Climate experts: Global warming doubts are 'real science'

Al Gore

A number of Ph.Ds have written a book chapter asserting that doubts about the theory of human-caused global warming should be considered "real science."

You know, the idea of basing hypotheses on documented evidence rather than a political agenda.

But the National Science Teachers Association wants nothing to do with such an approach.

Its executive director, David Evans, has written a letter to members insisting they must teach the agendas of the National Wildlife Federation, the North American Association for Environmental Education, the Campaign for Environmental Literacy, the Center for Climate Change Communication and other activist groups.

What they must avoid, he contends, is the information compiled by the scientists who wrote "Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming."

The chapter, written by Craig Idso, Robert Carter and S. Fred Singer and published by the Heartland Institute, challenges common climate change and global warming agenda arguments.

Spencer Irvine of Accuracy in Academia wrote in a review: "As much as the liberal media, liberal academics and pundits tell Americans that the earth is too warm and human beings are the cause for a spike in weather and temperature changes, there is little-to-no scientific consensus to support these assertions. ... [I]t is clear that the climate change agenda turns a blind eye to neutral and impartial studies of the subject."

The Heartland Institute distributed the chapter to several hundred thousand science teachers, prompting outrage from the National Science Teachers Association, the NSTA.

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The NSTA's director, Evans, told members flatly that "scientists don't disagree about climate change or its causes" and "labeling propaganda as science does not make it so."

Evans called the institute's information an "unprecedented attack."

"Just teach science in your classroom," he told teachers, suggesting "resources" from special interest organizations such as the National Wildlife Federation.

The Heartland Institute responded this week.

"The [teachers' association] letter is unclear what, exactly, we attacked," the group said.

"One might have thought, even assumed, that educators are interested in dialogue and debate and would be open to new ideas and facts. Is sharing research and commentary with them somehow improper? If so, why?" it continued. "The book in question is hardly propaganda: It was written by three distinguished climate scientists, all of whom have doctoral degrees in relevant scientific fields, who together have published hundreds of articles on climate issues in respected peer-reviewed journals. The book has more than 250 references, including many peer-reviewed articles and articles by noted alarmists as well as realists in the climate debate."

The institute explained the book is a single chapter of a much longer work in progress, "Climate Change Reconsidered II: Benefits and Costs of Fossil Fuels."

The book is being produced by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

"That book will be the fifth volume in a series that is so highly regarded by the scientific community it has been cited more than 100 times in peer-reviewed articles and was translated into Chinese and published by the Chinese Academy of Science," the institute wrote. "Does that sound like 'propaganda' to you?"

The focal point is that there is no agreement among scientists on global warming.

"More than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition stating as clearly and forcibly as they could that 'there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.' In a sane world, this fact alone ought to be sufficient to end silly talk of a 'scientific consensus,'" the institute said.

"There is much more evidence that scientists disagree than just one petition, and more importantly, good reasons why scientists disagree about this wickedly complex scientific puzzle. To learn about that, you need to read the book. It's available for free online at heartland.org, in case you weren't mailed one.

"We have a president of the United States and majorities of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate who do not believe the science is settled. Many of them believe global warming is not a crisis. Are they all wrong? Is it some 'vast right-wing conspiracy'? That seems unlikely. Maybe it's just real science."

WND reported last year that despite the tens of millions the U.S. government has spent publicizing the theory of human-caused "global warming," most Americans don't see it as an issue.

That's according to Social and Behavioral Sciences Team in the executive office of the President Obama, part of the National and Science Technology Council. Its annual report described how it worked in eight "policy areas," including climate change.

"Climategate" exposes the global warming scam. Get it now at the WND Superstore.

The report said consumer adoption of "green-power plans remained low at roughly 700,000 customers nationwide."

To improve that figure, the team initiated a dialogue with the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to "identify the potential behavioral barriers underlying low take-up of clean energy, as well as a suite of behavioral tools that can be used to address these barriers."

"For example, behavioral science research indicates that prompting consumers to select a power plan from among clean and non-clean options (rather than defaulting them into a standard electricity plan) and presenting plan options in ways that facilitate informed decision-making can improve take-up," the report said.

It also wanted to make consumers better understand what the government wanted them to do about global warming.

"To help households, communities and decision-makers better understand and adapt to the effects of rising global temperatures, SBST, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the University of Maryland have worked to help the United States Global Change Research Program improve their 'climate indicators,' which convey important information about climate patterns to non-scientists," the report said.

"This pilot yielded mixed results. For example, simplifying a graph showing changes in the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index increased successful interpretation of the indicator by 18 percent points, but did not significantly increase how well people were able to draw inferences from the indicator," the report said.

It then went into detail about how it did research to show that simply changing a graph around might help convince people of the agenda's value.

One of the more famous global warming predictions came from former vice president and current carbon-credit entrepreneur Al Gore, who told an audience in a 2009 speech that "the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years."

His 2006 documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," famously predicted increasing temperatures would cause earth's oceans to rise by 20 feet, a claim many scientists say is utterly without rational basis.

See Gore:

Another came from a 2013 column by Mark Hertsgaard, which was headlined "The End of the Arctic? Ocean Could be Ice Free by 2015."

He wrote: "Say goodbye to polar bears and a whole lot of ice. New research suggests the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free by 2015, with devastating consequences for the world. Can it be stopped?"

Taking one more step back in time, the BBC said Arctic summers would be ice-free by 2013.

Sierra Club Canada also said in 2013 that the Arctic sea ice would vanish that year.

Tim Ball, a former University of Winnipeg climatology professor, said global temperatures have been dropping since the turn of the century, prompting the change in terminology from "global warming" to "climate change."

Activists are also spending less time discussing temperatures and more time pointing to more extreme events such as tornadoes, droughts, cold snaps and heat waves. Ball said there's a shred of truth there, but it's being badly distorted.

"Yes, there's been slightly more extremes," he said in an interview with WND and Radio America. "That's because the jet stream patterns are changing, because the earth is cooling down. All the arguments about sea-level rise, about Arctic ice disappearing, if you recall it's not that long ago that our friend Al Gore was saying that there would be no summer ice in the Arctic. I think the year he set for it was 2014. That proved to be completely wrong."

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Tim Ball:

At the Ron Paul Liberty Report, Chris Rossini said the "alarmism" about "climate change" is reaching "levels of desperation."

"The arguments go from ridiculous to hysterical. We're told by many politicians that 'climate change' is the #1 threat to Americans. This is of course a favorite of the swindling class. Others tell us that the #1 threat is ISIS, and some are now saying that it's Donald Trump. Some say it's North Korea, Russia, or Iran. The carousel of #1 threats is always in motion."

Rossini continued: "In the media you'll find stories that free birth control is needed in order to battle climate change, and that climate change will turn women into prostitutes. Non-believers of this ridiculous propaganda are branded as 'deniers'.

"Even appeals to religion and the afterlife have been showered on Americans. Whether it be comments from the pope, or from Nobel Prize winning 'economist' Paul Krugman, who says: 'You can deny global warming (and may you be punished in the afterlife for doing so – this kind of denial for petty personal or political reasons is an almost inconceivable sin).'"

Rossini wrote, "Boy, do these characters really want Americans to believe the climate change religion."

Scientist Art Robinson has spearheaded The Petition Project, which has gathered the signatures of at least 31,487 scientists who agree that there is "no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

They say, "Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

Robinson, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California-San Diego, where he served on the faculty, co-founded the Linus Pauling Institute with Nobel-recipient Linus Pauling, where he was president and research professor. He later founded the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. His son, Noah Robinson, was a key figure in the petition work and has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Caltech.

Heresy hunters

WND reported when some two dozen scientists with major U.S. universities urged President Obama to use racketeering laws to prosecute opponents who deny mankind is causing catastrophic changes in the climate.

In a letter addressed back then to Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren, the scientists said they "appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a recalcitrant Congress."

"One additional tool – recently proposed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America's response to climate change," they wrote, according to Politico.

Two years ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said legal punishment was the appropriate response to global-warming dissenters.

"I wish there were a law you could punish them with," he said, launching into a diatribe against philanthropists Charles and David Koch, known for their support of conservative causes.

"I think it's treason. Do I think the Koch brothers are treasonous – yes, I do. They are enjoying making themselves billionaire[s] by impoverishing the rest of us. Do I think they should be in jail – I think they should be [enduring] three hots and a cot at the Hague with all the other war criminals. Do I think the Koch brothers should be tried for reckless endangerment? Absolutely, that is [a] criminal offense and they ought to be serving time for it."

"Climategate" exposes the global warming scam. Get it now at the WND Superstore.