Tuesday, April 03, 2007

The DeWeese Report v. The MinusCar Project Part II

Hi. I used to blog The MinusCar Project. Illness, work, play, all get in the way. I can still rhyme when I take the time though. Let’s go.

A couple posts ago I was preparing to deconstruct the article, “Forcing Global Warming Nightmares On Children” in the American Policy Center’s, The DeWeese Report. Mr DeWeese offers many examples of skeptical climate change science.

He begins with a popular quote from a Duke University study, “The magnitude of future global warming will likely fall well short of current highest predictions." This is quite the hopeful study. I read a few articles and didn’t find much negative about it. The Duke University News report article is here. A Washington Times article is here, it bothers to mention contrary reports from the University of Toronto, University of Chicago, Oregon State, the Carnegie Institution and Harvard.

A pessimist view of the quote might look like this. On a scale of 0 to 100% of life lost on the planet what’s significantly short of 100%. 50%?

After the Duke study comes Dr. Richard Lindzen saying, “global warming is unlikely to be a dangerous future problem” and Dr Fred Singer saying, “there is no evidence to support the manmade hypothesis.”

The bulk of the letter to the student is a lot of unsourced scientific data demonstrating that global warming is indeed a dubious theory. Mr DeWeese saves special derision for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Here are a couple of my favorite parts of Mr DeWeese’s science:

“Would it surprise you to learn that carbon dioxide or CO-2 is not a pollutant…”
I suppose it would surprise Mr DeWeese to learn that the week the Supreme Court ruled that CO2 is a pollutant. I guess it’s all in how you or those activist judges define it.

“…and is essential for us to live?”
Perhaps Mr DeWeese doesn’t understand the concept of too much of a good thing.

Mr DeWeese busts the IPCC hard for their 1996 report that dropped these two “damning” statements prior to publication.
"None of the studies cited about has shown clear evidence that we can contribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases."
"No study to date had positively attributed all or part of the climate changes…to man-made causes."
Is there any chance the IPCC dropped these statements because they couldn’t be substantially supported? Even so, is it possible that 11 years of continued research might also deem the statements unsupportable?

After the science Mr DeWeese switches gears and talks about money.

“’Follow the money.’ In other words, to understand why some people do certain things, find out who is getting paid and why. Scientists who use climate change to explain natural environmental changes receive massive grants from government, private foundations and even corporations.”
Next up: Following the advice of Mr Tom DeWeese.

2 comments:

Tuco said...

That guy sounds like he must be in bed with Senators Inhofe and Barton - (see:
http://tucorides.blogspot.com/2006/11/america-climate-change.html

I guess it's always good to have debate and to have someone play devil's advocate, but when it comes to the climate change story you definitely don't want to allow politicians and oil/car execs to publish fuzzy science like the tobacco companies did up until the 1990's saying "smoking doesn't cause cancer."

sararah said...

this sounds a lot like all those silly "dihydrogen monoxide" arguments which prove water is bad...and indeed, in large amounts, it is (just ask New Orleans, or that girl who died from water poisoning on the radio show, right?)