Friday, December 11, 2009
At the Copenhagen climate talks, Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the international weather agency, told a news conference that the
period from 2000 through 2009 will almost certainly be the warmest decade in the 150
years of modern record-keeping. And with just a few weeks remaining, 2009
will likely be the fifth warmest year on record. But what about those hacked emails from the climate research unit at the University of
East Anglia? Jarraud replied that there is no evidence that independent estimates showing a warming world are in doubt. The more
interesting question is who was behind the break-in and why? The use of dirty tricks to cast doubt on the reality of global warming began
with Kyoto.
It's awkward that the United States, alone among major nations, declined to ratify the Kyoto protocol calling for reduction of greenhouse
gases.
Without the United States, which is responsible for 1/3 of the world's greenhouse emissions, the Kyoto accord was meaningless. To
convince Congress and the public that scientists have serious doubts about global warming, a petition was launched. The only return
address on a massive
mailing to academic scientists was a P.O. Box. The only name was Fred
Seitz. A famous condensed matter physicist in his earlier years, Seitz headed the ultra-conservative George C. Marshall Institute in
Washington.
Seitz was also a permanent paid consultant of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Although he conducted no tobacco research, Seitz used
his scientific reputation to cast doubt on medical evidence showing that secondhand smoke is dangerous. Now he was doing the same for
global warming. The petition mailing included a Wall Street Journal op-ed that said we have an ethical responsibility to burn as much
fossil fuel as possible to get carbon out of the ground and into the air where it can create life. According to NBC news correspondent
Ian Williams this week, the life C02 is helping to create in Malaysia includes the Aedes Aegypti mosquito that multiplies more rapidly as
the temperature rises. Aedes transmits dengue fever.
Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat also known as Senator Bee Pollen, could not let the Health Reform Bill go through without a provision
mandating that insurers reimburse alternative medicine providers. It was Harkin, you will recall, who was responsible for creation of
the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), forcing Harold Varmus to resign as head of NIH. NCCAM hasn't
found any cures, but it has done a credible job of using rigorous placebo-controlled double-blind studies to demonstrate that one herbal
remedy after another is totally ineffective.
Presumably the alternative medicine providers will be reimbursed for applying the placebo effect.
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