period 43 million years earlier. CO2
levels are higher today than the relatively hot period 17 million years ago.
Scientifically, there seems little relation between CO2 levels and warmth.” [5] “Old ice gives new clues to climate change”;
Christian Science Monitor, November 28, 2005,
Monday, USA; Pg. 25, 503 words, Peter N. Spotts Staff writer of The Christian
Science Monitor. “In addition
to carbon dioxide, the cores also contain information on methane, a powerful
greenhouse gas, and nitrous oxide. In a separate
study from the same cores, the rise and fall of methane also tracked closely
with that of CO2 and temperatures. Both sets of results appear in Friday's
edition of the journal Science. The triggers
for the changes in gas concentrations remain a mystery, Brook acknowledges.
They tend to lag the temperature record by some 800 to 1,000 years. Some have
argued that this gap rules out a connection between rising CO2 and the
warming climate. But Brook
explains that the gap most likely signals a ‘positive feedback’ in the
climate system. In short, warmth begets more CO2 in the atmosphere. This raises
temperatures further, which leads to more CO2 released into the air. The
shift between these glacial periods and warm ‘interglacial’ periods has been
linked to long-term changes in Earth's tilt as it orbits the sun.” NOTE:
If this alleged “positive feedback” were actually at work, then we would
expect, at the end of warming
periods, that CO2 concentrations would start decreasing before the
temperatures. At least such evidence would be consistent with such a feedback
effect. But the Antarctic ice-core record shows the temperatures decreasing
first. So there is zero evidence in the Antarctic ice-core record to support
that any such “positive feedback” effect is at work. (See Part 2 for a discussion.) [6] “Global Warming: An Unstoppable 1,500-Year Cycle”;
New Book Debunks Greenhouse Fears and Points to Natural 1,500-Year Warming
Cycles; PR Newswire US, November 9, 2006
Thursday 7:25 PM GMT, 925 words [7] “The gods are
laughing: Scientists who work in the fields liberal arts graduate Al Gore
wanders through contradict his theories about man-induced climate change”;
National Post's Financial Post & FP Investing (Canada), June 7, 2006 Wednesday, FINANCIAL POST:
COMMENT; Pg. FP19, 1834 words, Tom Harris, National Post. “Gore
repeatedly labels carbon dioxide as ‘global warming pollution’ when, in
reality, it is no more pollution than is oxygen. CO2 is plant food, an
ingredient essential for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a
lifeless, frozen ice ball. The hypothesis that human release of CO2 is a
major contributor to global warming is just that -- an unproven hypothesis,
against which evidence is increasingly mounting. In fact, the
correlation between CO2 and temperature that Gore speaks about so confidently
is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales. U of O climate
researcher Professor Jan Veizer demonstrated that, over geologic time, the
two are not linked at all. Over the intermediate time scales Gore focuses on,
the ice cores show that CO2 increases don't precede, and therefore don't
cause, warming. Rather, they follow temperature rise -- by as much as 800
years. Even in the past century, the correlation is poor; the planet actually
cooled between 1940 and 1980, when human emissions of CO2 were rising at the
fastest rate in our history. Similarly, the
fact that water vapour constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases by volume is
conveniently ignored by Gore.” [8] “Debunking global warming myths”; The Toronto Sun,
March 14, 2007 Wednesday, EDITORIAL/OPINION; Pg. 20, 623 words, BY LICIA
CORBELLA [9] “Who or what
is the real culprit?; Not all experts agree that man is to blame; others
point the finger at oceans or the sun.” The Straits Times (Singapore), May 1,
2007 Tuesday, REVIEW - OTHERS, 1625 words, Andy Ho, Senior Writer. “While some
environmentalists might concede that the IPCC report is a political document,
they would also point to what they see as Mr Gore's knockout punch, a
dramatic video based on the world's climate record preserved in ice cores. The air of ancient
times is trapped inside ice, so scientists drill into ice at the poles and
take these ice cores back to the lab where the sealed ancient air is released
under carefully controlled conditions to study its carbon levels. A chicken and egg question IN HIS
presentation, Mr Gore shows how ice core data translate into a sawtooth graph
of the world's temperature fluctuations from eons past. He then strategically
places below this graph yet another one of carbon level changes in the
atmosphere over the same period. The two graphs
obviously move in lockstep with each other, he says. With great panache, Mr
Gore concludes that when carbon goes up, temperature inevitably follows. As surely as night follows day? Yet if the
graphs are mapped onto each other instead of being counterposed one above the
other, as Mr Gore does, it becomes very clear that, very consistently, every
temperature rise actually precedes the carbon rise by some 800 years. This
undeniable time lag is critical since what it says is that more carbon in the
air did not lead to global warming in times past. If so, factors other than
carbon must have set off the various periods of global warming in times past. If so, the
most fundamental assumption of the carbon theory of human-induced global
warming rests on shaky ground. In fact, carbon is a bad candidate for such a
theory. After all, methane is 27 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse
gas.” [10] “SPPI Exposes Fundamental Scientific Error in Laurie
David's ‘Global Warming’ Book for Children”; Business Wire, September 13,
2007 Thursday 1:52 PM GMT, 358 words “A fundamental
scientific error lurks in a book calculated to terrify schoolchildren about
‘global warming,’ Robert Ferguson, SPPI president, announced today: ‘The
Down-To-Earth Guide to Global Warming,’ by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon,
is intentionally designed to propagandize unsuspecting school children who do
not have enough knowledge to know what is being done to them. A new SPPI
[Science and Public Policy Institute] paper (http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/other/childrensbookerror.html)
briefly examines a cardinal error, found on page 18 of the David book, where
she mousetraps children: “The more the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the
higher the temperature climbed. The less carbon dioxide, the more the
temperature fell. You can see this relationship for yourself by looking at
the graph. What makes this graph so amazing is that by connecting rising
CO2to rising temperature scientists have discovered the link between
greenhouse-gas pollution (sic) and global warming.” The SPPI paper
states, in part: ‘What really
makes the David-Gordon graph ‘amazing’ is that it's egregiously
counterfactual. Worse, in order to
contrive a visual representation for their claim that CO2 controls
temperature change, the authors present unsuspecting children with an altered
temperature and CO2 graph that reverses the relationship found in the scientific
literature. The manipulation is critical because David’s central premise posits
that CO2 drives temperature, yet the peer-reviewed literature is unanimous
that CO2 changes have historically followed temperature changes.’ ” [11] Here is an image of the SPPI document:
For the full SPPI report, visit: Notice two things about the graph that SPPI
reproduces above from the children’s book in question: 1) In
a most confusing manner, time is represented as going from right to left (The superimposed
yellow arrow is mine, to help you out). 2) CO2 is labeled
(at left) as the red
curve, whereas temperature is labeled (at
right) as the blue curve. But this is false! They have mislabeled the curves.
SPPI produces a corrected graph, shown below:
For the full SPPI report, visit: Once we label the curves correctly, and read from
right to left, it is obvious that temperature always rises before the CO2. Notice also the following, from SPPI: “On page 103
of their book, David and Gordon cite the work of Siegenthaler
et al. (2005), for their written and graphical contention that
temperature lags CO2. However, Siegenthaler et al. clearly state the
opposite: ‘The lags of
CO2 with respect to the Antarctic temperature over glacial terminations V to
VII are 800, 1600, and 2800 years, respectively, which are consistent with
earlier observations during the last four glacial cycles.’ ” [12] “Carbon’s upside; A story of man, termites and
climate hubris”; The Washington Times, August 17, 2007 Friday, OPED; A19, 864
words, By John Linder, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES. “The popular
notion is that humans burning fossil fuels increases carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere and thus drives a dangerous increase in temperature. Pointing to
ice core data, politicians have argued that past CO2 changes also caused
large temperature changes. They conveniently fail to mention that the
scientists who work on those ice cores know that the temperature changes
actually preceded the CO2 changes - by about 400 to 800 years. In the context
of Earth's history, today we are a carbon-starved planet. The 385 parts per
million (ppm) CO2 levels today are at the lower range of comfort. The more
welcoming levels of CO2, for both plants and animals, have been 2000 to 3000
ppm.” [13] Global Broadcast Database - English, January 30, 2007 Tuesday, 201 words; SHOW: FOX
NEWS 9:00 PM FOX. “In the
1980’s, we dug up long ice cores from both Greenland and the Antarctic. At
the showed moderate natural 1500 year cycle. We have had 600 warmtion [sic]
in the last million years. And the ice cores and the sea bed sediment show.
This and none of the past has found CO2 coinciding with temperature change.
In fact, Mr. Gore in his Antarctic scenario says temperature and CO2 have
moved radically and together through the last four ice ages and that's true.
What he doesn't tell us is that the temperatures changed 800 years before the
CO2 levels.” [14] “Exploding the myth on climate change”; Bristol
Evening Post, July 1, 2008 Tuesday, Pg. 10, 308 words. “The
International Panel On Climate Change tells us that global warming is brought
about by man producing too much CO2 - but many scientists say this is not the
case. People like Al
Gore will show you graphs of polar ice core records in which the rise and
fall of temperature and CO2 are directly related. It all looks
as if this is the proof we need. What he
doesn't tell you is that the warming comes first, and up to 800 years later,
the CO2 rises. So CO2 is not the cause of warming, but more likely the result
of warming. He and people
like him tell you there is no more discussion, accept what the IPCC tells
you. If we accept
what we're told without being able to debate the issue, we deserve to be
falling off the edge of the flat world.” [15] “Earth now cooler”; The Advertiser (Australia); July
4, 2009 Saturday; OPINION; Pg. 71, 144 words [16] “Science
cooks the books, driving sensible people to screaming point”; Sydney Morning
Herald (Australia), November 12, 2009 Thursday, NEWS AND FEATURES; Opinion;
Pg. 17, 1057 words, Miranda Devine [17] “Climate and plague”; Oil & Gas Journal, January
18, 2010, LETTERS; Pg. 14, 454 words, Jamil Azad, Geoscientist, Calgary [17a] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sharon-begley-returns-to-newsweek-will-write-column-essays-contribute-to-newsweekcom-54206242.html [18] “Is Antarctica Shrinking?”; Newsweek, October 5,
1981, UNITED STATES EDITION, SCIENCE; Pg. 72, 1630 words, SHARON BEGLEY with
RITA DALLAS in London and RON GIVENS in New York [19] “Which of These Is Not Causing Global Warming
Today?; A. Sport utility vehicles; B. Rice fields; C. Increased solar
output”; Newsweek, July 2, 2007, COVER: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW NOW:
ENVIRONMENT; Pg. 48, 1758 words, By Sharon Begley and Andrew Murr. [20] Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last
2,000 Years (2006), pp 81,82 Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate
(BASC), National Academy of Science. [21] “Resisting
Change: Global Warming Deniers”: NEWSWEEK's Sharon Begley joined us for a
Live Talk on Wednesday, August 8 [2007], at noon, ET, about climate change
denial and its lasting pervasiveness.; Newsweek Web Exclusive. |
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