Really? We humans caused all those
problems? Those who believe in
AGW often chide the non-believers as “deniers” (as
if they denied the holocaust or claimed the world were flat)
and attribute their opponents’ denial to an inability to
understand the scientific “facts.”

This ad hominem attack overlooks the really bad “science” and
almost hysterical illogic that is sometimes used to
support the theory of AGW.

What follows is another example. Apparently
anything in support of AGW does not necessarily need to meet
the test of rationality for many of
its supporters. So,
which camp can really claim the logical high
ground? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124424567009790525.html#mod=djemEditorialPage

JUNE 6, 2009 ‘Worse Than Fiction’
Global warming alarmists are fond of
invoking the authority of experts against the skepticism of
supposedly amateur detractors — a.k.a. “deniers.”

So when one of those experts says that a recent report on
the effects of climate change is “worse than fiction,
it is a lie,” the alarmists should, well, be
alarmed.

The latest contretemps pits former U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan, now president of
the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, against Roger

Pielke, Jr., an expert in disaster trends at the University
of Colorado.

Mr. Annan’s outfit issued a lengthy report
late last month warning that climate change-induced
disasters, such as droughts and floods, kill 315,000 each
year and cost $125 billion, numbers it says will rise to
500,000 dead and $340 billion by 2030.

Adding to the gloom,
Mr. Annan predicts “mass starvation, mass migration,
and mass sickness” unless countries agree to “the
most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated”
at a meeting this year in Copenhagen. Even on its
own terms, the numbers here are a lot less scary when put
into context.

Malaria kills an estimated one million people
a year, while AIDS claims an estimated two million. As for
the economic costs, $125 billion is slightly less than the
GDP of New Zealand. Question: Are targeted campaigns using
proven methods to spare the world three million AIDS and
malaria deaths a year a better use of scarce resources than
a multitrillion-dollar attempt to re-engineer the global
economy and save, at most, a tenth that number?

We’d say yes. But the Annan report deserves even closer
scrutiny as an example of the sleight of hand that so often
goes with the politics of global warming. Unlike starvation,
climate change does not usually kill anyone directly.
Instead, the study’s authors assume a four-step chain of
causation, beginning with increased emissions, moving to
climate-change effects, thence to physical changes like
melting glaciers and desertification, and finally arriving
at human effects like malnutrition and “risk of
instability and armed conflicts.”

This is a heroic set of assumptions, even if you agree that emissions
are causing adverse changes in climate. Take the supposedly
heightened risk of conflict: The authors suggest that
“inter-clan fighting in Somalia” is a product of
climate change. A likelier explanation is the collapse of a
functioning Somali government and the rise of jihadists in
the region.

Enter Mr. Pielke, who, we hasten to
add, does not speak for us (nor we for him). But given the
headlines the Annan report has garnered, his views deserve
amplification. Writing in the Prometheus science policy
blog, Mr. Pielke calls the report a “methodological
embarrassment” and a “poster child for how to lie
with statistics” that “does a disservice” to
those who take climate change issues seriously.

Mr. Pielke’s critique begins by citing a recent
peer-reviewed paper by three German researchers that
“it is generally difficult to obtain valid quantitative
findings about the role of socioeconomics and climate change
in loss increases.” Reasons for this, the researchers
explain, include “the stochastic [random] nature of
weather extremes, a shortage of quality data, and the role
of various other potential factors that act in parallel and
interact.”

The report does admit to a “significant margin of error,” but this hardly
excuses the sloppiness of its methodology. “To get
around the fact that there has been no attribution of the
relationship of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions and
disasters,”

Mr. Pielke notes, the Annan “report engages in a very strange comparison of earthquake and
weather disasters in 1980 and 2005.

The first question that
comes to mind is, why? They are comparing phenomena with
many ‘moving parts’ over a short time frame, and
attributing 100% of the resulting difference to human-caused
climate change. This boggles the mind.”

It gets worse. The Annan report cites Hurricane Katrina as a
case study in the economic consequences of climate change.

Yet there’s not even remotely conclusive evidence that
temperature increases have any effect on the intensity or
frequency of hurricanes. The authors also claim that global
warming is aggravating the El Niño effect, which has
“ruined livelihoods, led to lost lives and impaired
national economies.”

Yet new research “questions the notion
that El Niños have been getting stronger because
of global warming,” according to Ben Giese of Texas
A&M.

We could go on, except we’re worried
about the blood pressure of readers who are climate-change
true believers. Our only question is, if the case for global
warming is so open and shut, why the need for a report as
disingenuous as Mr. Kofi Annan’s?

added note:

One interesting reason may be that the worlds finances

revolve around investments. In past years those investments

have been highly profitable.The investments that were once

‘common sense’, now, due to governmental regulations and taxation,
no longer bring the large returns.

The forced mandates proclaimed by many in Power, to ‘Save the World’ are

now the investors dream. The returns are astronomical for those
using this system to their advantage….

The consumers and taxpayers, will not be nearly as fortunate..

It is so frustrating to see so many resources and capital diverged in the name of GW with so much to do in other areas especially in sustainable design.

I will use this info to further my case against the myopic views and actions spurred by the commercialization of GW expressed on this entry http://www.sustainableday.com/?p=44

Edit Comment By: stiven on July 23rd, 2007
at 4:34 am