New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is Now a "Weather Skeptic"

After the latest Northeast snow storm brought less than expected (forecasted) totals to New York City at a news conference, Mayor, Bill de Blasio spoke on the "modest" snow totals seen in his city:

What we saw here is a very different than what was projected, even as of late yesterday.

He added,

This is the lesson we keep learning. The National Weather service does everything they know how to do. Mother Nature still does what it wants to do, so what we got was a storm where the numbers that were projected occurred to the north and west of us — not here, thank God so we were spared some of the worst of it.

If ONLY de Blasio and those like-minded would take such a view with the climate! One of the points I've often made when it comes to the oft-repeated doom-and-gloom forecasts perpetuated by climate alarmists of every rank is that, if the weather forecasters are sometimes very wrong predicting what's going to happen just days, or even hours, later, why in the world would anyone trust a climate forecast that purports to tell us what is going to happen years, decades, or even centuries in the future?

Think about it: How often are your local forecasts very wrong? Not very often when the days are not far away. But once one gets past a few days, the forecasts are often quite wrong and adjustments are made as those days draw closer. As I noted back in 2009, the reason there is such a devotion to dire climate forecasts by the "Warmists" is because they have, in a sense, made man-made global warming (or, "science" in general) their religion. (Sadly, the modern left has many such gods.)

And because the modern left has also made a god of government, an impending climate disaster is a convenient tool for more Big Government.

Copyright 2017, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the brand new book The Miracle and Magnificence of America

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Global Warming Skeptics on the Increase

In 1992 Al Gore said, “Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled.” Around this time last year, (3/4/2007), I wrote about a number of “significant” skeptics to the global warming phenomenon. I began with how, in about 30 years, climate hysteria has gone from the threat of a pending ice age to the belief that human beings are causing a devastating heating of the earth. Well, it seems the number of “significant” skeptics is growing significantly, and more-and-more they’re letting their voices be heard.

Perhaps the most prominent man-made global warming “denier” is John Coleman, the co-founder of The Weather Channel. Not only has he called global warming a “non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam” (he even refers to it as “the greatest scam in history”), he advocates suing Al Gore and anyone else selling carbon credits, so as to “finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”

Coleman was a featured speaker at the International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC), sponsored by the Heartland Institute, held March 2 to March 4 of this year in New York City. The conference had nearly 100 speakers and 400 participants. The theme of the conference was, “there is no scientific consensus on the causes or likely consequences of global warming.”

Joseph L. Bast, the conference host and president of The Heartland Institute, reported that present at the ICCC, along with Coleman, were “more than 200 scientists and other experts on climate change, from Australia, Canada, England, France, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and of course the United States,” coming from the “Universities of Alabama, Arizona State, Florida State, Mississippi, Ohio State, Oregon State, and Virginia; from George Mason, Harvard, The Institute Pasteur in Paris, Johns Hopkins, and the London School of Economics.”

They also reportedly came from, “The University of Monash, Nottingham, Oslo, Ottawa, Rochester, Rockefeller, and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. And from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Suffolk University, Westminster School of Business (in London), and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.”

Around two-and-a-half months prior to the ICCC, the U.S. Senate released a report that contained the objections of over 400 scientists to, “major aspects of the so-called ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming.” The reported noted that, “These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.”

The report also noted that, “The distinguished scientists featured in this new report are experts in diverse fields, including: climatology; geology; biology; glaciology; biogeography; meteorology; oceanography; economics; chemistry; mathematics; environmental sciences; engineering; physics and paleoclimatology. Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Gore.”

Some brief highlights from the report:

Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem stated that, “First, temperature changes, as well as rates of temperature changes (both increase and decrease) of magnitudes similar to that reported by IPCC to have occurred since the Industrial revolution (about 0.8C in 150 years or even 0.4C in the last 35 years) have occurred in Earth's climatic history. There's nothing special about the recent rise!”

Russian scientist Dr. Oleg Sorochtin of the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences said, “Even if the concentration of ‘greenhouse gases’ double, man would not perceive the temperature impact.” Chief Meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart of the MetSul Meteorologia Weather Center in Sao Leopoldo – Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil added, “The media is promoting an unprecedented hyping related to global warming. The media and many scientists are ignoring very important facts that point to a natural variation in the climate system as the cause of the recent global warming.”

Lastly, French Climatologist Dr. Marcel Leroux, former professor at Université Jean Moulin and director of the Laboratory of Climatology, Risks, and Environment in Lyon, stated, “Day after day, the same mantra - that ‘the Earth is warming up’ - is churned out in all its forms. As ‘the ice melts’ and ‘sea level rises,’ the Apocalypse looms ever nearer! Without realizing it, or perhaps without wishing to, the average citizen is bamboozled, lobotomized, lulled into mindless ac­ceptance. ... Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!” (A link to the Senate report, as well as other global warming information, is on my homepage.)

In spite of the man-made global warming doomsayers’ statements to the contrary, it seems that this debate is far from over. Exclaiming last year that, “Global warming is not a crisis,” Lord Christopher Monckton, a former policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher, challenged Al Gore to a public debate on the matter. He ended his challenge with, “May the truth win!” That would be “convenient.”

Copyright 2008, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

From Global Cooling to Global Warming

“There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production… The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it… (scientists) are almost unanimous in the view that the (weather) trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century…The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down.”

That’s right folks, you read it right, they said we were “cooling down.” The above quotes are from the April 28, 1975 issue of Newsweek magazine. Notice what Time magazine had to say on the same subject in 1974:

“When meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. (Climatologists) are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age… Telltale signs are everywhere from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest… Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.”

So, in about 30 years we’ve gone from the threat of having icebergs in our back yard to the threat of having said icebergs all melt, and each of us wishing we had traded our SUVs in for a lifetime supply of fluorescent light bulbs.

Al Gore wants to sell us “carbon offsets”; Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel wants the American Meteorological Society (AMS) to take away its certification of broadcast meteorologists who don’t tow the “man made” global warming line; and our own Joan King wants us to practice more birth control so we don’t expand our population “past the carrying capacity of the earth.”

The one reasonably certain fact that I have gathered in this debate is that the earth is a bit warmer than it was a decade or two ago. Beyond that there is so much hype, hysteria, and misinformation that one could find himselfs worrying that those beloved polar bears in the coca cola commercials might need to be replaced by more warm-weather loving animals, like say armadillos.

Take heart friends; there are plenty of scientists who have serious doubts about man-made global warming. James Spann, who has been in operational meteorology since 1978, recently wrote an Op-Ed piece responding to Ms. Cullen. He notes that, “For many, global warming is a big cash grab. Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up…Even the lady at ‘The Weather Channel’ probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change.”

Timothy Ball, the first Canadian to hold a Ph.D. in Climatology and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, says, “Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification.”

Alabama State Climatologist John Christy has “found almost no sign of global warming in the satellite data,” and adds that, “one finds it difficult to conclude the (sic) climate change is occurring in the US and that it is exceedingly difficult to conclude that part of that change might have been caused by human factors.”

Dr. William Gray, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, is another man-made global warming skeptic. According to the L.A. Times, Dr. Gray “pioneered the concept of ‘seasonal’ hurricane forecasting — predicting months in advance the severity of the coming hurricane season. Gray’s prognostications, issued since 1983, are used by insurance companies to calculate premiums.” He has also served as a weather forecaster for the U.S Air Force. In a recent Denver Post article he stated that, “They've been brainwashing us for 20 years. Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was.”

I believe in the biblical principle of stewardship. We should all remember that, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Ps. 24:1). We are merely managers of His property. However, in our stewardship we must focus on the Creator and not the created.

I’m afraid that many caught up in the global warming hoopla have become foolish in the manner described by the Apostle Paul in Romans and, “Exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.”

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com