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Article published Dec 19, 2007
Year of global cooling

December 19, 2007

By David Deming - Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.

Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years. Antarctica is getting colder. Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S.

South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.

Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007. Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. In northeastern Australia, the city of Townsville underwent the longest period of continuously cold weather since 1941. In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered.

Last January, $1.42 billion worth of California produce was lost to a devastating five-day freeze. Thousands of agricultural employees were thrown out of work. At the supermarket, citrus prices soared. In the wake of the freeze, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked President Bush to issue a disaster declaration for affected counties. A few months earlier, Mr. Schwarzenegger had enthusiastically signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, a law designed to cool the climate. California Sen. Barbara Boxer continues to push for similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.

In April, a killing freeze destroyed 95 percent of South Carolina's peach crop, and 90 percent of North Carolina's apple harvest. At Charlotte, N.C., a record low temperature of 21 degrees Fahrenheit on April 8 was the coldest ever recorded for April, breaking a record set in 1923. On June 8, Denver recorded a new low of 31 degrees Fahrenheit. Denver's temperature records extend back to 1872.

Recent weeks have seen the return of unusually cold conditions to the Northern Hemisphere. On Dec. 7, St. Cloud, Minn., set a new record low of minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. On the same date, record low temperatures were also recorded in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Extreme cold weather is occurring worldwide. On Dec. 4, in Seoul, Korea, the temperature was a record minus 5 degrees Celsius. Nov. 24, in Meacham, Ore., the minimum temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the previous record low set in 1952. The Canadian government warns that this winter is likely to be the coldest in 15 years.

Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri are just emerging from a destructive ice storm that left at least 36 people dead and a million without electric power. People worldwide are being reminded of what used to be common sense: Cold temperatures are inimical to human welfare and warm weather is beneficial. Left in the dark and cold, Oklahomans rushed out to buy electric generators powered by gasoline, not solar cells. No one seemed particularly concerned about the welfare of polar bears, penguins or walruses. Fossil fuels don't seem so awful when you're in the cold and dark.

If you think any of the preceding facts can falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. Nothing creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a true believer. In 2005, a Canadian Greenpeace representative explained “global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can't make this stuff up.

Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

David Deming is a geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis, and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.

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Citrus Farmers Fight Cold Snap
By ANTHONY MCCARTNEY,AP
Posted: 2008-01-03 13:16:41
Filed Under: Nation News
TAMPA, Fla. (Jan. 3) -- A blast of cold air brought flurries to the Sunshine State on Thursday but seemed to have spared citrus crops from the major damage that growers had feared.

A serious freeze would have been devastating to the country's biggest citrus industry, already struggling from years of diseases and hurricanes. But most orange and grapefruit groves are in Central and South Florida, where temperatures hovered in high 20s and low 30s. Trees can be ruined when temperatures fall to 28 degrees for four hours.

"Mother Nature cut us a break this time and now we can continue to produce the quality citrus crop Florida is known for," said Michael W. Sparks, executive vice president and CEO of grower advocacy group Florida Citrus Mutual.

Temperatures were not below freezing for long enough to cause widespread damage to Florida's citrus trees, the group said. In fact, the cold could benefit some growers because it slows down growth and hardens up citrus trees.

Orange juice futures for immediate delivery fell slightly in early trading Thursday on the New York Board of Trade.

Growers had tried to harvest as many mature fruits and vegetables as possible, and tried to protect plants by spraying them with water that freezes, insulating the temperature at 32.

Temperatures in many areas of northern Florida dropped into the 20s early Thursday, following the 30-degree temperatures some northern parts of the state saw Wednesday. Cross City was at 20. Farther south, Orlando was 31 and it was 39 in Miami. Snow flurries were reported near the Daytona Beach coastline, the first in Florida since 2006.

People in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast and the Ohio Valley woke up to sub-freezing temperatures.

Upstate New York had single-digit readings and wind chills well below zero. At 7 a.m., it was 8 degrees below zero in Watertown, N.Y., with the wind chill making it feel like 20 below. In Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, it was 17 below with calm winds.

The coldest reading in Maine was 33 below near the St. Pamphile border crossing with Canada. Detroit was 6. Ohio saw 9 degrees at Cleveland Hopkins Airport, 8 in Youngstown and 7 in Dayton.

People shivered overnight inside about 1,000 homes that lost power in the Cincinnati suburb of Madeira after a vehicle hit a utility pole around 12:30 a.m. Duke Energy indicates nearly all the customers were back on by 6 a.m.

On the West Coast, a trio of rainstorms was expected to hit Southern California, with the first band of showers set to arrive Thursday afternoon or evening. The heaviest precipitation is expected Friday night into Saturday.

From Thursday to Monday, lowland areas around Los Angeles and Orange County were expected to get a total of up to 4 inches, while mountain areas of Southern California could get 10 inches.

Officials urged homeowners in mudslide-prone areas to stock up on sandbags, monitor the news for evacuations and keep an eye on streams and flood control channels for flooding. Fire stations throughout the region were handing out free sandbags.

The storm could dampen the San Diego Chargers' playoff game against the Tennessee Titans on Sunday. A Qualcomm Stadium official said that if the rain persists, the field will be covered by a tarp until one hour before the game.

Citrus crops were not the only ones at risk in Florida. Around the state, farmers were checking on other crops that Florida produces in the winter for much of the country, from broccoli and cabbage in north Florida to strawberries, tomatoes, corn and citrus toward the south.

The early looks indicated that damage to most crops would be isolated and "not as bad as it could have been," said Terry McElroy, spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

McElroy said most of the crops growing in north Florida can withstand cold snaps and were probably not damaged in the freeze. But it may be days before some farmers know for sure how much they have lost.

In Louisiana, strawberry farmers covered their crops with material in an attempt to protect them. Peach farmers, however, welcomed the cold, which they say benefits their fruit trees during their period of dormancy.

"The more cold weather we have, the better," said Joe Mitchum, a peach grower outside Ruston, La.

The unusually low temperatures led New Orleans emergency officials to enact a "freeze plan" on New Year's Eve, allowing homeless shelters to temporarily exceed their fire safety capacity. Six shelters took on 700 extra cots between them, boosting the city's capacity of about 400 shelter beds. The plan is expected to last through Thursday.

Snow fell Wednesday from Ohio through eastern Kentucky and West Virginia into parts of Virginia and Maryland. West Virginia's rugged Randolph County got 13 inches, the Weather Service said.

At least 40 of West Virginia's 55 counties closed schools Wednesday because of snow-covered roads and freezing temperatures. The holiday break continued Thursday for students in at least 35 counties as the effects of the storm lingered.

Dozens of schools also were closed Wednesday in southeastern Michigan.

Associated Press writer Gillian Flaccus in Santa Ana, Calif., contributed to this report.


Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-01-01 13:36:51

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Nature and Man Jointly Cook Arctic
WASHINGTON, Thu Jan 03, 05:58 PM

There's more to the recent dramatic and alarming thawing of the Arctic region than can be explained by man-made global warming alone, a new study found. Nature is pushing the Arctic to the edge, too.

There's a natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming, which has melted sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. New research points a finger at a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle.

But that energy transfer, which comes with storms that head north because of ocean currents, is not acting alone either, scientists say. Another upcoming study concludes that the combination of both that natural energy transfer increase and man-made global warming serve as a one-two punch that is pushing the Arctic over the edge.

Scientists are trying to figure out why the Arctic is warming and melting faster than computer models predict.

The summer of 2007, like the summer of 2005, smashed all records for loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and ice sheet in Greenland. In September, the Arctic Ocean had 23 percent less sea ice than the previous record low. Greenland's ice sheet melted 19 billion tons more than its previous record.

The Nature study suggests there's more behind it than global warming because the air a couple miles above the ground is warming more than calculated by the climate models.

Climate change theory concentrates on warming of surface temperatures and explains an Arctic that is warming faster than the rest of the world as mostly because reduced sea ice and ice sheets means less reflecting solar rays.

Rune Graversen, the Nature study co-author and a meteorology researcher at Stockholm University in Sweden, said a shift in energy transfer explains the thawing more, including what's happening in the atmosphere, but does not contradict consensus global warming science.

Oceanographer James Overland, who reviewed Graversen's study for Nature, said the research dovetails with an upcoming article of his which concludes that the Arctic thawing is a combination of the two.

"If we didn't have the little extra kick from global warming then we wouldn't have gone past the threshold for the change in sea ice," said Overland, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's lab in Seattle.

Other researchers said Graversen's study underestimates the effect of global warming because it relied on older data that stopped at 2001 and wasn't the most accurate.

Overland and scientist Mark Serreze disagree over which effect — man-made or natural — was the big shove that pushed the Arctic over the edge, but they agreed that overall it's a combined effort.

"Think of it as a boxer that's almost going down for the count ... and that one blow to the noggin comes and he's down for the count," said Serreze, a senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

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REGULATION WATCH

Bye Bye, Light Bulb
If only Microsoft could argue its competitors hurt the environment.

BY BRIAN M. CARNEY
Wednesday, January 2, 2008 12:01 a.m. EST

Just like that--like flipping a switch--Congress and the president banned incandescent light bulbs last month. OK, they did not exactly ban them. But the energy bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush sets energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs that traditional incandescent bulbs cannot meet.

The new rules phase in starting in 2012, but don't be lulled by that five-year delay. Whether it's next week or next decade, you will one day walk into a hardware store looking for a 100-watt bulb--and there won't be any. By 2014, the new efficiency standards will apply to 75-watt, 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs too.

Representatives of Philips and General Electric, two of the biggest lightbulb makers, say there's nothing to be concerned about. And Larry Lauck of the American Lighting Association says, "I think everyone's pretty happy" with the new law. But then, the lighting industry has no reason not to be: People will need light, whatever the law says--according to Randy Moorehead of Philips, there are four billion standard-size (or "medium base") light sockets in America alone.
So if you're GE or Philips or Sylvania, the demise of the plain vanilla lightbulb is less a threat than an opportunity--an opportunity, in particular, to replace a product that you can sell for 50 cents with one that sells for $3 or more.

Yes, the $3 bulb lasts longer. Yes, it cuts your electricity bill. Mr. Moorehead says that when every one of those four billion light sockets has an energy-saving bulb in it, the country will be saving $18 billion a year on its electric bill. That's $4.50 per bulb--and the bulb makers are standing by to make sure a substantial portion of those "savings" get transformed into profits for them.

Now it may be that those bulbs are worth more--because they last longer, etc. But some of those bulbs, like compact fluorescents and Philips' new "Halogena-IR" bulb, are already available. Currently they command all of 5% of the lightbulb market. That means that, whatever value proposition GE and Philips are selling, consumers aren't buying.

What we bulb buyers needed, it seemed, was a little nudge. Or, if you want to be cynical about it, the bulb business decided to migrate its customers to more-expensive--and presumably higher-margin--products by banning the low-cost competition.

"I was kind of involved at the very beginning" of this legislation, Mr. Moorehead says modestly. Indeed, in December 2006, Philips announced a campaign to encourage governments all around the world to phase out low-cost bulbs by 2015.

Now, I'm sure that Philips and GE and Sylvania all want to make the world a better place and so on. But if they can do so while at the same time getting the government to force their customers to pay 10 times as much for their products, well . . . did they mention that they're making the world a better place? The light bulb that costs 10 times as much does, it is true, last four times as long. But if you're a lightbulb maker, that's a pretty good trade.

If you're a consumer, you have to decide that for yourself. Except that, after the ban, you won't be allowed to any more. You just got traded up, forcibly, to a "better" product.

What's remarkable about this bit of market interference is that there is, basically, nothing wrong with the present-day, Edison-style lightbulb. It's not a lawn dart or a lead-painted toy or a magnet that will perforate your kid's intestines if he swallows it. It is what it is, and for most people in most applications, it was good enough. So the lightbulb makers and the environmentalists convinced Congress to ban them for no better reason than they believed everyone would be better off with something else.
Note that the lightbulb makers didn't need a ban to convince consumers to "upgrade." Microsoft, Dell, Apple and any number of other companies manage to convince the Joneses that they need a better "one"--whatever it is--every few years. If Philips wanted a Halogena-IR bulb in every socket, it had only to put them on the market at a price that made them irresistible compared to the 50-cent bulb of yore. Likewise with the much hailed compact fluorescent. They have been on the market a good deal longer than Philips's fancy new incandescent. The prices have come down and the quality has gone up. But not, apparently, enough for 95% of the bulb-buying public.

A few years back, one could have argued with a straight face that consumer awareness of the benefits of CFLs was inadequate. No more. The sticking point lies at that ineffable nexus between price and quality--with all that "quality" implies, whether it be service life, the delay between flicking the switch and full power, or color temperature or the look of the thing.

There are billions to be made--and spent--figuring out how to get consumers to pay more for something. This year Steve Jobs convinced a million people to pay $400 for a cell phone in a market in which many people believe that the phone should come free with a service contract. But why worry about making a product so good people feel they have to have it, when you can instead get the government to tell them they have no choice?

Don't fault the bulb makers for this. If Microsoft could get a law passed requiring users to upgrade Windows, they'd probably go for it, too. Same with Detroit--"Buy a hybrid, or else!" would probably suit them fine. But do remember this the next time a company goes to Washington to save the world: They'll end up doing it at your expense.

Mr. Carney is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

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Findings
In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm

By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: January 1, 2008
I’d like to wish you a happy New Year, but I’m afraid I have a different sort of prediction.

You’re in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what’s in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet.

Unfortunately, I can’t be more specific. I don’t know if disaster will come by flood or drought, hurricane or blizzard, fire or ice. Nor do I have any idea how much the planet will warm this year or what that means for your local forecast. Long-term climate models cannot explain short-term weather.

But there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).

Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.

A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”

When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

When Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans in 2005, it was supposed to be a harbinger of the stormier world predicted by some climate modelers. When the next two hurricane seasons were fairly calm — by some measures, last season in the Northern Hemisphere was the calmest in three decades — the availability entrepreneurs changed the subject. Droughts in California and Australia became the new harbingers of climate change (never mind that a warmer planet is projected to have more, not less, precipitation over all).

The most charitable excuse for this bias in weather divination is that the entrepreneurs are trying to offset another bias. The planet has indeed gotten warmer, and it is projected to keep warming because of greenhouse emissions, but this process is too slow to make much impact on the public.

When judging risks, we often go wrong by using what’s called the availability heuristic: we gauge a danger according to how many examples of it are readily available in our minds. Thus we overestimate the odds of dying in a terrorist attack or a plane crash because we’ve seen such dramatic deaths so often on television; we underestimate the risks of dying from a stroke because we don’t have so many vivid images readily available.

Slow warming doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead. They have used these images to start an “availability cascade,” a term coined by Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and law at the University of Southern California, and Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago.

The availability cascade is a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear. Once the images of Sept. 11 made terrorism seem a major threat, the press and the police lavished attention on potential new attacks and supposed plots. After Three Mile Island and “The China Syndrome,” minor malfunctions at nuclear power plants suddenly became newsworthy.

“Many people concerned about climate change,” Dr. Sunstein says, “want to create an availability cascade by fixing an incident in people’s minds. Hurricane Katrina is just an early example; there will be others. I don’t doubt that climate change is real and that it presents a serious threat, but there’s a danger that any ‘consensus’ on particular events or specific findings is, in part, a cascade.”

Once a cascade is under way, it becomes tough to sort out risks because experts become reluctant to dispute the popular wisdom, and are ignored if they do. Now that the melting Arctic has become the symbol of global warming, there’s not much interest in hearing other explanations of why the ice is melting — or why the globe’s other pole isn’t melting, too.

Global warming has an impact on both polar regions, but they’re also strongly influenced by regional weather patterns and ocean currents. Two studies by NASA and university scientists last year concluded that much of the recent melting of Arctic sea ice was related to a cyclical change in ocean currents and winds, but those studies got relatively little attention — and were certainly no match for the images of struggling polar bears so popular with availability entrepreneurs.

Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, recently noted the very different reception received last year by two conflicting papers on the link between hurricanes and global warming. He counted 79 news articles about a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and only 3 news articles about one in a far more prestigious journal, Nature.

Guess which paper jibed with the theory — and image of Katrina — presented by Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”?

It was, of course, the paper in the more obscure journal, which suggested that global warming is creating more hurricanes. The paper in Nature concluded that global warming has a minimal effect on hurricanes. It was published in December — by coincidence, the same week that Mr. Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize.

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Gore didn’t dwell on the complexities of the hurricane debate. Nor, in his roundup of the 2007 weather, did he mention how calm the hurricane season had been. Instead, he alluded somewhat mysteriously to “stronger storms in the Atlantic and Pacific,” and focused on other kinds of disasters, like “massive droughts” and “massive flooding.”

“In the last few months,” Mr. Gore said, “it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter.” But he was being too modest. Thanks to availability entrepreneurs like him, misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier.

Quoted from JoAnn

As cold as it was today, I can't wait for some global warming.

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United Nations and crusading celebrities are simply wrong

Environmental extremism must be put in its place in the climate debate

By Dr. Tim Ball & Tom Harris  Wednesday, January 9, 2008

All responsible citizens are ‘environmentalists’, but that is no reason to yield to mass delusions.

Many people are starting to realize that much of what they’ve been told about climate change by governments, the United Nations and crusading celebrities is simply wrong. Not surprisingly, the assertion that “the science is settled” in a field the public is coming to understand is both immature and quickly evolving, is triggering growing public skepticism.  Alarmists respond by upping the ante, making even more extreme and nonsensical forecasts, which in turn further fuels healthy public disbelief.
This pattern of exaggerated, and finally ludicrous assertions influencing debate in society is an old story. Extremists and extremism have always defined the limits for the majority. Climate extremism will increase in the near future as purveyors of politically correct but flawed views of climate change attempt to defend the indefensible.  
  
Realization of this misdirection, and in many cases, deception, leads to the next stage in the life cycle of such mass delusions.  People begin to ask, “What is the motivation for the scare? How was society so easily misled? Why did so many otherwise intelligent people accept or even promote the scare?
  
In this and subsequent articles I (Dr. Ball) will suggest answers to these crucially important questions.
  
Like all philosophies that come to dominate society, climate hysteria is part of an evolution of ideas and needs an historical context.  The current western view of the World essentially evolved from the Darwinian view. Even though it is still just a theory and not a law 148 years after it was first proposed, Darwinian evolution is the only view allowed in schools. Why? Such censorship suggests fear of other ideas, a measure of indefensibility.  
  
A proper appreciation of time is essential to this discussion and the larger theme of climate change. Before Darwin, the English church accepted Bishop Ussher’s biblically-based calculation that the world was formed on October 23, 4004 BC. But Darwin needed a much older world to allow the sort of evolution he envisioned as driving natural change to occur. Religion said God created the world in 7 days; Darwin needed millions.
  
Sir Charles Lyell provided the answer in a book titled Principles of Geology, which Darwin took on his famous voyage to the Galapagos Islands. The combination of long time frames and slow development resulted in a philosophical view known as uniformitarianism.
  
If such a term sounds more appropriate to religion than science, that is because it is, in essence, another form of belief system. Uniformitarianism is the idea now underpinning western society’s view of the World. A basic tenet assumes change is gradual over long periods of time and any sudden or dramatic change is not natural. Employing a version of uniformitarianism adapted to their needs, environmental extremists can point to practically any change and say it is unnatural, which implies it is man-made.  But we know from modern science that natural changes can indeed be quite sudden and extreme – Professor Tim Patterson of Carleton University, in Ottawa pointed out last year in the Financial Post that “Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thousand-year-long “Younger Dryas” cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6 degrees C in a decade—100 times faster than the past century’s 0.6 degrees C warming that has so upset environmentalists.”  Happening as it did before the dawn of civilization, it was, of course, entirely natural.
  
Notice also another illogic inherent in the stance of the extremists. If humanity is not ‘natural’ then who are we and why are here? One obvious answer is we were put here by a greater being, a God.  But the entire essence of Darwin’s theory is that there is no God as Darwin was a professed atheist. This debate is actually part of the entire question of environmentalism and the misdirection discussed here. It is also part of today’s debate manifest in best selling books such as Richard Dawkins’, “The God Delusion”, or Christopher Hitchens’ “God is not Great."  Dawkins talks almost as if he views Darwin as a God.  
  
Historically, new views of the world take time to filter down and become part of the general fabric of society.  Even then, some people never buy in.  Over 400 years ago, Copernicus proposed that the Earth revolves around the Sun, yet even today polls in Europe showed a significant percentage of people still believe the Sun goes around the Earth as this seems to match the visual evidence.  But for most people it really doesn’t matter - as long as the Sun rises and sets they couldn’t care less. But Darwin’s theory had much greater implication for the average person. To put it in a silly way reflective of the fashion in which he was attacked at the time, Darwin effectively said there is no God and your great grandmother was a gorilla. Now he was talking to, and about, everybody in a personal way.  
  
Science became more personal still with the advent of environmentalism, which began with a symbolic event, the usual agent of change. The famous Whole Earth photograph taken by U.S. Apollo 17 astronaut Ronald Evans part way to the Moon became symbolic and changed how we viewed our planet and our relation to it.  This image quickly became what anthropologists refer to as a catalytic symbol and was a major trigger that ushered in today’s environmental movement.  



“In 1948, the British astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle said, “Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside is available...a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.” U.S astronaut Ronald Evans’ well known Whole Earth photo is now considered by many to be the most important image of the twentieth century.  It has acted as a catalytic symbol helping change the way we think about our world.”

While previously the idea that the Earth was small and finite and we could run out of resources was a philosophical concept appreciated only by a few, now everyone could see the image of our planet floating in a vast and hostile universe. Ronald Evans’ photo showed up in classrooms, school texts and at environmental conferences everywhere and had massive impact on the average citizen’s perspective of humanity’s place in nature.  
  
An entirely new worldview (at least for the bulk of society) developed, called environmentalism.  But, as with all new views, people wondered how far it would, or should, change society, how fast we should implement such changes and what we should preserve from the ‘old ways’. As usual, extremists are defining the limits. They inevitably take the ideas too far or too fast. Extremists also alienate people by assuming they’re the only ones who understand, often complaining that society is now losing more than we are gaining.  
  
At the same time, extremists took on the title of environmentalists as if they were somehow special and the rest of us were not also concerned about, and involved in, environmental protection.  How dare they - we are all environmentalists. Yet extremists continue to imply that they care and we don’t and that we must do things their way or ‘else’.
  
For example, PR Newswire Association LLC (UK) cites the Washington DC based Center for Science and Public Policy (see link on Breitbart news page), “Some voices on the political left have called for the arrest and prosecution of skeptical scientists [i.e. those who question whether human-produced carbon dioxide is causing a climate crisis]. The British Foreign Secretary has said skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and must be denied access to the media.”
  
Environmental extremists have successfully applied intense emotional pressure – both moral and political - ‘you don’t care about the planet, the children, or the future if you question us’, let alone disagree, they assert. .
  
Many politicians are caught in an awkward position because, while they understand how environmental extremism poses a very serious threat to our economies, including the ways that have brought us peace and prosperity, they also don’t want to be accused of not caring about the environment.  So, most politicians put on the ‘Cloak of Green’, using much of the rhetoric of extremism while trying to avoid implementing the solutions of the extremists.  This logical inconsistency is starting to haunt our leaders as truly dangerous legislation is being passed by misinformed and opportunistic politicians based on the sort of empty climate change rhetoric that nearly all of them now use. In Canada, an example is Bill C-288, The Kyoto Implementation Bill.  In the U.S., America’s Climate Security Act so strongly promoted by Senator Barbara Boxer, Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is a very serious threat to the American way of life.  
  
Most of our leaders know very well the World is in little danger from climate change, at least not any caused by human activity.  But they also realize, as does any thinking person, that there are indeed serious pollution problems that we must continue to address.  In an effort to appear ‘green’, politicians are then pushed by party strategists to intentionally confuse the issue by referring to the benign gas carbon dioxide as “global warming pollution” (a favourite trick of Al Gore and Boxer) and speaking of ‘clean air’ and ‘climate control’ as if they were interchangeable.  This is amplified by many in the media who, out of ignorance, laziness or opportunism simply repeat the mistake until it becomes part of the landscape.  As a result, the emotional pressure to ‘do something about global warming’ mounts and billions of dollars are wasted trying to ‘stop climate change’ - a wholly impossible objective - while real issues are neglected.  
  
In 2008, it is crucially important that the public stay alert for environmental extremists presenting, and media and politicians blindly repeating, natural events as unnatural. Temperature is always rising and falling, glaciers advance and retreat, drought and floods occur over and over - climate is changing all the time and much more quickly than Darwinian-driven western science allows.
  
There is no question that we have a great deal to learn about the drivers of global climate change.  But this is not the primary problem right now.  As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”  And, in today’s media and politics there is far too much being asserted about climate change that has little, if any, foundation in reality.  However, based on what we do know, there is little to suggest that current conditions are anything but natural and well within any previous patterns of climate change.   It is time for the general public and mass media to join the ‘skeptics’ and demand more real data and less blind faith in the climate debate  

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ALBANY
Conference set on climate shift, farmers
BY SARA FOSS Gazette Reporter

    If you’re a farmer, you can expect shorter winters and longer summers.
    You can expect more pests on vegetable crops from insects to weeds, and more extreme weather events such as floods and droughts.
    These are just some of the ways that global warming will affect agriculture, according to scientists.
    An upcoming conference, titled “New York Farming and Climate Instability,” will focus on what farmers can expect from climate change and what can be done to prepare for it. The conference will be held from 9 a.m. to noon Wednesday, Jan. 30, at the New York State Legislative Office Building in Albany. The event is sponsored by Honest Weight Food Co-op, the Regional Farm & Food Project and the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York.
    The conference will feature a question and answer session; questions will be directed at a panel of farmers from throughout the state. Also expected to attend and answer questions is scientist Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig, who has studied climate change at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. State legislators have been invited, and organizers expect a strong turnout.
    The goal of the conference, said Billie Best of the Regional Farm & Food Project, is to raise awareness of how climate change will affect agriculture in New York. “Agriculture is on the front line of climate change,” she said. “Farmers need to be prepared to respond to change.”
    “Farmers who grow crops choose crops on the basis of seasons, their water supply, the soil type,” Best continued. “All of these things are affected by climate change.”
    This is the first time Honest Weight, based in Albany, the Regional Farm & Food Project and the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York have sponsored an event like focused on farming and climate change.
    “This is probably the most relevant topic to food, and local food, that I can think of,” said Karissa Centanni, education coordinator at Honest Weight.
    Best said that some people — including legislators — remain skeptical about whether global warming is occurring.
    Conference organizers, on the other hand, have no doubts that climate change is occurring.
FARMERS ARE AWARE
    “It’s very much clear that one of the areas that will be greatly affected by climate change is agriculture,” said Greg Swartz, a Sullivan County-based farmer who serves as executive director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York. “Farmers are generally more aware of what’s happening in the environment.”
    Last year the National Arbor Day Foundation released a new plant hardiness zone map that updated a 1990 map issued by the United States Department of Agriculture; in the new map, significant portions of many states have shifted at least one full hardiness zone, an indication that the United States is getting warmer.
    “That’s a real thing that’s happening very quietly,” Best said. “All growers tend to know the hardiness zones they live in.”
    Hardiness zone maps are used by gardeners to determine what trees, flowers, fruits and vegetables will survive in the zone where they live.
    Best, who raises chickens, cows, goats and sheep on a small farm in western Massachusetts, said she notices subtle changes, but that it’s hard to know whether to attribute them to climate change or normal weather patterns.
    “It seems the winters are warmer than in my childhood,” she said. She said there’s a pond at her farm that has dried up three times in the nine years she’s live there; two of those three times have been in the last three years.
SUPPORT FOR FARMS
    The brochure for “New York Farming and Climate Instability” suggests a number of ways to tackle the problem of climate change, including: supporting organic and sustainable agriculture, supporting small and medium sized farms, supporting local foods and conserving farmland.
    Supporting local food, organizers said, reduces the consumption of fossil fuels in transporting and processing food; smaller farms, they said, require less energy and pollute less than larger, more industrial farms.
    “We want to go back to a couple centuries ago, when farmland was not all developed and there were farmers markets all around,” said Louise Maher-Johnson, who is organizing the “New York Farming and Climate Instability” conference and is a member of the Honest Weight and RFFP boards. “People want local food, and they want better food. You can’t have carbon dioxide reduction without (talking about) food.”

Quoted Text

Fear not global warming, just get ready for it

    Yes, the world is warming up, and thank God it is. Can anyone imagine global cooling? Food production would decline worldwide. Another ice age? No thanks!
    At least with global warming, the breadbaskets of Canada and the Soviet Union will flourish. The coming changes in coastal areas all around the planet will have to be dealt with. We know the flooding and coastal devastation will be enormous. Just think, Albany will become a coastal port!
    Our good president Franklin D. Roosevelt should have changed one word of his famous 1933 speech, “The only thing to fear is fear itself” to “The only thing to fear is fear of change.” Change is all around us, every day. Thank God today, we have the scientific knowledge to foresee and deal with it — sometimes.
    LEONARD MULLER
    Greenfield Center