AS OF TODAY, 4th JULY 2008:

This man must be regarded as Australia’s Public Enemy No. One.

Ross Garnaut: Architect of the destruction of the Australian economy.

Garnaut’s unworkable emmissions trading scheme promises to do more damage to the economy than even the Whitlam government did in the 1970s, and that’s saying something.

The following appeared on the excellent “Wattsupwiththat” blog.

Why throw out GISS Temp”?

(GISS is the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the Research Director of which is the now highly-discredited Dr. James Hansen).

Thanks for taking a different look at this. It is true that one can make arguments for and against GISTEMP as a valid/not valid data set.

My view is that this is a lot like voting for a company wide policy change on a company board of directors.

Let’s say this issue was on a company board of directors decision to choose to make changes to policy related to employee comfort. Some employees complain that the work environment is too hot and they have been suffering a long term effect. The board decides to hire four consultants with the mandate: “tell us if we should expend the money to replace all of our a/c units company wide in all of our world locations. The cost will be huge, so we need to know before we make a policy change to do this.”

One of the consultants to members of the board who strongly advocates the policy change also has been lobbying company staff worldwide and other board members with the data he has collected and collated that shows that the trend is shifting in the direction that he advocates. As consultant, he is also the creator of one of the datasets used to evaluate the policy change.

Now when the time comes to make the decision, the board brings in all the data sets from consultants. They look at each one and see that the majority of them have no change in the last 11 years that supports the policy change to put in new a/c units. Yet the one consultant that has been pushing this policy change gives an impassioned speech that his data set tells a story that the others do not. Some of the board members who are skeptical of this person and his data that supports the policy change do some research of their own. They discover that the dataset created by the consultant who advocates the policy change has been adjusted at many data points, almost without exception in favor of the policy change. Some board members also learn of some math errors in the data, point out the math errors, and also some of the questionable ways individual data points have been adjusted. the consultant shrugs and retorts “you’re just a bunch of court jesters”.

Meanwhile, it has been discovered that one of the business friends of the consultant who has been lobbying board members and staff has a company that trades in air conditioner systems. That person has been traveling to all of the worldwide offices of the company and lobbying the employees to tell them that their work environment is indeed getting hotter, and that the data from his friend the consultant proves it beyond the shadow of a doubt. He tells them that his friend the consultant uses special techniques to find the “real” trend in the data and that the other datasets aren’t as valuable as this one. He urges the employees to form pacts and unions to lobby the corporate board to make a change. The employees do just that.

The board looks at the data, they listen to the impassioned pleas of the employees, and they also listen to the one consultant who calls them “court jesters”, and his friend the a/c salesman, who says “the time is now, you must act now’. But a few employees that are concerned that the expense the company may be about to undertake is unwarranted, they think the work environment is just fine, and the “solution” may hurt the company more than help it.

One of the employees finds that in the largest company facility, 78% of the temperature sensors in used to collect environmental data in that facility have been installed incorrectly, and shows that they are too close to equipment that produces waste heat. They also discover that two of the consultants use IR sensors to get the data, but that the other two consultants are using the direct measure environmental sensors, 78% percent of which in the largest company facility are installed incorrectly. These few employees that discover this also lobby the board by pointing out some of these issues with the datasets.

So it is time for the board to vote. The one consultant who has lobbied the board most heavily says “don’t worry about that 78% of the problematic environmental sensors in the biggest facility, I can adjust for that.”

But then one of the other skeptical board members says: “The employee that found this says “How can you adjust for these if you’ve never seen or visited them? How can you know they are all equally biased or not?”. And, isn’t it true that in some of the data you presented, there were no sensors present, and some of the data was interpolated by you, particularly at the far ends of the building?”

The consultant says: “I stand by my data and methods, and if you don’t do something soon, your facility may reach a tipping point where you can no longer keep it cool enough to work in, your company productivity will tank.”

One of the board members says, “Ok lets stop and look at this differently”. “What if we simply ignore the dataset from the consultant who calls us “court jesters” and has the buddy who’s the air conditioner salesman?. Look, now there’s no trend in the last 11 years”.

So 3 of 4 datasets, each presented by independent consultants are in front of them and show no change in the past 11 years. The one that does show a trend has been heavily lobbied and has been shown to have errors in measurement by environmental sensors and questionable data adjustment methods applied. Plus the consultant who prepared it has insulted those members who dared to question his data and methods, and he is the only one of the four consultants who has links to the air conditioner salesman, as it was discovered that the air conditioner salesman invited the consultant to speak at one of his employee rallies.

How do you think the board of directors will vote on this policy change?

The following is from the excellent False Alarm website.

Paul MacRae, June 15, 2008

After reading some of the False Alarm website, which criticizes the scientific “consensus” that humans are the principal cause of global warming, a friend sent me an email the other day that read, in part:

How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about this (if your premise is correct)?  I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence…  Has there ever been another case when so many “leading” scientific minds got it so wrong?

This is a really good question. I’m not a climate scientist (but, then, neither is Al Gore); I’m an ex-journalist, now an academic. I teach professional writing. How dare I claim to know more than, say, the 2,000 or so scientists who contribute to the reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? These are the experts, after all, and they say that humans are the principal cause of global warming at the moment. How could the experts possibly be wrong?

Of course, many, many people (not just scientists) have been wrong before on many, many topics. Until the 1960s, few scientists believed in continental drift. Millions of intelligent people continue to believe in communism even after the collapse of the Soviet Union  in 1989. After Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring came out in 1962, many, many people believed DDT was bad when in fact, if used properly, DDT could have saved millions of lives in places like Africa. Science is a process of systematically weeding out the wrong ideas and replacing them with better wrong ideas, as it were.

But getting on to global warming:
Getting it wrong at the IPCC

How can so many be so wrong? Well, for a start, here’s a comment from the Summary of the IPCC’s 2007 report:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.

The only problem with this statement is that it isn’t true: it’s now widely accepted in scientific circles that the climate system hasn’t warmed since 1998. Yet, somehow, the writers of the 2007 IPCC report managed to find increases in warming when the planet wasn’t warming, which was a triumph of ideology over fact.

Curiously enough, this lack of warming still hasn’t been officially announced to the public. Why not? You’d think the news would make big, bold, front-page headlines: GLOBAL WARMING OVER (at least for now). Unfortunately, too many scientific careers (and billions in scientific grants) are riding on the hypothesis that humans are the main cause of warming to give the hypothesis up that easily.

How can so many be so wrong? Ten years of no warming is a bit more than the normal year-to-year fluctuations — it’s more like a trend — but none of the IPCC’s sophisticated computer models predicted it. Yet, since carbon emissions are continuing to increase, the trend should be continuous warming if humans are the principal cause of climate change, as the IPCC believes (although it puts its bias in probabilistic language — “it is highly likely that…”).

How can so many be so wrong? Here’s the IPCC’s mission statement:

The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation (1) [italics added].

There’s nothing wrong with having a mission; it’s unavoidable. The IPCC is a kind of global-warming think tank and most think tanks have a mission. The mission of the Fraser Institute, for example, is to promote free markets. The mission of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is to promote socialism, although its mission statement doesn’t say this directly. Both seek to be as “objective” as possible, but they start from different premises.(2)

Similarly, the mission of the IPCC is to investigate and promote the idea that human activities are the main cause of global warming. Its mandate isn’t to explore the idea that perhaps humans aren’t at fault. However, a key difference between the IPCC and the Fraser Institute, or the IPCC and the Centre for Policy Alternatives, is that most readers of a Fraser Institute or CPA document know that the organization has a bias and take that into account in assessing the information they are receiving. (3)  The IPCC, on the other hand, promotes itself to the public as a fully scientific, unbiased source of information on climate change, when, in fact, as anyone who carefully reads its mission statement (few, apparently, have bothered) would know, it is not.
‘Review by governments’ isn’t science

How can so many be so wrong? The next sentence of the IPCC’s mission statement reads: “Review by experts and governments is an essential part of the IPCC process” [my italics added]. Yet, surely if the IPCC was looking at climate change from a balanced, purely scientific perspective, its findings would not be subject to “review by governments,” which are political bodies with political, not scientific, agendas. Does anyone today believe that Galileo should have had to present his findings to the Church before publishing them? True science is not subject to review by governments.

How can so many be so wrong? No truly objective scientific body would be striving for “consensus” in its reports, although we expect consensus from think-tank publications — the Fraser Institute isn’t going to put out a document calling for the nationalization of the Canadian oil industry, for example.

Yet reaching a consensus was the IPCC’s task when it was started in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program. What consensus? The one approved by the politicians who bankrolled the process, which is why, again, and incredibly, the IPCC’s conclusions undergo “review by governments.”(5)  That is, the IPCC has to meet a political (ideological) as well as a scientific agenda.

This striving for consensus meant that the IPCC was not interested, right from the start, in giving legitimacy to views that didn’t fit its mandate. For example, the 1990 IPCC report said of dissenters: “Whilst every attempt was made by the Lead Authors to incorporate their comments, in some cases these formed a minority opinion which could not be reconciled with the larger consensus“(4)  [italics added]. So why not publish the minority reports along with the majority report so the public can see the full range of opinion?

And, since the IPCC’s mission isn’t to investigate possible natural causes of climate change but to determine the role of “human-induced” climate change, it’s not surprising that the IPCC finds what it seeks. How do we know there is bias rather than objective science at work? Because when scientists who aren’t part of the “consensus” suggest other, natural mechanisms for climate change, they not only do not receive a respectful hearing, as you’d expect from disinterested scientists, they are denounced as heretics.
Official Climate Science calls critics ‘immoral,’ ‘irresponsible,’ ‘dangerous’

For example, when physicist Henrick Svensmark suggested that cosmic rays might be one explanation for climate change, former IPCC chairman Bert Bolin denounced his theory as “extremely naïve and irresponsible,” and another scientist at a conference called it “dangerous.”(6)  Similarly, research questioning the validity of ice-core CO2 readings was declared “immoral.” These responses are reminiscent more of religion than science.

What is the proper scientific attitude toward new ideas? Here’s what philosopher of science Karl Popper had to say:

If you are interested in the problem which I tried to solve by my tentative assertion, you may help me by criticizing it as severely as you can; and if you can design some experimental test which you think might refute my assertion, I shall gladly, and to the best of my powers, help you to refute it(7).

This is the opposite of the IPCC’s approach, which is to shout down or ignore critics, and even make it difficult for them to continue their research or get published. When the Official Science peer-reviewed journals refuse to publish articles by skeptics, as they do, Official Science can then say the skeptical science doesn’t have peer-reviewed publications: it’s a Catch-22. Official Climate Science has made up its mind as to the (human) culprit in global warming and isn’t interested in any other suspects.

All of the above may be wrong, of course: the IPCC may be doing a totally accurate, bang-up job of assessing the science on climate change. Unfortunately, the process — “review by governments” and a bias toward human causes of climate change  — means that the IPCC is not the objective scientific body it presents itself as to the public. It is driven by agendas other than science.

I began serious research into climate change in May, 2007, following an attack by Dr. Andrew Weaver, a leading computer-modeling climatologist from the University of Victoria’s, over a column I’d written in the Times Colonist newspaper.

Curiously, while agreeing with me on many of the scientific points I’d made in the column (temperature precedes CO2 increases, for example), Weaver then declared the column to be lacking in “scientific literacy,” presumably because it challenged the “consensus” view that humans are the primary cause of climate change at the moment.

We know this is Weaver’s view because he says so: “Anthropogenic forcing alone is insufficient to explain the warming from 1910 to 1945 but necessary to reproduce the warming since 1976.”(8)  Somehow, the planet warmed from 1910 to 1945 without our help, but apparently it couldn’t have warmed after 1976 without our help.

I read a lot of science, so the “scientific illiterate” charge didn’t make much sense to me, but perhaps I was lacking in knowledge. So started to seriously investigate the issue of climate change.
Truth in the balance

How can so many be so wrong? I began my research with Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance, and discovered something very interesting: a huge scientific hole in Gore’s argument.

Gore ties global temperature to carbon dioxide levels. The implication is that as CO2 levels increase, temperature increases. In both the book and his movie and book An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has a chart showing the ups and downs of temperature and CO2 for the past 450,000 years — it’s a roller coaster ride (see graph below), with the clear implication (never quite stated directly) that CO2 drives temperature.

But, if changes in carbon dioxide levels caused changes in temperature, as Gore wants us to believe, then what caused the changes in carbon dioxide levels? Gore doesn’t say in Earth in the Balance beyond a footnote reference to “variations in solar intensity.”(9) He says nothing at all about “variations in solar intensity” in an Inconvenient Truth, book or movie.

How can so many be so wrong? Here are the scientific facts as attested to by almost all climate scientists, including Weaver. Changes in CO2 levels follow global temperature changes by several hundred years. CO2 doesn’t drive the climate, at least not in the recent geological past. And the roller-coaster ride of glacials (cold times) and interglacials (warm times) are almost certainly caused by “changes in solar intensity” due to something called the Milankovitch cycles.

The earth’s position in relation to the sun is not constant and over the past two million years, every 100,000 years or so, the earth goes into a glacial phase of about 80,000 years, following by a warm interglacial phase of 10,000-20,000 years. We’re in an interglacial right now — in fact, we’re more than half-way through it.

Not only that, but while the planet’s temperature has been fluctuating up and down (so much for the “balance of nature”), the planet’s carbon dioxide levels have been steadily falling for the past 130 million years. Carbon dioxide levels are the lowest they’ve been in 250 million years (see graph, below),, and if the levels get too much lower — say 150 parts per million of the atmosphere rather than the current 380 ppm — almost everything on earth will die because CO2 is essential to life.

CO2 over 600 million years
For a greener planet we need more CO2, not less

How can so many be so wrong? A fact that Official Climate Science prefers to ignore is that higher levels of CO2 are good for most forms of plant life. That’s why hothouse growers pump CO2 into their greenhouses–the plants grow better. The level growers aim for is about 1,200 ppm, or three times the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. A world with more CO2 will be a greener world, not a devastated world, but for some reason this scientific fact doesn’t figure in the Al Gore climate script.

How can so many be so wrong? Our biggest climate problem on the horizon isn’t warming and higher CO2 levels, it’s lower CO2 levels, global cooling, and a new ice age that will be far, far more catastrophic than a few degrees of warming. For some reason, the public isn’t told much about this, and yet these are scientific facts. The problem is, they aren’t convenient facts for the global-warming “consensus.”

Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth book and movie are where most people have gotten their information about global warming and yet in both he ignores the Milankovitch cycles. Why? Because the cycles don’t support his argument that CO2 determines temperature. In other words, he’s being scientifically dishonest. A British judge even ruled that nine of Gore’s key contentions in An Inconvenient Truth were scientifically unjustified, and that Gore’s film couldn’t be shown in British schools without a disclaimer that this was political propaganda, not science.

None of this is a problem. It’s a free country and Gore can write what he likes — lots of nut cases write books on climate (I may be one of them). The problem is that even though most of his book and movie are completely wrong, Gore is not criticized by the climate science community.

James E. Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has even said he supports Gore because “he has the bottom line right.”  Gore’s facts are wrong, but he has the bottom line right? I wonder what Hansen would say if one of his students turned in a paper that had the “bottom line right” but the wrong facts.

How can so many be so wrong? Why didn’t the climate scientists at the Bali conference in December, 2007, stand up as a body and correct UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon when he declared: “One path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear.” Surely a body of scientists must be aware that the planet has been much warmer in the past, with much higher levels of carbon dioxide, and didn’t face “oblivion.” Why didn’t they educate Ki-Moon (and through him the public) with a few geological facts?

How can so many be so wrong? Not only that, but rather than stand up as a body and warn the public about Gore’s errors, the climate community accepted a Nobel Peace Prize with him. This is as blatant an act of scientific dishonesty as any in the history of science.
Violating the scientific code of ethics

In the news in 2007 was a proposal to create a scientific “code of ethics” that would include, as one of its seven tenets, the following: “Do not knowingly mislead, or allow others to be misled, about scientific matters. Present and review scientific evidence, theory or interpretation honestly and accurately.”

After reading Earth in the Balance, and then learning that Gore’s errors were not only not being challenged by climate scientists but that Gore was largely supported by the climate science community, I knew there was something seriously wrong with the ethics of climate science. Although there is no official scientific code of ethics, surely it is incumbent on any scientist not to “knowingly mislead, or allow others to be mislead, about scientific matters.”

Yet, here are the words of leading climate scientist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. (10) [italics added].

Here’s what James E. Hansen, a leading figure in the global-warming pessimist camp, has to say about the need for scientific honesty:

Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue, and energy sources such as “synfuels,” shale oil and tar sands were receiving strong consideration. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic under current conditions(11)  [italics added].

Finally, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Al Gore:

In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality [about global warming]. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis. Over time that mix will change. As the country comes to more accept the reality of the crisis, there’s going to be much more receptivity to a full-blown discussion of the solutions(12)  [italics added].
Why ’scary scenarios’? Why not just tell the truth?

How can so many be so wrong? Why are “extreme scenarios,” “scary scenarios” and “over-representation of factual presentations” necessary? Why not just give the public the straight facts? Probably because Official Climate Science doesn’t have the facts to back up its case. The scientists have tons of data, of course, and an hypothesis — that rising temperatures are due to rising carbon dioxide levels and that’s it’s going to be disastrous. But an hypothesis is all they have and, as it turns out, even that hypothesis is wrong — temperatures aren’t rising at the moment.

Even if temperatures were rising, there is no conclusive evidentiary link between CO2 and temperature (indeed, in the past, temperature drove CO2, not vice-versa) because the climate system is much too complicated to be driven by one factor, as the climate scientists well know. It makes no more sense to say “humans are the principal cause of global warming” than it does to say “clouds (or cosmic rays or volcanoes or sunspots) are the principal cause of global warming.”

Yet, although they are aware that correlation does not prove causation, and perhaps sincerely believing the world is in peril, some scientists deliberately or unconsciously attempt to mislead the public into accepting an hypothesis as scientific fact. Proof? Not hard scientific evidence but the “consensus” — a large number of scientists who have agreed to accept the hypothesis as scientific fact.
Many scientists are afraid to speak out

How can so many be so wrong? On the “consensus,” Nigel Lawson, a former Spectator editor and Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983-89, writes:

It is sometimes claimed … that the scientific account published in the reports of the [IPCC] … represents the unanimous view of some 2,500 scientists. In fact, the physical science section of its most recent report (IPCC, Climate Change 2007, February 2007) was written by 51 named authors (and subsequently edited by representatives of member governments and the UN). The other scientists engaged in the process were involved as “reviewers” and the like, and many of these have made clear their disagreement with important aspects of the IPCC account.

Then there is the even larger number of reputable climate (and allied) scientists not involved in the IPCC process, literally hundreds of whom have, at one time or another, made public their disagreement with (often fundamental) aspects of the conventional wisdom. Finally, there are large numbers of dissenting climate scientists who have chosen not to stand up and be counted, for fear that to do so would damage either their career prospects or their chances of securing research grants. All that can be said with confidence is that the dissenting minority of reputable climate (and allied) scientists is a sizeable one(13).

I could go on and on, but to detail everything I’ve learned about the sorry state of climate science would require a book, which is what I am writing and which I hope will appear in 2009. Here, though, are a few more tidbits:

* Carbon dioxide’s effect on temperature is logarithmic. That is, the more CO2 you put in, the less effect it has on temperature. At this point, a doubling of CO2 will produce less than one degree Celsius of temperature change. Therefore, there is no need to fear a “runaway” greenhouse effect. The public, in general, is not informed about or actively misled on this.
* It is unusual, in earth’s history, to have ice caps at all. The planet won’t go into “oblivion” if we lose the ice caps, which is highly unlikely in any event, as climate science well knows. We may have to move or protect some cities from rising sea levels in the worst-case scenario, but this is over hundreds or thousands of years.
* There is no 100 per cent “consensus” on the causes of climate change, as Al Gore claims, or even a huge majority consensus. Most geologists, for example, don’t accept that humans are the main cause of climate change because they know, from their paleo-history, that the earth has been warmer than today and with higher CO2 levels than today with no disaster, and that today’s climate is well within past natural variation. Proof? Take a look at the roller-coaster temperature chart above, which Gore uses in his presentation. Notice that the three previous high-temperature points (the three previous interglacials) are all higher than today’s peak temperature. In other words, interglacials in the past were warmer than today’s interglacial, without any human influence at all. It’s plain as day in Gore’s presentation but, of course, he doesn’t mention the previous interglacials because that would destroy his argument. It’s a case of hiding the truth in plain sight and hoping nobody will notice.
* We have far better things to spend billions of dollars on, such as reducing world poverty, than trying to “stabilize the climate,” which is an impossible task. Climate science knows this, but insists we should try anyway.

Let me conclude by saying this:

I can’t claim to be an expert on climate science. But, as a former journalist, I do claim an ability to know when someone is not dealing honestly with the public. And everything I have read since I began my research convinces me more and more, as my book title argues, that most of what we, the public, have been told about global warming is misleading, exaggerated, or plain wrong, including the claim that the planet is warming.

You don’t need to be a climate expert make this discovery, as I have, but you do need time and patience and some idea of where to look. Of one fact I am now sure: the public won’t get a balanced, objective viewpoint from the Official Climate Science “consensus.”

How can so many be wrong? The real question, once we’ve seen the way Official Climate Science spins the facts, is how can we be sure anything it tells us is right?

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Notes

1. IPCC, “16 Years of Scientific Assessment in Support of the Climate Convention,” December, 2004, p. ii.

2. The CCPA’s mission statement reads: “The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is an independent, non-partisan research institute concerned with issues of social and economic justice. Founded in 1980, the CCPA is one of Canada’s leading progressive voices in public policy debates.” The Fraser Institute’s job description is a little more forthright: “Our mission is to measure, study, and communicate the impact of competitive markets and government intervention on the welfare of individuals.” Both centres, I hasten to add, sincerely believe that their approaches, left or right, offer the best outcomes for everyone.

3. I know this as a former editorial page editor who received opinion articles from both sources.

4. Climate Change 90. Quoted in Vincent Gray, The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of Climate Change 2001, p. 7. Gray says this position was relaxed, after protests, in later reports. See Gray, “Climate Change 95: An Appraisal.” Available at www.libertymatters.org/cc-heartlndstdy.htm.

5. IPCC, “16 Years of Scientific Assessment in Support of the Climate Convention,” available at www.ipcc.ch/about/anniversarybrochure.pdf. See Richard Courtney’s “Global Warming: How it all Began” at www.john-daly.com/history.htm, which argues that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as a new leader, used concern about global warming to bolster her international reputation. The Global Warming Swindle film suggests Thatcher was looking for a way to increase Britain’s use of nuclear power, against fierce popular opposition, and hoped fears of fossil-fuel emissions would pave the way to acceptance of nuclear plants. Michael Crichton, in his novel State of Fear, p. 500, suggests that with the fall of Soviet Communism, Western governments needed a new “enemy” to keep its citizens “in a state of perpetual fear” and global warming was it.

6. Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder, The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change. Cambridge: Icon Books, 2007, pp. 73-74.

7. Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2007 (1963), p. 35.

8. Francis W. Zwiers and Andrew J. Weaver, “The Causes of 20th Century Warming.” Science 15 December 2000: Vol. 290. no. 5499, pp. 2081 - 2083.

9. Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1993, p. 96.p. 96.

10. Schneider is quoted in Jonathan Schell, “Our Fragile Earth.” Discover, October, 1989, pp. 45-48. See also Stephen Schneider, “Don’t Bet All Environmental Changes Will Be Beneficial,” APS (American Physical Society) News, August/September 1996, p. 5. Available at home.att.net/~rpuchalsky/sci_env/sch_quote.html.

11. James E. Hansen, “Can we defuse the global warming time bomb?” Natural Science, Aug. 1, 2003. Available at naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html.

12. David Roberts, “Al Revere: An interview with accidental movie star Al Gore.” Grist, May 9, 2006. Available at www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts.

13. Nigel Lawson, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming. New York: Duckworth Overlook, 2008, pp. 107-108.