The Week the Climate Change Movement Collapsed

From email:

Friday, June 11th, 2010
So much happened this week it was hard to focus in on one story. Let's take a little stroll around the internet, shall we?

Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers, brings our attention to a legal examination of the science behind Global Warming. The bottom line:

"...[O]n virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.”

Read the whole report by clicking this link and downloading the PDF.
Students at Oxford University appear to have discovered the holes in the Global Warming argument.

On May 20, Oxford Union, the prestigious 187-year-old English debating society, formally considered the question of whether it was more important to focus on growing the economy or solving global warming. Climate realism won the day, 135 to 110. It's no wonder, considering how the purportedly scientific arguments advanced in support of the scaremongering conclusions have fallen apart since the Climategate scandal invited verification of the left's previously unexamined claims.During the debate, Lord Whitty, former environment minister under the Labor government, claimed 95 percent of scientists were in agreement that man was responsible for a coming climatic cataclysm. Lord Monckton, representing climate realists, asked him to provide a reference backing up the claim. The audience jeered Lord Whitty for having none beyond, "Everyone knows it's true."

Senator Lindsey Graham, once a staunch advocate of global warming, also appears to have changed his mind:

Reporters asked Graham several times about why he was supporting Lugar's bill, when just a few months ago he had argued that the Senate shouldn't pass a "half-assed" bill that lacked hard restrictions on carbon emissions. Graham replied that he now doesn't think pricing carbon is that important. "The science about global warming has changed," he noted, offhandedly. "I think they've oversold this stuff, quite frankly. I think they've been alarmist and the science is in question," Graham told reporters. "The whole movement has taken a giant step backward."
Graham's change of heart seems to parallel (or follow) the feelings of the American public. According to a poll by the Political Psychology Research Group, discussed in an editorial in the New York Times, the public is at least slightly concerned about warming, and would like the government to take some action, but wants no part of any legislation that could even slightly impede the progress of the American economy.

The explanation for this hesitancy is obvious: The American People aren't big fans of polluting, and prefer clean air and water wherever possible. However, they are not willing to lose their jobs over faulty science and political activism. One by one, doomsday claim after doomsday claim is falling apart under even the lightest of scrutiny. Last week, we told you that islands in the South Pacific supposed threatened by rising oceans aren't sinking at all, but are actually expanding. This week, we learned:

Global Warming will have little to no effect on rivers in Asia. Previously, Radical Greens had claimed that melting glaciers in the Himalayas would result in water shortages throughout Asia

The Himalayan Ice isn't melting at all. In fact, it's growing, ever-so-slightly

Similarly, Global Warming has had virtually no impact on Coral Reefs. Previously, some had claimed that reefs would declines due to ocean acidification

Antarctica was 4 degrees warmer 130,000 years ago than it is today and has cooled over the last 6,000 years.

All Global Warming in the last 50 years was predicted by natural climate cycles Finally, we have our Quote of the Week. It comes from Mike Hulme, in a soon to be published paper telling us what we all already know about the IPCC:

Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous. That particular consensus judgement, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies; other IPCC authors are experts in other fields.

Say it with us: "There is no consensus."

Most Egregious Claim of the Week
With Global Warming losing credibility by the second, the Radical Greens need a new apocalypse to garner themselves the attention they've become accustomed to receiving. Fortunately, the UN has filled the void:

The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 unless fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover, UN experts warned Monday.
Of course, given the track record of UN predictions, I'm pretty we can expect that A) this report will be debunked within three years, and B) there will be more fish in the ocean in 2050 than there are now. No doubt the Radical Greens will be on to their next apocalypse du jour by then.
-Patrick Gallagher, Editor