Just Blaine Wrong on climate change
U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer
Last year’s global average temperature was the 10th warmest since 1850. In fact, eight of the past 10 years, and 13 of the last 14, are among the warmest on record.
So naturally, Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Republican member of Congress from Missouri’s 9th district, has concluded: “We are undergoing a period of worldwide cooling.”
Mr. Luetkemeyer, of St. Elizabeth in Miller County, was a farmer, insurance man, banker, state representative and state tourism director before being elected to Congress last November. His college degree is in political science, not climate science.
Nevertheless, he has now proclaimed the data behind concern over global warming to be “international junk science.”
Last week, he introduced a bill that would prohibit U.S. financial contributions to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s most authoritative scientific body. The IPCC won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for compiling and publishing mountains of scientific data on global climate change.
But Mr. Luetkemeyer — who freely admits he hasn’t read any of it — thinks its junk science.
The good news is that his bill will go nowhere; as a freshman member of the minority party, Mr. Leutkemeyer has very little influence. The bad news is his bill is an embarrassment — to himself, his constituents and the rest of Missouri.
Global Average Temperature Record.
The graph above charts global average temperatures over time. It’s true that average temperature during each of the past three years was slightly lower than in 2005. That’s what scientists call annual temperature fluctuation.
But to anyone who can actually read a graph — a group that apparently doesn’t include Mr. Luetkemeyer — the larger trend is unmistakable.
The 1990s were the warmest decade since at least 1850. Yet 2008 — the year Mr. Luetkemeyer says proves “we are undergoing a period of worldwide cooling” — was warmer than all but two years of the 1990s.
The Arctic ice pack is shrinking by about 12 percent per decade. Greenland is losing at least 36 cubic miles of ice cover each year. Sea levels are rising. The reason: Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are at their highest levels in at least 650,000 years.
Just since 1950, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by about 35 percent.
Last week, Mr. Leutkemeyer issued a press release to trumpet his ignorance. He claimed that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has “debunked global warming theory.” In fact, the EPA global warming web site links to the very U.N. agency for which Mr. Luetkemeyer would cut funding. (You can read the most recent U.S. government report on climate change here.)
He claims that “more than 700 international scientists” have signed a report disputing global climate change. Some of the 700 are legitimate scientific contrarians. But one of them is Chris Allen, a weatherman at a Kentucky TV station. He has no college degree; the only “scientific articles” he’s ever written are on the station’s weather blog. Another is Edward Blick, a Biblical creationist from Oklahoma who believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old and “global warming is hatred against humanity.”
Mr. Leutkemeyer told Post-Dispatch reporter Bill Lambrecht that “the IPCC has 50-some scientists.” Actually, the latest IPCC report was the product of “more than 500 lead authors and 2,000 expert reviewers” and summarizes the findings of thousands more researchers.
That fact can be found in the preface of the document Mr. Luetkemeyer dismisses as junk science. This proves that on little, easy-to-check facts, just as on big, complicated issues of climate science, Mr. Luetkemeyer is just Blaine wrong.
Gosh, imagine that, another attack on a Republican. Go figure!
Looks as though Sgt. Sarcasm is back with a vengeance.
Lots of linky-linky with the usual repetitious lack of thinky-thinky.
Big disappointment though — nothing on the polar bears.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/cag3.html
January 1997 - 2009 Trend = -0.86 degF / Decade
January 1998 - 2009 Trend = -2.33 degF / Decade
January 1999 - 2009 Trend = -1.86 degF / Decade
January 2000 - 2009 Trend = -1.75 degF / Decade
January 2001 - 2009 Trend = -1.53 degF / Decade
January 2002 - 2009 Trend = -3.60 degF / Decade
January 2003 - 2009 Trend = -2.64 degF / Decade
January 2004 - 2009 Trend = -3.84 degF / Decade
January 2005 - 2009 Trend = -13.69 degF / Decade
January 2006 - 2009 Trend = -26.33 degF / Decade
January 2007 - 2009 Trend = -2.20 degF / Decade
So why does this editorial writer choose to lie to you? It has been warming over all for 10, 000 years since the ice age yet this leftist editor chooses to expose the global warming scam as the leftist answer to the neocon’s WMD scam.
What was promised by the IPCC for 23 years was and is:
“More tropical diseases, sea level rise, more storms and severe weather events, and species extinctions”
That is not “just” cooling. It’s a climate crisis that is being predicted.
Yes politicians, consultants, academics and PR firms are all lying. The thread of truth that make it legal for NASA, IPCC and the UN to lie is that yes, the CO2 global warming theory is a science and yes CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The truth is all research is done on effects not causes and yes this cooling was not predicted 23 years ago when this failed theory began.
Here are the denier’s observed facts:
-A policy of precaution is not science, its superstition.
-Just shy of a quarter of a century of failed IPCC predictions certainly disproves the theory.
-La Nina is stronger than all of Global Warming’s magical powers.
-Melting ice does not prove CO2 is at fault?
-Our cooling clear blue sky disproves the theory.
-10 years of NOAA cooling disproves the theory.
-Resulting cooling disproves predicted warming.
THE THEORY WAS WRONG. MOVE ON.
Be responsible environmentalists and stop chasing a false crisis from CO2. Work on real pollution and stop scaring our children with this. Let’s all get ahead of the curve preserve our planet, not save it from a mistake with more needless fear.
Peace!
This summer the IPCC, NASA, UN, and the NOAA will all jump ship by stating such crap as this:
“Recent weather and climate has produced challenges for climatologists and climate scientists all over the world and therefore we are proposing a bold new initiative to expanding our research to better our goals of public policy when it comes to climate and our environment. Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.”
Get used to that sort of PR for a long time as politicians jump ship and start pointing fingers. There WILL be Senate hearings.
You warmie cry babies will be hiding in embarrassment.
The high Saturday is supposed to be 71′ - in July in St. Louis. Okay, whatever! (Check out the 10-day forecast folks and enjoy the global warming)
So how was that global air temperature measured in 1850? How about 1950? Are these so called facts and charts that he put out there estimates or true, consistent measurements over time?
If we are in such a crisis, why is it that our appointed rock star flying all over the place with hundreds of staffers? If we are in such a crisis, why is it that Mr. Gore still lives in his huge, fossil fuel gulping mansion? Why is it that most of you so called concerned citizens on the editorial board do not drive Priuses? For your so-called leaders, why do they waste so much energy in Washington on doing absolutely nothing? Why do they produce 1000 page bills, print them out, for nobody to read?
Tell me, oh holy editorial board, what you are actually doing to help solve the problem that you assert is a crisis?
This editor chooses to lie to you because he or she is one of the thoughtless benefactors of this modern day witch burning called glowbull warm mongering. In this case, a lazy so-called journalist (a dieing species in new communication thank god) is irresponsibly riding the last waves of this cultural fear mongering trend of fearing the unknown and selling it’s paper to the lowest of the impressionable. Don’t let yourself be included in this group and tell this paper you won’t stand for it.
This editor is part of THIS world:
Hysterical corporate media, pandering politicians, PR firms and paid consultants posing in lab coats calling themselves scientists.
Yes, the biggest liars are the biggest and most respected people we trust, the newspaper and the United Nations. It’s organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences that are backing off of this aging 23 year old theory and I predict this editor will sooner or later start yelling “FIRE” in the theatre over some other made up and temporary cultural myth of fear.
History will not be kind editor and we will not forget you for this.
By the way, melting and warming do not constitute a crisis nor proof of whom or what causes weather all of a sudden. Nature is still in charge and we are living longer than at any time in history and environmentalism has accomplished so much more since the smoggy 70’s that you editor could have chosen to tell us about.
23 years of promising us a doomsday is unsustainable and I beg all of you to remind this editor every chance we get.
The science is clear and open, easily accessible and certainly quite understandable by the average person who is willing to seek the truth for themselves. This editor has the same access, to the same info as you and I. Don’t let this editor treat you as a brainless puppet. The IPCC reports over the last 19 years have all failed to predict the outcome of climate. The climate crisis they predicted never arrived and as one who has read all of their reports and gathered as much info as possible, I have become a denier of the theory. Pollution is real, global warming is not and don’t bother calling me irresponsible because what is irresponsible is pursuing this dead theory and leading environmentalism down the wrong road.
It’s this editor that is being irresponsible, not the guy in the SUV, not the unemployed factory worker or even the politician promising to lower the temperature of the planet with your taxes. It all starts here, at newspapers. I’d frame this editorial promising doomsday since the tide is turning fast on this temporary cultural trend called death by catalytic converter gas and plant food. At least editor, could you please stop scaring our kids with this needless hysteria and fear from a nonexistent crisis?
The editorial hacks whine that Luetkemeyer has a degree in poly sci not climate change. Just let us know how many of you hacks have degrees in climate change. What hypocrites you are.
Should have been degree in climate science. None of the editorial hacks have a degree in that,either.
Thank you JoeCool. Now we know it’s not what we need to know to make an wise decision, it’s just who is saying it?
The science is clear and open, easily accessible and certainly quite understandable by the average person who is willing to seek the truth for themselves.
Omigosh, TWO of 700 scientists are not what they claim to be! I’ll bet that none of the UN “experts” cited could possibly have less than impeccable credentials, or that those scientific “summaries” the IPCC produces could possibly have been carefully edited to produce the desired result.
And we all know how effective the UN is at addressing world problems. Without the world body, the crises in Darfur (Sudan), Lebanon, Palestine, Myanmar, Iran, Somalia, etc, etc, would never have been solved. Oh wait, they HAVEN”T been solved!
Before the Post decides to use Blaine Luetkemeyer as its whipping boy, it had better review Al Gore’s foaming-at-the-mouth advocacy of massive economic and politicl upheaval in pursuit of a dubious effort on “climate change”. The EPA administrator recently testified that with India and China rejecting limits on their carbon output, any measures the US undertakes (at enormous cost), would be totally ineffective.
The Post should also publish its editorial board’s scientific credentials for its readers to review. I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of climatologists moonlighting at the paper. As for the graphs the “scientists” at the Editorial Board published, they remind me of the old saw that “there are lies, damned lies, and then there’s statistics”.