I just returned from an extended stay in Goa and India where I noticed a virtual blackout in the major media of any information on climate change that dissents from the orthodoxy promoted by the IPCC and radical environmental activists like Al Gore. Their view is that human activity is the primary cause of global warming and that the effects of global warming in the future will be catastrophic and that the catastrophe can be avoided by major changes in the economies of the major industrial countries. > Thus, no one I met in Goa/India had heard that while the ice extent in the Arctic had diminished the Antartic ice cap has set a recent record for most ice extent. > http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/a_new_record_for_antartic_total_ice_extent > No one I met in Goa/India had heard about the British High Court ruling requiring that school children in Britain be informed of nine scientific "errors" in Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, which is widely shown in India without any caveat or warning. > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm > Some excerpts: > A High Court judge who ruled on whether climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, could be shown in schools said it contains nine scientific "errors". > Mr. Justice Burton said the government could still send the film to schools - if accompanied by guidance giving the other side of the argument. > Without the guidance, updated after the case was launched, the government would have been breaking the law, the judge said. [end of excerpts] > No one I met in Goa/India had heard that there is no general consensus among climate change scientists on the primary causes of global warming. The IPCC has said that there is almost unanimous consensus. > http://www.dailytech.com/Survey+Less+Than+Half+of+all+Published+Scientists+Endorse+Global+Warming+Theory/article8641.htm > An excerpt: > "Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus." > The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results. [end of excerpt] > No one I met in Goa/India was aware that global temperatures, which started rising slowly in the mid-1800s, had not increased since 1998, and had in fact declined in 2007 to approximately the same level they were in 1900. By the way, CO2 levels have increased by about 4% since 1998. > http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm > An excerpt: > Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming. > All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. > A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down. [end of excerpt] > How many people reading this know that there is a meeting going on in New York right now where dissenting scientists will challenge the so-called "global warming consensus". > http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080229135952.aspx > I think well meaning readers will agree that one side of a controversial scientific debate should not be ignored by the major media apparently for political reasons. >
