<table width="814" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="25047"><tbody><tr><td width="100%" align="center"><b><font face="Verdana" size="3">The
Middlebury Community Network</font></b></td>
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<br><a href="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html">http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html</a><br><br><br><hr width="75%" color="#800000" size="1">
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<td width="100%" align="center"><strong><font color="#800000" face="Verdana" size="3">Editorial:
The Great Global Warming Hoax?</font></strong></td>
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<td width="100%"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Editor's Introductory
Note</b>: Our planet has been slowly warming since last emerging from the "Little Ice Age" of the 17th century,
often associated with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_minimum" target="_blank"><b>Maunder
Minimum</b></a>. Before that came the "<b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period" target="_blank">Medieval Warm
Period</a></b>", in which temperatures were about the same as they are today.
Both of these climate phenomena are known to have occurred
in the Northern Hemisphere, but several hundred years
prior to the present, the majority of the Southern
Hemisphere was primarily populated by indigenous peoples,
where science and scientific observation was limited to
non-existent. Thus we can not say that these periods
were necessarily "global".</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">However, </font><font face="Verdana" size="2">"Global Warming" in recent historical times has been an undisputable fact, and no
one can reasonably deny that.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">But
we're hearing far too often that the "science" is "settled", and that
it is mankind's contribution to the natural CO2 in the atmosphere has
been the principal cause of an increasing "Greenhouse Effect", which is
the root "cause" of global warming. We're also hearing that "all the
world's scientists now agree on this settled science", and it is now
time to quickly and most radically alter our culture, and prevent a
looming global catastrophe. And last, but not least, we're seeing a
sort of <b>mass hysteria</b> sweeping our culture which is
really quite disturbing. Historians ponder how the
entire nation of Germany could possibly have goose-stepped
into place in such a short time, and we have similar
unrest. Have we become a nation of overnight
loonies?</font></p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/mass-hysteria.jpg" width="750" border="0" height="204"></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Sorry folks, but we're not exactly buying
into the Global Hysteria just yet. We know a great deal about atmospheric physics,
<b><a href="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html#bio">(bio)</a></b> and from the onset, many of the claims were just plain fishy.
The extreme haste with which seemingly the entire world
immediately accepted the idea of Anthropogenic ( man-made
) Global Warming made us more than a little bit suspicious
that no one had really taken a close look at the
science. We also knew that the catch-all activity
today known as "Climate Science" was in its
infancy, and that atmospheric modeling did not and still
does not exist which can predict changes in the weather or
climate more than about a day or two in advance.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">So the endless stream of
dire predictions of what was going to happen years or
decades from now if we did not drastically reduce our CO2
production by virtually shutting down the economies of the
world appeared to be more the product of radical political
and environmental activism rather than science.
Thus, we embarked on a personal quest for more
information, armed with a strong academic background in
postgraduate physics and a good understanding of the
advanced mathematics necessary in such a pursuit.
This fundamental knowledge of the core principles of
matter and its many exceptionally complex interactions
allowed us to research and understand the foundations of
many other sciences. In short, we read complex
scientific articles in many other scientific disciplines
with relative ease and good understanding - like most
folks read comic books.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">As our own knowledge of
"climate science" grew, so grew our doubts over
the "settled science". What we found was
the science was far from "settled".. in fact it
was barely underway.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">It was for a while a
somewhat lonely quest, what with "all the world's
scientists" apparently having no doubt.
Finally, in December 2007 we submitted an article to one
of our local newspapers, the <b><a href="http://www.addisonindependent.com/" target="_blank">Addison
Independent</a></b>, thinking they would be delighted in
having at minimum an alternative view of the issue.
Alas, they chose not to publish it, but two weeks after
our submission (by the strangest coincidence), published
yet another "pro-global-warming" feature written
by an individual whom, to the best we could determine, had
no advanced training in any science at all, beyond
self-taught it would appear. Still, the individual
had published a number of popular books on popular
environmental issues, was well-loved by those of similar
political bent, and was held in high esteem among his
peers. We had learned a valuable lesson: Popular
Journalists trump coupled sets of 2nd-order partial
differential equations every time. Serious science
doesn't matter if you have the press in your pocket.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">In fairness to the
Addison Independent and its editors, our article was
somewhat lengthy and technical, and presumably the average
reader most likely could not follow or even be interested
in an alternative viewpoint, since everyone knew by now
that the global warming issue was "settled
science". And we confess that we like the
paper, subscribe to it, and know a number of folks who
work there personally. They're all good folks, and
they have every right to choose what does or doesn't go in
their publication. They also have a right to spin
the news any direction they choose, because that's what
freedom of the press is all about. Seems everyone,
both left and right, does it - and it's almost certain we
will be accused of doing the same here. And we just
may be, as hard as we may try to avoid it. We humans
aren't all shaped by the same cookie cutter, and that's a
blessing that has taken us as a species to the top of the
food chain.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">But by then we had been
sharing our own independent research of the literature
with others via email, and receiving a surprising amount
of agreement back in return. (We're in contact with a
large number of fellow scientists around the country,
dating back to our college days in the 17th century when
beer was a quarter a bottle). One local friend, in
particular, kept pressing us to publish, and even offered
to set up a "debate" with the Popular Journalist
who had usurped our original article. This we
politely declined, arguing that "debate" cannot
prove or disprove science...science must stand on its
own.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">But then something
unusual happened. </font><font face="Verdana"><font size="2">On
Dec.
13, 2007, <b> 100 scientists</b> jointly signed an <b><a href="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/un-signatories.html" target="_blank">Open
Letter</a></b> to Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General
of the United Nations, requesting they cease the man-made global
warming hysteria and settle down to helping mankind better prepare
for natural disasters. The final signature was from the <b>
President of the World Federation of Scientists</b>. </font></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"> </font><font face="Verdana" size="2">At
last, we were not alone...</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"> </font></p></td>
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<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>We decided to
publish</b> the results of our counter-exploration on the internet - but
in a somewhat uniquely different fashion. Knowing that most
folks aren't geeks, and may have little understanding of science or
math, we're going to attempt to <u>teach</u> some of the essential
physics and such as we go along. Readers with little or no mathematical or
scientific training may find it challenging, but if you have a
general understanding of introductory college or even solid high
school level chemistry or physics, you should have no problem in
following this amazing tale. The brighter readers, even
without a science background, should be able to follow, as
well. Smart folks learn faster than most.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">What follows is a tale
gleaned from many sources over what turned out to be an unreasonably
long period of time. We'll be first examining a "worst
case" scenario, using very simple math at first, in order to
arrive in a ballpark that will tell us if we need to go further and
pull out long strings of complicated equations, which we don't want
to have to resort to because we're writing for the average layman
who is not a rocket scientist. This is a valid scientific
method despite its apparent simplicity, for if one can first
determine that a person does not own a motorcycle, then you don't
have to spend a lot of time calculating how likely he is to crash
while riding it. Reducing it to the simplest of terms for
the average person to understand was a daunting task. Below is
an example of what "real" Climate Scientists have to deal
with on a daily basis. Is it any wonder that the most popular
majors in college are liberal arts?</font></p>
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<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/equation.jpg" width="408" border="0" height="172"><br>
<font face="Verdana" size="2">Snipped from an article
entitled <br>
<b>Solar-Cycle Warming at the Earth’s Surface and an
Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity.<br>
</b>By Ka-Kit Tung and Charles D. Camp<br>
Department of Applied Mathematics<br>
University of Washington, Seattle Washington</font></p></td>
<td width="50%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Let's take a
short glance at the equation at the left, because you're
never going to see anything like it again in this editorial. To most of
you, it is gobbly-gook, but to a physicist, it is part of a
mathematical proof accompanying a particular study done on
the sun's role in Global Warming. What the authors are
explaining is they have found that the total solar
irradiance (TSI) has been measured by orbiting satellites
since 1978 and it varies on an 11-year cycle by about
0.07%. So, from solar min to solar max, the TSI
reaching the earth’s surface increases at a rate
comparable to the radiative heating due to a 1% per year
increase in greenhouse gases, and will probably add, during
the next five to six years in the advancing phase of Solar
Cycle 24, almost 0.2 °K to the globally-averaged
temperature, thus doubling the amount of transient global
warming expected from greenhouse warming alone.
Whew....</font></td>
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<p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Don't
fret - neither Al Gore nor any of the Popular Journalists
can understand it either.</b></font></p></td>
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<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">We'll try to reference most of the
material, but if we miss a credit, or use a photograph someone
didn't want to share with the world (OK, we wonder why the photo was
on the web if that were the case) we'll quickly remove it with our
apologies. And let's freely admit up front that what we offer
here is a dissenting opinion, and surely we have
"cherry-picked" the articles of others which are also
contrary to the widely held current beliefs. A bit of this is
original on our part, but most of it comes from others around the
globe. We have tried to present work from what we believe to
be credible, thoroughly diligent scientists actively engaged in
current research. Let's get started:</font></p>
<hr width="75%" color="#c0c0c0" size="1">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">We're
reminded of an earlier story, which happened back in 1912. This was the
amazing discovery of a skull and jawbone in which was quickly named the
<b>Piltdown Man</b> and which all the world's
archaeologists immediately accepted as a hitherto unknown form of early
human. It appears no one bothered to examine it closely, assuming that
other scientists had thoroughly investigated and vetted it. The hoax
wasn't uncovered until 1953, when it was learned that the skull was
that of a modern man and the jaw that of an orangutan. Seems no one had
ever bothered to take a really close look at the artifact.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Well, folks, it does
appear we have a new, 21st Century Piltdown Man, and this time we know his name.</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"> <b>He's called
"Anthropogenic Global Warming"</b> </font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">It's hard to nail down
exactly when the sky started falling, but certainly the work of <a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/about/pubaff/news_releases/2006/news632761361369965320.htm" target="_blank"><b>Michael
Mann</b></a> provided its first global exposure. Michael
Mann, a paleoclimatologist ( one who attempts to interpret the past
climate through certain Paleolithic records, such as ice core
samples, sea bed sediments, coral heads, and tree ring growth ), submitted a paper to
<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html" target="_blank"><b> Nature</b></a> magazine
in 1998 which, unfortunately, was not subjected to peer review
before publication. In it, he offered what has now become
known as the famous "hockey stick" chart, showing the
earth's temperature having been relatively constant for the past
thousand years before suddenly skyrocketing upward at the dawn of
the 20th century. His interpretation was that man's production
of CO<sub>2</sub> in the modern age was obviously responsible for the
sudden increase. It turned out to be one of the biggest
scientific blunders of all time.</font></p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_ZBy66b-zlMs/RyKkOYC95KI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/pNwi3SnYTKY/s400/HOCKEYSTICK.jpg" width="400" border="0" height="279"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Look carefully at the
chart above, which is the famous "hockey stick"
chart. Note the horizontal scale is in years, stretching from
the year 1000 to the near present time. The vertical scale is
in degrees Centigrade, and note carefully that it is graded in
increments of 1/10 of a degree. That means the wiggly blue
section in the middle is actually only varying up and down by about
a half of a degree. The baseline, as noted, is set
at the average of the recorded temperatures from 1961 to 1990.
Also note that only the red portion represents actual measured
temperatures - the rest is based on the assumption that one can
interpret past temperatures from examining ancient tree rings or ice
core samples from centuries-old ice locked in glaciers. This
is, at best, a marriage of apples and oranges - the handle being
somewhat of an educated guess, and the blade being based on actual
measurements using thermometric recording devices. Sort of
like pairing the skull of a human with the jawbone of an orangutan. And finally,
note that the chart is for the northern hemisphere only. This
chart, unfortunately, became the foundation for the first report of
the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ),
which in turn provided the summary information and recommendations
to the world's governments. The </font><font face="Verdana" size="2"> Anthropogenic Global Warming
panic was off to a rocketing start.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">However, some folks
noticed a couple of significant and fairly well accepted
climatological history facts
to be conspicuously missing. The first was the well-documented
"Medieval Warm Period" where temperatures, at least in
Europe as mentioned in our introduction, were significantly
higher. The second was the "Little Ice Age", a
period in which the temperatures dropped so low the Thames River in
London froze over.</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>How could this be an accurate record of the
last millennium?</b></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Let's pause and
mention that the data above is not "raw" data. Dr.
Mann actually used about 70-80 data sets, and in each set he applied
a mathematical analysis known as a principle component analysis (
PCA ) which seeks to extract principal, or significant component
information from a widely varying set of raw data.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Along comes <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/" target="_blank"><b>Steve
McIntyre</b></a>, a Canadian analyst, who spends two years of his
own personal time reverse-engineering Dr. Mann's PCA program.
McIntyre subjects Mann's PCA program to a "Monte Carlo"
analysis - which inserts random data sets into the function - and
discovered that no matter what data he fed it, the result was always
the same. The arm of the "hockey stick" ( paleo-record
)
always came out straight. In Dr. Mann's case, the rising
temperature of the Medieval Warm Period and the expected trough of
the Little Ice Age had been completely erased. The hockey
stick was broken. Fini. Kaput. We may never know whether
Mann's work was deliberately contrived to fit some personal
environmental agenda, or just a colossal
mathematical blunder.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">McIntyre submitted his
work to Nature Magazine - since they were responsible for publishing
Mann's flawed research without peer review in the first place, but
they reportedly rejected it, saying it was "too
long". He then shortened it to 500 words, and
re-submitted it, but again it was rejected, this time saying it was
"too mathematical" or words to that effect. Heaven
forbid any publication calling itself an "International Weekly
Journal of Science" from actually publishing any science that
hinged on mathematics. Let's all push a yard stick into the
snow, measure the snow depth, call ourselves "climate
scientists", and get published in Nature. In the end,
McIntyre turned to the internet and its true freedom of the press,
and today he is known to every serious climate scientist on the
planet as the man who broke the hockey stick.</font></p>
<p align="LEFT"><font face="Verdana" size="2">The National Academy
of Sciences has found Mann's graph to have “a validation skill not
significantly different from zero” – i.e., the graph was
useless. Note the corrected version, below, in which neither
today's temperatures nor the rate of warming are particularly
unusual compared to the historical record. Thus, even the
"global warming" of the 20th century was not even remotely
a cause for the slightest alarm. It was all "much to do
about nothing".</font></p>
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<td width="50%"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/hope-it-lasts.jpg" width="408" border="0" height="334"></td>
<td width="50%" valign="top"><font face="Verdana" size="2">The
Medieval Warm Period, of which the proponents of
Anthropogenic Global Warming don't want you to be aware, was
a period in which agriculture flourished, helping Europe
emerge from the Dark Ages.</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">The Little Ice Age produced
crop failures from too-short growing seasons leading to
widespread hunger and even starvation in some more northern
locales.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Since our emergence from
the Little Ice Age, agriculture has again flourished, and
most of us hope it lasts quite a while longer. This is
certainly no cause for panic, and a few of us think being
comfortably warm and having plenty to eat is actually good.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">And Tom Nelson has a few
more graphs the AGW folks don't want you to see posted <a href="http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/search/label/graphs" target="_blank"><b>HERE.</b></a></font></p></td>
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<hr width="75%" color="#c0c0c0" size="1">
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Into the
Laboratory, it's time to go to work.</b></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Next, let's take a
look CO2 from an Atmospheric Physicist's view -
straightforward physics that we hope most of you will be able to
follow:</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">What we commonly call
"light" is actually electromagnetic radiation, physically
no different from radio waves, except of different frequencies and wavelengths.
The part we can see is called the visible spectrum. Beyond
what we can see in the higher frequencies ( and shorter wavelengths,
since they are reciprocal functions ) lies the ultraviolet
spectrum. UV light is very penetrating, which is why one
could get sunburned on an overcast day. Beyond even that are
X-rays, which can penetrate much deeper. On the opposite
end of the visible spectrum lies infra-red... which you can't see,
but you can easily feel, as anyone who has warmed his hands near a
hot stove can testify. It is the infrared portion we commonly
refer to as "heat" radiation. And beyond that are
the radio and television wavelengths we all know and love.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">The sun is very
"bright", and its frequency spectrum is generally too short to
produce much infrared coming down through the atmosphere.
Radiation from the sun penetrates the atmosphere, strikes the earth,
and some of it is absorbed and some is reflected. The
different bandwidths (colors) of reflected light depend on the
material struck, so something green-colored is reflecting the green
portion of the visible spectrum and absorbing the rest. This
heats up the earth, and that's the first part of the story.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">All heated bodies emit
radiation in the infrared range. This is called "black
body" radiation, because a perfectly black body reflects no
visible light but still emits radiation in a specified band of
wavelengths. Infrared radiation is of a much longer
wavelength, and can be much easier absorbed by certain components in
the atmosphere, causing them to also "heat up". The
warm air around us is being kept warm partially from black body
radiation coming from the earth itself. Another method of
warming is by conduction - air coming in contact with the heated
soil, rocks, trees, buildings, etc. and being directly warmed by
that contact. This may be a bigger factor than we think, but
we're not going to attempt to try to determine just how much that
might be. We'd have to know the total surface area of every
object - down to the smallest blade of grass - there is on our
planet. We also need to remind ourselves that there is
actually no physical quantity known as "cold". There
is only "heat" and "lack of heat".</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Next, lets talk about
a scientific process called Atomic Absorption Spectrometry. It
is a method by which we can measure precisely which wavelengths of
radiation a particular gas is capable of absorbing.</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/absorption-spectrometer.jpg" width="525" border="0" height="212"></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">In our highly
simplified drawing above, a radiation source is beamed through a
glass container containing a gas sample. As the radiation
passes through, a portion of it is absorbed at particular narrow
bandwidths (often more than one ) so the end result are some
"missing" sections of the whole spectrum coming from the
source, which show up as dark lines. They're missing because
they were absorbed by the sample in the chamber. They are called
absorption lines, or absorption spectra, and when analyzed by a knowledgeable
person, can tell one what the gas or gas mixture is in the sample
chamber based on a catalog of known spectra. It's a wonderful tool for analyzing unknown gas
samples.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Let's look at a real
result, below - the absorption spectrum for pure carbon dioxide plus
an amount of water vapor equal to that in our current atmosphere as the
sample and infrared radiation from a black body spectrum as the source.
This is part of the so-called "greenhouse effect"</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/CO2%20Absorption%20Spectrum.jpg" width="457" border="0" height="230"></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">As we can see above, carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation (IR) in
<u>only three narrow bands of frequencies</u>, which
correspond to wavelengths of 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µm), respectively.
The percentage absorption of all three lines combined can be very
generously estimated at about 8% of the
whole IR spectrum, which means that 92% of the "heat"
passes right through without being absorbed by CO2. In
reality, the two smaller peaks don't account for much, since they
lie in an energy range that is much smaller than the where the 15
micron peak sits - so 4% or 5% might be closer to reality. If the
entire atmosphere were composed of nothing but CO2, i.e., was pure
CO2 and nothing else, it would still
only be able to absorb no more than 8% of the heat radiating from
the earth.</font></p>
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<tbody><tr>
<td width="100%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Note: In
our original draft, we talked a bit about relative spacing
geometry, to give the reader a feel for the distance between
molecules in the atmosphere. We talked in (very crude)
terms about tacking bottle caps up on a barn wall, and gave
some spacing examples in 2 dimensions for a rough feel of
the subject. One of our readers, <span lang="EN-GB">Peter
J. Morgan - a consulting engineer from New Zealand -
undertook to re-write our simple ( and not technically
accurate ) description for his 15 year old son. He was
kind enough to send it to us, and we liked it so much we
threw out our South Park estimate and substituted his work
instead. Thanks, Peter!<span style=""> </span></span></font></td>
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<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"><span lang="EN-GB">To give you a
feeling for how little CO<sub>2</sub> there actually is in the
atmosphere, let's note that atoms and molecules are very tiny
things, and the distances between them are therefore also very
small. Physicists like to use a unit of measure called an Angstrom,
which is 0.1 of a nano-meter, or a 0.1 billionth of a meter, (i.e.
10<sup>-10</sup> of a meter or 10<sup>-7</sup> of a mm). A molecule
like CO<sub>2</sub> has a size of around two Angstroms (2 x 10<sup>-7</sup> mm).
The density of the gas is 10 to the 24th power number of molecules
occupying a space of about 22 liters (i.e. 4.55 x 10<sup>22</sup>
molecules per liter) at a pressure of 760mm of mercury and 273
degrees Kelvin (i.e. 32 degrees Fahrenheit or zero degrees Celsius)
– called the "standard temperature and pressure". You
can almost think of all this as just the normal temperature and
pressure around you right now. A simple calculation shows that in a
3-dimensional tetrahedron array, as shown in the diagram below (for
the closest possible packing with an equal distance between
molecules), the spacing between molecules is approximately 28 Angstroms.</span></font></p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/tetra-molecule.jpg" width="506" border="0" height="275"></p>
<p align="center"><i><font face="Verdana" size="2"><span lang="EN-GB">For
equidistant packing, a tetrahedron arrangement is required</span></font></i></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"><span lang="EN-GB">To fit 4.55 x 10<sup>22</sup>
molecules equispaced in a 100-mm cube (i.e. one liter) they have to
be 28 Angstroms apart.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"><span lang="EN-GB">Since at 2 x 10<sup>-7</sup> mm
diameter, CO<sub>2</sub> is a very tiny molecule, let's magnify the
picture by a factor of 10 million, so that we can imagine a CO<sub>2</sub>
molecule as a 20 mm diameter marble floating in the air.
However, CO<sub>2</sub> makes up only 380 of each million molecules
of air – the rest are a mixture of all the other atmospheric gases
and water vapor – i.e. only one in every 2632 molecules is a CO<sub>2</sub>
molecule. Let’s imagine that all the other molecules are colored
blue, and CO<sub>2</sub> molecules are colored red. All the marbles
making up our model atmosphere are equispaced at 280 mm apart.
When mixed evenly into our model atmosphere (which is what the wind
does) a bit more simple math shows that our red marbles are
equispaced at 3900 mm (i.e. 3.9 meters) apart. In the real
atmosphere, at a height of approx. 5500 meters, pressure is halved
from what it is at sea level. A bit more simple math shows that at a
height of 5500 meters (55 million kilometers in our model
– that’s 143 times the distance from earth to the moon!), our 20 mm
diameter CO<sub>2</sub> marbles are equispaced at 4.9 meters
apart. Now you know why CO<sub>2</sub> is called a “trace” gas.</span></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">This whole
picture we have drawn ( with Peter Morgan's help ) illustrates both how little CO2 there is in
the atmosphere, and how relatively little of the radiation it is
capable of absorbing and "heating" the atmosphere. We know
that most of the other IR radiation bands slips through and doesn't
get to do any heating at all. (We've all seen the
nice IR photographs taken from the space station.) But some
scientists such as <b><a href="http://www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm" target="_blank">Dr.
Heinz Hug</a></b> who specialize in study of this stuff claims that
all of the heat in these particular spectra are indeed absorbed in a
relatively short distance, so adding more CO2 to the atmosphere
can't affect anything at any rate. Other scientists, such as
Dr. Roy W. Spencer at NASA - and one of the leading experts in the
field of climate science - doesn't completely agree</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">We've decided to be
exceptionally generous to all concerned in the debate and look at
the worst-case scenario, where we'll say that <u>all</u> of the
available heat in the CO2 absorption spectrum is actually
captured. We know that man is responsible for about 3 % of it,
so with the simplest of math, we have .03 x .08 = .0024. And
remember that 8% figure was actually larger than reality, since the
two side peaks don't have much energy to capture.</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Man-made CO2
doesn't appear physically capable of absorbing much more than<br>
two-thousandths of the radiated heat (IR) passing upward through the
atmosphere.</b></font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>And, if all of
the available heat in that spectrum is indeed being captured by the
current CO2 levels before leaving the atmosphere, then adding more
CO2 to the atmosphere won't matter a bit.</b></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">In short, the laws of
physics don't seem to allow CO2 it's currently assumed place as a
significant "greenhouse gas" based on present concentrations.
The other "greenhouse gases" such as methane, nitrous oxide,
tetrafluoromethane, hexafluoroethane, sulfur hexafluoride,
trifluoromethane, 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane, and 1,1-difluoroethane
exist only in extraordinarily smaller amounts and aren't even up for
serious discussion by any segment of the scientific community.
And, since the other
components of the atmosphere (oxygen, nitrogen, and water vapor)
aren't materially affected by human activity, the "greenhouse
effect" is essentially a totally natural phenomenon, unaffected
by human activity. We could repeat the spectral analysis and
calculations for Oxygen, or O<sub>2</sub> ( </font><font face="Verdana" size="2">The
percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere remains exactly the same at
all heights up to about 85 km, and is about 20.9% by volume ) and
Nitrogen (N<sub>2</sub>) which is the whopper at 78.1% - but we
won't. We'll leave that as your homework problem now that you
know how to do it. Just look up the atomic absorption spectra
for both, and do the math. You'll discover that Oxygen and
Nitrogen aren't even "greenhouse gases", so that leaves
the principal greenhouse gas... you
guessed it.... Water Vapor. Curiously enough, the UN IPCC
reports don't even mention water vapor, since it is technically not
a "gas" in the atmosphere. Dr. Roy W. Spencer has one of the
best comments we've read on this subject:<br>
</font></p>
<div align="center">
<center>
<table width="681" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="679"><span class="factoid_font"><font face="Verdana" size="2">"Al
Gore likes to say that mankind puts 70 million tons of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day. What he
probably doesn't know is that mother nature puts 24,000
times that amount of our main greenhouse gas -- water vapor
-- into the atmosphere every day, and removes about the same
amount every day. While this does not 'prove' that
global warming is not manmade, it shows that weather systems
have by far the greatest control over the Earth's greenhouse
effect, which is dominated by water vapor and clouds."</font></span></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</center>
</div>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"> <br>
We can safely ballpark water vapor
as being responsible for more than 95% of all the greenhouse effect,
with oxygen and nitrogen playing no role and carbon dioxide
being relatively insignificant... particularly the even smaller
human-produced part.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Side note</b>:
Both Oxygen and Nitrogen don't like to live alone. They prefer
to find another and stick together into a diatomic ( 2 atom )
molecule. Thus the molecular weight of atmospheric oxygen or
nitrogen is approximately twice that of one of them alone. We
say "approximately", because it takes energy to bind them
together, and mass and energy are equivalent stuff, as our good friend
Dr. Einstein explained with his famous equation E=MC<sup>2.</sup></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Now, you can sit back
and give yourself a pat on the back, because you now know more pure
physics of the atmosphere than a lot of so-called "climate
scientists", and likely know more than almost all of the
non-scientist Popular Journalists and other writers churning out
panic-stricken books and newspaper articles on the subject.</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>And for sure, you
now know a lot more than Al Gore.</b></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>One would think</b>
this would be the end of the discussion, that the laws of physics
show us that CO<sub>2</sub> isn't even a significant "greenhouse gas"
and certainly the human contribution is insignificant. We both
now know that CO<sub>2 </sub>can't possibly be the evil byproduct
all the ballyhoo has been claiming, and in fact, our biologist
friends tell us if we could <u>increase</u> the CO<sub>2</sub>
content a little more, the planet would be much the richer...
because plants love it, grow much larger with more of it, and we all
like to eat. CO<sub>2 </sub>is a non-toxic, non-polluting,
earth-friendly component that really is critical to our
survival. Maybe that's why we laughed so hard when the Popular
Journalist in the Addison Independent insisted that 340, rather than
380 parts per million CO<sub>2</sub> was a "target" we
should all shoot for. While you're pulling rabbits out of a
hat, could you please bring me a Pepsi?</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">OK, if you still are
compelled to worry about something, think about this: The
amount of oxygen in our atmosphere is slowly diminishing. A
very long time ago, it was as much as 35% of the atmosphere, and has
been shrinking ever since. We always wondered why those
plant-eating eating dinosaurs had such long necks, and now we know -
they had to reach up for dinner into the really tall trees that once
dotted our oxygen-rich planet.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">But let's not worry
about that just now, for this current
story is far from over. If you've read this far, you're
likely more curious than most, and probably more intelligent than
average. And you probably want to know exactly what is causing
the warming and cooling periods on the planet which have been going
on for millennia. Inquiring minds want to know this stuff.</font></p>
<hr width="75%" color="#c0c0c0" size="1">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Let's break for a minute</b>,
and point out that "Climate Science" is a catch-all term,
like "Sports". The fellow who takes a daily
temperature reading or measures the snow depth with a stick could
call himself a "Climate Scientist" as much as the person
tending the boiler in the basement could call himself a
"Stationary Engineer". Earth's climate is an
enormously complex subject, spanning not only the "pure"
sciences like physics and chemistry, but many of the "natural
sciences", such as oceanography, meteorology, volcanology, paleontology,
archeology, solar science, and many others. All scientists aren't of the same
quality, intellect, or natural talent for the trade. Sloppy
scientists are as common as bad mechanics.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>At the top of the
pecking order</b> of knowledge needs sit the fundamental laws of
physics - for no matter what others may determine, the final results
must obey the fundamental, established principles which determine
the nature of all elemental matter. Unfortunately, many
"environmental scientists" actually study very little
physics, chemistry or biology in depth. And many of the
"lower" sciences involve little mathematics beyond
introductory calculus. Before the greater body of scientists
out there start beating on us, we'll admit that very few physicists
had a time slot to study organic chemistry and beyond in college - and the truth of the
matter is, there aren't enough semester hours available for everyone
to be cross-trained in other disciplines to any competent
depth. This makes becoming a highly skilled "Climate
Scientist" very challenging, for this extremely complex field
requires a very large tool kit. Thus, we trust others to
deliver meaningful results from their specific disciplines. If
a geologist tells us a particular rock is from the Devonian Period,
we have little choice but to believe him. So in what follows,
we're going to have to trust we have chosen good, solid scientists
from other disciplines as our guide.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">In reading
"scientific articles" one must also be very alert to use of the
word "if". This is the killer word - the Colt .45 of
sloppy or even deliberately misleading science. "If" the sea level rises 40
feet, then certainly most of Manhattan will be flooded.
"If" the moon falls on Kansas, then certainly wheat prices
are going to soar out of site. Within a sentence or two,
"if" morphs into "when" and soon everyone is
convinced that the moon is absolutely going to fall on Kansas, it's
just a matter of time, we're all doomed... unless we take immediate
action to stop it. But neither of these are very
likely to happen, as we shall soon see.</font></p>
<hr width="75%" color="#c0c0c0" size="1">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>After the hockey
stick</b> was accepted virtually overnight without close examination
( like the Piltdown Man ), along comes Al Gore, a long-time
"environmentalist", ( who made near-failing grades in
science and math in college ) who decides to make a movie out of it. The
hockey stick goes up on the big screen, and Gore boards a mechanical
lift with cameras grinding, pointer in hand as he rises in unison with the blade of the
stick which starts growing upward toward the ceiling. No
longer are we talking about tenths of a degree, the temperature is
rising like a puff pastry, and headed toward the attic. It all
began with the word "<b>if</b>". If the hockey
stick tip continues to rise (lift starts going upward, the audience
holds its breath ) then... and along comes computer animations of
New York flooding, Florida underwater, and poor little Polar Bears
struggling to board the last piece of ice floating in the open
Arctic Sea. (sigh...) It ends with Hurricane Katrina and Boston
almost losing the pennant. It is Hollywood at its finest, and the
Deacons of La La Land give it an Oscar. Even the Nobel Committee
is impressed, gives it two thumbs-up and a Nobel Prize to Gore and
the other members of the IPCC for the many lives that will be saved
in the future because of this brilliant early warning. And,
there's still time for we miserable humans to "save" the
planet by buying "carbon offsets" accomplished best by investing in Al Gore's British company which buys stock in
other companies that will benefit from a world-wide global warming
hysteria (keeping a healthy cut) and making, perhaps, Al Gore the richest former Vice
President in history. That will buy a lot of SUV's, jets, and
large mansions with mega-electric bills. Everyone wins except
the taxpayer and businessman, who are soon to pay a very heavy
price.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>So what's really
causing the endless cycles of warming and cooling</b>, if it isn't a
constantly changing "Greenhouse Effect" - with man to
blame? Man wasn't producing much CO<sub>2</sub> in the past million
years, so he hasn't simply been turning the greenhouse up and down
at will. Just look up - one of the most likely culprits is our
old friend, the Sun.</font></p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0707/070907sun.jpg" width="330" border="0" height="288"></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Canadian climatologist <a href="http://http-server.carleton.ca/%7Etpatters/biography/biography.html" target="_blank"><b>Tim
Patterson</b></a> says the sun drives the earth's climate
changes—and Earth's current global warming is a direct result of a
long, moderate 1,500-year cycle in the sun's irradiance.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Patterson says he learned of the
1,500-year climate cycle while studying cycles in fish numbers on
Canada's West Coast. Since the Canadian West had no long-term
written fishery records, Patterson's research team drilled sediment
cores in the deep local fjords to get 5,000-year climate profiles
from the mud. The mud showed the past climate conditions: Warm
summers left layers thick with one-celled fossils and fish scales.
Cold, wet periods showed dark sediments, mostly dirt washed from the
surrounding land. Patterson's fishing profiles clearly
revealed the sun's 87 and 210-year solar cycles—and the longer,
1500-year <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard-Oeschger_event" target="_blank"><b> Dansgaard-Oeschger</b></a> cycles found since the 1980s in ice
cores, tree rings, and fossil pollen.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">"Even though the sun is
brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase
in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause
the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an
amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate
changes. Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered,"
says Patterson.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">"In a series of groundbreaking
scientific papers starting in 2000, Vizer, Shaviv, Carslaw and most
recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as
the output of the sun varies ... varying amounts of galactic cosmic
rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system... These
cosmic rays enhance cloud formation, which, overall, has a cooling
effect on the planet."</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">"When the sun is less bright,
more cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more
clouds form and the planet cools... This is precisely what
happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th
century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere ... was at
a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age."</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">The Canadian expert concludes,
"CO<sub>2</sub> variations show little correlation with our planet's
climate on long, medium and even short time scales. Instead,
Earth's sea surface temperatures show a massive 95 percent <u> lagged</u>
correlation with the sunspot index." We'll talk about
what a "correlation" means in a couple of minutes.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">So what does this all mean?
It means, in the simplest of terms, that it is <u>the Sun</u> which
is warming the oceans, not an increased "Greenhouse
Effect" caused by human activity.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">And, it might appear that Mother
Earth is not the only one suffering from the Sun's effect.
Data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey mission in 2005
disclosed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps” near Mars’
south pole had been shrinking for three consecutive summers.
Mmmm... We could go on for endless pages on solar science and
the sun's relationship to global warming, but we're not going to do
that. One of the best summary articles we've found in simple
layman terms is by Kevin Roeten, and you can read more on that by
clicking <b><a href="http://planetdaily.ws/index.php/more/77/" target="_blank">HERE</a></b>.</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>The current
warming Solar Cycle is just about over.<br>
The global temperatures have been nominally <u> flat</u> for the past 8
years.<br>
If the Solar Scientists are correct, we about to head into a cooling
cycle... which is not good news.</b></font></p>
<hr width="76%">
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Let's get back to our own
science project</b>.</font></p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/correlation.jpg" width="400" border="0" height="205"></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">The above chart shows two things we
immediately recognize as very similar. In fact they seem to
match each other very well. We would say they have a strong
correlation, and with a little mathematics, we could compare each
one point-by-point on the graph and come up with a number that would
tell us just how well they match each other, called a correlation
coefficient. In fact, a glance at the above suggests a perfect,
100% correlation, because in fact one is an exact copy of the
other. We know this because we made the chart.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Now suppose the blue one represents
changing CO<sub>2</sub> levels in the atmosphere and the red one represents
changing global temperatures over the same time frame. The
above is a gross exaggeration, of course, but we wanted to make sure
no one doubted there is a strong correlation between the two.
Is there any doubt that CO2 is causing the global temperature to
change? Any doubt at all? None? Zero doubt, right?</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b><u>Wrong</u></b> In fact, the
blue line is exactly one pixel on your screen ahead of the red
line. We know that because we made the chart. You
couldn't tell that one was exactly like the other and actually
leading it by one pixel without dragging out a powerful magnifying
device and doing some very careful measurements and some pretty
lengthy mathematics.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">This was the fundamental mistake
that Mann, Al Gore, the Oscar boys, the Nobel Committee, the IPCC, and just
about everyone else on the planet made at the beginning. They immediately assumed,
noticing that CO<sub>2</sub> levels and global temperatures had a pretty good
correlation, that CO<sub>2</sub> was the culprit, and was causing global
temperatures to rise. In fact, it appears it was just the
opposite: rising global temperatures caused increased CO<sub>2</sub> level in
the atmosphere.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">So where did the increasing CO<sub>2</sub> come from?
You can't make CO<sub>2</sub> out of Oxygen and Nitrogen... surely you're
pulling my leg!</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Let's do a little simple Chemistry,
and figure out the molecular mass of the different atmospheric
constituents. For this we go to the <b><a href="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/periodic-table.html" target="_blank">Periodic
Table of the Elements</a></b>, and find the atomic mass of Nitrogen,
Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen. Let's forget about Argon, which
is about 0.9% of the atmosphere, because it's supposed to be CO<sub>2</sub>
that's the evil stuff. To the nearest round number,
Carbon = 12, Nitrogen = 14, Oxygen = 16, and lowly Hydrogen =
1. That's based on the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the
atom. The Periodic Table will give a slightly different
number, because of that binding energy ( which is a mass equivalent
) we talked about earlier.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">So, what's the approximate <u>molecular mass</u>
of the different gasses? That's simple addition:</font></p>
<div align="center">
<center>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="25%" align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Water
(H<sub>2</sub>O)</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">1 +1+16 = 18 amu</font></p></td>
<td width="25%" align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Nitrogen
(N<sub>2</sub>)</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">14 + 14 = 28 amu</font></p></td>
<td width="25%" align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Oxygen
(O<sub>2</sub>)</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">16 + 16 = 32 amu</font></p></td>
<td width="25%" align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Carbon
Dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>)</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">12 + 16 + 16 = 44 amu </font></p></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</center>
</div>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Remember, we're rounding off to the
nearest whole number, and amu means Atomic Mass Units.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Do you see something
significant? Think like a scientist. Yes, CO<sub>2</sub> is by far
the <u>heaviest</u> of the major constituents, and the law of
gravity applies to it as well. It sinks to the ground.. in
fact, into the ground, and into the oceans, as well, because CO2 is
very water-soluble and that's what puts the fizz in Ginger Ale.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">This doesn't happen
overnight. In fact, the winds and convection currents and such
keep the air stirred up constantly, so it may take 100-150 years for
the CO<sub>2</sub> you are exhaling right now to make it back into mother
earth, where most of it is currently locked up. </font></p>
<div align="center">
<center>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="44%" valign="top"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/solar-warming.jpg" width="336" border="0" height="268"></td>
<td width="56%">
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"> Now our puzzle
is complete, and we can visualize the whole thing.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">1. The sun heats the earth,
repository of most of the CO<sub>2</sub> on the planet.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">2. Some stored CO<sub>2</sub> comes out by a
process known as <i>outgassing</i> ( from the soil ) and the <i>champagne
effect</i> ( from the oceans ). The oceans are by far the
largest source.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">3. Sloppy
"scientists" see the warming, and the CO<sub>2</sub>, but
overlook the changes in the sun, don't see the fine
differences in timing... and proceed to blame the increasing
temperature on CO<sub>2 </sub>and mankind as the culprit in
a classic knee-jerk reaction.</font></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</center>
</div>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Funny, any 1st Grader would have
told us that if we had asked them "What makes the earth warm,
Susie?" Nobody ever said science had to be
"hard". You can demonstrate this with a simple
kitchen experiment. Pour a glass of ginger ale, sit it on the
table, and see how long it takes to go "flat" at room
temperature. Now pour an equal glass into a pan and put it on the
stove on low heat, then time how long it takes to go flat. That's your homework experiment - to
demonstrate that extra heat really releases CO<sub>2</sub> a lot faster :-)></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Our satellites are pretty good at
measuring overall ocean temperatures from afar, and CO<sub>2</sub> measurements
are being taken daily around the globe. The best results we
have been able to turn up so far is that measurable CO<sub>2</sub> increases
appear about 9 months after an upswing in ocean temperatures.
The data is messed up a bit every time a volcano decides to blow its top, because that's the mother of CO<sub>2</sub> producers, bar
none. And a buffalo emits about the same amount of methane (CH<sub>4</sub>) as driving
your automobile about 8,000 miles - which can combine with O<sub>2</sub> in a highly exothermic reaction (
gives off heat ) to produce CO<sub>2</sub> and H<sub>2</sub>O as end products.</font></p>
<hr width="76%">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana"><font size="2"><b>One question</b>
that has been nagging us here at the Middlebury Community Network
Science Center (our desk) is, "how in heck does one measure the
"global temperature" in the first place"? If we
asked you what your skin temperature is right now, you'd likely
answer, "Where?" The temperature on your nose is
likely far different from the bottom of your feet or other places
you might measure. With the greater portion of the earth
covered by water, and no floating temperature recording buoys every
mile or so, how can we get an "average"? Well,
satellites can measure ocean temperatures ( we'll talk more about
that later ) but here in the U.S., for example there are only 1221
U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations</font><font size="2">,
and our math shows that to be about one every 3,400 square miles.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">And from that data,
one can cherry-pick (as some have done ) to obtain any result he
wants. For example, here are four records we cherry-picked
from the whole dataset - note the temperatures are in Fahrenheit,
not Centigrade:</font></p>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="50%" valign="top">
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/cornwall-vt-temp.jpg" width="375" border="0" height="288"><br>
<font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Cornwall, Vermont</b>
temperatures appear to have slowly<br>
increased during the past century - about 1/2 °F<br>
...time to break out the lifeboats.</font></p></td>
<td width="50%" align="center" valign="top">
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/steamboat-springs-temp.jpg" width="375" border="0" height="292"><br>
<font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Steamboat Springs, Colorado</b>,
on the other hand,<br>
had a temperature drop of about 4 </font><font face="Verdana" size="2">°F<br>
Darn, they're stealing our skiers!</font></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" width="100%" valign="top">
<hr width="75%" color="#c0c0c0" size="1">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="50%" valign="top">
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/berkley-ca-temp.jpg" width="375" border="0" height="291"><br>
<font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Berkley, California</b>
really heated up - a whopping 3 °F<br>
Must have been all those protests in the 60's...</font></p></td>
<td width="50%" valign="top">
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/bucyrus-oh-temp.jpg" width="375" border="0" height="289"><br>
<font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Bucyrus, Ohio</b> doesn't
seem to have a ticket one way<br>
or the other in the Global Warming Game.<br>
Spoil Sports!</font></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" width="100%" align="center" valign="top">
<hr width="75%" color="#c0c0c0" size="1">
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p align="left"><b><font face="Verdana" size="2">What's that
straight line running through the annual average temperature
readings?</font></b><font face="Verdana" size="2"><br>
The linear regression line obtained from the statistical output is
the "best-fitting" straight line that can be drawn through
the data. It is designated by the equation Y = b<font size="1">1</font>X
+ b<font size="1">0</font>, where X represents the year, Y
represents the predicted temperature anomaly, b<font size="1">1</font>
is the slope of the line and b<font size="1">0</font> is the Y
intercept of the line. Now you know.</font></p>
<div align="center">
<center>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td colspan="2" width="100%"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>While we can joke</b>
about individual station readings, in fact there may be something
skewing the data. Berkley, California, for example, was a
sleepy little town back in 1857, when the data starts. Since
that time, it has grown into a much larger city, with many miles of
asphalt roads operating as near-perfect "black body" heat
radiators. This is known as the "urban heat island"
effect. Many Climate Scientists now seriously doubt the
accuracy of even the 20th century section of the hockey stick. </font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="66%"><font size="1"> </font><font face="Verdana" size="2">Anthony
Watts, writing in <b><a href="http://icecap.us/index.php" target="_blank">ICECAP</a></b>,
gives us a typical example:</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">This NOAA USHCN climate
station of record #415018 in Lampasas, Texas, was found to
be tucked between a building and two parking lots, one with
nearby vehicles. According to the surveyor, it is
right next to the ACE Hardware store on the main street of
town. While likely representative of the temperature
for downtown Lampasas, one wonders how well it measures the
climate of the region. In her survey, volunteer
surveyor Julie K. Stacy noted the proximity to the building
and parking, which will certainly affect Tmin ( the lowest
temperature ) at night due to IR radiance. Daytime Tmax is
likely affected by the large amount of asphalt and concrete
in the area around the sensor.</font></p></td>
<td width="34%"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/heat-island.jpg" width="213" border="0" height="163"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" width="100%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">You too can check the temperature history near your Grandpappy's
home by accessing the <b><a target="_blank" href="http://www.co2science.org/data/ushcn/ushcn.php">Historical
Climatology Network (USHCN)</a></b> stations databank.</font></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</center>
</div>
<hr width="75%" color="#c0c0c0" size="1">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">While Al Gore's Oscar
and Nobel Prize winning film, <b><i><a href="http://www.an-inconvenient-truth.com/" target="_blank">An
Inconvenient Truth</a></i></b>, has serious students of climate
change laughing their heads off, the British didn't think it was
very funny. The British High Court has ruled that it cannot be shown
to students without first having a disclaimer that it is
"propaganda", instead of a "documentary".
Those Brits just don't seem to have a sense of humor... or maybe
they just think scaring little kids isn't an honorable pastime.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Nevertheless, the film
makes a good outline for further discussion. Let's start with
those poor little Polar Bears, taking their swim in the vast, empty
Arctic ocean, just before they drown. Carole "CJ"
Williams probably sums it up best, so we'll just quote her below..</font></p>
<div align="center">
<center>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="43%" valign="top"><img src="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/00440/news-graphics-2008-_440233a.jpg" width="320" border="0" height="226"></td>
<td width="57%" valign="top">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Last March,
global warming fanatic Al Gore used a picture of two polar
bears purportedly stranded on melting ice off the coast of
Alaska as a visual aide to support his claim that man-made
global warming is doing great harm to Mother Earth. The one
he chose, but didn’t offer to pay for right away, turned
out to be a photo of a polar bear and her cub out doing what
healthy, happy polar bears do on a wave-eroded chunk of ice
not all that far from shore in the Beaufort Sea north of
Barstow, Alaska.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">The picture,
wrongly credited to Dan Crosbie, an ice observer specialist
for the Canadian Ice Service, was actually taken by Amanda
Byrd while she was on a university-related research cruise
in August of 2004, a time of year when the fringe of the
Arctic ice cap normally melts. </font></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" width="100%">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Byrd, a marine
biology grad student at the time, was gathering zooplankton
for a multi-year study of the Arctic Ocean. Crosbie,
who was also on the trip, pilfered the polar bear photo from
a shared computer onboard the Canadian icebreaker where Ms.
Byrd downloaded her snapshots; he saved it in his personal
file. Several months later, Crosbie, who is known as an avid
photographer, gave the photo to the Canadian Ice Service,
which then allowed Environment Canada to use it as an
illustration for an online magazine.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Today that
photo, with credit given to photographer Dan Crosbie and the
Canadian Ice Service, can be found all over the Internet,
generally with the caption “Two polar bears are stranded
on a chunk of melting ice”.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">It’s a hoax,
folks. The bears, which can swim distances of 100 miles and
more, weren’t stranded; they were merely taking a break
and watching the boat go by when a lady snapped their
picture.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">On Feb. 2,
2007 Denis Simard, a representative of Environment Canada,
distributed that lady’s photo to 7 media agencies,
including the Associated Press, and timed it to coincide
with the release of the United Nations’ major global
warming report in Paris, France on Feb 3rd. When the press
called Simard in Paris to ask if it was his picture and
could they print it, he says, “I gave them permission
because Dan said it was his picture.”</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Al Gore saw
the picture shortly thereafter and contrived to use it in a
presentation about man-made global warming that he staged at
a conference of human resource executives on March 22, 2007
in Toronto, Canada.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">With an
enlarged version of Amanda Byrd’s polar bear picture on
the screen behind him, Gore said, “Their habitat is
melting… beautiful animals, literally being forced off the
planet. They’re in trouble, got nowhere else to go.”</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Of course,
after those words were spoken, the audience, being under the
impression that polar bears are in imminent danger, gasped
with concern and sympathy for the plight of the poor,
pathetic polar bear population, whose diet, by the way, can
include convenient humans, though attacks, like wolf-human
attacks, are said to be rare.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">According to
Ms. Bryd, when she took the picture, the mother bear and its
cub didn’t appear to be in any danger and Denis Simard
seems to have backpedaled when quoted by Ontario’s
National Post as saying that you “have to keep in mind
that the bears aren’t in danger at all. It was, if you
will, their playground for 15 minutes. You know what I mean?
This is a perfect picture for climate change, in a way,
because you have the impression they are in the middle of
the ocean and they are going to die with a coke in their
hands. But they were not that far from the coast, and it was
possible for them to swim.” </font></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</center>
</div>
<div align="center">
<center>
<table width="794" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="457"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/greenpeace-screenshot.jpg" width="451" border="0" height="361"></td>
<td width="333">
<p align="center"><b><font face="Verdana" size="2">That
"Melting" Arctic Ice</font></b></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">At left is a screen shot
from the <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy" target="_blank"><b>Greenpeace</b></a>
web site, from a video which drips with the urgency of
stopping the "melting" of the Arctic Ice Pack.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">But look closely:
Those are <u>shear lines</u>, where the ice has <u>broken</u>,
not "melted". Melting does not occur in
particular paths across the ice sheet, except when being
zapped by aliens in UFO's.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Note closely the comment
"more severe storms that wreak havoc on our home and
communities".</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">It has become most popular
to blame global warming ( and man ) on virtually everything
under the sun. And we mustn't forget to throw in a
non-sequitur related to the "elderly and poor" -
whose beachfront condos will soon be under water, no doubt.</font></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" width="792"><font face="Verdana" size="2">But
a new study released in Jan, 2008 by Chunzai Wang, a
research oceanographer at the <b><a href="http://www.noaa.gov/" target="_blank">National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's</a></b> Miami Lab
and the University of Miami, suggests that Global warming
could actually <u>reduce</u> the number of hurricanes that
hit the United States. Wong found a link between
warming waters, especially in the Indian and Pacific oceans,
to increased vertical wind shear in the Atlantic Ocean near
the United States And wind shear - a change in wind
speed or direction - makes it hard for hurricanes to form,
strengthen and stay alive. His conclusion is, </font><font face="Verdana" size="2">"Global
warming may <u>decrease</u> the likelihood of hurricanes
making landfall in the United States,"</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">His study is published in <em><b><a href="http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/" target="_blank">Geophysical
Research Letters</a></b>.</em></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">The global warming
hysterians very typically use photos of perfectly normal
weather phenomena to promote panic
( and presumably,
donations to their cause ). Particularly popular are
videos of calving glaciers, which break off and create quite
a splash when they hit the water. But any 10-year-old
knows that a calving glacier is a result of a <u>growing</u>,
not receding glacier. A receding glacier, well... <u>recedes</u>...and
calves no more.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">To
make a very long story much shorter, the warmer oceans have
indeed been selectively melting some portions of the Arctic
Ice Cap, but severe storms created large waves which broke
up, rather than melted a substantial portion of the edges of
the polar ice. This re-freezes in the winter.
And you don't have to panic: the cold winter of 2007-2008
has returned the arctic ice cap to a handsome 13,000 000
square kilometers - which may melt again in normal summer
melting cycle. There's tons of research going on in
this field as well.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>And
about those "melting glaciers..."</b></font>
</p><div align="center">
<center>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td colspan="2" width="100%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Strange
how our research turned up a completely different
story. We found 50 glaciers are advancing in New
Zealand, others are growing in Alaska, Switzerland, the
Himalayas, and even
our old friend, Mt. St. Helens is sprouting a brand new
crater glacier that is advancing at 3 feet per year.</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">And down south last September, NASA satellites showed the Antarctic Ice
Field to be the largest it has ever been in the 30 years it
has been observed by satellite (based on an analysis of 347 million radar
altimeter measurements made by the European Space Agency's
ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites).</font></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="50%">
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/glacier1.jpg" width="314" border="0" height="212"></p></td>
<td width="50%">
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/glacier2.jpg" width="309" border="0" height="212"></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="50%">
<p align="center"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">The
terminus of Tsaa Glacier in Icy Bay in July 2005.<br>
Photo by Chris Larsen, Geophysical Institute, UAF</span></p></td>
<td width="50%">
<p align="left"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">The
terminus of Tsaa Glacier in June 2007 after a recent
advance of the glacier. Note the position of the large
waterfall. The glacier advanced about one-third of a
mile sometime between August 2006 and June 2007.<br>
Photo by Chris Larsen, Geophysical Institute, UAF</span></p></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</center></div>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Al
Gore tells us the Greenland ice cap is thinning, but he
doesn't mention that a newly discovered volcanic "<a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071212103004.htm" target="_blank"><b>hot
spot</b></a>" may be a contributor, along with warming on
the coast due to warmer waters
coming up the gulf stream. In general, we found growing
glaciers outpacing melting glaciers by a good margin.
Nothing like cherry-picking an isolated example to create
panic, Al.</font>
</p><center>
<hr width="76%">
<div align="center">
<center>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="34%"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/sea-level-rise.jpg" width="379" border="0" height="244"></td>
<td width="66%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Our
Oceanography friends tell us that the actual measured rise
in average ocean levels is on the order of 1.6 millimeters
(about the width of a match ) annually. There are 25.4 mm in an inch, so in 25 years,
the oceans might be up about 1.5 inches or so if the trend
continues. In a <u> thousand years</u>, it will be up
a whopping 64 inches, and everyone but the NBA is
clearly in serious trouble.</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Al Gore, on the other hand,
recently said the problem is much worse than previously
thought, and the Polar Ice Cap will be completely gone in 5
years.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">We're going to hold you to that,
Albert. We wonder if anyone has ever had a Nobel Prize
taken back... </font>
</p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" width="100%">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">If you
make a quick knee-jerk assumption, you'd probably
conclude that something has to be melting somewhere
to cause such a steady rise, however
miniscule. But there's another principle of
physics at work here called <u>thermal expansion</u>.
When you heat an object, it gets bigger. Since
the oceans have been slowly warming over the past
few centuries, the volume of the oceans has also
been increasing a tiny bit, and that can possibly
account for most, if not all, of the 1 mm per year
rise in the average sea level.</font></p></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</center></div>
<center>
<hr width="76%">
</center>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">
Old glaciers are a wonderful repository of historical
information, because past samples of earth's atmosphere are
locked up in them. Coral heads and Sargasso Sea
sediments also leave Carbon 14 and Oxygen 18 clues to the
past temperature of the earth. We all agree that the
historical CO<sub>2</sub> curves and the temperatures curves
closely match each other. But when we look closely at the CO<sub>2</sub> and temperature
data found locked in ancient ice core samples, we find
that increases in CO<sub>2</sub> are actually <u>following</u>
increases in temperature and that CO<sub>2</sub> doesn't
cause warming - warming causes CO<sub>2 </sub>to increase.</font>
</p><center>
<hr width="76%">
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Summary -
Exactly what have we learned here?</b><br>
</font>
</p><div align="center">
<table width="600" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="100%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">1.
The "Greenhouse Effect" is a natural and
valuable phenomenon, without which, the planet would
be uninhabitable.</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">2. Modest Global
Warming, at least up until 1998 when a cooling trend
began, has been real.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">3. CO2 is not
a significant greenhouse gas; 95% of the
contribution is due to Water Vapor.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">4. Man's
contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively
insignificant. We didn't cause the recent
Global Warming and we cannot stop it.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">5. Solar
Activity appears to be the principal driver for Climate
Change, accompanied by complex ocean currents which
distribute the heat and control local weather
systems.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">6. CO2 is a
useful trace gas in the atmosphere, and the planet
would actually benefit by having more, not less of
it, because it is not a driver for Global Warming
and would enrich our vegetation, yielding better
crops to feed the expanding population.</font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">7. CO2 is not
causing global warming, in fact, CO2 is lagging
temperature change in all reliable datasets.
The cart is not pulling the donkey, and the future
cannot influence the past.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">8.
Nothing happening in the climate today is
particularly unusual, and in fact has happened many
times in the past and will likely happen again in
the future.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">9.
The UN IPCC has corrupted the "reporting
process" so badly, it makes the oil-for-food
scandal look like someone stole some kid's lunch
money. They do not follow the Scientific
Method, and modify the science as needed to fit
their predetermined conclusions. In empirical
science, one does NOT write the conclusion
first, then solicit "opinion" on the
report, ignoring any opinion which does not fit
their predetermined conclusion while falsifying data
to support unrealistic models.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">10.
Polar Bear populations are not endangered, in fact
current populations are healthy and at almost
historic highs. The push to list them as
endangered is an effort to gain political control of
their habitat... particularly the North Slope oil
fields.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">11.
There is no demonstrated causal relationship between
hurricanes and/or tornadoes and global
warming. This is sheer conjecture totally
unsupported by any material science.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">12.
Observed glacial retreats in certain select areas
have been going on for hundreds of years, and show
no serious correlation to short-term swings in
global temperatures.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">13.
Greenland is shown to be an island completely
surrounded by water, not ice, in maps dating to the
14th century. There is active geothermal
activity in the currently "melting"
sections of Greenland.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">14.
The Antarctic Ice cover is currently the largest
ever observed by satellite, and periodic ice shelf
breakups are normal and correlate well with
localized tectonic and geothermal activity along the
Antarctic Peninsula.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">15.
The Global Warming Panic was triggered by an
artifact of poor mathematics which has been
thoroughly disproved. The panic is being
deliberately nurtured by those who stand to gain
both financially and politically from perpetuation
of the hoax.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">16.
Scientists who "deny" the hoax are often
threatened with loss of funding or even their jobs.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">17.
The correlation between solar activity and climate
is now so strong that solar physicists are now
seriously discussing the much greater danger
of pending global cooling.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">18.
Biofuel hysteria is already having a disastrous
effect on world food supplies and prices, and
current technologies for biofuel production consume
more energy than the fuels produce.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">19.
Global Warming Hysteria is potentially linked to a
stress-induced mental disorder.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana" size="2">20.
In short, there is no "climate crisis" of
any kind at work on our planet.</font></p></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
</center>
<p align="center">
<font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>How do we end the panic?</b></font>
</p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">We've heard
several anecdotal examples of local children becoming
frightened after seeing Al Gore's movie, and maybe that's why
we're so angry with him. To counter that, the British
High Court has ruled that the film, if shown in their schools,
must be preceded by a disclaimer that it is propaganda, not a
documentary.. and a specific list of 9 distinct inaccuracies must be
included in the warning. The 9 have since expanded to
35, and we heartily encourage you to examine each and every
one by clicking <b><a href="http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html" target="_parent">HERE</a></b>.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">From
our point of view, we're watching a world gone mad, with
everyone hustling to get a piece of the action.
Politicians, radical environmentalists, and even mainstream
businesses are scrambling to appear as "green" as
they can - and reap of piece of the financial action sure to
follow as funds are diverted from normal paths in a headlong
race to save the planet.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Some
of this is actually good</b>. We do need to cut down on
our use of petroleum fuels, because they're becoming more and
more expensive to find and recover - and as
Will Rogers said, "They're making more people every day,
but they ain't making any more dirt." Green is
good, and we here at the Community Network try very hard to be
good stewards of the environment. We recycle everything,
drive 2nd-hand cars that get high gas mileage, and even had
only one offspring - thus gaining one whole human lifetime of
"carbon credits". It is overpopulation, after
all, that is using up our resources at an ever-increasing
rate. So the Great Global Warming Hoax could have a
unintended positive side in energy conservation, and even
Hitler made the trains run on time in Nazi Germany.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>But
is it wise</b> to achieve a noble goal by deceit, information
spin, bad science, dire predictions, censorship, and outright
terrorism of our children? We think not.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>We
understand</b> that those who jumped on the Global Bandwagon early
on are now in a difficult position. Many are now
searching for a way to back out quietly, without having their
professional careers ruined. Others are continuing to miss-quote
all the bad "science" on the subject, desperate to
perpetuate what appears now to be only a myth. The Popular Journalists
would starve if folks stopped reading their global hysteria
books, and if folks stopped believing that Global Warming is
man-made, they'll have to find some new themes on
catastrophic events and sell us on the idea that we're to
blame.</font></p><p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/hysteria-books.jpg" width="529" border="0" height="193"></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">A recent <b><a href="http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb" target="_blank">U.S.
Senate report</a></b> quotes 400+ scientists who originally
bought the global warming hoax, and are now confessing that
they don't believe in it any more. Yes, Sen. Inhofe, who
sponsored the report is a minority Republican on the U.S.
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and the
liberal Democrats aren't about to believe anything he says,
but we'll give him credit for being the first member of
Congress to take a stand against the growing hysteria.
It's a mess, and we're in it up to our cultural necks.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>What
is potentially more alarming</b>, is that some of the early
knee-jerk scientists that were so quick to jump on the
climate panic bandwagon are now fighting desperately to save
their careers by deliberately producing falsified data in a
last-ditch effort to support their individual research and
save their professional reputations. In our own
research, we uncovered some "data" in which a CO2
curve from an ice core study was conveniently moved some 83
years down the time scale, so the desired "results"
could be obtained. It's much too lengthy to discuss
here, but if you'd like to delve into the subject in depth,
we've posted the <b><a href="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/Jawoworski%20CO2%202004.doc">full
paper</a></b> by Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection
in Warsaw, Poland.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Powerful
political forces are also hard at work</b>, attempting to
preserve what we currently perceive as to be a myth by
government-enforced "education". The State
of California is attempting to require the myth to be taught
in all of their public schools. Given the general
level of science literacy of most public school teachers, particularly
in the lower grades, we wonder from where the course
materials would come. We're betting Greenpeace would
be more than happy to supply the
"information". We're also betting that
Vermont could soon follow suit. We don't call
ourselves the Green Mountain State for nothing.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">The
"debate" now seems to be settled down between two
opposing political forces, commonly labeled
"liberal" and "conservative", and two
separate scientific "methods" of proving their
points. Here they are, in a nutshell:</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">All
of the empirical evidence now favors the
"conservatives", who apply the laws of physics and
chemistry to known data and conclude that anthropogenic global
warming can't be happening. The coup de grace on the
conservative side is the fact that CO2 is lagging temperature,
and thus, they say, what happens next month can't possibly be
affecting what is happening today. We tend to favor this
logic.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">The
"liberals", on the other hand, have turned to
computer modeling to "prove" the world is about to
come to an end. Models can and in fact are being
constructed which can prove anything you want. By
tweaking the data, you can even make them come out with the
opposite answer. "Modeling" is a perfect tool
for perpetuating a scam like this, because they have absolutely
no basis in factual science, yet are easy to sell to the
unsuspecting public who thinks they are a part of legitimate
research process. Unfortunately, there is much
"model tweaking" (OK, "faking" is the better
word ) being done by the Hysterians to "prove" the
sky is falling. This is commonly known as Junk
Science. We saw one climate model in which the
temperature was held constant while the CO2 concentration was
arbitrarily doubled, a brilliant erasure of the laws of physics.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">The
ultimate "judge" at present is the press.
Fortunately for the Junk Scientists, the scientifically
illiterate reporters and other popular journalists are quick
to grab anything that calls for change, change, change ( does
that have a familiar ring to it?). Since most of the
press, ranging from our local folks to the New York Times,
tend to showcase the Junk Science and suppress the empirical
results, the equally science illiterate public gets only one
side of the story, and they, in turn, quickly organize mass
demonstrations calling for change, change, change.
Presumably, if you march enough protest signs around the
country, the Laws of Physics will bend to your will.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>There's
Big Bucks to be made promoting the hoax.</b> Take a look
at this clipping from a "green" directory site:<br>
</font>
</p><div align="center">
<center>
<table width="705" bgcolor="#f2fff2" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="691"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Great
News!! We now have a <u>34 ACRE NURSERY SITE</u>
underway in Maine with a wood and solar heated
greenhouse for tree seedling production. This will
enable us to grow out millions of seedlings for
transplanting to deforested areas across the north
woods.</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">If you would like to <u>DIRECTLY
OFFSET YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT </u>there is a <u>PAYPAL
DONATION</u> button under the picture. <u>ANY AMOUNT</u>
will help further the CO2 Reduction project!! Thanks!!</font></p></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</center>
</div>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Editors
Note: We have an even better offer: </b>For every
10 bucks you send us, we will hold our breath for one full
minute before exhaling the CO2 into the atmosphere. This
"carbon offset" will make you feel good about
driving your Hummer to the next Global Warming demonstration.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>"Climate
Science" has become the new gold mine for research funding</b>.
Any funding grant application today had better have the words
"Global Warming" in it somewhere if you want to rise
to the top of the pile when the money is handed out.
Spending on "climate research" has skyrocketed from
$175 million to $5 billion annually, and you'd better make sure
your "results" support AGW, or the Leprechaun will get
away and your pot of gold will vanish. "Peer
Review" has generally become a laugh, as the Hoaxters now
all review each other's work, and the cash register keeps
ringing. A huge proportion of the "climate
scientists" now at work weren't even interested in the
subject a few years ago, and it's a bandwagon playing the new
pop tune of "Ca-Ching, Ca-Ching". The Hoaxters
now control many of the science journals, and are suppressing
any honest research that exposes what <b><a href="http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/comments_about_global_warming/" target="_blank">John
Coleman</a></b>, founder of The Weather Channel, has called
"the greatest scam in history". In writing this
editorial, we of course automatically become
"deniers", the heathens of physics who haven't
converted to the new religion of global panic. It's now
100% honorable to fake your results, because keeping a paycheck
is a most honorable pursuit. It's now critically important
to keep the hoax afloat, for if the public ever finds out global
warming is a purely natural phenomenon, the money will dry up
in a heartbeat, because no government wants to waste money
on something man can't possibly change.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Recently,
several NASA scientists have resigned in protest</b> of the
bureaucrats who run the agency supporting Junk Science in
order to secure more funding for climate-related satellite
systems and other "research". And scientists
who speak out too loudly against the hoax have actually been
fired for crossing paths with the politicians promoting Junk
Science, as recently happened to University of Washington
climate scientist <b><a href="http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=21207" target="_blank">Mark
Albright</a></b>, who was dismissed from his position as
associate state climatologist, just weeks after exposing false
claims of shrinking glaciers in the Cascade Mountains.
Seems Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels claimed the Cascade glaciers
were melting, and Albright, in charge of the glacier studies,
said they weren't. Nickels had enough clout to get
Albright bounced from his job.</font></p><p align="left"><b><font face="Verdana" size="2">Our
public schools</font></b> <font face="Verdana" size="2"> seem to be highly infected with what the
serious climate scientists are now calling the new
"religious cult" of anthropogenic global warming
hysteria. No longer are teachers inviting their
students to explore climate change - now they are being
instructed to "make a nice poster showing how you can
stop global warming". This appears to
be primarily an American phenomenon. Graduate schools in
technology report their classes are mostly filled with foreign
students, and U.S. Public High School students are the most
science and mathematics illiterate of all developed
nations. "Education" majors ( our future
teachers ) have the lowest SAT scores of any college major so we
are stuck in a catch 22 situation where the least qualified to
teach anyone about anything are churning out mostly
scientifically illiterate students who then go off to college
and emerge with thousands of degrees in Art History with no job
in their field waiting for them when they graduate.<br>
</font>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="25%" align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/child-gw-book.jpg" width="159" border="0" height="159"></td>
<td width="75%"><b><font face="Verdana" size="2">Let's all
lie to our children while we're at it</font></b>
<p><b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Laurie%20David%20and%20Cambria%20Gordon" target="_blank"><font face="Verdana" size="2">The
Down-To-Earth Guide to Global Warming<br>
by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon</font></a></b></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">This children's
book "explains" the Global Warming Hoax to
English-speaking children everywhere. Here's a
textbook case ( pun intended ) of how to pull the wool
over their eyes.</font></p></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td colspan="2" width="100%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Simply
insert a fraudulent graph clearly showing Climate
Temperature to be following CO2 levels, in the same
manner as Al Gore. This is easily done by swapping
the actual CO2 and Temperature graphs, as shown below.</font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="50%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Then finish
with the statement:</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">"What
makes this graph so amazing is that by connecting rising CO2 to rising
temperature scientists have discovered the link between greenhouse-gas
pollution and global warming.”</font></p></td>
<td width="50%">
<p align="right"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/lie.gif" width="475" border="0" height="155"></font></p></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="50%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Of course,
the <b>actual data shows just the opposite</b> - that
CO2 <u>lags</u>, not leads temperature, and thus
"proving" just the opposite.</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Don't worry, the
parents aren't smart enough to detect the lie, either.</font></p></td>
<td width="50%">
<p align="right"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/correct.gif" width="475" border="0" height="177"></p></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>The battle</b> now seems to have settled down as a war between two
major information sources. The "mainstream
media" who controls the printed word on paper ( such as
the book above ) and the
talking heads on TV are generally supporting the Junk Science. The
Internet - last bastion of free speech and the only
significant outlet for empirical science, is slowly gaining
ground exposing the scam, but so far it's pretty much
an imbalanced situation, since the Junk Scientists also know
how to build web sites and blogs and are doing their best to
spread the panic in that media as well.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana"><font size="2">For
example Richard S. Lindzen, in his paper at the 2005 Yale Center
for Globalization conference clearly points to one particular
pro-hoax web site calling itself "<b><a href="http://www.realclimate.org/" target="_blank">Real
Climate</a></b>" which tells us that it is all about
"climate science from climate scientists", featuring
among others, the now universally discredited work of Michael
Mann and others who were too quick to become his overnight
followers. The site isn't actually run by
"scientists", it's actually run by <b><a href="http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/110" target="_blank">Environmental
Media Services</a></b>, which specializes in spreading
environmental junk science on behalf of numerous clients who
stand to financially benefit from scare tactics through environmental
fear mongering. Lindzen says, "</font></font><font face="Verdana" size="2">This
website appears to constitute a support center for global
warming believers, wherein any criticism of global warming is
given an answer that, however implausible, is then repeated by
the reassured believers. A collection of stock responses
for believers is also featured on <b><a href="http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics?source=daily" target="_blank">Gristmill</a></b>,
where the Popular Journalists and mainstream media can quickly
obtain a handbook for perpetuating the scam, and become instant
experts on the spot.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>In
the end, time will be the final judge</b>. If the ice
caps don't melt in our lifetimes ( or in 5 years, as Al Gore
is predicting ) then future historians are going to have a
rich trove of material on how the entire world went bonkers
over a global temperature shift of a few tenths of a degree
attributed to our "carbon footprint". If New
York floods during the last game of the World Series, then the
Computer Modeling has won out over the Laws of Physics and at
least we'll be able to make new models which will cure cancer,
end starvation, stop wars, and lower our taxes all at the same
time.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Most
of the best research has been performed in the last 3 years,
and strongly supports the notion that CO2 plays little role
in global warming. You will probably not be allowed to
find this out, except in places like this. The IPCC policy writers were actually
<b><a href="http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/wg1_timetable_2006-08-14.pdf" target="_blank">instructed</a></b>
to ignore the most recent and likely best information in
their earlier reports to the world's governments, and of course the
Popular Journalists continue to quote the older, now
debunked "science" that led to the panic in the
first place. It has turned real nasty, and it is our
strong feeling that much skullduggery is afoot.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">One of
the hallmarks of American politics is to tell a lie often
enough until it magically becomes the truth. <b><a href="http://www.meridian.org.uk/Resources/Global%20Dynamics/IPCC/index.htm" target="_blank">The
corruption of the UN IPCC</a></b> would make another long treatise
in itself, but we won't go there in this particular piece,
because we don't want to scare our children into thinking that
scandals in the UN were making unwitting liars out of their
teachers. Remember, the UN IPCC reports are the very
foundation of the Global Warming Hysterians' arguments.
That's where they get the "all the world's climate
scientists now agree" baloney. Scientists who
disagree with the policy writers ( who are largely bureaucrats
appointed by their own governments ) are ignored in the
reports, a well known phenomenon. And several IPCC
scientists are currently raising Cain with the IPCC policy
writers to stop using their name as "agreeing" with
the Junk Science IPCC reports. ( The IPCC claims that <u>all</u>
of their member scientists and contributors approve of their
phony reports, and as best we can determine at the present
time, a majority probably does not).</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b><a href="http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2007/02/my-commentary-on-draft-ipcc-report.html" target="_blank">Alec
Rawls</a></b> probably sums up the IPCC corruption best:
"What I found interesting in the IPCC report is how
blatant the statistical fraud is, omitting the competing
explanation from the models completely, while pretending that
they are using their models to distinguish between
anthropogenic and natural warming. These people are going to
hang on to their power grab until the bitter end." </font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>And
we might be wrong</b>. We're pledged to good science,
without any political or environmental agenda producing hasty
conclusions, and this ball game is still in play. We've
done an enormous amount of homework, and reached a preliminary
opinion on the matter, and are intent on remaining politically
independent in this regard. If we're wrong, delaying
immediate action will only hasten doomsday. If we're
right, then nature will take its course as it always has, and
normal life will go on by adapting to climate change, rather
than freaking out over a pending climate catastrophe.
That's what the Scientists' letter to the U.N. was all about.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>What
can you do</b> to further expose this Global Hoax seemingly
being spread to promote radical political and environmental
issues? You could start by sending the URL of this page
to your friends and other "regular" folks who have
no environmental ax to grind and are only seeking some
realistic appraisal of the situation. This article has
now been "peer reviewed" by dozens of highly
qualified scientists in fields related to climate change, and
there has been no fault found in our physics, chemistry, or
mathematics to date. It has already "gone
viral" world-wide, and has been read in 83 foreign
countries at last check.</font></p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">We
invite<b><font face="Verdana" size="2"> <a href="mailto:editor@middlebury.net?Subject=A%20comment%20on%20your%20Global%20Warming%20editorial">Comments</a></font></b></font>, <font face="Verdana" size="2">but flames and rants and other childish stuff will be deleted
and you won't even get the courtesy of a reply. We do
welcome comment from intelligent folk who have something
original to say, but please don't bombard us with
cut-and-paste cherry-picking from climate hysteria sites on the internet, because trust
us, we've already read all that.</font></p><p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>We
admire your tenacity in reading this all the way to the end.</b></font></p><p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>James
A. Peden, Editor</b></font>
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<td width="373"><font face="Verdana" size="2">While the hoaxers claim
"the science is settled, the time for debate has ended", in
fact new books and papers are emerging daily. You may help us
build our Climate Science Library by making a modest donation using the
Pay Pal button at the left.</font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Truth is, Al Gore has a <u>lot</u> more
money than we do.. and we promise to share what we learn with you in
future essays.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Thanks for helping us keep on top of
this issue!</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">James A. Peden,
Editor </font></p>
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<p align="left"><b><font face="Verdana" size="2">Editor's Post
Script - "it ain't over 'till it's over....."</font></b></p>
<p align="left"><b><font face="Verdana" size="2">New information
continues to emerge, so we'll keep the issue flowing here in this
"Post Script" section.</font></b></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">As expected, we've
received several tons of email from both scientists and
non-scientists alike, all thanking us for speaking out on this
issue. So far, not a single dissenting voice has crossed our
desk, which really surprised us, because we were expecting a mass
flamethrower attack from the Global Warming Hysterics. We
won't even attempt to post all of the comments, but we'll show you
a couple of our favorites:</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">"Even for
scientists your article is more convincing than many of the truly
peer-reviewed science papers, and I have sent it to a number of my
meteorologist and climatologist friends...."</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">John Brosnahan<br>
Retired Physicist<br>
( Whose past affiliations include the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics,
the University of Colorado Department of Astrogeophysics, Tycho
Technology, and the UCLA Physics Department. He was also
NOAA's public face for Technology Transfer, giving testimony to
the U.S. Senate Science and Technology Committee. )<b> </b> </font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">"Here is
probably the best internet posting anywhere in the world for
laypeople who want to know the truth about "global
warming". Our thanks to Jim Peden for permission to post it <a href="http://www.climatescience.org.nz/" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a>."</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Terry Dunleavy<br>
Hon Secretary<br>
New Zealand Climate Science Coalition</font></p>
<hr width="75%" color="#800000" size="1">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Also, we received an
unsolicited and previously unpublished short manuscript from Dan
Pangburn, a Professional Engineer, who, like us, became curious
and conducted his own independent study of the global warming
situation. This paper is unusual because it contains
original new plots created by Dan from raw data sources.
Through a different analysis, he arrived at the same conclusion,
and you may read his paper by clicking <a href="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/pangburn.html" target="_blank"><b>HERE</b></a>.</font></p>
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<td width="100%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">We've just
been made aware of a summary article by John K. Sutherland
that is almost a mirror image of our own, except he
published it on 10/29/07, several months before
ours. When two people come up with virtually the
exact same set of issues, data, and conclusions, it is
often called a Conspiracy. When they do it
completely independent of one another, it is sometimes
called Due Diligence. Please read Dr. Sutherland's
fascinating synopsis ( briefer than ours but very complete
) by clicking <b><a href="http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1598" target="_blank">HERE</a></b>.</font></td>
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<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Open your wallets, folks.</b>
Sen. Barbara Boxer has a full-court press going for adoption
of the <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-2191&tab=summary" target="_blank"><b>Climate
Security Act – S. 2191 (Lieberman-Warner)</b></a> global warming
cap-and-trade bill. This will impose a <b>$1.2
trillion tax increase</b> over the next 10 years according to the
Congressional Budget Office. Some say Sen. Boxer is
crazy. We think she's crazy like a fox. What better
way to secretly increase entitlement spending than by promoting a
cure for a nonexistent disease?</font></p>
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<td width="100%"><font face="Verdana" size="2">If you'd like
to read a very interesting essay on the sociological
implications of AGW hysteria, please click <a href="http://intelligentessays.blogspot.com/2008/03/anthropogenic-global-warming-propaganda.html" target="_blank"><b>HERE</b></a>.
This was a graduate essay written by Chad Cooper, who has
really done his homework. In exploring many avenues of
the AGW propaganda machine, he surmises, "<span lang="en">The
propaganda techniques discussed are tactical methods to
convince the world population that humans are the primary
cause of global warming. The strategic goal, however, is to
incorporate as many of these methods into the daily life of
the average citizen, so that he accepts the theory as fact.
From new articles, t-shirts, laundry detergent, political
speeches, movies, and appliances to car insurance
commercials, AGW has permeated modern society to the point
where there is no escape."</span></font></td>
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<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>See something
missing?</b> Look at the "official" list of
"greenhouse gases" below, as offered by our boy geniuses
on the UN IPCC. Golly, it appears that Water Vapor isn't
among the list - the UN IPCC says its role is "not well
understood", even though it is responsible for about 95% of the
"greenhouse effect. Using their logic, we could argue
that our human population is all-male - because females are
"not well understood" - and thus it is proper to remove
any mention of them in our list of genders on the planet. Also note that only
"anthropogenic" sources are listed - no mention of the
minor fact that the earth itself is the major contributor of
CO2. Hey, natural stuff doesn't count ( when you're trying
to create panic.)</font></p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/greenhouse-gases.jpg" width="550" border="0" height="330"><br>
<b><font face="Verdana" size="2">Don't you sense just a tiny bit
of a con job?</font></b></p>
<hr width="75%" color="#800000" size="1">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>"Global
Mourning" a mental disorder? </b>Our opening question,
"Have we become a nation of overnight
loonies?" may turn out to be a truth spoken in
jest. Some very serious mental health researchers are now
examining a new mental disorder called "Solastalgia", a
form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by a palpable sense
of dislocation and loss that people feel when they perceive
changes to their local environment as harmful. An expanded
discussion of this is available by clicking <b><a href="http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007906.html" target="_blank">HERE</a></b>.
So, next time a Global Warming Hysteric starts chanting about
polar bears and Disney World floods, please be kind and bear in
mind that they may be half a bubble off plumb.</font></p>
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<td width="50%"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>"Deniers"
have a sense of humor</b></font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Come to think of it, 50%
of the population is, by definition, below average
intelligence. And according to the National
Institutes of Health, 21% are mentally ill.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">That might explain the
polar bear suits and Kumbaya singing to stop global
warming. We think the t-shirt at right is cooler
than a polar bear suit (click on image).</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">And no, we don't make any
money by sending you there, darn it.</font></p></td>
<td width="50%"><a href="http://www.printfection.com/stupidityoffsets/Stupidity-Offsets-T-Shirt-C-2-sided-whitelight/_p_2181283" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/offset-t-shirt.jpg" width="380" border="0" height="306"></a></td>
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<td width="64%"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Just when you
thought it couldn't get any funnier...</b></font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Al Gore now combines <b>Amway
and Evangelism</b> to produce a series of "training
sessions" which in turn will produce an army of
"climate change fighters".</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">His new <a href="http://www.theclimateproject.org/" target="_blank"><b>Climate
Project</b></a> is non-profit volunteer group that focuses
on his now totally-discredited movie, <i>An Inconvenient
Truth</i> and his follow-up presentations. </font><font face="Verdana" size="2">Gore
will lead the participants through the junk science and
format of his presentation, so they can repeat it in their
communities</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">His reported advertising
budget? <b>$300,000,000.00</b>.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Each participant makes a
commitment to give the presentation at least 10 times.
No mention of a pink Cadillac as a prize for the most
converts.</font></p></td>
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<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>You're going to
love this</b>. Another chunk of ice has broken off the ice
shelf around the Antarctic Peninsula. The Hysterians quickly
jumped on it, claiming it was another effect of "global
warming" ( "caused by man" is now clearly
understood in the GW Looney Community ). But surprise,
surprise, there are active <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/surprise-theres-an-active-volcano-under-antarctic-ice/" target="_blank"><b>volcanoes</b></a>
in the same area. NASA has published an image showing
the surface temperatures in Antarctica ( on the left, below
). This panicked the GW Looneys so much they quickly
posted the caution that "a number of (unnamed ) editors have
objected to the NASA image" and imploring their religious
following, " Please do not use this image ".</font></p>
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<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/NASA-antarctic.jpg" width="375" border="0" height="312"></p></td>
<td width="50%">
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/loonie-antarctic.jpg" width="375" border="0" height="312"></p></td>
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<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">This is the
original NASA image, showing the assorted hot spots due to
underground thermal activity around the Antarctic continent
and the associated temperature trends.<br>
Note that he highest temperatures are around the Antarctic
Peninsula and the Ross Ice shelf, where most of the
Antarctic "melting" has occurred.</font></p></td>
<td width="50%">
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">This is the
same image being distributed around the Global Warming
Looney Bin, with suitable admonition against its use.</font>
</p><p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">The data used
for the NASA image were collected by the Advanced Very High
Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors that were flown on
several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
satellites.</font></p></td>
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<td colspan="2" width="100%">
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Please do
not use it. indeed. It drives yet another nail into
the Anthropogenic Global Warming Coffin.</font></p></td>
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<td width="60%"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Help, I've
fallen and I can't get up...</b></font>
<p align="LEFT"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Since late
2001, the trend of global surface temperatures has been
firmly downward. We now know with reasonable confidence that solar intensity and world ocean currents
are the primary temperature moderators... since CO2 levels
have continued to rise throughout this past decade of
cooling. This cooling hopefully won't last forever,
of course, because the climate is always changing.</font></p></td>
<td width="40%">
<p align="right"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/decade-cooling.jpg" width="400" border="0" height="163"></p></td>
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<td width="59%"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>London Brits
asking for more CO2<br>
6 April 2008</b></font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Seems you can never satisfy
the British.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">We've received an urgent
request for more of our fine U.S. - made CO2 from <b><a href="http://www.iceagenow.com/" target="_blank">Robert
Felix</a></b> ( left ) and <a href="http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/" target="_blank"><b>Hans
Schreuder</b></a> (right) in London.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">Coming your way, fellows... </font></p></td>
<td width="41%">
<p align="right"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/london-co2.jpg" width="382" border="0" height="204"></p></td>
</tr>
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<center>
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<td width="67%"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Ah, those
UN IPCC Climate "Models"</b></font>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">We received an email
asking why we didn't believe the UN IPCC models predicting
world climate meltdown in a few years were good
models. We sent back a list of items the UN Climate
Yo-Yos deliberately omit from their models</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2">And the sketch at the
right, just in case he still didn't get it.</font></p></td>
<td width="33%"><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/model-cars.jpg" width="227" align="right" border="0" height="216"></td>
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<p align="left"><b><font face="Verdana" size="2">The 2008 </font></b><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;"><b>International
Climate Conference</b> in New York City wrapped up, and interestingly
enough, it appears they also came to the <u>exact</u> same conclusion as we had
more than a month earlier, with 500 signatories. Their final Declaration is
repeated below. The reaction from the global warming
fanatics was predictable - the scientists gathered in New York
were all heathens financed by the big oil companies, who refuse to convert to the new religion
founded by Al Gore ( after he flunked out of divinity
school). The president of the World Federation of Scientists
is actually an <b><a href="http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html" target="_blank"> alien</a></b> (financed by the big oil companies) and sent down to destroy the world by preventing
us from stopping global warming.</span></font></p>
<p align="left"><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">Incidentally,
we were asked to become co-signers of the declaration below, to
which we obliged with the greatest humility, in view of the truly
outstanding group of climate scientists and other presenters at
the conference.</span></font></p>
<p align="center"><b><font color="#333333" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-weight: bold;">Mar
05, 2008 <br>
</span></font></b><font face="Verdana" size="2"><strong><b><font color="black"><span style="color: black;">The
Manhattan Declaration - from the 2008 International Climate
Conference</span></font></b></strong><font color="black"><span style="color: black;"> </span></font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="3"><i><b>"Global
warming" is not a global crisis</b></i></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">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 </span></b></span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">Resolving
that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the
scientific method; </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">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; </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">Recognizing
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; </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">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; </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">Noting
that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth
than colder: </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b><font color="black"><span style="color: black; font-weight: bold;">Hereby
declare:</span></font></b><font color="black"><span style="color: black;"> </span></font></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">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. </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">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. </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">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. </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">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. </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">That
human-caused climate change is not a global crisis. </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b><font color="black"><span style="color: black; font-weight: bold;">Now,
therefore, we recommend </span></font></b></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">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.” </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">That
all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce
emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith. </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">Agreed
at New York, 4 March 2008.</span></font></p>
<hr width="75%" color="#800000" size="1">
<p><font color="black" face="Verdana" size="2"><span style="color: black;">
... and there's lots more interesting stuff on Sen. Inhofes report
from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works <a href="http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=865dbe39-802a-23ad-4949-ee9098538277" target="_blank"><b>HERE</b></a>.
Golly, we're even mentioned. Looks like everybody's famous
for 15 minutes....</span></font>
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<p align="right"><font face="Verdana"><a name="bio"></a><img src="http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/letter-shadow.jpg" width="357" border="0" height="24"></font></p></td>
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<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><b>Editor's Science
Bio</b></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana" size="2">James A. Peden -
better known as Jim or "Dad" - Webmaster of
Middlebury Networks and Editor of the Middlebury Community
Network, spent some of his earlier years as an Atmospheric
Physicist at the Space Research and Coordination Center in
Pittsburgh and Extranuclear Laboratories in Blawnox, Pennsylvania,
studying ion-molecule reactions in the upper atmosphere. As
a student, he was elected to both the National Physics Honor
Society and the National Mathematics Honor Fraternity, and was
President of the Student Section of the American Institute of
Physics. He was a founding member of the American Society
for Mass Spectrometry, and a member of the American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics. His thesis on charge transfer
reactions in the upper atmosphere was co-published in part in the
prestigious Journal of Chemical Physics. The results obtained by himself and his colleagues at
the University of Pittsburgh remain today as the gold standard in
the AstroChemistry Database. He was a co-developer of the
Modulated Beam Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer, declared one of the
"100 Most Significant Technical Developments of the
Year" and displayed at the Museum of Science and Industry in
Chicago. </font></p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>