The Enlightened Climatologist
It’s 10:40 on a Tuesday morning. I should be at school, preparing for my afternoon class on Constitutional Law, but instead, I’m at home, bundled in blankets, and sipping hot cocoa. The reason for today’s absence can be seen from my window. The Arlington/D.C. metropolis has been covered in two feet of snow and, with the exception of a few auxiliary government agencies, and some scattered restaurants and shops, the city has been sound asleep since Friday afternoon. The clouds gathering overhead promise more of the same, and many of my classmates are wondering whether it would have been wiser to take an early spring break. After all, February flights to the Bahamas are comparatively cheap. However, for the politically interested, this Narnian-esque winter holds broader implications than an excuse to play hooky. The Wall Street Journal published a blog last night on the irony of a recent announcement that the NOAA–one of many bureaucracies designed to tell us what to think–would be providing information on “earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons …” The blog follows on the heels of an article published in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph that chronicles a host of errors in a recent report from The United Nation’s panel on climate change, and reveals that glaciers may not be an endangered species after all. Not everything, it appears, is quite as settled as we’ve been led to believe. The Enlightened Climatologist may not be so enlightened after all.
Another “Oops” on Global Warming
H/T to my mother and uncle for making me aware of this:
The U.N.’s leading panel on climate change has apologized for misleading data published in a 2007 report that warned Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.
In a statement released Wednesday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said estimates relating to the rate of recession of the Himalayan glaciers in its Fourth Assessment Report were “poorly substantiated” adding that “well-established standards of evidence were not applied properly.”
Despite the admission, the IPCC reiterated its concern about the dangers melting glaciers present in a region that is home to more than one-sixth of the world’s population.
“Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes)…”
“The chair, vice-chairs, and co-chairs of the IPCC,” the statement continued, “regrets the poor application of IPCC procedures…”
The apology follows a growing storm of controversy which initially forced the IPCC to concede that data relating to the Himalayan glacier melt included in the 2007 report was not backed up by sufficient scientific data.
Speaking at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi Wednesday, the IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri admitted errors had been made but said it was not an excuse to question the legitimacy of all global warming science.
“Theoretically, let’s say we slipped up on one number, I don’t think it takes anything away from the overwhelming scientific evidence of what’s happening with the climate of this earth,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse.
The controversy centers on a paragraph in Chapter 10 of the 2007 report which states: “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world, and if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometers by the year 2035. ”
But is has recently emerged that the IPCC statement on Himalayan glaciers, which was based on information from a 2005 report by the World Wildlife Fund, was in turn gleaned from an article that appeared in the popular UK science journal, The New Scientist in June 1999.
In the article, “Flooded Out,” Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain speculates that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming.
A glacier expert interviewed by CNN explained that the data published was flawed.
Michael Zemp from the World Glacier Monitoring Service said: “There are simply no observations available to make these sorts of statements.”
Zemp says that the figures quoted in the report are not possible because 500,000 square kilometers is estimated to be the total surface area of all mountain glaciers worldwide.
“The other thing is that the report says the glaciers are receding faster than anywhere else in the world. We simply do not have the glacier change measurements. The Himalayas are among those regions with the fewest available data,” Zemp said.
In defense of the IPCC, Zemp says “you can take any report and find a mistake in it but it’s up to the next IPCC report to correct it.”
Zemp also believes that the errors shouldn’t shake people’s belief in climate science.
“Glaciers are the best proof that climate change is happening. This is happening on a global scale. They can translate very small changes in the climate into a visible signal,” he said.
Pat Buchanan Believes In Climate Change
“Not only does Hillary’s commitment represent a doubling of U.S. foreign aid, she declared at Copenhagen that climate change — known as global warming before a blizzard brought Obama winging home early — is “undeniable.”
Now, undeniably, there is climate change. But we call it spring, summer, fall and winter.”
I put this up because I think the second paragraph is brilliant. The rest of the column, which talks about how the Tea Partiers are the last best hope for the West against a “New World Order,” can be seen here.
Who’s “rooting against the country?”
During a phone interview yesterday on MSNBC, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) accused congressional Republicans of “rooting against the country” for daring to vote against cap and trade. I could only ask myself of the painful irony I was hearing, “Can he possibly be saying this with a straight face?”
The statement, deeply cynical and wholly inappropriate, along with the rationale behind it, deserves further examination. Listen to it for yourself here.
Here?s a partial transcription of what Waxman told host Andrea Mitchell:
So far, this Congress — since Obama became President — the Republicans have said no to an economic stimulus bill, they’re saying no to a global warming bill… They want to play politics and see if they can keep any achievements from being accomplished that may be beneficial to the Democrats. They’re rooting against the country and I think in this case, even rooting against the world because the world needs to get its act together to stop global warming. I wish they were playing a more constructive role. Some Republicans doubt the whole science of global warming, even though the consensus is overwhelming. They don’t want to believe it.
Let’s be clear: One of the same guys from the same party that not long ago suffered a near-panic attack at the prospect of American victory in Iraq is actually trying to call out the GOP for putting politics before, well, patriotism. As the saying goes, you just can’t make this stuff up.
Waxman did more than bestow new meaning upon the phrase, “People in glass houses shouldn’t cast stones.” As strange and irreverent as it may seem, Waxman actually confirmed just how much global warming may be to the left what Islamist terrorism is to the right, and probably still most Americans. “As Paul Krugman put it in Sunday’s New York Times:
Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole, but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.
Still skeptical? Let’s reexamine Waxman’s own words. A simple swap of environmental-speak for war on terror talk and an interchange of party names offers a more precise illustration of his inadvertent irony. Here’s what a conservative Republican easily could have said just two short years ago:
So far, this Congress — since they became the majority — the Democrats have said no to the troop surge, they’re saying no to a war funding bill… They want to play politics and see if they can keep any achievements from being accomplished that may be beneficial to the Republicans. They’re rooting against the country and I think in this case, even rooting against the world because the world needs to get its act together to stop global terrorism. I wish they were playing a more constructive role. Some Democrats doubt the whole success of the surge, even though the consensus is overwhelming. They don’t want to believe it.
See the comparison? In Waxman & Krugman’s world, global warming, not Islamofascism, is the “existential threat” that demands urgent, dramatic, status quo-altering action. All who oppose or even question them are, according to Krugman, committing “betrayal” and “a form of treason… treason against the planet.”
(Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard rightly points out that, according to leftwing criteria, more Americans are actually traitors as opposed to… I guess we’ll call them “patriots of the world.”)
Bottom line: Nobody ought to be “rooting against the country,” ever, for any reason at all. The reasons are too obvious to even list. And in a way, Waxman et al are at least right to be on the lookout for snakes in the garden. However, his accusation was both wrongly directed and poorly applied.” By lumping well-meaning Republicans in Congress with certain talking head types, Waxman completely rejects the serious arguments being made against cap and trade, not to mention the merits of various alternatives to the bill. (Such immense criticism will likely, hopefully lead to the bill’s demise in the Senate.) All things considered, who’s really doing the disservice to the country?
In recent years, many on the right have called out their fellow Americans — whether they’ve been Democratic leaders, the far left, Limbaugh, or even the paleocons — for openly craving the present administration’s failure. Such a selfish desire is downright vulgar in our modern, decent democracy and deserves to be condemned. Many on the left, however, have consistently been missing the mark.
In Waxman’s recent episode, legitimate concern was mistaken for callous sedition, quite possibly because he (like Krugman and others) truly believes global warming to be more deadly a threat than radical Islam. In his world, regrettably, basic policy skepticism is “treason” and the largest tax on the middle class in more than a decade, in the words of another Democrat, is “patriotic.”
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Tom Qualtere currently serves as research assistant to the president of The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. This column among many others can also be found at NewMajority.com.
