EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY: Copyright Guardian Media Group plc.

(Submitter's Note: the last time I posted on this topic, I got a flood of PERSONAL abuse. Please note that this is not necessarily my own opinion, it is an article by a respected journalist: if anyone wishes to send hate mail, send it to Robin McKie, NOT ME!)

UK 'Observer' newspaper, Sunday February 27, 2000:

IT'S APOCALYPSE NOW AS WORLD BOILS OVER:

Scientists fear that global warming has now gone beyond the point of no return, reports Robin McKie:

In Mozambique, 300,000 people are left homeless and hundreds have been killed in devastating floods. In France, storms cause 90 fatalities, destroy 270 million trees and trigger #7.5 billion worth of damage. In Austria, a series of avalanches sweeps 11 people to their deaths. And in the Arctic, scientists discover that over the past two decades the polar ice cap has thinned from a modest 10ft thickness to a flimsy 6ft.

And that is just a brief selection of the environmental horrors that have beset the planet over the past few weeks, although it is enough to confirm meteorologists' worst fears. With wearied resignation, they are now admitting what was long suspected - that global warming must be accepted unambiguously as the trigger for increasingly unstable weather fronts, storms, melting glaciers and rising seas.

The world is slowly sliding into climatic uncertainty - yet there is little sign that we are capable of taking action that can halt this descent into elemental catastrophe.

'We can no longer say we are still unsure whether extreme weather events are caused by global warming or not,' says Dr Mike Hulme, of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University. 'When we look at the Mozambique floods, at the storms that hit France, at the absence of winter in Britain this year, at the avalanches in the Alps, we are witnessing events that are now clearly tainted by human actions.'

Yet, as Hulme points out, even if mankind stopped pumping carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere tomorrow, we would have to wait a very long time to reap the benefits. It would take several hundred years to stop the world's oceans from rising, for example.

'Even if we closed every factory in the world at mid night tonight, there would be enough carbon in the atmosphere to keep it warm for generations, and enough heat permeating through the oceans to keep sea levels rising for hundreds of years,' Hulme says.

That is bad enough. But now, three years after the Kyoto environmental summit at which the leaders of the industrial nations hammered out meagre proposals for reducing industrial gas emissions by 5.2 per cent of 1990 levels by the year 2010 - the chance of mankind's willingness to reduce output by even a modest amount looks remote and unlikely.

Some nations responded fairly well, of course - including relatively bad polluters like Britain, which was obliged to agree to a 12.5 per cent reduction. In fact, Tony Blair has decided to go further, and has pledged the country to a 20 per cent cut. Other European nations have been equally enthusiastic.

The world could be slightly encouraged - were it not for one major blot on the political landscape. Although President Clinton signed the Kyoto Treaty, committing the United States - by far the biggest carbon dioxide polluter in the world - to reduce emissions by 7 per cent, Congress has simply refused to ratify the agreement or cut US carbon dioxide output by a single tonne.

This failure can be traced to US experts who claimed that signing the Kyoto treaty would cost every American $2,000 a year in higher fuel bills, a line that was promoted with particular vigour by the Global Climate Coalition, an alliance of car manufacturers and oil companies, including Peabody Coal, the powerful Western Fuels Association and Exxon.

The coalition's aim - as revealed in internal documents - has been to turn global warming from a 'fact' into a 'theory' in the minds of the American public.

The origins of this extremely powerful, well-funded lobbying group predate Kyoto and can be traced to the days when George Bush Snr was President, a man who promised to 'counter the greenhouse effect with the White House effect' and then spurned the 1992 environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro.

The election of Bill Clinton in November 1992 subsequently gave hope to reformers. 'This was the moment for the US to take the lead,' says author Mark Hertsgaard in his book Earth Odyssey, which he spent six years researching. 'We led the global economy, there was an economic boom, and we had a Vice-President who had just written that global warming was the greatest emergency facing the planet.'

Unfortunately, the reformers, and the world, have been undone by a combination of factors: the election of a right-wing Republican Senate opposed to any attempt to curb Americans' right to have lives as wasteful and profligate as they like, the entrenchment of the global climate coalition, and - as Hertsgaard puts it - 'the long-time and deeply ingrained relationship between the Gore family and one of the industry's giants - Occidental Petroleum'.

In this latter case, it was discovered that Vice-President Al Gore's father had invested in Occidental Petroleum, to the tune of $500,000 in stock. When Gore came to supervise the 'Reinventing Government' plan of 1995, he handed over a vast US Navy oil reserve at Elk Hills, California, to Occidental. The sale order was signed in 1997.

'It was a windfall for Occidental,' says Hertsgaard, 'and it was sure a windfall for the stockholders. Anyone with stock in Occidental amassed a fortune.'

The current impasse over Kyoto can be attributed to a number of factors, including 'the political influence of the fossil fuel industry and its friends in Congress, coupled with the inability of the Clinton Administration and its own personal entwinement in the corporations themselves', as Hertsgaard put it.

The world's bid to reduce its headlong flight towards climate disruption, rising seas and drowned coastlines has been thwarted primarily by this depressing combination of effects. Just as it has done with moves to curb gun use, the US has stubbornly refused to accept what the rest of the world, and its own liberal politicians, have been saying: that it has to change its ways - drastically.

However, this deeply depressing situation has been lightened by recent encouraging signs. The global climate coalition, the nemesis of environment campaigners, is beginning to show signs of instability. General Motors, Ford, Shell, Amoco and BP have recently quit the organisation, although others, such as Exxon and Mobil, remain.

'These companies have watched the tide of public opinion change and moved far away from their entrenched position,' said Hulme. 'The future of car engine technology lies in the development of ways to reduce carbon and other emissions, and more and more of these companies are now accepting that this is inevitable.'

Many experts predict that the family of someone killed in a storm or avalanche may soon follow the example of litigants against cigarette companies - and sue oil companies for pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Intriguingly, Britain is currently on course to reach its Kyoto targets by 2010 but has had to do very little to achieve this goal. By switching from coal to gas burning, and by improving energy efficiency, we have cut emissions by several per cent, a trend further boosted by the fact we are now enjoying warmer and warmer winters - which, of course, are linked to our carbon dioxide output. This irony is not lost on scientists.

However, to achieve its goal of a 20 per cent emissions cut Britain will soon have to take more direct action, and next year is expected to introduce a climate change levy on companies. Employers will be taxed according to the amount of energy they consume. How this cash is then distributed by the Treasury is still uncertain, however.

One thought is to use the cash to offset National Insurance contributions, making it cheaper to employ people, but dearer to use electricity and gas. Alternatively, the money could fund research into solar, wind and wave energy devices that would then replace the gas, oil and coal plants which generate most of Britain's electricity.

In other words, global warming, already an influence on British society, is going to touch our lives increasingly (see panel). 'We can take action to mitigate its effects, but we must also try to anticipate what is inevitably going to happen to our country,' said Dr Geoff Jenkins, of the Met Office's Hadley Centre.

Bridge builders, architects, health services, lawyers, civil servants, biologists, doctors and many others will have to prepare for a future in which the climatic certainties of the past can no longer be taken for granted.

This point is summed up by geographer Professor Nigel Arnell of Southampton University. 'We know the climate is going to change but we don't know specifically how or where,' he says. 'For the first time, the immediate past is not going to be a good guide to the immediate future, and we don't know what that future will be like.'

However, no organisation or unit as yet exists to provide guidance. It is for this reason the Government is preparing to establish a climate change research centre at which engineers, social scientists, meteorologists and other scientists will attempt to identify the unavoidable changes that will soon sweep the country and devise ways to mitigate their effects.

'We need to pool our resources and deploy them now as best we can,' said Hulme. 'We cannot stop global warming, but we can arm ourselves against it if we act promptly.'

How does it affect us?

Compared with many parts of the globe, Britain is likely to escape the worst effects of global warming over the next couple of decades - but it will still have to cope with a host of social, political and environmental headaches. For a start, rising sea levels will increase the danger of sea surges and flooding, particularly in low-lying areas around East Anglia and South-East England, where arid summers will also dry up water supplies.

Other effects of global warming will be even odder. The type of tarmac used on our roads will have to be changed to stop it from melting in summer. Similarly, insect pests - like those already affecting some forestry plantations - may become serious nuisances: cold winters, which would normally have killed off most of them, will have become a thing of the past. Similarly cases of tick-borne illnesses, such as Lyme's disease, are expected to increase in the balmy conditions of coming decades.

Other issues that will have to be tackled include the design of bridges and high buildings which are likely to be battered by the increasingly severe winds that will sweep over the nation. Sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) - the nation's most precious habitats - will move and shift in the wake of environmental change, posing awkward problems for lawyers and biologists trying to protect plants and animals that have moved from their 'custody'.

Even patterns of death will be affected. At present, local authorities face a major crisis every winter when they have to deal with a surge in deaths, mainly of the elderly killed by the cold and by flu. However, in future, it will be the searing heat of summers that will cause stress, fatal heat strokes and a jump in the nation's death charts - taking the winter burden off local councils, and delaying it until summer.

-- Risteard Mac Thomais (uachtaran@ireland.com), March 01, 2000

Answers

NASA Marshall Space Flight Center on the theory of "Global Warming" - http://wwwssl.msfc.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd06oct97_1.htm

Paper By Dr. Roy Spencer Senior Scientist for Climate Studies NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center "Even with Needed Corrections, Data Still Don't Show the Expected Signature of Global Warming" http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/MSU/hl_measuretemp.htm

6/2/99 (BBC) -- Researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom argue that the recent rise in global temperatures may be due not to greenhouse gases produced by human activity, but to the magnetic flux of the Sun. http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/news_archive/060299_global_warming_su n.html

Heck, just go to NASA search and there is a ton of information refuting the theory of man-caused global warming http://www.nasa.gov/search/

-- marsh (siskfarm@snowcrest.net), March 01, 2000.

Thanks for this post, Risteard Mac T.,
The Mozambique unfolding tragedy is a TV visual beyond understanding the magnitude of it. Only 12 helicopters have rallied to aid, while the world bickers about payment of any help they might be prepared to give..., a sad day for everyone and more strangely extreme weather to come.

Regards from OZ

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), March 01, 2000.

Tornado's last month in Arkansas and Missouri are not what you would think to happen in the winter. Very unusual weather this year.

-- Maggie (song bird@iwon.com), March 01, 2000.

A good, and interesting post. No flames from me, just trying to figure everything out.

"Many experts predict that the family of someone killed in a storm or avalanche may soon follow the example of litigants against cigarette companies - and sue oil companies for pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."

We used to call these things an Act of God. That does seem to overstretch things a bit, doesn't it? Suing oil companies for an avalanch? It would sure require a lot more evidence that we have now to indicate all the weather related phenonena is caused by buring of fossil fuels.

What happens when the signs of the end of the age appear.......no light from the sun, the moon, the stars? Who do we sue then?

Interesting, though, since many reports seem to indicate that this "crisis" will come to a whistling halt in a few years when we run out of oil.

rocky, who is intrigued by this whole thing and wondering what happens next.

-- rocky (rknolls@no.spam), March 01, 2000.

Global warming is a theory not fact!!!!Pseudo science doesn't prove anything but a political agenda.Wake up!!!There is a lot more to what influences the weather than how much carbon dioxide is in the air.Besides that 98.8% of the carbon dioxide can be linked to natural causes like volcanoes.Next you'll try to convince us that cfc's like freon are causing the depletion of the ozone --- NOT!!!!!Freon is heavier than air,ask any auto tech who services air conditioning.What causes ozone depletion?Cold!!!!You don't see the holes in the summer or over the equator or tropical zones do you?This also is a natural occurance not caused by mankind.

-- just a thought (tigerpm@netscape.com), March 01, 2000.

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Editorial Page Global Warming Is 300-Year-Old News By Arthur B. Robinson and Noah E. Robinson, chemists at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

Opponents of the use of coal, oil and natural gas -- the world's primary energy sources -- received what looked to be good news last week. A National Research Council panel of 11 members, after reviewing and evaluating existing experimental data over the last 20 years, concluded that there has probably been a rise in the Earth's surface temperature.

Unfortunately for advocates of the Kyoto treaty, atmospheric temperatures over the same two decades have not risen. The climate model chosen to support the Kyoto plan -- a scheme to sharply reduce energy use -- predicts that atmospheric temperature should have risen by one degree to two degrees Fahrenheit over those 20 years. Yet satellites and weather balloons have shown no verifiable atmospheric temperature rise.

Indeed, despite the hype, the NRC findings do little to advance the argument that people have caused global warming. The NRC panel's 85- page report, though concluding that surface temperature has risen a little, is full of inconclusive results. The first sentence of the report's concluding remarks reads: "The various kinds of evidence examined by the panel led it to conclude that the observed disparity between the surface and lower- to mid-tropospheric [atmospheric] temperature trends during this particular 20-year period is probably at least partially real."

The report further says that uncertainties in all of the records -- surface, satellite and balloon -- are too great to draw conclusions about the relative effects of volcanic eruptions, measurement errors due to localized human activity in urban areas, instrument errors, human release of greenhouse gases and other factors. The report concludes that "major advances" in scientific methods will be necessary before these questions can be resolved.

A Lost Myth

Other findings have also been inconclusive. The Commerce Department announced that U.S. surface temperatures in 1999 were the second- warmest on record. What the department failed to mention is that it has other surface records in which 1999 falls below 1934, and that NASA ranks 1999 as the 14th-warmest-year of the century. In the global atmosphere, satellites show 12 years warmer than 1999 and 8 cooler, while weather balloons show 15 warmer and 27 cooler.

All this is bad news for the antitechnologists. They desperately needed word of their long-awaited "greenhouse signal," due to arrive with the new millennium. Now, in the absence of more solid proof, opposition to their global plans will continue to grow. Already, more than 17,000 American scientists have signed a petition opposing the Kyoto treaty. Treaty supporters, meanwhile, are increasingly relying on their multimillion-dollar media campaign promoting a perception of human-caused global warming.

That the Earth is warming is, of course, very old news. The current warming trend began about 300 years ago, at the low point of the Little Ice Age. Indeed, receding glaciers and other geographic phenomena caused by this 300-year trend were cited by the NRC committee as support for their belief that the current rise in surface temperatures is probably real.

This rising trend and the fluctuations within it are closely correlated with solar activity. Solar increases during the early 20th century caused a substantial rise in temperatures. This was followed by a cooling cycle. During this latter period, environmentalists spread doomsday scenarios about "global cooling" -- a phenomenon, they claimed, caused by hydrocarbon fuels. Over the last 20 years, temperatures leveled, and now may be resuming their previous rise. The change has allowed the same environmentalists to spread fears of "global warming" -- demonizing, of course, hydrocarbon fuels.

The chart nearby places all of this in historical perspective. Derived from isotopic ratios in the skeletons of marine organisms deposited in a region of the Atlantic Ocean, this record shows temperatures during the past three millennia. Clearly seen are the Little Ice Age and the much warmer period about 1000 years ago known as the Medieval Climate Optimum, so named because the climate was unusually benign. Earth temperatures are now near the 3,000-year average and clearly not unusual.

What will temperatures be during the 21st century and beyond? No one knows. Astronomers are not yet able to predict future solar activity. If current trends continue, however, our environment will be much improved.

Already, plant growth and diversity -- from the forests and fields of North America to the rain forests of South America -- have shown a marked increase. This is the result of carbon dioxide fertilization, a process that occurs when man moves carbon from below-ground deposits of coal, oil and natural gas, and puts it into the atmosphere where it is then used to make more plants and animals.

Some studies indicate that North American forests are growing so fast that they are storing all of the human-released carbon from North America. Animals, because they eat plants, have increased just as rapidly. When this biological miracle stabilizes -- one or two centuries in the future -- it is estimated that the plant and animal population of the Earth may have doubled. Farm production is also being increased by carbon dioxide fertilization, and will continue to accelerate.

A warmer planet, with milder weather (as experienced during medieval times) and much more wildlife -- how could a true environmentalist wish for more? Worries about flooding in this warmer world are unjustifiable. Floods did not occur 1000 years ago. Scientists have shown that it would take thousands of years for the ice caps to melt, if they melted at all. As warmer temperatures increase snow in the polar regions, sea levels might actually decrease.

Technological Wealth

Meanwhile, short-term efforts to improve the environment, such as the plan by California's South Coast Air Quality Management District to require all public vehicles to be powered by electricity, natural gas, or other clean-burning fuels, will use more hydrocarbon fuels rather than less. Electricity -- especially now that nuclear power and hydroelectric dams are considered politically incorrect -- will continue to be produced primarily by burning hydrocarbons. The energy delivered to an electric car requires more hydrocarbon fuel per mile than does the direct use of hydrocarbon fuel.

Our scientists and engineers have provided the technological wealth that now finances most of our environmental programs. They will continue to do so unless pseudo-environmentalism torpedoes our economic progress along with the hopes and futures of billions of people in the less developed world. Return to top of page Copyright ) 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Publisher's Sale of this WebReprint Article Does Not Constitute Or Imply Any Endorsement Or Sponsorship Of Any Product, Service, Company Or Organization. REPRODUCTIONS REQUIRE FURTHER PERMISSION www.djreprints.com

-- Phil (patrickhenry7@hotmail.com), March 01, 2000.

Forgot the link:http://www.djreprints.com/jitarticles/trx0001337201615.html

-- Phil (patrickhenry7@hotmail.com), March 01, 2000.

DOCTORS FOR DISASTER PREPAREDNESS NEWSLETTER

January 2000

Vol. XVII, No. 1

GLOBAL WARMING ``DISCREPANCIES'' As the multimillion-dollar campaign to win support for the Kyoto Global Energy Rationing Protocol heats up, the National Research Council has issued a report and news release: ``New Evidence Helps Reconcile Global Warming Discrepancies; Confirms That Earth's Surface Temperature Is Rising.''

The report addresses a vexing body of evidence that the temperature of the earth's low- to mid-troposphere is not increasing. This is an extremely important discrepancy because climate models relied on by drafters of the Kyoto Treaty generally predict that ``temperatures should increase in the upper air as well as at the surface if increased concentrations of greenhouse gases are causing the warming'' (NRC press release 1/12/2000).

The main focus of the 84-page report by an 11-member scientific panel is to review and reassess old evidence in an effort to resolve the discord between global climate theory and actual observations, partly by ``correcting'' the data.

The executive summary acknowledges the need to consider ``the contribution of natural climate variability to decade-to-decade climate changes.'' It even mentions the sun as one of three external factors that can influence climate (volcanic eruptions and greenhouse gases are the others). Solar variability is alluded to four times, but in a purely qualitative sense. The graphs showing excellent correlation between solar magnetic cycle length and the earth's temperature are neither shown nor referenced.

Century-to-century climate changes (as in Ice Ages and the Medieval Climate Optimum) are ignored; no graphs go back further than 1880.

There is indisputably at least one human-caused effect in the surface temperature record: land-use changes such as urbanization, producing the heat island effect (which global warmers will now have to acknowledge). Weather stations tend to be located near population centers, producing biased data. Many areas are sparsely covered, and there is actually less land station coverage than in 1990.

The panel considers removing the data determined to be ``erroneous'' and ``adjusting'' biased data to account for inhomogeneities. But what of the possibility of biased scientists whose research funding depends on ``finding'' global warming?

Satellite-based Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) provide vast quantities of data (more than 15,000 measurements per day) and have truly global coverage. After applying numerous corrections, as for orbital drift, radiometer gain, and diurnal drift, the fact remains: Tropospheric temperature has changed so little over 20 years that a different sign for the trend is obtained, depending upon whether or not the final year of the record is included-a year that was extraordinarily warm in the wake of the exceptionally strong 1997-98 El Niqo. Panel members who wish to discount the significance of the satellite data note that the discrepancy with surface data might be explained ``if the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 were stronger and longer lasting than that of El Chichon in 1982'' [emphasis added].

The standard deviation of 0.2 to 0.3 ?C over 20 years in a globally averaged temperature time series ``makes it difficult to establish long-term temperature trends using a 20-year period,'' states the report. Yet the surface temperature trend over the past 20 years-an upward trend of between 0.25 to 0.4 ?C, depending on which data set or curve-fitting method is used-is precisely the information being used to sell Kyoto.

An ``ensemble of simulations'' run with the climate model (``computationally intensive numerical experiments'') has yielded a ``number of different possible scenarios.'' Yet, ``model- observation discrepancies indicate that the definitive model experiments have not yet been done.'' The panel concludes: the observed disparity between surface and satellite measurements is ``probably at least partially real.''

In other words, the adjusted real-world observations still don't agree with the global warmers' predictions. The panel further concludes that ``major advances'' in scientific methods will be necessary before important questions can be resolved.

The bottom line in the report is a plea for more research money, apparently to prove the admittedly problematic theory that Kyoto already assumes to be fact. Conclusions that readers can draw for themselves: (1) There is still no proof that the relatively benign climate now enjoyed by the earth (as compared with 1880) has anything to do with human activity and (2) The predictions of global climate catastrophe made by global warmers have been refuted, even if the 300-year warming trend continues.

You can read or search Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change on line at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/9755.html or order a print copy from the National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Ave, NW, Box 285, Washington, DC 20055, (800) 624-6242. Nothing in this report invalidates the review of the evidence relevant to global warming and the effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by Robinson et al., Medical Sentinel Sept/Oct 1998 (also available at http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm). An excellent review of the NRC report by Arthur and Noah Robinson appeared in The Wall Street Journal, 1/18/2000, p. A26.

CHILLING RESEARCH AND COOKING DATA In May, 1999, Evan DeLucia and ten colleagues published an article in Science showing the fertilizing effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide on the Loblolly pine. In a letter to the editor, Bert Bolin, first head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote: ``In the current, post-Kyoto international political climate, scientific statements about the behavior of the terrestrial carbon cycle must be made with care...'' Translation by Patrick Michaels: ``Scientists had better consider NOT publishing results that might undermine support for Kyoto. Signed, the Boss.'' The IPCC's former chief scientist Sir John Houghton wrote in 1996 that climate change is a ``moral issue.'' He said that he agreed with the World Council of Churches, ``which calls upon the Government to adopt firm, clear policies and targets [read: Kyoto], and the public to accept the necessary consequences.'' The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will ``contribute powerfully to the material salvation of the planet from mankind's greed and indifference.''

Michaels states: ``This is the chilled environment in which the secular scientist now works. Leaders of the world's premier scientific organizations on climate change now publicly call for the suppression of research findings and invoke religion, and not science, as the basis for policy'' http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/kyotoseffects.htm

In December, 1999, seven ``environmental'' groups released a worldwide map with more than 100 anecdotes and reports of scientific studies that purport to prove that global warming is on our doorstep. ``They've cooked their books,'' writes David Mastio (USA Today 12/16/99), and ``their map is as much a big lie as any created by a Soviet-era dictator.'' For example, the breakup of the West Antarctic ice sheet is hardly proof of global warming, as the sheet has been retreating by several hundred feet per year for more than 7,000 years. While some glaciers in Greenland are melting, other, more important ones are expanding. Is global warming responsible for tropical diseases in the United States? In 1793, an outbreak of yellow fever killed thousands in Philadelphia. Noah Webster collected observations from numerous physicians and used them to promote improved sanitation.

DDP 2000 MEETING SCHEDULED Mark your calendars: the 18th annual meeting of DDP will be held at the San Francisco Airport Marriott June 30-July 2, 2000.

DDP, 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9, Tucson, AZ 85716, (520)325-2680, www.oism.org/ddp. http://www.oism.org/ddp/ddpnews/ddpjan00.htm 63 of 77

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-- Phil (patrickhenry7@hotmail.com), March 01, 2000.

Global Warming Review Letter from Frederick Seitz Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Global Warming Petition Letter from Frederick Seitz

Research Review of Global Warming Evidence

Below is an eight page review of information on the subject of "global warming," and a petition in the form of a reply card. Please consider these materials carefully. 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.

This 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 4 billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries.

It is especially important for America to hear from its citizens who have the training necessary to evaluate the relevant data and offer sound advice.

We urge you to sign and return the petition card. If you would like more cards for use by your colleagues, these will be sent.

Frederick Seitz Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. President Emeritus, Rockefeller University

http://www.oism.org/oism/s32p31.htm

Additional information available from: Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine PO Box 1279 Cave Junction OR 97523 Fax: 541-592-2597 Phone: 541-592-4142

Copyright 2000 ) OISM

-- Phil (patrickhenry7@hotmail.com), March 01, 2000.

Boston Globe: Scientists don't agree on global warming

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist, 11/05/98

See: Boston Globe Article

Underway in Buenos Aires is a giant international conference on global warming, a follow-up to last December's United Nations- sponsored confab in Kyoto, Japan. Delegates to the summit aim to put teeth into the treaty that came out of Kyoto, which calls for the world's leading countries to reduce sharply their use of energy over the next decade and a half. If implemented, the treaty would force the most productive societies on earth - the ones that have led the way in making human life comfortable, safe, and prosperous - to slow their economic growth and degrade their standard of living.

The organizers of the Buenos Aires conference take it for granted, of course, that global warming is real. The ''consensus'' among scientists, it is said, is that the planet's temperature is rising, the cause of the rise is the use of fossil fuels, and disastrous climate changes are looming unless drastic changes are made. The media likewise tend to take it as a given that the experts are in accord on global warming. So do many politicians. ''The evidence of global warming keeps piling up,'' says Vice President Al Gore, who has made the issue a personal crusade, ''month after month, week after week.''

So if the scientists are all in agreement, who said this?

''We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto. ... The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

''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. 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.''

The carping of an oil-industry flack? The ignorant mutterings of fringe antienvironmentalists?

No. It is a petition signed by nearly 17,000 US scientists, half of whom are trained in the fields of physics, geophysics, climate science, meteorology, oceanography, chemistry, biology, or biochemistry. The statement was circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine along with an eight-page abstract of the latest research on climate change. The abstract - written for scientists but comprehensible by laymen - concludes that there is no basis for believing (1) that atmospheric CO2 is causing a dangerous climb in global temperatures, (2) that greater concentrations of CO2 would be harmful, or (3) that human activity leads to global warming in the first place.

The cover letter accompanying the petition and abstract was penned by Frederick Seitz, a past president of the National Academy of Sciences. (All these documents are available online at www.oism.org/pproject.) The scientific ''consensus'' on global warming, it turns out, does not exist.

The Oregon Institute petition is no anomaly.

More than 100 climate scientists have endorsed the Leipzig Declaration, which describes the Kyoto treaty as ''dangerously simplistic, quite ineffective, and economically destructive.'' The endorsers include prominent scholars, among them David Aubrey of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; Larry Brace of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; meteorologist Austin Hogan, who co-edits the journal Atmospheric Research; Richard Lindzen, the Sloane Professor of Meteorology at MIT; and Patrick Michaels, a University of Virginia professor and past president of the American Association of State Climatologists.

''The dire predictions of a future warming have not been validated by the historic climate record,'' the Leipzig Declaration says bluntly. ''In fact, most climate specialists now agree that actual observations from both weather satellites and balloon-borne radiosondes show no current warming whatsoever - in direct contradiction to computer model results.'' The declaration, plus a wealth of information on every aspect of the global warming controversy, is posted at the Web site of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, www.sepp.org.

What is going on in Buenos Aires is a costly exercise in futility. The United States has not signed the Kyoto treaty; even if President Clinton does sign it, there is no chance the Senate will ratify it. And without US participation, any plan to curtail CO2 emissions is doomed - as it ought to be.

Nevertheless, it is important to explode the myth that most scientists are worried about global warming. Politicians shouldn't be permitted to hijack science in their pursuit of power. Environmentalists and journalists with an antibusiness itch to scratch should be cross-examined whenever they claim there is only one side to an issue of public policy.

We've been down this ''consensus'' road before. Remember when the Chicken Littles were warning that the earth was getting colder? ''The evidence in support of predictions [of global cooling] has now begun to accumulate so massively,'' Newsweek claimed in 1975, ''that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.'' Except that there was no global cooling. The alarmists were wrong then. They're wrong now.

Jeff Jacoby is a Globe columnist.

http://www.sitewave.net/news/s49p725.htm

Global Warming Debunking News and Views

-- Phil (patrickhenry7@hotmail.com), March 01, 2000.

Maybe I'm admitting my age (47), but when I was a child on Long Island near NYC a local lake froze every year in January. Then in the early 70's it no longer did. I now live in Florida and local friends of mine who grew-up here say that it has gotten much hotter here. Manmade greenhouse gases have to have some affect since we are producing so much of it. See today's NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/022900sci-environ- climate.html

-- BadDog (benefits@insurer.com), March 01, 2000.

Got a suggestion for you, Mac. Do as I will do. Copy this entire thread to a word file, as I have done. Next time I post further evidence of global warming (anthopogenic or otherwise) I will then paste this entire followup thread here. This will save the time and trouble of all the Pollyannas, so that their energies may be more fruitfully spent discussing politics, chemtrails, gun control, assorted conspiracies, stocks, gold, aircraft accidents, their version of 19th century morality and fundamentalist interpretations of right and wrong.

You're welcome.

-- (First=Last@Last.=First), March 01, 2000.

1. We're at a peak for solar flare activity so we're getting toasted that way. 2. We're at 6,000,000,000 people and counting, its no wonder we're losing more and more people to natural disasters. We're covering the face of the globe. We're bound to get in the way of some heavy weather.

-- Guy Daley (guydaley@bwn.net), March 01, 2000.

PHIL: Thank you for your initiative in posting the articles concerning "global warming." I am familiar with the work done by several of the authors.

If the Kyoto madness is to be thwarted it will have been because of not only the work done by the researchers and authors such as Dr. Robinson, but because of people such as yourself.

Replacing ignorance with knowledge can be a tiresome and often thankless task. One can only hope that wisdom is the inevitable result.

Thank you again.

With respect,

-- Dave Walden (wprop@concentric.net), March 01, 2000.

It is obvious that the weather is changing. There are many opinions on what is causing it. It would appear to me that the Koyota accords are too little too late and these will disrupt the economy with only minimal impacts. Even if the amount of fuel burned was cut drastically, the long term impact would be minimal. Art Bell and Whitley Strieber wrote a book "The Coming Global Superstorm" that describes the changes in weather patterns in detail. Some will agree and some will disagree on the causes. They discuss causes such as changes in ocean currents, high pressure and low pressure systems and past catalysmic changes such as the mastadons found with green grass still in their mouth which indicates a sudden drop of perhaps 70 or 100 degrees in a matter of hours. Is it global warming, too much carbon dioxide, magnetic disturbances on the sun, sunspots, loss of ozone or what? Something significant is happening. What if we have huge winter storms, 10 feet of snow, an inability to deliver fuel, the loss of electricity and the death of some major cities and most of the people in them. It may not happen but it could. Major changes in ocean temperatures have been documented. What is causing them? Something to think about.

-- Moe (Moe@3stooges.gom), March 01, 2000.

The atmosphere (and therefore one's climate) is not a stable system. It's quite capable of dramatic changes unaided by humans. When the Romans were here in the UK, they planted vinyards in Yorkshire. Three centuries ago, the Thames (river through London, further south) froze during most winters thick enough to hold funfairs on its surface. Now, it's warmer again, though you still can't have vinyards in Yorkshire.

HOWEVER: these are facts. Human activity has boosted the level of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere and continues to do so at an increasing rate. Carbon Dioxide is a "greenhouse gas"; it increases the amount of solar radiation trapped by the atmosphere. And if hard evidence is found that this is the direct or indirect cause of any or all of the climate changes we observe, it'll be too late to do anything about it.

You don't want to encourage skiing on avalanche slopes, do you?

-- Nigel (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), March 02, 2000.

Nigel,

Regarding CO2 and climate: if you haven't already, you might peruse the review at:

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Also, the Idso boys have gathered some related data at:

Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

At that site, the Subject Index may be quite convenient.

More facts are better. For example, outside of illusory "climate models", atmospheric (including lower atmospheric) temperature trends do not appear to follow atmospheric CO2 trends.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), March 02, 2000.

JERRY B: Thank you for your links. I was not familiar with co2science.org. The authors reaffirm the high esteem in which most of us hold the scientific method and those who practice it.

Those that postulate that man is an aberration in nature, and that the results of his activities are therefore a threat to the other life forms on the planet - indeed a threat to the planet itself, are, in many cases, simply the latest in a seemingly never-ending parade of collectivists/socialists. They hate man in general and freedom in particular.

If in using science (read the scientific method) it could be demonstrated that the activities of man were causing potential enviromental catastrophe to our civilization and the ability of the earth to continue to sustain life, only a fool (or worse) would not prmoptly search for a solution while they engaged in whatever mitigation might be appropriate.

I would assert however, using the reality of the last several hundred years as the only example needed, that the solution would be found in continued freedom and one of its most obvious consequences, advancing technology - a hallmark of the western world.

And therein lies the key. Most "enviromentalists" view the West as the culprits in their various scenarios. That fact alone belies the telltale stench that is associated with the movement.

To be certain, the "solution" to whatever enviromental problems might be scientifically demonstrable, resulting from the success of freedom, would not be found in freedom's curtailment.

The last several hundred years clearly demonstate that fact as well.......

Thank you again.

With respect,

-- Dave Walden (wprop@concentric.net), March 02, 2000.

Dave,

You're very welcome for the links.

Regarding some other comments in your post, let me repeat a portion of my reply to another poster in another thread:

In addition to the issues associated with "global warming" there are questions regarding motives of people who propound some particular related notions. While megalomaniacs, and their fans, often tend to promote schemes which tend to concentrate power in political entities, some unknown number of people, who promote such schemes, do so simply because they have been taken in by some part of the con. Since distinguishing the con artists from their victims is often not practical, I prefer to focus on the issues, and to comment on the content of posts rather than on other aspects of people who may also express some of the views contained in such posts.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), March 03, 2000.