How did “experts” arrive at a powerful United Nations estimate that glaciers were melting at a rapid pace? It’s an important question because glacier melting has been a key claim underlining efforts to regulate carbon emissions via the theory of manmade global warming.
But it now appears that the estimate about Himalayan glacial melt was based on a nearly decade-old interview of one climate scientist in a science magazine, The New Scientist, and that hard scientific evidence to support that figure is lacking. The scientist, Dr. Syed Hasnain, a glacier specialist with the government of Sikkim and currently a fellow at the TERI research institute in Delhi, studies “index glaciers” and has more recently suggested that only small glaciers would disappear entirely.
The real lesson isn’t that glaciers aren’t melting, though. That’s an issue for measurement and scientific fact, rather than opinion. The real lesson is that a lot of the statements coming out of the UN’s IPCC aren’t trustworthy because they’re based on little to no data, or insufficient data to support their rather grave claims.
“The IPCC report said Himalayan glaciers are receding faster than anywhere else in the world and that’s not correct,” said J. Graham Cogley, a professor of geography at Trent University in Ontario. Dr. Cogley is a glaciologist who contributed to another part of the 2007 IPCC report and is one of the first people to track down some of the inconsistencies in the section on Himalayan glaciers. He added that the 2035 date was also likely wrong.
“There’s a failure to review this data adequately by qualified experts,” Prof. Cogley said.
Indeed. Climate science is likely to be — one day — a credible field based on rational reflection of credible data. But it’s not that today. More to the big point, though, is that one gets the feeling wheels are coming off a great juggernaut set in motion. It was either going to break through all adversaries and carry the day or it was going to break down, rust up, and die.
Of course, alarmism won’t die. It will move to regulatory efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency or it will try to get random chemicals banned because it’s easier to scare a nation in 30-second soundbites than to educate about real risk ratios. But at least this part of the alarmist agenda appears to be melting away just a bit.
There have been two recent cases in which the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to silence policy dissenters whose work would most likely help the environment but do so in a manner that is not consistent with the political desires of the administration.
Meet the Obama EPA, and its new suppressing, paranoid style. It was the president who once ripped the Bush administration for silencing scientific critics, and it was EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson who began her tenure promising the agency would operate like a “fishbowl.” But that was before EPA realized how vastly unpopular is its plan to usurp Congress and regulate the economy on its own, based on its bizarre finding that CO2 is a danger to health.
On the specific level, this is bad for environmentalism and for sound policymaking.
On a larger level, how’s that new transparency working out?
It’s a truly sad day now that Dr. Norman Borlaug has passed away. His life, and his life’s work, led to the happy and ongoing lives of millions — if not billions — of people.
The Chilling Effect conducts interviews with those making news, analyzing news, or just being plain interesting when it comes to the ongoing debate over climate change. Our latest installation elicits information from Phelim McAleer, one of the producers of, Not Evil, Just Wrong.
1) Give us the brief synopsis of your new film, “Not Evil Just Wrong”
“Not Evil Just Wrong” is the film that Al Gore and Hollywood don’t want America to see because it exposes their use of flawed science to spread propaganda about global warming. The ultimate goal of that kind of environmental hysteria is a regulatory system that will cost millions of people their jobs, cripple the U.S. economy and destroy the American dream of a prosperous life.
Our film tells Americans facts that the liberal media won’t. For example, Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” is so riddled with factual errors and political spin that the British High Court won’t let schoolchildren watch it without a warning. We also show a pattern of environmental alarmism and its deadly consequences.
The story of DDT is the most powerful example. DDT is perfectly safe and remarkably effective at combating malaria. Its creator won a Nobel Prize back when the award was worth something. But environmentalists spread all kinds of lies about the pesticide and scared the United States and the world into banning it. The result was the death of tens of millions of children.
Today, carbon dioxide is the new DDT. But CO2 is a compound essential to life, and giving it the DDT treatment will have far more devastating consequences for every household in America.
2) Your previous film, “Mine Your Own Business” was well-done and seems to touch on related themes. How was “Not Evil Just Wrong” influenced by your last experience?
“Mine Your Own Business” sprung from a story Ann and I pursued while living in Romania and while I was working as a correspondent for Financial Times. We heard about a supposedly evil, capitalist mining company polluting the environment and exploiting the natives in Transylvania, and like the good liberal journalists we were at the time, we had the story written in our heads before we knew any facts.
But we must have had a trace of objectivity left in our journalistic blood because when we got to Transylvania and started reporting the story, we determined that everything the environmentalists said about the mine was either exaggerated or untrue. That experience opened our eyes to the agenda of radical environmentalists and the lengths they are willing to go to achieve it.
The response to “Mine Your Own Business” was phenomenal, and many of the people who saw it suggested a new topic for us to pursue — the untold story of the DDT ban and its impact. The idea piqued our investigative curiosity and started us down the path that led to “Not Evil Just Wrong.”
3) Most people who are publicly against cap and trade or carbon taxes 1) distrust the scientific “consensus” for global warming 2) think that cost of legislation and regulation outweigh any potential benefits 3) agree with all of the above. What is your general view on this issue?
The science behind the global warming scare is definitely bogus. Besides noting the factual errors that the British High Court identified in Gore’s movie, our documentary emphasizes two other instances of bad science.
The first focuses on the infamous “hockey stick” graph, which showed the Earth’s temperature remaining largely static until the 20th century and blamed the rapid changes on mankind. Alarmists embraced the theory — until a retired businessman named Stephen McIntyre took a closer look at the science behind the graph and debunked it.
McIntyre also exposed flawed data at NASA that environmental alarmists loved to cite because it showed 1998 and 2006 as the hottest years in the continental United States. McIntyre’s fact check forced NASA to change its numbers and acknowledge 1934 as the hottest year on record.
Environmentalists have used such bad science to try to scare governments into drafting Draconian regulations that will kill jobs and send energy prices sky high. The science doesn’t justify a “cap and trade” system, and there are no potential benefits. There would only be economic heartache.
4) The lesson from environmentalists banning DDT plays a major role in NEJW. Without spoiling too much of your film, can you offer a few thoughts on why this issue is so critical to understanding the modern global warming rush to regulate?
The DDT story matters because environmentalists have the same contempt for CO2 as they still have for DDT — even after the World Health Organization overturned its DDT ban in 2006.
The WHO made that decision because the science does not warrant a ban on DDT, but today’s environmentalists will adamantly contend, in face of all findings to the contrary, that DDT kills people and animals. Rachel Carson, whose hysteria in the book Silent Spring inspired the ban on DDT, remains Al Gore’s hero even though her seminal work cost millions of people their lives.
That same mindset is evident in the non-debate over global warming. Environmentalists insist that the science on the issue is “settled” even when men like Stephen McIntyre embarrass their favorite experts with the experts’ own data. Combined with the DDT story, we see a pattern of behavior on the part of environmentalists.
Gerd Leipold of Greenpeace called it “emotionalizing issues” in a recent BBC interview, and he defended the practice. But his interviewer, Stephen Sackur, defined the technique more accurately as “scare tactics.” Environmentalists used those scare tactics to turn the world against DDT, and now they’re doing the same thing to try to turn people against CO2.
5) You have come up with a really cool concept to promote the film’s release via Tea Parties in people’s living rooms. Tell us about what your perfect premier night would look like and how people can get involved.
“Not Evil Just Wrong” is the film that Al Gore and Hollywood don’t want America to see. They don’t want America to see it because when people know the economically depressing truth about global warming hysteria, they will resist being pushed into a regressive future.
We are going to rally that resistance by organizing the largest-ever simultaneous movie premiere in homes and on campuses across America. At 8 p.m. EST on Oct. 18, everyone who has purchased a premiere pack will push the play button on their DVD players to watch “Not Evil Just Wrong.” It will be America’s first cinematic tea party!
We wanted to give our partners in this effort and their guests a taste of Hollywood, so our premiere packs include movie posters for the front door and red carpet for the front porch. Everyone can go to the show in style and even talk like the movie stars on Oscars night — “So who are you wearing?”
We also have an affiliate program for bloggers and others who want to make a little money online while helping us promote the film. It just takes a few minutes to register as affiliate, post a banner or text ad on a Web site, and start earning revenue for sales.
The regional director of the Iowa Farm Bureau says there needs to be more “science” behind the EPA’s contention that ethanol is contributing to global warming.
… but … “a meeting today of senior White House staff with U.S. Climate Action Partnership, or USCAP- whose members include GE, Duke Energy (DUK), and Caterpillar (CAT)- indicates [cap and trade] is not a dead issue“
There have been two recent cases in which the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to silence policy dissenters whose work would most likely help the environment but do so in a manner that is not consistent with the political desires of the administration.
