Townhall.com, Where Your Opinion Counts
Talk Radio:   Bill Bennett   Mike Gallagher   Dennis Prager   Michael Medved   Hugh Hewitt   
BREAKING NEWS  LeftArrow - Townhall.com : Conservative, Political, Republican   RightArrow - Townhall.com : Conservative, Political, Republican  
Columns, funnies & more in your inbox!
  • Check the boxes and send us your email address to receveive your free newsletter
  • Your daily must-read of conservative columns, cartoons and news. Coulter, Sowell, Krauthammer and more.
  • Townhall.com’s weekly inside scoop on what’s happening behind the scenes in the world of politics. When news breaks, we report.
  • Signup to receive the latest daily Townhall cartoons
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Paul Driessen :: Townhall.com Columnist
None Dare Call It Fraud
by Paul Driessen
Vote on It:
Average Vote:
[+] Text [-]
 
 
Poll
Will Congress pass Obamacare by the end of the year?

Imagine the reaction if investment companies provided only rosy stock and economic data to prospective investors; manufacturers withheld chemical spill statistics from government regulators; or medical device and pharmaceutical companies doctored data on patients injured by their products.

Media frenzies, congressional hearings, regulatory investigations, fines and jail sentences would come faster than you can say Henry Waxman. If those same standards were applied to global warming alarmists, many of them would be fined, dismissed and imprisoned; sanity might prevail, and the House-Senate cap-and-tax freight train would come to a screeching halt.

Going Rogue by Sarah Palin FREE

Fortunately for alarmists, corporate standards do not apply – even though sloppiness, ineptitude, cherry-picking, exaggeration, deception, falsification, concealed or lost data, flawed studies and virtual fraud have become systemic and epidemic. Instead of being investigated and incarcerated, the perpetrators are revered and rewarded, receiving billions in research grants, mandates, subsidies and other profit-making opportunities.

On this bogus foundation Congress, EPA and the White House propose to legislate and regulate our nation’s energy and economic future. Understanding the scams is essential. Here are just a few of them.

Michael Mann’s hockey-stick-shaped historical temperature chart supposedly proved that twentieth century warming was “unprecedented” in the last 2000 years. After it became the centerpiece of the UN climate group’s 2001 Third Assessment Report, Canadian analysts Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre asked Mann to divulge his data and statistical algorithms. Mann refused. Ultimately, Mc-Mc, the National Science Foundation and investigators led by renowned statistician Edward Wegman found that the hockey stick was based on cherry-picked tree-ring data and a computer program that generated temperature spikes even when random numbers were fed into it.

This year, another “unprecedented” warming study went down in flames. Lead scientist Keith Briffa managed to keep his "lost” (destroyed?) all the original data.

The supposedly “final” text of the IPCC’s 1995 Second Assessment Report emphasized that no studies had found clear evidence that observed climate changes could be attributed to greenhouse gases or other manmade causes. However, without the authors’ and reviewers’ knowledge or approval, lead author Dr. Ben Santer and alarmist colleagues revised the text and inserted the infamous assertion that there is “a discernable human influence” on Earth’s climate. Continued...

1 2
| Full Article & Comments | Next >
Share:
Vote on It:
Average Vote:
 
About The Author
Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death.

Be the first to read Paul Driessen's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox.

GLOBAL WARMING & THE EPA
The people of the United States are caught in a tragic dilemma. No one can or might be inclined to argue that we should not clean up the planet. I truly believe that in the U.S. we do our part.
When the EPA was created, it sounded like a very good idea to most Americans. Those that have been APPOINTED to manage the EPA, soon realized that there was a lot of money and perks to be gained if they pushed the envelope to the nth degree in the name of making everything and everyone cleaner.
Now we find that no one can smoke indoors...in some places, not even their own cars if children are in the car and we can no longer advertise tobacco products on television. I have no dog in that fight. I have not smoked for nearly fifty years. I merely use the tobacco products to illustrate my point.
We have stopped most industrial endeavors in the U.S. such as drilling, developing coal, gas and any product that might add whatever particulates into the atmosphere. No steel making, almost no manufacturing. We have become a buyer rather than a seller and we sit upon trillions of dollars in assets. Soon, the U.S. dollar will be worthless and now, we are going to send more tax dollars to Washington so they can further restrict us based upon global warming.
I am not a scientist, but I am a thinker. If the seasons can change the temperatures in those cities and countries that are located above 30 degrees N latitude, or 30 degrees S latitude, simply because those places tilt toward or away from the sun, it would hold that the star that rules our solar system has more influence than anything else.
Never forget...the EPA is made up of appointed personnel.They currently weild more power than our elected officials. How did we allow that to happen?

NOTICE!!!
Due to an error in Townhall's internal processing, this article is not display correctly and a couple of paragraphs are missing. The error is a missing quotation mark in the HTML code marking a URL link to another Web site.

The error shows in the line, "Lead scientist Keith Briffa managed to keep his "lost” (destroyed?) all the original data."

The missing text is: "Lead scientist Keith Briffa managed to keep his tree ring data secret for a decade, during which the study became a poster child for climate alarmism. Finally, McKitrick and McIntyre gained access to the data. Amazingly, there were 252 cores in the Yamal group, plus cores from other Siberian locations. Together, they showed no anomalous warming trend due to rising carbon dioxide levels. But Briffa selected just twelve cores, to ”prove“ a dramatic recent temperature spike, and chose three cores that ”demonstrated“ there had never been a Medieval Warm Period. It was a case study in how to lie with statistics.

Meanwhile, scientists associated with Britain’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) also withheld temperature data and methods, while publishing papers that lent support to climate chaos claims, hydrocarbon taxes and restrictions, and renewable energy mandates. In response to one request, lead scientist Phil Jones replied testily: ”Why should I make the data available, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?“ Of course, that’s what the scientific method is all about—subjecting data, methods and analyses to rigorous testing, to confirm or refute theories and conclusions. When pressure to release the original data became too intense to ignore, the CRU finally claimed it had "lost“ (destroyed?) all the original data."

I have no doubt Townhall regrets the error, and I have no doubt they will refuse to correct it. I found it by reading the source code for the page.

Regards,
i (10/16/2009 - 12:00 AM)
Sign Up to Post Your CommentsSign Up to Post Your Comments
If you are already registered, click here to login. Otherwise, please take a few seconds to register with Townhall.com. Once you sign up, you’ll be able to post your comments immediately, use the action center, get podcasts, and more!
Note: Fields marked with a red asterisk (*) are required.
Salutation:
First Name:
*
Last Name:
*
Email:
*
Nickname:
*
Note: Nick name will be shown when you post comments.
Address 1:
*
Address 2:
City:
*
State:
*
Zip:
*
Phone:
      
Your daily must-read of conservative columns, cartoons and news. Coulter, Sowell, Krauthammer and more.
(Bi-Weekly) We highlight the best opportunities from our partners for surveys, action items and more.