In a remarkable editorial over the weekend, Australian scientist David Evans renews his argument against government-mandated restrictions on carbon emissions, noting that there is little evidence to show they have anything to do with climate change.

If you’ve followed my sporadic coverage of climate change alarmism, you may recall him as a scientist who worked on carbon accounting for the Australian government, and changed his mind once he saw the evidence on which global warming alarmism was (or rather, was not) based.

Evans was one of the signatories of the open letter to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon, on the occasion of the climate change junket in Bali, late last year. He was among several people who weren’t welcome. He has written a paper (link in PDF) in support of his position that CO₂ does not cause global warming, has written a more accessible alternative, and has also penned a remarkable confession: I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train.

His editorial is worth reading in full, but here are some key points:

When I started that job [of writing Australia’s carbon accounting model] in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it. […]

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world’s temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). […]

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

[…]

Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.

So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.

In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn’t noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.

[…]

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.

[…]

The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.

Don’t expect any of this to make an ounce of difference. To turn a typical alarmist point against them, too many people are invested in the climate alarmism lobby. Some merely for its value in obtaining public money for research, but others, like Al Gore, quite literally. Politicians love the idea of climate change, because it gives them at once an opportunity to appear saintly and selfless, and an excuse to impose measures that increase their power and reward their political benefactors. Many companies buy into it because it gives them marketing collateral, and allows them to gain a slice of a “green” products pie that is expect to top $688 billion by 2010 (link in PDF), not to mention all the spinoffs from trade in an entirely new class of assets — carbon credits — simply conjured out of thin air by governments. The media loves it because, well, scary stories sell magazines.

Expect David Evans to be attacked over everything except the substance of his arguments, by all these people with undeniable vested interests of their own.

But he is right: if climate alarmists demand that the world drastically limit its use of fossil energy, and significantly increase the cost of production — which is the stuff that provide people with food, housing and healthcare, and lift the poor out of poverty — the onus is on them to prove why he is wrong and their solution is unavoidably necessary. And even if he is wrong, they should show why there is no alternative solution to large-scale, invasive government regulation, such as relying on technological innovation and free markets to solve whatever problems people might encounter as a result of global warming.

Their plan is a staggering price to pay for mere precaution, especially when it appears that their fears are based on little more than elaborate speculation. In fact, the precautionary principle — that self-contradictory rule to which environmentalists so often appeal — itself cautions against their grand, megalomaniacal, but ultimately vain schemes to change the climate. But it won’t stop them trying to run your life, scare your children and rob you blind.

Update: Fixed a missing close quote that cut half the paragraph starting with, “Don’t expect any of this to make an ounce of difference.” Proof-reading is under-rated and sadly neglected, on occasion. My apologies.

If you really care about global warming, there are a whole bunch of things you probably think you shouldn’t be doing that you should, and vice versa. The environmental religion of the modern age, in which an angry Gaia will punish us for our sinful ways, but we can redeem ourselves by sacrifice and self-denial, has spawned a mythology of classical proportions. The problem is that many of those myths, spouted as accepted wisdom by an uncritical media and special-interest activists, appear to be just plain wrong.

Wired magazine goes to the actual science — remember science? — and makes some proposals for those who really care about climate change, and think not only that reducing carbon emissions will actually help, but delude themselves that it is possible to reduce them enough to make even a little dent in anticipated warming.

Here is its list, each of which is explored further in a separate article:

• Live in Cities: Urban Living Is Kinder to the Planet Than the Suburban Lifestyle
• A/C Is OK: Air-Conditioning Actually Emits Less C02 Than Heating
• Organics Are Not the Answer: Surprise! Conventional Agriculture Can Be Easier on the Planet
• Farm the Forests: Old-Growth Forests Can Actually Contribute to Global Warming
• China Is the Solution: The People’s Republic Leads the Way in Alternative-Energy Hardware
• Accept Genetic Engineering: Superefficient Frankencrops Could Put a Real Dent in Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Carbon Trading Doesn’t Work: Carbon Credits Were a Great Idea, But the Benefits Are Illusory
• Embrace Nuclear Power: Face It. Nukes Are the Most Climate-Friendly Industrial-Scale Form of Energy
• Used Cars — Not Hybrids: Don’t Buy That New Prius! Test-Drive a Used Car Instead
• Prepare for the Worst: Climate Change Is Inevitable. Get Used to It

It doesn’t say all of these are good ideas, of course. There are excellent reasons to slash-and-burn overgrown, bug-infested jungles, to plant more productive crops, sure. But there are also plenty excellent reasons not to cut down old-growth forests. However, if your policy goal is to reduce carbon emissions, which seems to be the sole fetish of environmentalists and policy makers, then all of these points, including razing the rainforests, are valid.

Meanwhile, the US Congress is about to debate a cap-and-trade scheme that will vastly expand government powers and revenue, cost consumers trillions in bureaucratic red tape, tax and lost economic growth, and achieve very little indeed. In welcoming an open floor debate on these mushy measures, the Wall Street Journal writes:

The vehicle is a bill that principal sponsors Joe Lieberman and John Warner are calling “landmark legislation.” They’re too modest. Warner-Lieberman would impose the most extensive government reorganization of the American economy since the 1930s.

Ouch. Nothing like a fat bureaucracy to infringe on the liberty and prosperity of the people. Nothing like a first-country moral crusade to give developing-country leaders ideas to foist upon their long-suffering people. Nothing like an overbearing state to hold down the development of the poor.

As if $130 oil isn’t reason enough to consider more fuel-efficient cars, reduce energy usage in industry and invest in alternative energy sources.

While we wait for this legislative disaster, however, would the disciples of St Al please report to the consistory, so they can get cracking on Wired’s measures?

(Hat tip: Climate Skeptic.)

The Australian, a newspaper in, well, Oz, reports that global warming appears to have stopped in 1998, that 2007 saw a 0.7°C drop in temperature, and that sunspot activity suggests we may be entering a period of global cooling again. Despite the mass hysteria at Al Gore’s hot air concerts.

Sorry to ruin the fun, but the ice age cometh

[…] Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously. […]

Then a regular reader (hat tip: Hard Rain) sent me a post by Tim Blair, an Australian blogger, which saved me half the trouble. He covers the subject more than just well, and includes a reference to my favourite¹ Czech physicist, Luboš Motl. Lumo, as he signs his posts, noted that despite what the media believes sells well on climate change (panic! doom!), the Amazon.com bestseller list begs to differ.

Lumo also has an interesting titbit on Al Gore’s film. Remember those ice cliffs that he waxed so lyrical about? When he almost got tears in his eyes over their spectacular beauty, and the thought that one day, they might be gone? The producers of the alarmist blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow must be proud. After all, they made the computer-generated images.

I have often said (though I’m not sure whether I’ve written) that by 2030 or so we’ll all be worried about the next ice age. Warming appears to have reached a peak in 1998, and solar activity appears to be heading for a new low. As the Australian (article, not blogger) suggests, solar output is more closely correlated to temperatures measured on earth than atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, which anyway seem to be an effect of global warming, not a cause. Solar activity also accounts for the strange up-down-up temperature trend (despite steadily rising carbon dioxide) of the 20th century, as well as for the 1000-year temperature maxima and minima that Michael Mann tried to erase for the benefit of the UN IPCC.

This point about the influence of the sun on climate (well duh!) is made in several books on the subject, and is summarised well in The Great Global Warming Swindle, an excellent polemic made for Channel 4 in Britain last year. (You can buy it on DVD, or if you’re lucky download it from Google Video. It’s well worth watching, if you haven’t yet seen it.)

It would seem that the ice age alarmism is starting already, just as global warming alarmism started just about when Newsweek published its infamous cooling panic story in 1975. Pity Newsweek recanted in 2006. Upon publishing a story by Sharon Begley on the global warming “denial machine”, for “Newsweek Project Green”, the editor wrote:

Our story is not a piece of lefty cant. […] In 2040, will the editor of NEWSWEEK hold up this week’s issue as an alarmist and discredited report in the tradition of 1975’s “global cooling” story? One can hope, for that would mean America and the rest of the world had reversed the effects of warming so quickly that climate change will seem as rare and remote as polio. But I fear our successors will find that our concerns were the right ones, and that we were on the safest of scientific ground this week. Denying reality does not make it go away. Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things.

No, it didn’t take until 2040. It took just a couple of weeks, before this story itself was shredded by an editorial which described it as a “moral crusade”, “self-righteous indignation”, a “vast oversimplification” and “a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading”. And that was just Newsweek’s self-criticism. Guess they should have stuck to their global cooling guns in the first place.

Good thing they call it “climate change” now, so the media can sensationalise, we can panic, and bureaucrats and activists can claim our money, no matter what happens.

Update: After all that, I forgot to add the link right at the top of the post, to The Australian. Fixed now.

1. True, I don’t think I know more than one. [↩]

One often hears that opponents of climate change alarmism are “deniers” (a slur intended to recall Holocaust denial), are oil-company-funded (as if energy companies don’t need those dollars to polish their green image), are limited to a lunatic fringe (as if lunatic fringes host international conferences and write appeals to the United Nations) and most importantly, claim that they get their facts wrong (ironic, considering the many inconsistencies in alarmism “science”).

Now one alarmist expresses his surprise at the debate on a green website he started. He thought he’d have to cast the net wide to find skeptics, but in reality, is having to actively recruit people willing and able to defend the climate catastrophe orthodoxy. And it’s the “able” part that appears to present the most serious problems. Skeptics are better prepared, better informed and better read than alarmists. They quote better science and argue their cases more effectively, he laments.

I seldom quote entire posts, but this makes for pretty amazing reading:

When I launched the TalkClimateChange forums last year, I was initially worried as to where I would find people who didn’t believe in global warming. I had planned to create a furious debate, but in my experience global warming was such a universally accepted issue that I expected to have to dredge the slums of the internet in order to find a couple of deniers who could keep the argument thriving.

The first few days were slow going, but following a brief write-up of my site by Junk Science I was swamped by climate skeptics who did a good job of frightening off the few brave Greens who slogged out the debate with. Whilst there was a lot of rubbish written, the truth was that they didn’t so much frighten the Greens away — they comprehensively demolished them with a more in depth understanding of the science, cleverly thought out arguments, and some very smart answers. If you want to learn about the physics of convection currents, gas chromatography, or any number of climate science topics then read some of the early debates on TalkClimateChange. I didn’t believe a word of it, but I had to admit that these guys were good.

In the following months the situation hardly changed. As the forum continued to grow, as the blog began to catch traffic, and as I continued to try and recruit green members I continued to be disappointed with the debate. In short, and I am sorry to say it, anti-greens (Reds, as we call them) appear to be more willing to comment, more structured, more able to quote peer reviewed research, more apparently rational and apparently wider read and better informed.

And it’s not just TalkClimateChange. Since we re-launched the forums on Green Options and promoted the “Live Debate” on Nuclear Power, the pro-nuclear crowd have outclassed the few brave souls that have attempted to take them on (with the exception of our own Matt from TalkClimateChange). So how can this be? Where are all these bright Green champions, and why have I failed to recruit them into the debate? Either it’s down to poor online marketing skills, or there is something else missing. I’ve considered a range of theories as to the problem, none of which seem to fit — such as:

Greens are less educated? Nope.
Greens have less time? Nope.
Greens are a little reticent? Nope.
Greens are less intelligent? Definitely nope.
Greens are less passionate? Absolutely nope.
Greens have less at stake? Clearly not.

The only feasible explanation that I can come up with so far is that perhaps Greens are less invested in the status quo, and therefore less motivated to protect it? The other possibility is that we are all completely wrong and we’re deluded — please tell me this isn’t so. So I am hoping that La Marguerite [where this piece was posted — Ivo], with its insightful host and enlightened readership may be able to help shed some light on this peculiar phenomenon?

The post was written by a fellow named Mark, and he promises a follow-up next week right about now. I picked it up via Tom Nelson via Climate Skeptic.

It raises a lot of interesting points, not least about the sheltered cocoon of comfort in which the green left lives, and in which their PC fashions and prejudices appear to be “universally accepted”.

In one way, he’s right. Those who don’t believe we’re headed for certain apocalypse unless we act now are indeed “invested in the status quo, and therefore … motivated to protect it”. That’s the status quo in which humans are free from costly government bureaucracy, free to own their property and improve it, free to pursue health, prosperity and progress as they subjectively define it, and free to invest their capital to ensure sustainable resource use in the future. This is the status quo which has created a large middle class, has built prosperity that only a century ago would have been undreamed of, has supported substantial population growth despite the alarmist predictions of scientists and the media, has reduced poverty rates and improved the quality of life of rich and poor alike, has doubled life expectancy in 100 years. The status quo which has enjoyed the prosperity to invest in improving the quality of the environment, in contrast, for example, to the state-controlled economies of the Soviet Union, or the poor economies of the developing world, in both of which pollution has been far, far worse than in the capitalist West. And this is the status quo where people are free to continue building on these trends without sacrificing their productivity and future prosperity to a global climate change industry that has more vested interest than any oil company has ever had.

In the final analysis, I’ll stick my neck out and say, yup, “we are all completely wrong and we’re deluded” is pretty much spot-on. Sorry, my good man.

If only to prove that there’s no such thing as “scientific consensus” on climate change, the group of scientists, economists and other prominent consensus-busters that convened in New York issued a declaration summarising its findings last week.

I noted a few days ago that this group, which styles itself the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC, in pointed contrast to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, convened by the United Nations and patronised by green lobbyists and political pressure groups) had rudely been dismissed by a credulous, editorialising media, which promptly got its facts wrong on the Flat Earth Society.

The Manhattan Declaration that emerged from the conference merited hardly any coverage. The exceptions on major media sites that I could find are a column in the Wall Street Journal that mostly makes the valid point that Al Gore makes an easy target, a disputatious item in a column in the New York Times, a couple of blog posts by Melanie Phillips on the Spectator’s website, and a report in The Register that calls the NIPCC the “IPCC’s ‘evil twin’”.

The summary for policymakers — another reference to its politicised counterpart at the UN — is available in PDF format.

Of course, even if there were consensus, it would have no scientific value in and of itself. Science is about observation, hypothesis, experiment, and proof, not about how many people believe this or that incomplete hypothesis. Basing public policy that binds billions and costs trillions on such incomplete hypotheses incurs far more risk than the political pressure groups would claim accompany no action or voluntary action.

The full text of the Manhattan Declaration follows (original link):

Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change
“Global warming” is not a global crisis

We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,

Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;

Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;

Recognising that the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ‘consensus’ among climate experts are false;

Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing, human suffering;

Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:

Hereby declare:

That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.

That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.

That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.

That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.

That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.

Now, therefore, we recommend –

That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth.”

That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008

Are these points worthy of debate? I think so. No matter what you think about the “scientific consensus”.

Yesterday, either CNN or Sky News reported on the Heartland Institute’s conference on climate change. (It was CNN — see update.) The three-day conference, held in New York earlier this week, was designed to answer some of the questions that would be relevant to my “10 reasons to reject” and “10 more reasons to disbelieve“. Questions such as:

• how reliable are the data used to document the recent warming trend?
• how much of the modern warming is natural, and how much is likely the result of human activities?
• how reliable are the computer models used to forecast future climate conditions? and
• is reducing emissions the best or only response to possible climate change?

The conference was addressed by leading sceptics of the political orthodoxy emanating from the UN’s IPCC, including many sporting doctorate degrees or other distinctions. The lengthy speaker list included Fred Singer, Ross McKitrick, Anthony Watts, Barun Mitra, Václav Klaus, Craig Loehle, Willie Soon, Roy Spencer, Lord Monckton, Marc Morano, and South Africa’s very own Free Market Foundation man, Leon Louw.

The report ended with a snide comment: “The Flat-Earth Society didn’t shut up shop in 1492.”

Not only does this flippant insult illustrate the media’s clear bias on the subject of climate change, but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny itself.

For a start, the Flat Earth Society either originated with Samuel Rowbotham’s book, Earth Not A Globe, in the 19th century, or was founded in 1547, depending on whom you believe. I’d bet on the former, which is corroborated by a a Flat Earth Society FAQ and by Wikipedia. The latter date comes from a tagline on a Flat Earth Society page.

Moreover, the notion that Columbus sailed west against the prevailing wisdom of the Flat Earth Society is a fiction that first appeared in a historical novel by Washington Irving, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, in 1828. Never happened. He probably wasn’t widely mocked for his notion of reaching India by sailing west, and even if he was, by failing to reach India he did not prove the earth was round. That the earth was circumnavigable was proven in practice not by an American icon, but by Ferdinand Magellan, who reached the Phillipines on two voyages, one heading east and the other west from Spain, in the early 16th century. This was also well before the Flat Earth Society claims it was founded. Thing is, the notion that medieval scholars believed the Earth was flat is a myth.

If the media’s snide dismissal of any debate around climate change is itself a fiction, why would anyone believe the editorial opinion about climate change they can’t resist injecting into their news reporting?

Update: It was CNN, which was still running the “news report” today, 13 March. The exact insult by “reporter” Miles O’Brien was: “Even the Flat Earth Society didn’t fold its tents in 1493.” Earlier in the story, he interviewed one of the participants and without blushing asked what planet he was on. No biased editorialising there, either.

The US Fish & Wildlife Service is considering listing the polar bear as a threatened species, under that country’s Endangered Species Act.

Before blasting this idea as an underhanded ploy by evil environmentalists, it is worth considering the exact meaning of the terms in question. The US criteria are not quite consistent with those of the World Conservation Union (which the cognoscenti abbreviate as IUCN). The latter maintains the famous (or infamous, considering how few of its members have actually gone extinct) Red List of Threatened Species, in which “critically endangered”, “endangered” and “vulnerable”, describing an extremely high, very high or high risk of extinction respectively, are collectively known as “threatened”. By contrast, a “threatened” species under the US law means any species which is “likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range”, and an “endangered” species is one “which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range”. Also, there is much more scope for discretion under the US rules, while the IUCN criteria for the different categories are very specific.

So, on what grounds should the polar bear be listed as threatened? Among the US agency’s own research, a population forecast says much depends on 45-, 75- or 100-year predictions of the extent of Arctic sea ice, and even then, there’s much uncertainty. Besides, that analysis (PDF) has come under attack (PDF) for serious flaws in its methods and analysis. Turns out that after a few years of slight decline in Arctic sea ice coverage, this winter’s Arctic ice is back to normal levels. (Via Anthony Watts, who links to the useful University of Illinois Cryosphere Today site. It also has a cute story about a stolen polar bear photo, reproduced above, which Al Gore and the media used to tell yet another lie: “They cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming.” Sob sob. Hat-tip: Hard Rain.)

What about polar bear population? Well, it’s pretty much stable, it appears. A National Center for Policy Analysis report entitled Polar Bears on Thin Ice? Not Really!, says that only two of the twenty or so population groups are in decline, which hardly gels with “throughout all or a significant portion of its range”. There’s a picture alongside. The chart illustrates the polar bear populations that are growing, declining, stable and unknown. Hardly looks like a threatened species, does it?

In fact, although the Red List includes the polar bear (and the hippo, which is responsible for more human deaths in Africa than any other large animal), I can’t see which of the criteria it actually meets. The Inuit around Hudson Bay are saying more need to be hunted, because their population is increasing, and in an amusingly headlined article, “Advertisers urged to kill off polar bears,” James Murray reports on a study that finds advertisers should eschew cute pictures of polar bears to burnish their green image.

Listing a species that isn’t actually endangered is likely to do as much harm to noble conservation efforts as did Norman Myers’s 1979 statement, based on supposition alone, that 40 000 species would go extinct per year until 2000. Didn’t happen. Yet it was repeated in Al Gore’s 1993 book, Earth in the Balance, and is only one among many hyperbolic prophesies of mass extinction, which simply have not come true, and don’t look likely to happen in the foreseeable future either. They’re a bit like the cults who predict the end of the world. They’ve never been right, but of course, that only strengthens their faith that they have to be right sometime soon.

Despite the lack of evidence that the polar bear is, in fact, threatened, Brendon Frazier of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, says it should be listed not as threatened, but as endangered. In this AFP article, he explains the reason why:

“An endangered listing can affect the sell-off of the oil drilling rights,” Brandon Frazier, a spokesman for global animal welfare group International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said. “The authorities would have to get approval through the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct drilling if there is an endangered species that inhabits the area.” […]

US lawmakers have proposed listing the polar bear as “threatened”, but IFAW said that did not go far enough. “A ‘threatened’ listing leaves open the possibility for exemptions and doesn’t shut loopholes, such as the one that allows Americans to trophy-hunt for polar bears in Canada and bring their heads and hides back to the US,” Frazier told AFP.

So there’s your reason. Anything to stop the big, bad oil companies from drilling. If the polar bear is under threat, the reason is climate change, which in turn is caused by evil humans, who dare pursue industrial development, scientific advance and economic progress.

That’s what they’re fighting for. If the polar bear gets listed as threatened, this can be used to stop almost any new industrial development, anywhere. Even if the impact is so tenuous nothing but global warming alarmism can rationalise it. If the polar bear gets listed as endangered, then so is the growth in prosperity that has fueled the rising quality of life among rich and poor alike. It’s not about the polar bear. It’s about us. It is, to quote William F. Buckley, about standing athwart history, yelling “Stop!”.

Now who’s the conservative?

I don’t have time to write much today (well, I don’t have time to write much unpaid stuff) so I’ll be a good capitalist and steal something from the socialist radicals over at The People’s Cube. I thought it very funny. I’ll quote some extracts, but it’s worth reading the whole thing.

Industrial Nations Threaten Globe Again

A new menace to the planet has been discovered and validated by a consensus of politically reliable scientists: Anthropogenic Continental Drift (ACD) will result in catastrophic damage and untold suffering, unless immediate indemnity payments from the United Sates, Europe, and Australia be made to the governments of non-industrial nations, to counteract this man-made threat to the world’s habitats.

Science is Unquestionable

The continents rest on massive tectonic plates. Until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 18th century, these plates were fixed in place and immobile. However, drilling for oil and mining for minerals has cut these plates loose from their primordial moorings and left them to drift aimlessly. “The potential for damage is truly catastrophic,” said Hans Brinker, a spokesman for the International Panel on Continental Drift (IPCD). “The continents are adrift due to the ruthless capitalist exploitation of the environment for profit. Unless immediate steps are taken to halt all oil and mineral extraction, we can expect a massive surge in earthquakes and volcanos by next Tuesday.” The representative seemed close to tears during his announcement, a clear indicator of the severity of the threat.

[…]

Data is ‘Air France’ Tight and Undeniable

This widening of the Atlantic is taking place at an astounding rate, according to indisputable IPCD scientific data. Today it costs almost a third again as much to fly an Air France jet from New York to Paris than it did in 1997, a clear indicator that the ocean has indeed increased in size in the past decade. Surface shipping rates have likewise increased dramatically.

“This is a clear and reliable indicator of the speed of ACD,” said Passapotapissalong, “much more so than the global positioning satellite data often cited by ‘Continental Drift Deniers.’ The GPS system was, after all, originally created by the US military to enhance their empire-building program, and we all know who controls the US military.” He paused at this point and pulled his ears out to each side, a clear reference to the ape-like countenance of the American president.

“Although these so-called ’scientists’ claim that there is no GPS data to support the rapid widening of the Atlantic Ocean, they are all employees of American corporations or have been paid to falsify their data by the American government. Air France fuel costs are a much more reliable indicator of distance flown.” He added that he and his right-thinking colleagues had “nothing to gain” by presenting their findings, pointing out that their stipends, expenses and salaries were drawn from the IPCD General Fund, not corporate or government grants.

[…]

I’d like to congratulate and thank the brave, socially-conscious Comrade Betinov for his timely warning.

Three guesses where this quote comes from:

To many scientists and students of scientific history, there really is no such thing as a consensus.

Nope, it’s not the Wall Street Journal. It’s not TCS Daily. It’s not from the Climate Denialist and UFO Nutters Digest either. This is from a columnist/blogger at the New York Times, Andrew Revkin. He’s been among the more informative media voices, doggedly reporting both sides — and the middle — of the climate debate.

His piece notes a typically detailed and well-referenced minority report (intro here, full document here) released by Senator James Inhofe, ranking member of the US Environment and Public Works Committee. It documents the views of over 400 scientists who disagree with the “consensus” claimed by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and its patron saint, Al Gore), and links to much peer-reviewed research work that undermines the orthodox views of “settled science”.

An excerpt from the introduction:

Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists. In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics “appear to be expanding rather than shrinking.” Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears “bite the dust.” In addition, many scientists who are also progressive environmentalists believe climate fear promotion has “co-opted” the green movement.

This blockbuster Senate report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. This new “consensus busters” report is poised to redefine the debate.

If 400 sounds like a consensus-busting number, but still paltry in comparison with the UN’s exagerated claim of 2 500 scientists that back the IPCC view, consider this:

Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated.

“Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media,” Paldor wrote.

Whichever side is right, in debunking the notion that the science is — barring a few extremist nutters and oil company shills — settled, Inhofe’s report is timely indeed. If they’re going to draft Gore, perhaps they could draft Inhofe to run against him. The campaign would be most entertaining.

There’s a lot of good news on the consensus front in Europe, noted by Hans Labohm, a Dutch economist and IPCC reviewer. It shows that skepticism on climate change is gaining a foothold throughout the countries of the EU. Far from buying the alarmist orthodoxy, opinion in Europe are divided about the truth and extent of global warming. It probably benefited more than any other continent from the medieaval warming period that permitted the expansion of agriculture and, some historians hypothesise, helped fuel the Renaissance. Russian scientists are even pointing to solar activity, which seems headed for another “Maunder Minimum”, and predicting a Little Ice Age, such as Europe experienced in the 18th century. Imagine what today’s efforts to prevent warming will look like if that happens. Our children will think we were insane. Imagine a world in which they ban hybrids and subsidise large, heavy gas guzzlers on safety and environmental grounds.

On the Nobel Peace Prize, Labohm notes the political composition of the Norwegian panel that awards it, and adds a telling quote:

Little wonder Francis Sejersted, past chairman of the committee, admits: ‘Awarding a peace prize is, to put it bluntly, a political act.’

Speaking of children, he answers the concerns of at least one commenter on my blog, who is convinced that we must all act immediately to help her children survive; to wit:

And what about our kids? Well, they have survived the story of Santa Claus without any visible scars. Wouldn’t they survive the nonsense of man-made global warming as well?

Labohm has written a useful and heartening roundup of which people and organisations aren’t meekly swallowing the politically-correct Gorthodoxy that dominates the media today.

Update: Link to comment pointed in the wrong direction. Fixed.

I’ve long held a certain view about the climate system. It is hugely complex and chaotic in a mathematical sense. It is incredibly hard, if not impossible, to predict, especially when we only measure relatively few of the constituent data points and even then have done so for only a few decades, mostly. Because the system is chaotic, most of the underlying variables have a “butterfly effect” on a predictive model of the system as a whole.

In short, we know far too little about climate to make serious public policy commitments about it. Most likely, our attempt at changing the climate will fail. If not, the chance of it working is at least as high as the risk of doing the wrong thing entirely and making matters worse.

It seems at least some scientists agree.

Gerard H. Roe and Marcia B. Baker, of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington in Seattle, published a paper (PDF) — peer reviewed, the works — which says, to put it simply, that uncertainty is not only characteristic of past climate predictions, but is an inevitable feature of the system.

Uncertainties in projections of future climate change have not lessened substantially in the last decades. Both models and observations yield broad probability distributions for long-term increases in global mean temperature expected for doubling of CO2, with small but finite probabilities of very large increases. We show here that the shape of these probability distributions is an inevitable and general consequence of the nature of the climate system, and we derive a simple analytic form for the shape that fits recent published distributions very well. We show that the breadth of the distribution, and in particular, in the probability of large temperature increases, is relatively insensitive to decreases in uncertainties associated with the underlying climate processes.

In other words: “It is evident that the climate system is operating in a regime in which small uncertainties in feedbacks are highly amplified in the resulting climate sensitivity.”

Despite being a climate skeptic (and not being qualified to critique their work in any case), I’m not entirely convinced of this argument. Neither is this physicist, Luboš Motl, and he adds a crucial observation:

I agree that during the last two decades, not much progress was made in these questions, especially if you look at the knowledge of mainstream scientists. But unlike Roe and Baker, I don’t think that it is a consequence of fundamental limitations of such a chaotic system. It is a consequence of having too many incompetent, politically passionate, corrupt, and dishonest people in the discipline.

Jim Hansen, phone home.