Minneapolis Can Do Better Than This

She has this on her website. I presume its a load of nonsense.
"The "Global Warming" issue needs a real and honest debate since there is actual proof that our climate is actually cooling in North America. (This is clearly documented through metrological records especially from 1998 through this present time). "

Yes it is a load of nonsense. 1998 was an abnormally hot year globally even by recent standards. The years since 1998 have not been as warm. But the warming trend overall is still clearly upward with no reason to think it will stop. It is intellectually dishonest to pick 1998 arbitrarily as your starting point and then say, see we are cooling off. It is pure cherry picking for ideological reasons. However it can look like a compelling argument for someone like White who clearly has no understanding of the issue beyond what she has been fed.

As if there wasn't enough wrong with the science, I don't believe Al Gore went to Princeton, either.

Wrong on many, many levels.

I wouldn't worry about her too much. She's running in the Minnesota 5th, which elected Keith Ellison last time. It's probably the most left leaning district in the entire state, and hasn't gone to the Republican candidate since the early 60s. Ellison is running again and he should win easily. I just moved out of that area and he is well liked by his constituents.

It's sad that she even gets the interview, but she is highly unlikely to get to the national stage.

What Ian said. The headline of the post connects a very progressive (and amazingly well-educated) city with a candidate they'd never vote for. We all have our kooks.

Yeah, this gets play. In my own district, where Dem. Jerry McNerney won the seat from bloviating Richard Pombo in 2006, we now have a Pombo clone running against McNerney. His only slogan. American Energy. Andal for Congress. He didn't say what kind of energy though.

Every time I come across this stuff, I think of the follow up questions that I would ask. Example: Asking Sarah Palin, What would Noah do?

It will be interesting when Dr. Patricia Dehmer, Director of the Office of Science, DOE, testifies before the House Committee on Science and Technology this coming week regarding The Foundation for Developing New Energy Technologies: Basic Energy Research in the DOE Office of Science. One Committee member is Dana "dinosaur flatulence" Rohrabacher. I should listen in to see in he makes an ass of himself... again.

And, Sheril, another lady in a position of responsibility for science policy. Dr. Dehmer received the Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1967 and the Ph.D. degree in Chemical Physics from the University of Chicago in 1972.

She has so little chance of getting elected here that the RNC wouldn't give her any air time at the convention to give her a boost. In fact, I didn't know who was running against Ellison until I heard about the dis.

Question...Do you know what the temp will be on Monday?

Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

Global Warming is and has always been a scam - I am open minded, give me proof.

I'd like to thank Don Allen--Barb's media/communications director--for weighing in here and reading.

To answer real quick, weather and climate are not the same thing. Here's a link to the EPA Kids Site for detail on the differences as well as information on climate change.

You and your boss may want to brush up on that.

Thank you for your direction in investigating this theory. It is very important that people use journalism to help expand understanding of information.

However, when one who has a Blog that for the most part is okay - there are bigger issues than "Barb" or "Global warming" going on in our own back yards. I hope that someday we can "agree to disagree".

Great Blog!

Donald W.R. Allen, II - General Manager
Twin City Business/The Independent Business News Network

A Review Of
'The Great Global Warming Swindle'
By S. Fred Singer, (Atmospheric Physicist)
March 19, 2007
Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth has met its match: a devastating documentary recently shown on British television, which has now been viewed by millions of people on the Internet. Despite its flamboyant title, The Great Global Warming Swindle is based on sound science and interviews with real climate scientists, including me. An Inconvenient Truth, on the other hand, is mostly an emotional presentation from a single politician.

The scientific arguments presented in The Great Global Warming Swindle can be stated quite briefly:

1. There is no proof that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from human activity. Ice core records from the past 650,000 years show that temperature increases have preceded--not resulted from--increases in CO2 by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2. As the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapour is far, far more important than CO2. Dire predictions of future warming are based almost entirely on computer climate models, yet these models do not accurately understand the role or water vapor--and, in any case, water vapor is not within our control. Plus, computer models cannot account for the observed cooling of much of the past century (1940-75), nor for the observed patterns of warming--what we call the "fingerprints." For example, the Antarctic is cooling while models predict warming. And where the models call for the middle atmosphere to warm faster than the surface, the observations show the exact opposite.

The best evidence supporting natural causes of temperature fluctuations are the changes in cloudiness, which correspond strongly with regular variations in solar activity. The current warming is likely part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that's been traced back almost a million years. It accounts for the Medieval Warm Period around 1100 A.D., when the Vikings settled Greenland and grew crops, and the Little Ice Age, from about 1400 to 1850 A.D., which brought severe winters and cold summers to Europe, with failed harvests, starvation, disease, and general misery. Attempts have been made to claim that the current warming is "unusual" using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data. Advocates have tried to deny the existence of these historic climate swings and claim that the current warming is "unusual" by using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data, resulting in the famous "hockey-stick" temperature graph. The hockey-stick graph has now been thoroughly discredited.

2. If the cause of warming is mostly natural, then there is little we can do about it. We cannot control the inconstant sun, the likely origin of most climate variability. None of the schemes for greenhouse gas reduction currently bandied about will do any good; they are all irrelevant, useless, and wildly expensive:

⢠Control of CO2 emissions, whether by rationing or elaborate cap-and-trade schemes

⢠Uneconomic "alternative" energy, such as ethanol and the impractical "hydrogen economy"

⢠Massive installations of wind turbines and solar collectors

⢠Proposed projects for the sequestration of CO2 from smokestacks or even from the atmosphere

Ironically, even if CO2 were responsible for the observed warming trend, all these schemes would be ineffective--unless we could persuade every nation, including China, to cut fuel use by 80 percent!

3. Finally, no one can show that a warmer climate would produce negative impacts overall. The much-feared rise in sea levels does not seem to depend on short-term temperature changes, as the rate of sea-level increases has been steady since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely--that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. Why do we assume that the present climate is the optimum? Surely, the chance of this must be vanishingly small, and the economic history of past climate warmings bear this out.

But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. Why should we devote our scarce resources to what is essentially a non-problem, and ignore the real problems the world faces: hunger, disease, denial of human rights--not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? Yet politicians and the elites throughout much of the world prefer to squander our limited resources to fashionable issues, rather than concentrate on real problems. Just consider the scary predictions emanating from supposedly responsible world figures: the chief scientist of Great Britain tells us that unless we insulate our houses and use more efficient light bulbs, the Antarctic will be the only habitable continent by 2100, with a few surviving breeding couples propagating the human race. Seriously!

I imagine that in the not-too-distant future all the hype will have died down, particularly if the climate should decide to cool--as it did during much of the past century; we should take note here that it has not warmed since 1998. Future generations will look back on the current madness and wonder what it was all about. They will have movies like An Inconvenient Truth and documentaries like The Great Global Warming Swindle to remind them.

Mr. Allen - you did your job. You proved that Sheril was right all along: your candidate is a danger to society. Thank you for providing additional evidence for this claim.

I live in the 5th district. This person has no shot whatsoever to unseat Rep. Ellison. In fact, in my precinct, GWB came in 3rd in the past two elections behind both the democrat and Ralph Nader. No need to give her anymore publicity.

"But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. Why should we devote our scarce resources to what is essentially a non-problem, and ignore the real problems the world faces: hunger, disease, denial of human rights--not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? Yet politicians and the elites throughout much of the world prefer to squander our limited resources to fashionable issues, rather than concentrate on real problems."

Mr. Allen,
First, a hearty welcome. Some here may not wish to engage you in debate, but I for one am glad you've come. Your presence reminds us that we, in the science community, have our work cut out for us to address the legitimate issues that you and others bring to our table.

To that end, I've pasted a quote out of the film review you cite above. As both a scientist and a liberal, I have to say the film's contention is dead, flat, wrong. I'm not an "elite" just because I have an education above a bachelor's degree. And since my gross salary is 5 figures, I'm not at the top of the economic ladder either. I do think all the things mentioned are extremely important issues, and I have written many letter to my representatives on the Hill lamenting their lack of leadership on these issues. I also note that it is both a Republican and Democratic failing.

That said, I hope you will grant me that significant climate change has the potential to dislocate significant numbers of mostly poor people around the world. Such a dislocation will only exacerbate, not reduce the problems the quote highlights, which is one of the many reasons I work on this issue personally and professionally.

Finally Mr. Allen, as a scientist, I would appreciate it if you debate this issue on the policy or regulatory merits that you dislike, instead of taking swipes at scientists. Science is NOT about absolute certainty, nor is it about consensus. Science is about the likelihood of occurrence (i.e. the likelihood I'll get hit by a bus crossing street X), so you will always find folks who disagree with the statistics and the conclusions. It doesn't mean the science is bad - quite the contrary.

If you don't want more regulations on business to fight climate change - say so. If you don't want Americans to make sacrifices that you are sure the Chinese won't make - then say so. Stop making scientists the scapegoats for other political agendas. we don't appreciate it, and its dishonest.

I've been reading about this on climateprogress.org, and I'm thinking the question Barb & Donald need to ask themselves is whether their skepticism (denial?) is based on a good understanding of the science, or on convenience. So far it's not looking good if Donald thinks studying and projecting macro-climatic trends is the same as predicting local weather fluctuation, and Barb assumes that smog reduction must mean CO2 emission is under control.

It's one thing to be skeptical (and there are still a few genuine skeptics who question not the reality of AGW but the likely future magnitude), but it is something else entirely to call global warming a "scam".

Calling it a "Scam" implies some kind of conspiracy to defraud the public.

My question to Mr Allen would be this: who exactly do he and Ms. White believe to be defrauding the public in this case? Climate scientists? Democratic politicians? All Democrats? All of the above?

The whole thing is just too nutty for words.

It scares me that we have people in Congress who actually "think" like this.

As other Minneapolis residents have pointed out, Minneapolis can do better than that. Keith Ellison has little to worry about from Barb. I thought it was funny, too, that she couldn't even get three minutes at the Republican Convention. Of course, it could be that thing about her being from Minneapolis and the convention being in St. Paul. There is a bit of a rivalry.