2007: Global Warming Alarmism Reaches A "Tipping Point" http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? FuseAction=Minority.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=dceb518c-802a-23ad-45bf- 894a13435a08&Region_id=&Issue_id= (For Selected Highlights of Speech Click Here:)

The American people will soon be asked to support global warming cap-and-trade legislation that will be billed as a "solution" to global warming. These bills come at a time when the science is overwhelmingly taking away the basis for alarm.

An abundance of new peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and data error discoveries in the last several months has prompted scientists to declare that fear of catastrophic man-made global warming "bites the dust" and the scientific underpinnings for alarm are "falling apart."

I have addressed global warming on the Senate floor more than a dozen times since 2003, and today's speech will reveal that peer-reviewed studies and scientists are coming over to many of the concerns I raised years ago.

I want to talk to you today for what may be a personally unprecedented two hours or more of time to report on the recent developments which are turning 2007 into a "tipping point" for climate alarmism. I will detail how even committed left-wing scientists now believe the environmental movement has been "co-opted" into promoting global warming as a "crisis' and I will expose the manufactured façade of "consensus."

I will also address the economic factors of so-called "solutions" to global warming and how they will have no measurable impact on the climate. But these so called "solutions" will create huge economic harm for American families and the poor residents of the developing world who may see development hindered by unfounded climate fears.

We are currently witnessing an international awakening of scientists who are speaking out in opposition to former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, the Hollywood elitists and the media-driven "consensus" on man-made global warming.

We have witnessed Antarctic ice GROW to record levels since satellite monitoring began in the 1970's. We have witnessed NASA temperature data errors that have made 1934 -- not 1998 -- the hottest year on record in the U.S. We have seen global averages temperatures flat line since 1998 and the Southern Hemisphere cool in recent years.

These new developments in just the last six months are but a sample of the new information coming out that continues to debunk climate alarm.

But before we delve into these dramatic new scientific developments, it is important to take note of our pop culture propaganda campaign aimed at children.

HOLLYWOOD TARGETS CHILDREN WITH CLIMATE FEARS

In addition to Gore's entry last year into Hollywood fictional disaster films, other celebrity figures have attempted to jump into the game.

Hollywood activist Leonardo DiCaprio decided to toss objective scientific truth out the window in his new scarefest "The 11th Hour." DiCaprio refused to interview any scientists who disagreed with his dire vision of the future of the Earth.

In fact, his film reportedly features physicist Stephen Hawking making the unchallenged assertion that "the worst-case scenario is that Earth would become like its sister planet, Venus, with a temperature of 250 [degrees] centigrade."

I guess these "worst-case scenario's" pass for science in Hollywood these days. It also fits perfectly with DiCaprio's stated purpose of the film.

DiCaprio said on May 20th of this year: "I want the public to be very scared by what they see. I want them to see a very bleak future." (LINK)

While those who went to watch DiCaprio's science fiction film may see his intended "bleak future," it is DiCapro who has been scared by the bleak box office numbers, as his film has failed to generate any significant audience interest.

Gore's producer to kids: ‘Be activists'

Children are now the number one target of the global warming fear campaign. DiCaprio announced his goal was to recruit young eco-activists to the cause.

"We need to get kids young," DiCaprio said in a September 20 interview with USA Weekend.

Hollywood activist Laurie David, Gore's co-producer of "An Inconvenient Truth" recently co- authored a children's global warming book with Cambria Gordon for Scholastic Books titled, The Down-To-Earth Guide to Global Warming.

David has made it clear that her goal is to influence young minds with her new book when she recently wrote an open letter to her children stating: "We want you to grow up to be activists."

Apparently, David and other activists are getting frustrated by the widespread skepticism on climate as reflected in both the U.S. and the UK according to the latest polls.

It appears the alarmists are failing to convince adults to believe their increasingly shrill and scientifically unfounded rhetoric, so they have decided kids are an easier sell.

But David should worry less about recruiting young activists and more about scientific accuracy. A science group found what it called a major "scientific error" in David's new kid's book on page 18.

According to a Science and Public Policy Institute release on September 13:

"The authors [David and Gordon] present unsuspecting children with an altered temperature and CO2 graph that reverses the relationship found in the scientific literature. The manipulation is critical because David's central premise posits that CO2 drives temperature, yet the peer-reviewed literature is unanimous that CO2 changes have historically followed temperature changes."

David has now been forced to publicly admit this significant scientific error in her book.

Nine year old: ‘I don't want to die' from global warming

A Canadian high school student named McKenzie was shown Gore's climate horror film in four different classes.

"I really don't understand why they keep showing it," McKenzie said on May 19, 2007. (LINK)

In June, a fourth grade class from Portland Maine's East End Community School issued a dire climate report: "Global warming is a huge pending global disaster" read the elementary school kids' report according to an article in the Portland Press Herald on June 14, 2007. Remember, these are fourth graders issuing a dire global warming report. (LINK)

And this agenda of indoctrination and fear aimed at children is having an impact.

Nine year old Alyssa Luz-Ricca was quoted in the Washington Post on April 16, 2007 as saying:

"I worry about [global warming] because I don't want to die." (LINK)

The same article explained: "Psychologists say they're seeing an increasing number of young patients preoccupied by a climactic Armageddon."

I was told by the parent of an elementary school kid last spring who said her daughter was forced to watch "An Inconvenient Truth" once a month at school and had nightmares about drowning in the film's predicted scary sea level rise.

The Hollywood global-warming documentary "Arctic Tale" ends with a child actor telling kids: "If your mom and dad buy a hybrid car, you'll make it easier for polar bears to get around." (LINK)

Unfortunately, children are hearing the scientifically unfounded doomsday message loud and clear. But the message kids are receiving is not a scientific one, it is a political message designed to create fear, nervousness and ultimately recruit them to liberal activism.

There are a few hopeful signs. A judge in England has ruled that schools must issue a warning before they show Gore's film to children because of scientific inaccuracies and "sentimental mush." (LINK)

In addition, there is a new kids book called "The Sky's Not Falling! Why It's OK to Chill About Global Warming." The book counters the propaganda from the pop culture. (LINK)

Objective, Evidence based Science is Beginning to Crush Hysteria

My speech today and these reports reveal that recent peer-reviewed scientific studies are totally refuting the Church of Man-made Global Warming.

Global warming movement ‘falling apart'

Meteorologist Joseph Conklin who launched the skeptical website http://www.climatepolice.com in 2007, recently declared the "global warming movement [is] falling apart."

All the while, activists like former Vice President Al Gore repeatedly continue to warn of a fast approaching climate "tipping point."

I agree with Gore. Global warming may have reached a "tipping point."

The man-made global warming fear machine crossed the "tipping point" in 2007.

I am convinced that future climate historians will look back at 2007 as the year the global warming fears began crumbling. The situation we are in now is very similar to where we were in the late 1970's when coming ice age fears began to dismantle.

Remember, it was Newsweek Magazine which in the 1970's proclaimed meteorologists were "almost unanimous" in their view that a coming Ice Age would have negative impacts. It was also Newsweek in 1975 which originated the eerily similar "tipping point" rhetoric of today:

Newsweek wrote on April 28, 1975 about coming ice age fears: "The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."

Of course Newsweek essentially retracted their coming ice age article 29 years later in October 2006. In addition, a 1975 National Academy of Sciences report addressed coming ice age fears and in 1971, NASA predicted the world "could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age."

Today, the greatest irony is that the UN and the media's climate hysteria grows louder as the case for alarmism fades away. While the scientific case grows weaker, the political and rhetorical proponents of climate fear are ramping up to offer hefty tax and regulatory "solutions" both internationally and domestically to "solve" the so-called "crisis."

Skeptical Climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball formerly of the University of Winnipeg in Canada wrote about the current state of the climate change debate earlier this month:

"Imagine basing a country's energy and economic policy on an incomplete, unproven theory - a theory based entirely on computer models in which one minor variable (CO2) is considered the sole driver for the entire global climate system."

And just how minor is that man-made CO2 variable in the atmosphere?

Meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological Society's (AMS) Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, explained in August how miniscule mankind's CO2 emissions are in relation to the Earth's atmosphere.

"If the atmosphere was a 100 story building, our annual anthropogenic CO2 contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor," D'Aleo wrote.

Four Essential Points Debunking Climate Fears

Debunking catastrophic man-made global warming fears can be reduced to four essential points:

1) Recent climate changes on Earth lie well within the bounds of natural climate variability - even the New York Times concedes this. UN temperature data show that the late 20th century phase of global warming ended in 1998; new data for the Southern Hemisphere show that a slight cooling is underway there.

2) Almost all the current public fear of global warming is being driven by unproven and un-testable computer model fears of the future, which now even the UN concedes that the models do not account for half the variability in nature, and thus that their predictions are not reliable.

3) Debunking the "More CO2 = A Warmer World" simplicity. Scientists are reporting in the peer- reviewed literature that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will not have the catastrophic impact doomsters have been predicting. In fact, climate experts are discovering that you cannot distinguish the impact of human-produced greenhouse gasses from natural climate variability.

4) A climate change "consensus" does not exist. Instead, the illusion that it does has been carefully manufactured for political, financial and ideological purposes.

These four basic points form the foundation of the rational, evidence-based approach to climate science that has come to be called global warming skepticism.

Essential Point #1: Earth's Climate Within Natural Climate Variability

Let us examine the first essential point:

The current climate of the Earth is well within natural variability.

An April 23, 2006, article in the New York Times by Andrew Revkin stated:

"Few scientists agree with the idea that the recent spate of potent hurricanes, European heat waves, African drought and other weather extremes are, in essence, our fault [a result of manmade emissions]. There is more than enough natural variability in nature to mask a direct connection, [scientists] say."

The Times is essentially conceding that no recent weather events fall outside the range of natural climate variability. And on a slightly longer time scale, many scientific studies have shown the Medieval and earlier Warm Periods were as warm as or warmer than Earth's current temperature -- when there were no influence from MAN or SUVs.

A 2006, National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report discredited the now infamous "Hockey Stick" temperature graph. The study, created by UN IPCC lead author Michael Mann, purported to show Northern Hemisphere temperatures flat for 1,000 years and then spiked upwards in the 20th century -- allegedly due to mankind's emissions.

But the NAS found evidence of both a Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. It also expressed little confidence in Mann's conclusion that the 1990s were the hottest decade of the last millennium and even less confidence that 1998 was the hottest year. In fact, as I will detail in a moment, in August NASA declared 1934 as the hottest year in the U.S.

There have been other recent studies refuting claims that the 20th century has seen unprecedented warmth. A June 29, 2007 paper by Gerd Burger of Berlin's Institute of Meteorology in the peer- reviewed Science Magazine challenged a 2006 study that claimed the 20th century had been unusually warm.

Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack, the chair of Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, noted in May 2007 that extremely long geologic timescales reveal that "only about 5% of that time has been characterized by conditions on Earth that were so cold that the poles could support masses of permanent ice."

Giegengack added: "For most of Earth's history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has rarely been cooler."

Greenland has COOLED since the 1940's!

In fact, current temperatures in Greenland -- a poster boy for climate alarmists - are COOLER than the temperatures there in the 1930s and 1940s, according to multiple peer-reviewed studies.

Yes, you heard me correctly. Greenland has COOLED since the 1940s! A fact the media and global warming activists conceal.

Greenland reached its highest temperatures in 1941, according to a peer-reviewed study published in the June 2006 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research. And, keep in mind that 80% of man- made CO2 came AFTER these high temperatures.

According to a July 2007 survey of peer-reviewed literature:

"Research in 2006 found that Greenland has been warming since the 1880's, but since 1955, temperature averages at Greenland stations have been colder than the period between 1881-1955. Another 2006 peer-reviewed study concluded the rate of warming in Greenland from 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than the warming from 1995-2005. One 2005 study found Greenland gaining ice in the interior higher elevations and thinning ice at the lower elevations. In addition, the often media promoted fears of Greenland's ice completely melting and a subsequent catastrophic sea level rise are directly at odds with the latest scientific studies."

These are scientific facts you will not hear from the UN scientists, Gore or the hysteria promoting media.

HEINZ CENTER ACTIVIST TWISTS THE FACTS

Yet despite all of this evidence, the media and many others still attempt to distort the science in order to create hysterical fears about Greenland.

Environmental activist Robert Corell, who works for Teresa Heinz Kerry's The Heinz Center, recently tried to stir alarm by stating: "I spent four months on the [Greenland] ice cap in 1968 and there was no melting at all."

If Corell, a former fellow with the American Meteorological Society, had desired to give a balanced historical view, he would have noted that Greenland in the 1930's or 1940's was much warmer. This is typical of the how many activists mislead the public by presenting utterly meaningless bits of information and avoiding inconvenient facts. Corell is also on record for giving former Vice President Gore's 2006 science fiction film two thumbs up for accuracy.

Corell's assertion in a September 8, UK Guardian article that earthquakes triggered by melting ice are increasing in Greenland was rebuffed by University of North Carolina's Jose Rial. Rial is a prominent climatologist/seismologist working on glacial seismic activity in Greenland.

Corell's erroneous claim prompted Rial to take the unusual step of writing a letter to the UK Guardian.

"I also know that there is no evidence to suggest that these quakes ‘are happening far faster than ever anticipated' [as Corell claimed,"] wrote Rial in a September 13 letter.

Rial criticized the newspaper for presenting a ‘falling-sky' alarmist perspective and added that "it will take years of continued surveying to know whether anything here [in Greenland] is ‘accelerating' towards catastrophe, as the article [featuring Corell] claims."

Antarctica Ice GROWS to Record Levels

For more evidence that the Earth's current climate is not changing in an alarming manner, you need to look no further than the South Pole.

Scientists monitoring ice in Antarctica reported on October 1 that the ice has GROWN to record levels since 1979 satellite monitoring began. The ice record was announced on the University of Illinois Polar Research Group website.

"The Southern Hemisphere sea ice area has broken the previous maximum of 16.03 million square kilometers and is currently at 16.26 million square kilometers."

And there's more: A February 2007 study reveals Antarctica is not following predicted global warming temperature or precipitation models. Here is an excerpt: "A new report on climate over the world's southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models." The study was conducted by David Bromwich, professor of atmospheric sciences in the Department of Geography, and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University.

How inconvenient that the two poster children of alarmism - Greenland and Antarctica -- trumpeted by Al Gore and the climate fear mongers, have decided not to cooperate with computer model driven fears.

And, there is much more evidence the Earth is currently well within natural climate variability.

Southern Hemisphere COOLING

The Southern Hemisphere is COOLING, according to UN scientist Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar, a retired Environment Canada scientist and an expert IPCC reviewer in 2007.

Dr. Khandekar explained on August 6, 2007:

"In the Southern Hemisphere, the land-area mean temperature has slowly but surely declined in the last few years. The city of Buenos Aires in Argentina received several centimeters of snowfall in early July, and the last time it snowed in Buenos Aires was in 1918! Most of Australia experienced one of its coldest months of June this year. Several other locations in the Southern Hemisphere have experienced lower temperatures in the last few years. Further, the sea surface temperatures over world oceans are slowly declining since mid-1998, according to a recent world-wide analysis of ocean surface temperatures."

Studies find Arctic, Alaska climate due to natural factors

The media will not report on the historical perspective of Greenland, the ice growing in Antarctica or the Southern Hemisphere cooling. Instead the media's current fixation is on hyping Arctic sea ice shifts.

What the media is refusing to report about the North Pole is that according to a 2003 study by Arctic scientist Igor Polyakov, the warmest period in the Arctic during the 20th Century was the late 1930s through early 1940s. Many scientists believe that if we had satellite monitoring of the Arctic back then, it may have shown less ice than today.

According to a 2005 peer-reviewed study in Geophysical Research Letters by astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon, solar irradiance appears to be the key to Arctic temperatures. The study found Arctic temperatures follow the pattern of increasing or decreasing energy received from the sun.

In another 2005 study published in the Journal of Climate, Brian Hartmann and Gerd Wendler linked the 1976 Pacific climate shift to a very significant one-time shift upward in Alaskan temperatures. These evidence based scientific studies debunk fears of man-made warming in the Arctic and in Alaska.

A NASA study published in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters on October 4, 2007, found Arctic winds blew "older thicker" ice to warmer southern waters.

Despite the media's hyping of global warming, Ignatius Rigor a co-author of the NASA study explained: "While the total [Arctic] area of ice cover in recent winters has remained about the same, during the past two years an increased amount of older, thicker perennial sea ice was swept by winds out of the Arctic Ocean into the Greenland Sea. What grew in its place in the winters between 2005 and 2007 was a thin veneer of first-year sea ice, which simply has less mass to survive the summer melt." (LINK)

Do not expect the media to report about this new NASA study blaming the "unusual winds" for moving ice out of the Arctic.

Global warming has stopped

It is important to point out that the phase of global warming that started in 1979 has itself been halted since 1998.

You can almost hear my critics skeptical of that assertion. Well, it turns out not to be an assertion, but an irrefutable fact, according to the temperature data the UN relies on.

Paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter, who has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, noted on June 18 of this year:

"The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stability has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2. Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 parts per million (17 %)."

Yes, it is true that 1998 was influenced by the warming effect of a particularly strong El Nino. But, lest you think Dr. Carter somehow misinterpreted the data, I have more evidence to bury any ‘skepticism.'

UK Officially Concedes Global Warming Has Stopped

The UK Met Office, Britain's version of our National Weather Service, was finally forced to concede the obvious in August of this year -- global warming has stopped.

After the UK Met Office --a group fully entrenched in the global warming fear movement-- was forced to acknowledge this inconvenient truth in August, they continued stoking man-made climate alarm.

Their response was to promote yet more unproven dire computer model projections of the future. They now claim climate computer models predict "global warming will begin in earnest in 2009" because greenhouse emissions will then overtake natural climate variability.

Hyping yet more unproven computer models of the future in response to inconvenient real world evidence based data is the ONLY bag of tricks left for the promoters of man-made climate doom. But it is a bit refreshing to hear climate doomsters be forced to utter the phrases like natural climate variability.

Meteorologist Joseph Conklin recently weighed in on these new developments.

Conklin wrote in August: "A few months ago, a study came out that demonstrated global temperatures have leveled off. But instead of possibly admitting that this whole global warming thing is a farce, a group of British scientists concluded that the real global warming won't start until 2009."

This new claim that "global warming will begin in earnest in 2009" sounds like the reverse of the 1930's Great Depression slogan of: ‘Prosperity is just around the corner.' Only in this instance the wording has been changed to "A climate catastrophe is just around the corner."

This is not to say that global average temperatures may not rise again - change is what the Earth naturally and continually does, and part of this is temperatures fluctuating both up and down. However, the awkward halting of global warming since 1998 despite rising emissions is yet another indication that CO2 levels and temperature are not the simple relationship many would have us believe.

U.S. surface weather measurement ‘scandal'

Another key development in 2007 is the research led by Meteorologist Anthony Watts of SurfaceStations.org which has revealed massive U.S. temperature collection data errors biasing thermometers to have warmer readings.

Meteorologist Conklin explained on August 10, 2007:

"The (U.S.) National Climate Data Center (NCDC) is in the middle of a scandal. Their global observing network, the heart and soul of surface weather measurement, is a disaster. Urbanization has placed many sites in unsuitable locations - on hot black asphalt, next to trash burn barrels, beside heat exhaust vents, even attached to hot chimneys and above outdoor grills! The data and approach taken by many global warming alarmists is seriously flawed. If the global data were properly adjusted for urbanization and station siting, and land use change issues were addressed, what would emerge is a cyclical pattern of rises and falls with much less of any background trend."

Adding to the further chilling of warming fears is a NASA data error correction that made 1934 the warmest year on record in the U.S., not the previously hyped 1998. Revised data now reveals four of the top ten hottest years in the U.S. were in the 1930's while only three of the hottest years occurred in the last decade.

Perhaps the most humorous reaction to this inconvenient correction came from NASA's James Hansen who tried to minimize the data error in August when he wrote: "No need to read further unless you are interested in temperature changes to a tenth of a degree over the U.S."

This comment was particularly outlandish, given that Hansen has become a media darling in recent years by hyping temperature differences of "tenth of a degree" to any reporter he could get within ear shot.

Essential Point #2: Unproven Computer Models Drive Climate Fears

Even the New York Times has been forced to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that the Earth is currently well within natural climate variation. This inconvenient reality means that all the warming doomsayers have to back up their climate fears are unproven computer models predicting future doom. Of course, you can't prove a prediction of the climate in 2100 wrong today, which reduces the models to speculating on what ‘could' ‘might' ‘may' happen 50 or 100 years from now.

But prominent UN scientists have publicly questioned the reliability of climate models.

In a candid statement, IPCC scientist Dr. Jim Renwick-a lead author of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report-publicly admitted that climate models may not be so reliable after all.

Renwick stated in June: "Half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable, so we don't expect to do terrifically well."

Let me repeat: a UN scientist admitted, "Half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable."

Also in June, another high-profile UN IPCC lead author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, echoed Renwick's sentiments about climate models by referring to them as nothing more than "story lines."

"In fact there are no predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been. The IPCC instead proffers ‘what if' projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios," Trenberth wrote in journal Nature's blog on June 4, 2007. He also admitted that the climate models have major shortcomings because "they do not consider many things like the recovery of the ozone layer, for instance, or observed trends in forcing agents. There is no estimate, even probabilistically, as to the likelihood of any emissions scenario and no best guess."

Climate models made by unlicensed ‘software engineers'

A leading scientific skeptic, Meteorologist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute, recently took the critique of climate computer models one step further.

Tennekes said in February 2007, "I am of the opinion that most scientists engaged in the design, development, and tuning of climate models are in fact software engineers. They are unlicensed, hence unqualified to sell their products to society."

Meteorologist Augie Auer of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, former professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Wyoming, agreed, describing climate models this way: "It's virtual science, it's virtual reality."

On a New Zealand radio interview in May, Auer joked about climate models: "Most of these climate predictions or models, they are about a half a step ahead of PlayStation 3 [video games]. They're really not justified in what they are saying. Many of the assumptions going into [the models] are simply not right."

Predictions ‘simply cannot happen'

Prominent scientist Professor Nils-Axel Morner, also denounced computer models in August 2007 saying: "The rapid rise in sea levels predicted by computer models simply cannot happen."

Morner is a leading world authority on sea levels and coastal erosion who headed the Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University. Morner, who was president of the Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution from 1999 to 2003, has published a new booklet refuting climate model predictions of catastrophic sea level rise.

Physicist Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, the former director of both University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute and International Arctic Research Center, told a Congressional hearing in 2006 that highly publicized climate models showing a disappearing Arctic were nothing more than "science fiction." Akasofu has twice been named one of the "1000 Most Cited Scientists."

Geologist Morten Hald, an Arctic expert at of the University of Tromso in Norway has also questioned the reliability of computer models that predict a future melting of the Arctic.

"The main problem is that these models are often based on relatively new climate data. The thermometer has only been in existence for 150 years and information on temperature which is 150 years old does not capture the large natural changes," Hald, who is participating with a Norwegian national team in Arctic climate research, said in May 2007.

Physicist Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, called himself a "heretic" on global warming.

"The fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated," writes Dyson in his 2007 book "Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe." Dyson is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London.

Dyson focuses on debunking climate models predictions of climate doom: "They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models."

Gore Challenged to Bet on Climate Model Accuracy

Internationally known forecasting pioneer Dr. Scott Armstrong of the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, challenged Gore to a $10,000 bet in June over the accuracy of climate computer models predictions. Armstrong and his colleague Professor Kesten Green of Monash University's in Australia, found: "Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder." According to Armstrong, the author of "Long-Range Forecasting," the most frequently cited book on forecasting methods.: "Of 89 principles [of forecasting], the [UN] IPCC violated 72."

Internationally renowned scientist Dr. Antonino Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists and a retired professor of advanced physics at the University of Bologna, has also taken climate models to task.

According to an April 27, 2007 article at Zenit.org, Zichichi, who has published over 800 scientific papers, said "the mathematical models used by the [UN's] IPCC do not correspond to the criteria of the scientific method."

UN Scientist Claims no climate model has ever been ‘validated'

IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr Vincent Gray, of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990, ridiculed the IPCC process as "dangerous scientific nonsense." Gray, the author of "Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001," explained on April 10, 2007:

"My greatest achievement was the second [IPCC] report where the draft had a chapter ‘Validation of Climate Models'. I commented that since no climate model has ever been ‘validated' that the word was inappropriate. They changed the word to ‘evaluate' 50 times, and since then they have never ‘predicted' anything. All they do is make ‘projections' and ‘estimates.'"

In fact, so much of climate computer modeling is based on taking temperature data from a very short time frame and extrapolating it out over 50 or 100 or more years and coming up with terrifying scare scenarios. There is often no attempt to look at the longer geologic record.

But much of this type of modeling has about as much validity as me taking my five year old granddaughter's growth rate from the last two years and using that to project her height when she is 25. My projections may show her to be 12 feet tall based on such short time frames. Yet that is exactly how many of the computer model fears of the future are generated for sea level rise estimates and ice melt projections in places like Greenland and the Arctic.

Once again, computer model predictions are not evidence.

Computer models drive polar bear extinction fears

In September, yet another report was issued based on computer models predictions. This report found that polar bear populations are allegedly going to be devastated by 2050 due to global warming. The report was issued as part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's consideration of listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.

This is a classic case of reality versus unproven computer model predictions. The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, whereas in the 1950s and 1960s, estimates were as low as 5,000-10,000 bears. We currently have an estimated four or five times more polar bears than 50 years ago. A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations ‘may now be near historic highs.'

Top biologists and wildlife experts are dismissing unproven computer model concerns for polar bears.

In 2006, Canadian biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor, the director of wildlife research with the Arctic government of Nunavut, dismissed these fears with evidence based data on Canada's polar bear populations.

"Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present," Taylor said, noting that Canada is home to two-thirds of the world's polar bears.

He added: "It is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria."

In September, Taylor further debunked the latest report hyping fears of future polar bear extinctions.

"I think it's naive and presumptuous," Taylor said, referring to a recent report by the U.S. government warning that computer models predict a dire future for the bears due to projected ice loss.

Less Ice = More Polar Bears?

Taylor also debunked the notion that less sea ice means less polar bears by pointing out that southern regions of the bears' home with low levels of ice are seeing booming bear populations. He noted that in the warmer southern Canadian region of the Davis Strait with lower levels of ice, a new survey will reveal that bear populations have grown from an estimated 850 bears to an estimated 3000 bears. And, despite the lower levels of ice, some of the bears measured in this region are among the biggest ever on record.

"Davis Strait is crawling with polar bears. It's not safe to camp there. They're fat. The mothers have cubs. The cubs are in good shape," he said, according to a September 14, 2007 article.

He added: "That's not theory. That's not based on a model. That's observation of reality."

Computer models predictions ‘do not prove anything'

Other Biologists are equally dismissive of these computer model based fears.

Biologist Josef Reichholf, who heads the Vertebrates Department at the National Zoological Collection in Munich, rejected climate fears and asserted any potential global warming may be beneficial to both humans and animals.

In a May 8, 2007 interview, Reichholf asked: "How did the polar bear survive the last warm period?"

Reichholf also debunked the entire notion that a warmer world will lead to mass species extinctions.

"Warming temperatures promote biodiversity," Reichholf explained. "The number of species increases exponentially from the regions near the poles across the moderate latitudes and to the equator. To put it succinctly, the warmer a region is, the more diverse are its species," he added.

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner and former lecturer at Durham University, also dismissed fears of a global warming driven polar bear demise.

"Why scare the families of the world with tales that polar bears are heading for extinction when there is good evidence that there are now twice as many of these iconic animals" than there were 20 years ago? Bellamy, the host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, asked on May 15, 2007.

Bellamy concluded: "The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything."

The bottom line is that the attempt to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act is not based on any evidence that the polar bear populations are declining or in trouble. It is based on computer climate models fraught with uncertainties. The truth is that we clearly do not know enough about most of the polar bear populations to make the argument for listing.

And frankly, listing the polar bear isn't about the bear either. It is about trying to bring about climate change regulations using the most powerful development-stopping law in the land, the Endangered Species Act. Polar bears are being used to achieve long sought left-wing environmental regulatory policies.

Essential Point #3: Debunking "More CO2 = A Warmer World" Simplicity

The third critical point on global warming is to debunk the "more CO2 = a warmer world" simplicity. Scientists and peer-reviewed studies are increasingly revealing that catastrophic climate fears of rising CO2 are simply unsustainable.

In May 2007, the "father of meteorology" Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin, dismissed fears of rising CO2 bluntly saying: "You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide."

Bryson has been identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.

Climatologist Dr. Ball recently explained that one of the reasons climate models are failing is because they overestimate the warming effect of CO2 in the atmosphere. Ball described how CO2's warming impact diminishes.

"Even if CO2 concentration doubles or triples, the effect on temperature would be minimal. The relationship between temperature and CO2 is like painting a window black to block sunlight. The first coat blocks most of the light. Second and third coats reduce very little more. Current CO2 levels are like the first coat of black paint," Ball explained in June 2007.

Environmental economist Dennis Avery, co-author with climate scientist Dr. Fred Singer of the new book "Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years," explained how much impact CO2 has had on temperatures.

"The earth has warmed only a net 0.2 degrees C of net warming since 1940. Human-emitted CO2 gets the blame for only half of that-or 0.1 degree C of warming over 65 years! We've had no warming at all since 1998. Remember, too, that each added unit of CO2 has less impact on the climate. The first 40 parts per million (ppm) of human-emitted CO2 added to the atmosphere in the 1940s had as much climate impact as the next 360 ppm," Avery wrote in August. Avery and Singer's book details how solar activity is linked to Earth's natural temperature cycles.

Global warming fears "bite the dust"

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact for the promoters of climate doom is the abundance of new peer-reviewed papers echoing these and many more scientists' skeptical views.

A new peer-reviewed study by Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research, finds that even a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would not have the previously predicted dire impacts on global temperatures.

This study is in agreement with the views of the 60 prominent scientists who advised the Canadian Prime Minister to withdraw from Kyoto in 2006.

The 60 scientists noted: "Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise.'"

Astronomer Dr. Ian Wilson proclaimed in August 2007 that the new Schwartz study means: "Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust."

Overturning Warming Fears in ‘One Fell Swoop'

American Enterprise Institute scientist Joel Schwartz also agreed:

"Along with dozens of other studies in the scientific literature, [this] new study belies Al Gore's claim that there is no legitimate scholarly alternative to climate catastrophism. Indeed, if [this study's] results are correct, that alone would be enough to overturn in one fell swoop the IPCC's scientific ‘consensus', the environmentalists' climate hysteria, and the political pretext for the energy-restriction policies that have become so popular with the world's environmental regulators, elected officials, and corporations. The question is, will anyone in the mainstream media notice?"

Former Harvard physicist Dr. Lubos Motl said the new study has reduced proponents of man-made climate fears to "playing the children's game to scare each other."

Sampling of recent peer-reviewed studies debunking rising CO2 fears

There are many other brand new peer-reviewed studies that show that fear of rising CO2 is misplaced. Here is a sampling of even more recent papers that I have not already cited:

1) An August 2007 peer-reviewed study published in Geophysical Research Letters finds global warming over last century linked to natural causes. Excerpt: The study, by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, was entitled "Synchronized Chaos: Mechanisms For Major Climate Shifts." The author's found that "By studying the last 100 years of these [natural] cycles' patterns, they find that the systems synchronized several times." The authors show that this mechanism explains all global temperature tendency changes and El Nino variability in the 20th century." (LINK)

2) A September peer-reviewed study counters global warming theory, by finding carbon dioxide did not end the last Ice Age. The study found: "Deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before atmospheric CO2, ruling out the greenhouse gas as driver of meltdown. The lead author geologist Lowell Stott, explained: "The climate dynamic is much more complex than simply saying that CO2 rises and the temperature warms." (LINK)

3) An October 2007 study by the Danish National Space Center Study concluded: "The Sun still appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change." This study was authored by Physicist Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen. (LINK)

4) A Belgian weather institute's August 2007 study dismissed the decisive role of CO2 in warming. Here is an excerpt about the study: "CO2 is not the big bogeyman of climate change and global warming. This is the conclusion of a comprehensive scientific study done by the Royal Meteorological Institute, which was published this past summer. Climate scientist Luc Debontridder explained: "Not CO2, but water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It is responsible for at least 75 % of the greenhouse effect. This is a simple scientific fact, but Al Gore's movie has hyped CO2 so much that nobody seems to take note of it."