The Anti-Science Climate Alarmists

Another New Year...full of hope, promise...and more of the same scare tactics from the left vis a vis climate change (HT Sue Jeffers via Facebook).

As world leaders in Durban, South Africa, struggled last month toward an imperfect agreement to curb carbon pollution, I listened to the alternate climate universe -- on talk radio, 1130 AM, where a suite of self-professed conservative commentators pronounce climate science a hoax.

The contrast with scientifically accepted climate reality could not be more stark.

Instead of discussing how world carbon emissions are rapidly destabilizing the atmosphere and oceans, and what challenges and opportunities those trends present, these talk-radio hosts -- beginning with failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, through Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and failed Republican gubernatorial aspirant Sue Jeffers -- consistently mock the findings of the world's leading climate scientists.

No wonder there is such disconnect with climate facts in the conservative corner of the public mind.

Now normally I ignore these kinds of ignorant rantings - after all when you are engaged in a battle of ideas, you have to allow the exchange of all ideas, good and bad.  However the author of this misbegotten piece of dreck decided to attack one of the kindest, gentlest gentlemen of the Minnesota House - my former Rep (and dear friend) Mike Beard.....

Antiscience talk on the radio fringe would not be worth commentary were such misinformation not seriously polluting the political discourse in Minnesota and the nation.

Rep. Mike Beard of the Minnesota House Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Committee has spouted similar misinformation as his basis for seeking to rescind the state's moratorium on new coal-fired power plants.

Now for those like Mr. Lenfestey, who have never made an attempt to even know Mike or how he came to the decisions he came to, let me educate you a bit.  Rep. Beard has put more time and effort into researching BOTH SIDES of this issue, than anyone on the left could ever come close to.  I know - I had more than a few discussions (OK more like private tutorials with Rep. Beard being the instructor) with Rep. Beard on the subject.  Hours and hours were spent on the subject.

One of the telling aspects of this dreck is just how easily Mr. Lenfestey dismisses scientists that don't agree with him on the issue...

A soft-spoken gentleman called in, declared himself a lifelong Republican, and wondered why conservatives are so hard on climate-change science, which he found convincing. She browbeat him with a torrent of misinformation: There is no global warming; polar bears are not in trouble; consult the work of "Lord" Monckton; on and on.

I wondered where she got this nonsense, so I checked her website. There she promotes links to the Republican Party, the Tea Party, and a site called "Minnesotans for Climate Change," which is linked regularly to Wattsupwiththat.com. Mystery solved -- mad Anthony Watts is a major source for the misinformation she dumps on her listeners.

Watts is an anti-climate-science blogger with a background in television meteorology, not climate science. His mocking assertions have provided no end of fuel for climate-change "skeptics," particularly his misguided alarms about records showing an upward trend in global temperatures.

The problem with Mr. Lenfestey's assertion that meteorology and climate science are somehow different is that it is dead WRONG.  When even the US Government (on it's science.gov website) lumps the 2 together, you can pretty much put that thinking aside as the disingenuous poppycock that it is.

Then there is out and out lie about Lord (in scare quotes in his column) Moncton...

Then there is "Lord" Christopher Monckton, neither a lord nor a scientist, whose job in England appears to be deputy head of a right-wing nationalist party. In the United States, he serves as "policy advisor" to an infamous climate-denial website, apparently qualified for the position by his degrees in classics and journalism.

Christopher Monckton is indeed a titled "Lord of The Realm" - the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.  Yeah I know that the Realm hands out titles like they were candy - that is part of being King or Queen.  As the climate change alarmists love to chide the skeptics "just saying it isn't so does not make it real".  In this case Mr. Lenfestey is guilty of lying to the readers of the Star Tribune - something I suppose he is used to doing as a former editorial writer to that august publication.

Something that Mr. Lenfestey also forgets to admit about Lord Monckton is this little tidbit of fact.

Monckton is on record as accepting that there is a greenhouse effect, and that CO₂ contributes to it. However, he has said "there is a startling absence of correlation between the CO₂-concentration trend and the temperature trend, necessarily implying that—at least in the short term—there is little or no causative link between the two", and that there is "a close correlation between CO₂ concentration and temperature: but it was temperature that changed first".

Saying t hat willfully omitting facts like that make Mr. Lenfestey's charge weak is like saying the Vikings are the worst team in the NFC Central - a sad understatement of epic proportions.

Now lets take a look at some recent (and some not so recent) SCIENCE that has come out that Mr. Lenfestey is denying...first let's take on the "shrinking Arctic Ice" and "endangered polar bears" myth...

A report from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado finds that Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007.

Now lets talk about how there really has been NO statistically significant global warming in the last 15 years.  Lets talk about the FACT that there has been no warming of "historic proportions" a claim often made by alarmists like Mr. Lenfestey.  From the previously linked BBC interview is also the admission that we DON'T KNOW if man is causing said global warming or if it is natural in origins. Then there is the FACT that there is no link proven between CO2 emissions and climate change.

I could go on for days there is that much contradictory science out there.

Mr. Lenfestey loves to denigrate those who disagree with him as being "anti-science" spouting "nonsense" and "mad" and "shrill" but in the end, it is Mr. Lenfestey and the rest of his climate change alarmist friends that are really anti-science and mad and shrill.  For they willfully ignore any contradictory reports, where those like Rep. Beard, who really are intellectually curious about the subject, do the research and THEN make a decision.  It is the alarmists like Mr. Lenfestey that need to have their facts checked - not those on the right who are a little skeptical of breathless claims that are just seem to be too settled to be true.