La Légion étrangère-C&P at your own risk !!

[strat-0]

The Theology of Global Warming
By JAMES SCHLESINGER


Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2005; Page A10

Almost unnoticed, the theology of global warming has in recent weeks suffered a number of setbacks. In referring to the theology of global warming, one is not focusing on evidence of the earth's warming in recent decades, particularly in the Arctic, but rather on the widespread insistence that such warming is primarily a consequence of man's activities -- and that, if only we collectively had the will, we could alter our behavior and stop the warming of the planet.

It was Michael Crichton who pointed out in his Commonwealth Club lecture some years ago that environmentalism had become the religion of Western elites. Indeed it has. Most notably, the burning of fossil fuels (a concomitant of economic growth and rising living standards) is the secular counterpart of man's Original Sin. If only we would repent and sin no more, mankind's actions could end the threat of further global warming. By implication, the cost, which is never fully examined, is bearable. So far the evidence is not convincing. It is notable that 13 of the 15 older members of the European Union have failed to achieve their quotas under the Kyoto accord -- despite the relatively slow growth of the European economies.

The drumbeat on global warming was intended to reach a crescendo during the run-up to the summit at Gleneagles. Prime Minister Blair has been a leader in the global warming crusade. (Whether his stance reflects simple conviction or the need to propitiate his party's Left after Iraq is unknown.) In the event, for believers, Gleneagles turned out to be a major disappointment.

On the eve of the summit, the Economic Committee of the House of Lords released a report sharply at variance with the prevailing European orthodoxy. Some key points were reported in the Guardian, a London newspaper not hostile to that orthodoxy: o The science of climate change leaves "considerable uncertainty" about the future.

**o There are concerns about the objectivity of the international panel of scientists that has led research into climate change.

**o The Kyoto agreement to limit carbon emissions will make little difference and is likely to fail.

**o The U.K.'s energy and climate policy contains "dubious assumptions" about renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Most notably, the Committee itself concluded that there are concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process and about the IPCC's crucial emissions scenario exercise.

Their lordships' conclusions were probably not welcomed at No. 10.

Also, on the eve of the summit, the Royal Society issued a press release, supposedly on behalf of the national academies of science (these eve-of-the-summit announcements are not entirely coincidental). It was headlined, "Clear science demands prompt action on climate change" and included this statement: "The current U.S. policy on climate change is misguided. The Bush Administration has consistently refused to accept the advice of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences." A sharp riposte from the president of the National Academy of Sciences followed. Space does not permit full discussion of the rebuke. A few key phrases, however, are revealing: "Your statement is quite misleading. . . . By appending your own phrase, 'by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases' to an actual quote from our report, you have considerably changed our report's meaning and intent. . . . As you must appreciate, having your own misinterpretation of U.S. Academy work widely quoted in our press has caused considerable confusion both at my academy and in our government."

Though the issue of global warming and, indeed, the summit itself were overshadowed by the acts of terrorism in London, the final communiqué from Gleneagles was closer to the position of the House of Lords (and the position of the Bush administration) than it was to the Royal Society. President Chirac had the gall (no pun) to suggest that the Europeans had brought President Bush around to their point of view. Closer to the truth was the comment of Philip Clapp of the National Environmental Trust, who called the agreement "utterly meaningless -- the weakest statement on climate change ever made by the G8."

An additional setback occurred three weeks after the Gleneagles Summit, when the U.S. entered into the "Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate" with Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea. The focus will be on technology to cope with concerns about global climate as well as pollution. It responds to President Bush's earlier call for a "post-Kyoto era." Greenpeace immediately denounced the agreement stating, "the pact sounds like a dirty coal deal."

The issue of climate change urgently needs to be brought down from the level of theology to what we actually know. It is, of course, quite likely that the greenhouse effect has to some extent contributed to global warming -- but we simply do not know to what extent. The insistence that global warming is primarily the consequence of human activity leaves scant room for variation in solar intensity or cyclical phenomena generally.

Over the ages, climate has varied. Generally speaking, the Northern Hemisphere has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 19th century. Most of the global warming observed in the 20th century occurred between 1900 and 1940, when the release of greenhouse gases was far less than later in the century. Between 1940 and 1975, temperatures fell -- and scientists feared a lengthy period of global cooling. The reported rise in temperatures in recent decades has come rather suddenly -- probably too suddenly given the relatively slow rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

We must always bear in mind that the earth's atmosphere remains a highly complex thermodynamic machine. Given its complexities, we need to be modest in asserting what we know. Knowledge is more than speculation.

* * *

Much has been made of the assertion, repeated regularly in the media, that "the science is settled," based upon a supposed "scientific consensus." Yet, some years ago in the "Oregon Petition" between 17,000 and 18,000 signatories, almost all scientists, made manifest that the science was not settled, declaring:

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

Several additional observations are in order. First, the "consensus" is ostensibly based upon the several Assessment Reports of the IPCC. One must bear in mind that the summary reports are political documents put together by government policy makers, who, to put it mildly, treat rather cavalierly the expressed uncertainties and caveats in the underlying scientific reports. Moreover, the IPCC was created to support a specific political goal. It is directed to support the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. In turn, the Convention calls for an effective international response to deal with "the common concern of all mankind" -- in short, to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Statements by the leaders of the IPCC have been uninhibitedly political.

Second, science is not a matter of consensus, as the histories of Galileo, Copernicus, Pasteur, Einstein and others will attest. Science depends not on speculation but on conclusions verified through experiment. Verification is more than computer simulations -- whose conclusions mirror the assumptions built in the model. Irrespective of the repeated assertions regarding a "scientific consensus," there is neither a consensus nor is consensus science.
===============================

Mr. Schlesinger, the first secretary of energy, launched the Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Effects and Assessment Program shortly after the creation of that department in 1977.

[strat-0]

Kyoto's conscientious objector
More Kyoto scandal from Montreal - propaganda extraordinaire!

By: Lorne Gunter,
National Post (Toronto) November 28, 2005


Beginning this week and carrying on well into next, Montreal's canape caterers, its Beaujolais purveyors, Voss water suppliers, fresh Ahi tuna mongers and Wagyu beef importers will be busy as can be. Every chef with a tall hat, every waiter with a tux, every chambermaid, doorman and maitre d' will be rushed off his or her feet.

The UN is in town.

The 11th "conference of the parties" (COP11), made up of those countries that signed the 1997 Kyoto accord on global warming -- some 3,000 official delegates and 6,000 observers --doesn't talk catastrophe on an empty stomach. Why would it? The vast majority of participants will be there on the tab of their taxpayers back home -- official government delegates, government-funded scientists, and NGO members whose travel is being covered by a government grant.

There will be celebrities, too, drawn by the desire to have their famous faces associated with a fashionable cause. And environmentalists and media and demonstrators.

But what there won't be is any objective debate about the science of global warming.

For the UN and the host Canadian government, the issue is settled: Man-made global warming (GW) is real and its solution will require lots of centralized planning and regulation. Ending global warming will feed big national governments and busybody international organizations just as surely as all those caterers, purveyors and suppliers will feed COP delegates. Therefore, delegates won't hear from anyone who questions the theory.

Ottawa has hired Montreal's Stonehaven Productions to ensure delegates hear only from those celebrities who agree with the GW orthodoxy, too. Stonehaven is the producer of the highly biased television series The Great Warming and the equally subjective upcoming Secrets of the Last Glaciers, which is billed as a documentary about the race by scientists against "the very greenhouse conditions we've created" to extract critical scientific data from high-elevation glaciers "before they melt away."

Stonehaven has recruited pop stars and actors to deliver highly polished propaganda pieces throughout the COP. It's even written their blurbs for them.

The clips are full of blame and doom. "An uncertain shadow is building on our children's planet ... and only we can stop it."

"We have only one home -- a little planet so finely tuned that life thrives. But something's changing that balance -- and warming our world." It's humans and human activities. "Will we do anything about it?"

But producer Karen Coshof, who is also the producer of The Great Warming and Secrets, made the mistake of asking Olympic gold-medal skier and entrepreneur Nancy Greene Raine to be one of the talking heads. Raine said sure, but, in an e-mail to Coshof, said she wanted to write her own message and added "I would need your assurance that it would be used." On Nov. 15, Coshof replied "Of course you can write your own, and you have my personal assurance it will be used."

Raine's draft stated: "Scientific discoveries in the years since the Kyoto Protocol was signed have rendered it out of date. It is time to re-evaluate Canada's position ... The Kyoto Protocol is not in our best interest, and will not prevent climate change. The billions being wasted trying to stop this natural phenomenon should be diverted to solving real environmental problems that we can control."

That's when the back-pedaling began.

"We cannot send political messages in these clips," Coshof wrote to Raine, "Our focus is on urging action."

Of course urging action is by its very nature a political act, particularly urging such obviously one-sided action as the COP-11 celebrities.

Coshof then seemed to hope she could put Raine off by telling her she had just 48 hours to have the clip taped and sent to producers. Greene said that was no problem, but asked again, "Can you confirm that my comments as I wrote them would be used?"

Only a week after giving Greene her "personal assurance it will be used," Coshof claimed she was "just assembling" the celebrity messages and that Stonehaven were "not the arbiters of the final product." "My advice to you," Coshof closed, was "probably best forget this."

And my advice to you, if you are expecting objective, scientific analysis when you are watching coverage of the COP11: Probably best forget it.

Lorne Gunter is on the editorial board of the National Post and is a columnist with the Edmonton Journal - he may be contacted at [e-mail].

[RocDoc]

Well, yeah!

[phil]

Well yeah what

World 'warmest for 12,000 years'

Earth has warmed by 0.6C (1F) over the past 30 years, research shows

The world is the warmest it has been in the last 12,000 years as a result of rapid warming over the past 30 years, a study has suggested.

Nasa climatologists said the Earth had warmed by about 0.2C (0.4F) in each of the last three decades.

Pollution from human activity was pushing the world towards dangerous levels of climate change, they warned.

As a result, plant and animal species were struggling to migrate fast enough to cooler regions, they said.

"The evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution," warned James Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York.

Ice melt

The study by researchers from Nasa, Columbia University and the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), showed that warming was greatest at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and was more pronounced over land than the oceans.

The reason behind the rise in temperatures in this region was a result of a loss in snow and ice cover, the researchers said.

As the Earth warmed, melting snow and ice exposed dark land surfaces which absorbed more energy from the Sun, resulting in more warming - a process known as "positive feedback".

Warming was less over the ocean than over the land because of the great heat capacity of the deep-mixing ocean, which causes warming to occur more slowly there.

Simon Tett, a scientist at the UK's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, said the findings supported Dr Hansen's earlier predictions, which had been criticised in some quarters.

"The results of this study show that James Hansen's predictions of the late '80s are consistent with what has happened," Dr Tett said.

"Modelling has moved on since then, but the idea that early predictions were done to cause panic and were wrong has been proved to be not the case."

More ... news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5381456.stm

[phil]

Myth: “Climate change isn’t happening.”

Fact: In the early 1990s 166 countries signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This international agreement expressed concern at climate change, acknowledged its causes and set out the need to take action. The signatories, including the United Kingdom, the United States, most European countries and many others, agreed that climate change was occurring and that it was caused by increasing amounts of greenhouse gases from human activity building up in the atmosphere.

At Bonn in 2001 around 180 countries agreed to international action through the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change, based on the advice of the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. Industrialised nations agreed to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by an overall 5.2 per cent by 2012 from 1990 levels. The United States has withdrawn from the agreement due to fears over slowdown of its economy.

Temperature data gathered from across the globe have shown that in the last 100 years the Earth’s surface temperature has risen by between 0.4 and 0.8 C and sea level by 0.10 to 0.25 metres. This is likely to have been the largest change in temperatures in the last 1000 years. What concerns scientists is that the change is so very rapid. Furthermore, temperatures are expected to increase between 1.4 and 5.8 C in the next 100 years.

Myth: “There is no agreement between scientists about climate change. Indeed a large number believe climate change isn’t happening at all and they’ve signed a petition (the Oregon Petition) to say so.”

Fact: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed in 1988 to study climate change. Its 2500 scientists – including eight Nobel Laureates – are drawn from the leading national and international scientific institutions. Their consensus, involving more than 14 years of assessment and peer-review, is that climate change is occurring and that it is very likely to be the result of the production of greenhouse gases from human activity. The scientists also point out that no known natural factors – like solar radiation changes or normal variability – can by themselves explain the rapid warming.

Opponents of action on climate change portray the Oregon Petition as evidence of scientific division on the question and say it has the support of 18,000 ‘scientists’ but the petition has been widely discredited. Among the signatories were Geri Halliwell, the former Spice Girl, fictional television characters, TV weathermen and dead people. Many scientists who signed it did so because it was falsely portrayed as being from the highly-respected US National Academy of Science. The status of the signatories was never checked; signatories were assumed to have only a bachelor’s degree in science, not any particular climate specialism or knowledge. The Oregon Petition does not indicate scientific doubt on climate change.

The Oregon Petition was collected by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, revealed to be a self-styled pressure group providing an ‘alternative’ voice on science. Amongst its other contributions is a publication entitled Nuclear War Survival Skills.

Myth: “The predictions by climate scientists are worst case scenarios, and their adoption by United Nations bodies was a political one, not a scientific one. Besides, predictions of climate change are based on computer simulations which are hopelessly simplified.”

Fact: It is difficult to construct computer simulations that model the climate accurately, but the models are getting increasingly good both at describing today’s climate and predicting the future. There are a number of different scenarios tested, each with differing assumptions about economic growth, adoption of non-fossil fuel energy sources, etc. The scenario that many people think is most likely is the worst case scenario because this is the one humanity is currently following.

The difficulty in deciding what should be done about climate change relates to the question of how much the climate needs to change before we have confidence to act. As climatologist Stephen Schneider notes: “I’m not 99 per cent sure, but I am 90 per cent sure [that the climate is changing]. Why do we need 99 per cent certainty when nothing else is that certain? If there were only a 5 per cent chance the chef slipped some poison in your dessert, would you eat it?” Clearly we need to take a ‘precautionary approach’ and act to the best of our knowledge, not wait for a disaster and then find out that it’s too late to do anything about it.

In the latest report by the experts that advise the United Nations, the scientists drew some very strong conclusions about the present reality of climate change. They concluded that “recent climate changes have already affected many physical and biological systems”. Examples of changes in response to 20th century warming include: shrinking glaciers, thawing permafrost, earlier break-up of river and lake ice, the lengthening of growing seasons in the most northern and southern countries, plant and animal ranges moving towards the poles or to higher ground, declines of some animal and plant populations, and earlier tree flowering, insect emergence and egg-laying in birds.

Myth: “In the past 25 years the atmosphere has actually cooled; besides climate change is nothing new, it’s been happening for centuries.”

Fact: The average atmospheric temperatures during the last Ice Age were only 5 C different from today. Small differences in the average global temperature can make a big difference to the Earth as we know it. While temperature records derived from satellites show either less warming than surface temperature data or even a slight cooling trend, this is not unexpected.

Recent studies, most notably a study by the US National Academy of Sciences published in 2000, found that satellite data needed to be adjusted for some measurement and calibration problems. These adjustments bring surface and satellite records into better agreement, with both showing a warming trend. With only 20 years of satellite observation, recorded trends can be strongly affected by extreme conditions, such as the 1991 eruption of the Mt Pinatubo volcano, which decreased atmospheric temperatures for several years.

It is important to remember that satellite and surface data differ in what they record: surface thermometers measure the air temperature at the Earth’s surface, while satellites take the temperature of wider depths in the atmosphere. The depletion of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere has had a cooling effect in that part of the atmosphere. Since this is a part of the atmosphere that satellites observe but which cannot be measured easily from the surface, it is not surprising that the warming is shown to be lessened. Since satellites began measuring in 1979 there have been differences between the temperatures they have found in the lowest 8 kilometres of the atmosphere and those measured at the surface but these are due to the combined effects of measurement errors, volcanic eruptions and changes in warming rates in the tropics.

Myth: “Of course greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide contribute to climate change, but only 3 per cent of carbon dioxide is from human sources. The rest is from other natural ones”

Fact: Although human sources of carbon dioxide are a small percentage of the total ‘carbon cycle’, they are not insignificant. For the past 420,000 years, until the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 1750s, this cycle of carbon exchange was roughly in balance. Since 1750, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 31 per cent (and is still increasing at 0.4 per cent per year), mainly due to burning oil, coal and gas, and the large-scale removal of forest and other land-use changes. These human activities have forced the carbon cycle out of balance and out of the known range of variation. Coal, oil and gas, which are mostly stored in deep underground deposits, are outside the natural living ‘carbon cycle’. When we extract and burn the fossil fuels they added into the carbon cycle artificially. The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, one of the principle greenhouse gases, are now likely to be higher than they have been for 20 million years.

Myth: “Solar activity is responsible for climate change.”

Fact: Solar variability has played a crucial role in determining temperature variations over the Earth’s history. However, more recently it is of limited importance in comparison with the effect of increased greenhouse concentration. There is evidence that solar changes added to global warming in the first half of the 20th century, but it cannot explain the fast warming of more recent decades. The US space agency NASA is clear that “as of now greenhouse gases afford a plausible explanation for such changes”.

Myth: “Spending money on climate change is a waste of time. Money could be better spent on development projects such as providing clean water. These will save more lives than efforts to stop climate change.”

Fact: We need to both provide clean water and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We have sufficient resources to take action on both. There are many difficulties in accurately calculating the costs and benefits of action or inaction in reducing climate change. Climate change deniers have overlooked the benefits or inaccurately calculated them. However, it is clear that unless global warming is tackled soon, the results in terms of more floods, worse droughts, decreasing food production and rising sea levels will become catastrophic during this century.

Most greenhouse gas emissions have been produced, and continue to be produced, in the rich countries, but many of the effects will be acutely felt in countries with the poorest people. These people are the most threatened by hunger and famine and the least able to adapt. Arguably, we have a moral duty to reduce this harm. Some commentators suggest there is an ‘ecological debt’ owed to climate-victims in poorer countries by the rich due to the climate change already set in motion.

[phil]

It isn't hard to find "scientists" who will swear that
the Evolution theory is flawed or even impossible ...

But it is still is the ONLY tested theory
that explain the world as we know it !!

[phil]

Oh! By the way ... It would be wise to double-check
anything you read in the National Post ...

It is the voice of the Neo-Cons in Canada !!

[kmc]

Hey, is this where all the foreigners hang out?

[phil]

Welcome to "The Foreign Legion" ...

You don't need to be able to speak French when you enlist but it is a good idea to learn as much as you can beforehand. It will be necessary to speak it in order to do your job.
You will need a valid passport and possibly a visa to enter France. You must enter France at your own expense. You are not reimbursed if they don't accept you.
Think about preparing a last will and testament.
You can't have a bank account in France. The Legion maintains an account for you and you can arrange to transfer money anywhere in the world.
A criminal history may be overlooked if the offenses are minor but there are no guarantees.


What To Take

Don't take anything you don't want to lose. Everything you bring will be stored in a duffel bag when you reach Aubagne. You will never see your belongings again if you're accepted. You are permitted to keep:

A French-English dictionary.
Shaving gear, toilet articles, a towel.
Cigarettes.
Your watch.
Your wallet and approximately 200 francs.
An address book or personal contact list.

The Contract

The recruit has been informed that:

1. His service begins as of the date of his signature on this contract.

2. This contract includes a six month probationary period eventually renewable by military authority.

The probationary period takes effect as of the date of signature on this contract.

THIS CONTRACT DOES NOT BECOME FINAL UNTIL THE TERMINATION OF THE PROBATIONARY PERIOD.

3. During the initial probationary period this contract can be terminated:

31. At the request of the recruit, agreed upon by military authority, for personal reasons or for notable difficulties in adaptation, expressed until the end of the fourth month of service. In this case the final decision of the commandment should be signified before the end of the initial probationary period.

32. At any time, by military authority by reason of:

- medical unsuitability for a pre-existent cause at enlistment
- unsuitability for employment or for serving in the ranks of the Foreign Legion
- the inability to adapt to military life.

4. During the renewed probationary period this contract can be terminated by military authority for employment unsuitability or for the inability to adapt to military life.

5. At any time this contract can be annulled as of the conditions fixed in article 32...

- at the agreed upon request of the recruit for urgent personal reasons that have befallen him and been duly acknowledged since the signing of his contract
- for reasons of physical unsuitability
- by military authority for professional insufficiency or as a disciplinary measure

"After which the candidate has promised to serve with honour and fidelity as of this day and has pledged in the course of this first contract to not prevail upon service or qualifications previously held by French right."

The contractee has equally promised to serve in the ranks of the Foreign Legion everywhere that the government deems it necessary to send him and, after having been informed of this present act, has signed with us.

Aubagne is the official headquarters of the French Foreign Legion. It is located 15 kilometres east of Marseille in southern France.

Inauguration

You will spend approximately three weeks in Aubagne undergoing screening that involves medical exams, security checks, aptitude tests, and interviews. You are not permitted contact with the outside world while in Aubagne and cannot phone or write anyone.


The Gestapo

The Gestapo is slang for the branch concerned with the Legion's internal security. They will interview you in your own language on all aspects of your life. The days of joining "no questions asked" are a thing of the past. Honesty is your best policy when talking with the Gestapo. Based on what you tell them, they may decide to change your name.


Changing Your Name

Changing your name is not mandatory and many Legionnaires keep their own name throughout their time in the Legion. You can have your name changed back to its original state through a process called rectification.


Aptitude Tests

You will take a series of tests in your own language, including a test in Morse code, to determine your aptitudes and abilities. Take these tests seriously. They are used to help establish whether or not you will be accepted and what career paths you are later allowed to follow.


Acceptance

Indicators of being a successful candidate are:

A coloured tab they give you to wear that progresses from yellow to green and finally to red.
A haircut. Haircuts are not given until several phases of indoctrination are complete.
Being assigned a six-digit serial number that you need to memorize and recite.
A final interview where you are asked why you want to join the French Foreign Legion.
Being outfitted with the military gear you will need for basic training and your regiment.

Daily Life

A typical day in your regiment is scheduled something like this:

5:00 Wake up call.
5:30 Roll call.
5:30 - 7:00 Breakfast, ablutions, corvée (cleaning) duties.
7:00 - 7:30 Corvée quartier (garbage sweep of company area).
7:30 Rassemblement compagnie (Company assembly).
7:30 - 9:00 Sporting activities.
9:00 - 9:30 Showers, casse croûte (snack).
9:30 - 12:00 Morning training, work details.
12:00 - 13:30 Soupe (lunch), corvée duties.
13:30 - 14:00 Corvée quartier.
14:00 Rassemblement compagnie.
14:00 - 17:30 Afternoon training, work details.
17:30 Soupe, end of work day.
17:30 - 21:30 Free time for yourself.
17:30 - 5:30 Allowed to be absent from camp with a permission (leave) slip.
21:30 Corvée duties.
22:00 Roll call.
22:30 Lights out.


MARCH OR DIE !!

[Mary]

Phil!!!

Je suis heureuse que j'ai découvert l'endroit où sont tous les traîtres! Pardonnez mon français horrible; je suis rouillée.

(Est-ce que je peux utiliser ce mot, "rouillée," comme ça? Je pense que peut-être c'est une expression idiomatique anglaise et pas française....)

M

[phil]

Mary ~ Don't worry about your french ...
It is impeccable as always !
Better than many francophones I know !

And yes, "rouillé" as in "I'm a bit rusty"
is a legitimate expression in the french language ....

It's a shame la Légion étrangère is still a male bastion ...
You'd make a fantastic recruit ... ...

[kmc]

Eu falo Portugues. Esta bom?

[rockysigman]

Haha, kenny is talking all funny.

[strat-0]

The French Climate Skeptic
By Hans H.J. Labohm : 11 Sep 2006

Skeptical voices in the international global warming debate are predominantly Anglo-Saxon, with occasional smatterings of Nordic, Russian, Italian and Dutch. But the French are conspicuously absent. How come? French intellectuals are reputed for their independence and dissenting views on any conceivable subject. Consequently, the French have a tradition of a very lively political debate -- yes, even of passionate polemics on just about any issue. But one topic has been conspicuously absent from the debate so far: global warming. Or has it?

Not exactly. But because of the language barrier, French climate skepticism has hardly been noticed outside the francophone world, while it has generally been ignored by politicians and the established climate community in France itself.

One of the most prominent French climate skeptics, Marcel Leroux, has recently published a magnum opus (more than 500 pages) on the subject: Global Warming: Myth or Reality? The Erring Ways of Climatology. The author is no stranger in climate Jerusalem. He is professor of climatology at the University J. Moulin and director of the Laboratoire de Climatologie, Risques, Environnement, both in Lyon. He has already been criticizing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for some 20 years. He believes that temperatures are the result of the dynamics of weather systems in the context of the various distinct aerological spaces in the world, not of the hypothetical equations of climate models.

Leroux started to write his book in order to comment on the sad state into which climatology has drifted during the last 20 years, since its entering into the political arena, and to show that climatology is also itself to blame for this drift.

"Hardly a week goes by without some new 'scoop' ... filling our screens and the pages of our newspapers," he writes. "'Global warming' caused by the 'greenhouse effect' is our fault, just like everything else, and the message/slogan/ misinformation becomes even more simplistic, ever cruder! It could not be simpler: if the rain falls or draught strikes; if the wind blows a gale or there is none at all; whether it's heat or hard frost; it's all because of the 'greenhouse effect', and we are to blame. An easy argument, but stupid!"

"The Fourth Report of the IPCC might just as well decree the suppression of all climatology textbooks, and replace them in our schools with press communiqués. ... Day after day, the same mantra -- that 'the Earth is warming up' -- is churned out in all its forms. As 'the ice melts' and 'sea level rises' the Apocalypse looms ever nearer! Without realizing it, or perhaps without wishing to, the average citizen in bamboozled, lobotomized' lulled into mindless acceptance. ... Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!"

In his book he also meticulously analyzes the development of climate science, focusing on the successive reports of the IPCC, which appeared in 1990, 1995, and 2001. According to Leroux, the first report already contains the core ideas of what is known as "global warming", but its tone is moderate and it makes no mention of human responsibility for it. The second report contributes nothing new from a scientific point of view, but suddenly and surprisingly, the human race is held responsible for global warming.

How was this turnaround achieved? New scientific insights? No, it was the result of a veritable scientific coup by sleight of hand. The scandal was brought to light by various people involved, including Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University and chairman of the George C. Marshall Institute (Washington). In his letter to the Wall Street Journal, on June 12, 1996, he wrote:

"[But] this [IPCC] report is not what it appears to be -- it is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the title page. In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.

A comparison between the report approved by the contributing scientists and the published version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had met and accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version. ... Few of these changes were merely cosmetic; nearly all worked to remove hints of the skepticism with which many scientists regard claims that human activities are having a major impact on climate in general and on global warming in particular.

The following passages are examples of those included in the approved report but deleted from the supposedly peer-reviewed published version:

- 'None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.'

- 'No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes.'

- 'Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced."

Instead, the following text was inserted: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate." In spite of the way this view was imposed, and all the subsequent controversy, the idea was never retracted.

The third report brought a second scientific coup. It increased the value of the predicted rise in temperature, and clinched the argument with the hockey stick diagram -- more recently exposed as a hoax -- stating that temperatures in recent times are higher than they have been for a thousand years. Moreover, the spectrum of the consequences of the greenhouse effect was considerably broadened, to the extent that it included every meteorological phenomenon.

Leroux also draws attention to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, of which article 6 on education and training, obliges participants to sensitize the public, at a national level, to climate change and its effects. States signatories to the Convention are thus bound to adopt the concept of "global warming" at the highest institutional level, to impose it as an incontrovertible dogma (i.e., a sort of state religion impervious to debate). In France, Leroux adds, the "servants" of the state -- and in their name, both audio-visual media and institutes -- feel bound to propagate the official dogma, just like a certain press agency in the East in its heyday; echoing the triumph of Lysenkoism, they shape public opinion in favor of the official theses.

In his treatment of the relative contributions of various greenhouse gases, including the most important one, water vapor, which represents 95 percent of the total greenhouse effect, he calculates that human activities account for only 0.28 percent, which is less than exciting. Consequently, he argues that we must shake off our unfounded obsession with the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, and reconsider the problem of climate change in a different way, re-establishing the proper hierarchy of phenomena and giving the "water effect" the major climatic importance it deserves.

All in all, Leroux believes that climatology has gradually become distanced from the treatment of real facts, the dynamics of weather and climate, especially under the growing influence of modeling. It has been in a conceptual deadlock for more than 50 years. "We can't really know what the weather will be like more than two or three days ahead," he writes, "but now all this has been erased in a trice! Now it is unhesitatingly claimed, we can predict weather and climate (which is the sum of weather) as far ahead as the year 2100. ... Astrology or science?"

Hans Labohm, co-author of Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma, recently became an expert reviewer of the IPCC.

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Fact: #709, no citation