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Courtesy: The Vancouver Sun and Dr. Patrick Moore

An inconvenient fact

Despite the anti-forestry scare tactics of celebrity movies, trees are the most powerful concentrators of carbon on Earth Dr. Patrick Moore is a co-founder of Greenpeace and chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver.

Patrick Moore, Special to the Sun

Published: Wednesday, August 29, 2007

It seems like there’s a new doomsday documentary every month. But seldom does one receive the coverage that Hollywood activist Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest climate-change rant, The 11th Hour, is getting.

When we’re bombarded anew with theatrical images of our earth’s ecosystems when the film opens across B.C. this Friday, I’m concerned that we’re losing sight of some indisputable facts.

Here’s a key piece of information DiCaprio, collaborator and long-time activist Tzeporah Berman and the leadership of my old organization Greenpeace are ignoring when it comes to forests and carbon: For British Columbians, living among the largest area of temperate rainforest in the world, managing our forests will be a key to reducing greenhouse gases.

As a lifelong environmentalist, I say trees can solve many of the world’s sustainability challenges. Forestry is the most sustainable of all the primary industries that provide us with energy and materials. Rather than cutting fewer trees and using less wood, DiCaprio and Berman ought to promote the growth of more trees and the use of more wood.

Trees are the most powerful concentrators of carbon on Earth. Through photosynthesis, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their wood, which is nearly 50 per cent carbon by weight. Trees contain about 250 kilograms of carbon per cubic metre.

North Americans are the world’s largest per-capita wood consumers and yet our forests cover approximately the same area of land as they did 100 years ago. According to the United Nations, our forests have expanded nearly 100 million acres over the past decade.

The relationship between trees and greenhouse gases is simple enough on the surface. Trees grow by taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, through photosynthesis, converting it into sugars. The sugars are then used as energy and materials to build cellulose and lignin, the main constituents of wood.

There is a misconception that cutting down an old tree will result in a net release of carbon. Yet wooden furniture made in the Elizabethan era still holds the carbon fixed hundreds of years ago.

Berman, a veteran of the forestry protest movement, should by now have learned that young forests outperform old growth in carbon sequestration.

Although old trees contain huge amounts of carbon, their rate of sequestration has slowed to a near halt. A young tree, although it contains little fixed carbon, pulls CO2 from the atmosphere at a much faster rate.

When a tree rots or burns, the carbon contained in the wood is released back to the atmosphere. Since combustion releases carbon, active forest management — such as removing dead trees and clearing debris from the forest floor — will be imperative in reducing the number and intensity of fires.

The role of forests in the global carbon cycle can be boiled down to these key points:

* Deforestation, primarily in tropical forests, is responsible for about 20 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. This is occurring where forests are permanently cleared and converted to agriculture and urban settlement.

* In many countries with temperate forests, there has been an increase in carbon stored in trees in recent years. This includes the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Sweden.

* The most important factors influencing the carbon cycle are deforestation on the negative side, and the use of wood, from sustainably managed forests, as a substitute for non-renewable materials and fuels, on the positive side.

To address climate change, we must use more wood, not less. Using wood sends a signal to the marketplace to grow more trees and to produce more wood. That means we can then use less concrete, steel and plastic — heavy carbon emitters through their production. Trees are the only abundant, biodegradable and renewable global resource.

DiCaprio’s movie, The 11th Hour, is another example of anti-forestry scare tactics, this time said to be “brilliant and terrifying” by James Christopher of the London Times.

Maybe so, but instead of surrendering to the terror, keep in mind that there are solutions to the challenges of climate, and our forests are among them.

This film should be a good, clear reminder for us to put the science before the Hollywood hype.

Dr. Patrick Moore is a co-founder of Greenpeace and chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver.

Global warming: No urgent danger; no quick fix

COURTESY: ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION

By PATRICK J. MICHAELS
Published on: 08/21/07 It’s summer, it’s hot and global warming is on the cover of Newsweek. Scare stories abound. We may only have 10 years to stop this! The future survival of our species is at stake!

OK, the media aren’t exactly nonpartisan, especially on global warming. So what’s the real story and what do we need to know?

Fact: The average surface temperature of the Earth is about 0.8 C warmer than it was in 1900, and human beings have something to do with it. But does that portend an unmitigated disaster? Can we do anything meaningful about it at this time? And if we can’t, what should or can we do in the future?

These are politically loaded questions that must be answered truthfully, especially when considering legislation designed to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas.

Unfortunately, they’ll probably be ignored. Right now there are a slew of bills before Congress, and many in various states, that mandate massively reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Some actually propose cutting our CO2 output to 80 percent or 90 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050.

Let’s be charitable and simply call that legislative arrogance. U.S. emissions are up about 18 percent from 1990 as they stand. Whenever you hear about these large cuts, ask the truth: How is this realistically going to happen?

I did that on an international television panel two weeks ago. My opponent, who advocated these cuts, dropped his jaw and said nothing, ultimately uttering a curse word for the entire world to hear. The fact of the matter is he had no answer because there isn’t one.

Nor would legislation in any state or Washington, D.C., have any standing in Beijing. Although the final figures aren’t in yet, it’s beginning to look like China has just passed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide. Like the United States, China has oodles of coal, and the Chinese are putting in at least one new coal-fired power plant a month. (Some reports have it at an astonishing one per week.) And just as it does in the United States, when coal burns in China, it turns largely to carbon dioxide and water.

What we do in the United States is having less and less of an effect on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the world’s atmosphere.

We certainly adapted to 0.8 C temperature change quite well in the 20th century, as life expectancy doubled and some crop yields quintupled. And who knows what new and miraculously efficient power sources will develop in the next hundred years.

The stories about the ocean rising 20 feet as massive amounts of ice slide off of Greenland by 2100 are also fiction. For the entire half century from 1915 through 1965, Greenland was significantly warmer than it has been for the last decade. There was no disaster. More important, there’s a large body of evidence that for much of the period from 3,000 to 9,000 years ago, at least the Eurasian Arctic was 2.5 C to 7 C warmer than now in the summer, when ice melts. Greenland’s ice didn’t disappear then, either.

Then there is the topic of interest this time of year – hurricanes. Will hurricanes become stronger or more frequent because of warming? My own work suggests that late in the 21st century there might be an increase in strong storms, but that it will be very hard to detect because of year-to-year variability.

Right now, after accounting for increasing coastal population and property values, there is no increase in damages caused by these killers. The biggest of them all was the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926. If it occurred today, it would easily cause twice as much damage as 2005’s vaunted Hurricane Katrina.

So let’s get real and give the politically incorrect answers to global warming’s inconvenient questions. Global warming is real, but it does not portend immediate disaster, and there’s currently no suite of technologies that can do much about it. The obvious solution is to forgo costs today on ineffective attempts to stop it, and to save our money for investment in future technologies and inevitable adaptation.

Courtesy: C.G. Johnson, via TheKansan.com 

Man’s affect on global warming…

- small compared to nature’s work

PUBLISHED: Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Today’s concerns about global warming should be seen in the light of the climate around 1000 AD. Vikings were farming Greenland. The climate of England permitted vineyards. But there are no indications that populated lands were experiencing alarming rising sea levels at that time. In the 13th and 14th centuries, there were climatic extremes. Cold winters, hot summers, flooding and drought. From the 16th to the 19th century, temperatures dropped. Glaciers advanced. Winters were severe. Summers were short and wet. England’s vineyards vanished. Farming in northern latitudes became impossible. The Viking community in Greenland perished.

Since about 1840, temperatures started to rise, about 1 degree C from 1840 to a high in 1984.

Investigating the climate conditions of that time with present-day analytical methods, the global warming and industrial pollution of 1000 AD must have been phenomenal.

Huge factories spewing out massive amounts of CO2 that affected the climate worldwide. Yet, the science of that day stopped it “cold,” and even over-corrected during the next 300 years.

If we studied their global warming problem and their solution to the industrial pollution of 1000 AD, we could adapt their superior technology to correct today’s climatic concerns. Where were these factories? How did they produce so many pollutants at a time of low middle ages industrial activity? How did they stop it?

Alternatively, we could realize sun activity, volcanic activity and other actions of nature contribute far more to climate change than do the puny efforts of man.

— C.G. Johnson,

Sedgwick

Courtesy: Marc Mareno Blog
Contact: Marc_Mareno at EPW.senate.gov

Newsweek Magazine’s cover story of August 6, 2007 entitled, “The Truth About Denial” contains very little that could actually be considered balanced, objective or fair by journalistic standards.

LINK)

The one-sided editorial, masquerading as a “news article,” was written by Sharon Begley with Eve Conant, Sam Stein and Eleanor Clift and Matthew Philips and purports to examine the “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.”

The only problem is — Newsweek knew better. Reporter Eve Conant, who interviewed Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, was given all the latest data proving conclusively that it is the proponents of man-made global warming fears that enjoy a monumental funding advantage over the skeptics. (A whopping $50 BILLION to a paltry $19 MILLION for skeptics – Yes, that is BILLION to MILLION - see below )

This week’s “news article” in Newsweek follows the Magazine’s October 23, 2006 article which admitted the error of their ways in the 1970’s when they predicted dire global cooling. (See: Senator Inhofe Credited For Prompting Newsweek Admission of Error on 70’s Predictions of Coming Ice Age – LINK )

Use of Word ‘Denier’

First, let’s take a look at Newsweek’s use of the word “denier” when describing a scientist who views with skepticism the unproven computer models predicting future climate doom. The use of this blatant Holocaust terminology has drawn the ire of Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. “The phrase ‘climate change denier’ is meant to be evocative of the phrase ‘holocaust denier,’” Pielke, Jr. wrote on October 9, 2006 (LINK)

“Let’s be blunt. This allusion is an affront to those who suffered and died in the Holocaust. This allusion has no place in the discourse on climate change. I say this as someone fully convinced of a significant human role in the behavior of the climate system,” Pielke, Jr. explained.

Newsweek Fails Basis Arithmetic

Newsweek reporter Eve Conant was given the documentation showing that proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so, while skeptics have received a paltry $19 MILLION by comparison.

Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter, who has testified before the Senate EPW committee, explains how much money has been spent researching and promoting climate fears.

“In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $US50 billion on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one.” (LINK )

For a breakdown of how much money flows to promoters of climate fear, see a Janaury 17, 2007 EPW blog post: (LINK)

“The [climate] alarmists also enjoy a huge financial advantage over the skeptics with numerous foundations funding climate research, University research money and the United Nations endless promotion of the cause. Just how much money do the climate alarmists have at their disposal? There was a $3 billion donation to the global warming cause from Virgin Air’s Richard Branson alone. The well-heeled environmental lobbying groups have massive operating budgets compared to groups that express global warming skepticism. The Sierra Club Foundation 2004 budget was $91 million and the Natural Resources Defense Council had a $57 million budget for the same year. Compare that to the often media derided Competitive Enterprise Institute’s small $3.6 million annual budget. In addition, if a climate skeptic receives any money from industry, the media immediately labels them and attempts to discredit their work. The same media completely ignore the money flow from the environmental lobby to climate alarmists like James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer. (ie. Hansen received $250,000 from the Heinz Foundation and Oppenheimer is a paid partisan of Environmental Defense Fund) The alarmists have all of these advantages, yet they still feel the need to resort to desperation tactics to silence the skeptics. Could it be that the alarmists realize that the American public is increasingly rejecting their proposition that the family SUV is destroying the earth and rejecting their shrill calls for “action” to combat their computer model predictions of a ‘climate emergency?’” (See EPW Blog for full article –

LINK )

As Senator Inhofe further explained in a September 25, 2006 Senate floor speech: “The fact remains that political campaign funding by environmental groups to promote climate and environmental alarmism dwarfs spending by the fossil fuel industry by a three-to-one ratio. Environmental special interests, through their 527s, spent over $19 million compared to the $7 million that Oil and Gas spent through PACs in the 2004 election cycle.”(LINK)

Now contrast all of the above with how much money the “well funded” skeptics allegedly receive.

The Paltry Funding of Skeptics (by comparision)

The most repeated accusation is that organizations skeptical of man-made climate fears have received $19 Million from an oil corporation over the past two decades. This was the subject of a letter by two

To put this $19 Million over two decades into perspective, consider:

One 2007 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant of $20 million to study how “farm odors” contribute to global warming exceeded all of the money that skeptics reportedly received in the past two decades. To repeat: One USDA grant to study the role of “farm odors” in global warming exceeded almost ALL the money skeptics have been accused of receiving over the past two decades. (Excerpt from article: “The United States Department of Agriculture has released reports stating that when you smell cow manure, you’re also smelling greenhouse gas emissions.” (LINK )

As erroneous and embarrassingly one-sided as Newsweek’s article is, the magazine sunk deeper into journalistic irrelevance when it noted that skeptical Climatologist Patrick Michaels had reportedly received industry funding without revealing to readers the full funding picture. The magazine article mentions NASA’s James Hansen as some sort of example of a scientist untainted by funding issues. But what Newsweek was derelict in reporting is that Hansen had received a $250,000 award from the Heinz Foundation run by Senator John Kerry’s wife Teresa in 2001 and then subsequently endorsed Kerry for President in 2004. (

LINK )

Science Vindicating Skeptics

Finally, Newsweek’s editorial rant attempts to make it appear as though the science is getting stronger in somehow proving mankind is driving a climate catastrophe. There are, however, major problem with that assertion.

Scientists are speaking up around the globe to denounce Gore, the UN and the media driven “consensus” on global warming. Just recently, an EPW report detailed a sampling of scientists who were once believers in man-made global warming and who now are skeptical. [See May 15, 2007 report: Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics: Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research –

LINK ]

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian government, detailed how he left the global warming funding “gravy train” and became a skeptic. “By the late 1990’s, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn’t believe carbon emissions caused global warming,” Evans explained. “But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence outlined above fell away or reversed,” Evans wrote. “The pre-2000 ice core data was the central evidence for believing that atmospheric carbon caused temperature increases. The new ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused by rises in atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any amplification. This piece of evidence casts reasonable doubt that atmospheric carbon had any role in past warmings, while still allowing the possibility that it had a supporting role,” he added. (LINK)

In addition, just last week, three new scientific studies further strengthened the skeptics’ views on climate change. (

LINK) Further, a recent analysis of peer-reviewed literature thoroughly debunks any fears of Greenland melting and a frightening sea level rise. [See July 0, 2007 - Latest Scientific Studies Refute Fears of Greenland Melt - LINK ]

Newsweek: A Media Dinosaur

The question remains: Is Newsweek even a news outlet worth taking the time to respond to in posts like this? Does Newsweek, a quirky alternative news outlet, even have an impact on public policy anymore?

Background of recent climate science developments:

Even the alarmist UN has cut sea level rise estimates in dramatically since 2001 and has reduced man’s estimated impact on the climate by 25%. Meanwhile a separate UN report found that cow emissions are more damaging to the planet than all of the CO2 emissions from cars and trucks. (LINK)

The New York Times is now debunking aspects of climate alarmism. An April 23, 2006 article in the New York Times by Andrew Revkin stated: “few scientists agree with the idea that the recent spate of potent hurricanes, European heat waves, African drought and other weather extremes are, in essence, our fault (a result of manmade emissions.) There is more than enough natural variability in nature to mask a direct connection, [scientists] say.”

The New York Times is essentially conceding that no recent weather events are outside of natural climate variability. So all the climate doomsayers have to back up their claims of climate fears are unproven computer models of the future. Of course, you can’t prove a prediction of the climate in 2100 wrong today. It’s simply not possible.

Climate Computer Models Not So Reliable

Recently, a top UN scientist publicly conceded that climate computer model predictions are not so reliable after all. Dr. Jim Renwick, a lead author of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, admitted to the New Zealand Herald in June 2007, “Half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable, so we don’t expect to do terrifically well.” (LINK)

A leading scientific skeptic of global warming fears, Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, former CEO of the Netherlands’ Royal National Meteorological Institute, took the critique of climate models that predict future doom a step further. Tennekes wrote on February 28, 2007, “I am of the opinion that most scientists engaged in the design, development, and tuning of climate modes are in fact software engineers. They are unlicensed, hence unqualified to sell their products to society.” (LINK)

Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania noted “for most of Earth’s history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has rarely been cooler,” Giegengack said according to a February 2007 article in Philadelphia Magazine. (LINK) The article continued, “[Giegengack] says carbon dioxide doesn’t control global temperature, and certainly not in a direct linear way.”

Climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball explained that one of the reasons climate models fail is because they overestimate the warming effect of CO2 in the atmosphere. Ball described how CO2 stabilizes in the atmosphere and its warming impact diminishes. “Even if CO2 concentration doubles or triples, the effect on temperature would be minimal. The relationship between temperature and CO2 is like painting a window black to block sunlight. The first coat blocks most of the light. Second and third coats reduce very little more. Current CO2 levels are like the first coat of black paint,” Ball explained in a June 6, 2007 article in Canada Free Press. (LINK)

New data is revealing what may perhaps be the ultimate inconvenient truth for climate doomsayers:

Global warming stopped in 1998.

Dr. Nigel Calder, co-author with physicist Henrik Svensmark of the 2007 book “The Chilling Stars: A New Theory on Climate Change,” explained in July 2007: (LINK)

“In reality, global temperatures have stopped rising. Data for both the surface and the lower air show no warming since 1999. That makes no sense by the hypothesis of global warming driven mainly by CO2, because the amount of CO2 in the air has gone on increasing. But the fact that the Sun is beginning to neglect its climatic duty – of battling away the cosmic rays that come from ‘the chilling stars’ – fits beautifully with this apparent end of global warming.”

Perhaps the conversion of many former scientists from believers in man-made global warming to skeptics (LINK) and the new peer-reviewed research is why so many proponents of a climatic doom have resorted to threats and intimidation in attempting to silence skeptics. (See: EPA to Probe E-mail Threatening to ‘Destroy’ Career of Climate Skeptic - LINK )

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From the “global warming insanity department”….
By Meteorologist James Spann

I see that NASA has issued a release that they are forecasting daily
highs in July and August between 100 and 110 degrees in the summer of
2080 for cities such as Chicago, Washington, and Atlanta. This is
based on a “widely-used weather prediction model coupled to a global
model developed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.” The
press release also says they “analyzed nearly 30 years of
observational temperature and precipitation data” for use in the
project.

Anyone have any problems with this other than me?

First off, the best global forecast models we have in operation now
struggle with weather beyond five days. Sometimes, their 24 hour
output is laughable. How in the world are these people issuing a
forecast for weather more than 70 years from now using model output?

Another interesting part of the release says “The global model is one
of the models used in the recently issued climate report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)…” This is the very
problem so many of us have with the IPCC report, which basically says
we are headed for catastrophic man-made global warming. Live by the
models, die by the models. In the real weather business, we have died
by the models so many times we know you simply can’t trust them for
long range solutions.

The second problem is their data set. Only using data for the last 30
years? That is one of the biggest problems in this entire debate; we
only have reliable weather data that goes back to the late 1880s, and
this Earth has been here for a long, long time.
All of this is a reminder of how refreshing it was to hear Dr. Roy
Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville on the Rick and
Bubba show earlier this week, who calmly presented the viewpoint that
the warming in recent years is mostly natural. His facts and presentation
were excellent, and all I can say is AMEN.

And, by the way, I stand by the statement I wrote back in January. I
don’t know of another television meteorologist who buys into the
catastrophic, man-made global warming hype. I am sure there are some
out there, but I sure can’t find them. Seems like most of us in
broadcast meteorology join the 17,800 independently verified
scientists that have signed the Oregon Petition, which states:

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of
carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses 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.”

I continue to wonder why these voices are kept silent by the media.

Posted at Senate.Gov by Marc Morano - Marc_Morano@epw.Senate.Gov - 1:34 PM ET
 
Senate Environment & Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have proposed the “Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act” aimed at combating climate change. The proposed partisan bill (S.309) is supported by another 15 senators, including: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY); Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL); Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT); Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-DE); Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI); Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-WI); Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI); Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA); Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ); Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT); Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ); Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI); Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI); Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD), and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD).

FACT: A new MIT study concludes that the Sanders-Boxer approach would impose a tax-equivalent of $366 billion annually, or more than $4,500 per family of four, by 2015. And the annual costs will grow after 2015. [Read full MIT study]

The Kyoto Protocol would have imposed an equivalent tax of over $300 billion a year, 10 times the size of the Clinton-Gore tax increase of 1993. In addition to the MIT study, a new Congressional Budget Office study released recently, details how a carbon cap-and-trade system would result in massive wealth redistribution from the poor and working class to wealthier Americans. [Read more on CBO study]

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), EPW Ranking Member, said today: “Carbon caps would artificially and needlessly raise the cost of energy the most on the people least able to afford it. It astounds me that any Senator could support such a proposal.”

Read Senator Inhofe’s full opening statement from today’s EPW subcommittee hearing [Link] 

# # #

From Sheryl Crow’s Blog :

It’s been well over a week since the Stop Global Warming College tour ended and I am just now processing the experience. A few concerns still hang heavy on my mind and heart.

 First, I am deeply concerned over where we are as a nation.  I feel we are so blessed to live in a country where we enjoy so many rights that other countries cannot even begin to imagine.  However, it terrifies me that we seem to have lost touch with our connection to the earth. I am concerned that we have risen to such heights of arrogance in our refusal to acknowledge that our earth is rapidly changing in ways that might affect us  catastrophically but instead, we hold steadfast to our belief that nothing can happen to us as a people.  We get into our oversized, war-machine-like vehicles and stay distracted by the business of getting on with daily life.

 Clearly, the subject of global warming remains a partisan issue in the minds of many conservatives. It appears to me that many on the right want to see this as a liberal issue, as demonstrated in the continued debate, rather than accepting the peer-reviewed science that is so clearly laid out for us earthlings. I suppose after our encounter with Karl Rove, I got a little taste of what it feels like to have dipped my thumb into the political pie for a brief moment, over what I failed to realize was still a political topic, or in Mr. Rove’s words, an insulting topic. I got my hand slapped, as if to say, “don’t mess with the big boys, even on topics as humanitarian as global warming.”  Within hours, the climate certainly did change.  It was me at the center of a storm-like spin. I have seen ranting political pundits work their spin before but, like most people, I have always tuned it out… at least, until the moment when the spin was about my reputation.  It feels pretty scary to watch credible news outlets run with a story that is clearly not true, debate my patriotism over my alleged desire to have the use of toilet tissue legislated, and to be the joke of late night TV monologues, all as a result of a 2 week old blog and nightly comedy routine that was taken out of context and spun as truth, instead of the joke it clearly was.  What terrifies me the most is that we not only accept this of our journalists today but we are oblivious to it, and thus, oblivious to the damage it causes. When “news stories” are broken, do we not expect a certain amount of fact-checking or source-checking?  One has to ask if this falls under the guise of sloppy reporting or deception as a source of spin. We seem to accept a certain amount of deception and we seem to be helpless to doing anything about it, as illustrated so clearly by where we are right now in this moment in our history.
 (I’d like to thank Glenn Beck for his apology and his acknowledgement that he had reported my little toilet tissue sketch as real news).

 Which brings me back to my original subject:  the planet.  Deeper than temperature and the extinction of the polar bear is the idea that we all share this beautiful, ailing planet, Democrats and Republicans alike. What Laurie and I were proposing by encouraging every college student to change a light bulb was actually meant to be not only useful in the fight against global warming but also symbolic of a change in attitude. It is bound by the belief that perhaps what each of us does in our personal lives does truly affect another person’s freedoms. If I drive a gas guzzling 12 cylinder vehicle knowing what I know now about carbon emissions and our dependence on foreign oil, I am basically saying that I don’t care about the planet I leave behind for your or my kids.

 I have been saying all along that this issue is deeper than recycling. It is more telling than unplugging gadgets not in use and not taking 35 minutes showers. It’s about waking up. It’s about understanding and embracing the fact that we don’t own anything here. We are renters and that our lack of respect for the planet and the people inhabiting it will be the thing that takes us down, not simply the temperature or inevitable shortage of water.

 The planet will live on in whatever state it is in, however, it is humanity that will suffer.  And as I sit and wonder, like so many other people in this country, where are the marchers in the streets, where are the voices screaming for injustices to cease, for greed and apathy to let go of it’s hold, I can only come up with one supposition:  Perhaps we have lost our sense of who we were born to be and instead, are numbed out beyond recognition by the ceaseless chatter that is the soundtrack to our lives.

 It is my truest fear that we are losing our way.   Every night on the stop global warming college tour, Laurie and I would tell these great young people that they have the power to do anything they want.  That we all have the power to create a movement for change.  That the best part of ourselves is the part that rises up instinctively from compassion.  I believe this to be true. I believe that divinity exists in all of us and that if we eliminate some of the chatter in our lives, the voice of compassion will have a chance to be heard. And, if we were to act from a place of compassion in every act of our lives, would we be arguing about whether global warming exists? Or would we simply be living our lives peacefully  knowing that how we live will affect the planet we leave for our children and for their children.  If compassion was the motivating factor behind all of our decisions, would our world not be a completely different place?  Food for thought.

SC

From Sheryl Crow’s Blog…

“I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming. Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating. One of my favorites is in the area of conserving trees which we heavily rely on for oxygen. I propose a limitation be put on how many sqares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don’t want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required. When presenting this idea to my younger brother, who’s judgement I trust implicitly, he proposed taking it one step further. I believe his quote was, “how bout just washing the one square out.”

Well, well. Some “climate expert” on “The Weather Channel” wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for “tolerance”, huh?

I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:

*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at “The Weather Channel” probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab.

*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, lets not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.

If you don’t like to listen to me, find another meteorologist with no tie to grant money for research on the subject. I would not listen to anyone that is a politician, a journalist, or someone in science who is generating revenue from this issue.

In fact, I encourage you to listen to WeatherBrains episode number 12, featuring Alabama State Climatologist John Christy, and WeatherBrains episode number 17, featuring Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, one of the most brilliant minds in our science.

WeatherBrains, by the way, is our weekly 30 minute netcast.

I have nothing against “The Weather Channel”, but they have crossed the line into a political and cultural region where I simply won’t go.