Global Warming: What Tom Brokaw Wants You To Know (revised) When Global Baloney Becomes A Salami Sunami
Hosting a TV docufiction presented as a documentary, former NBC newsman Tom Brokaw joins Al Gore’s campaign to mislead America about global warming.
Timed to allow its airing to coincide with a typical July summer heat wave, Global Warming: What You Need To Know hosted by Tom Brokaw is the second salvo in an orchestrated attempt to peddle junk science as reality. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth fired the first shot aimed at convincing the public that humans are altering the climate and that such alteration is catastrophic.
The inconvenient reality is that both Gore and Brokaw must resort to deception, trickery, and outright lies in their dishonorable attempt to peddle their hysterical nonsense.
Some of the worst of Gore’s fiction was addressed recently in More Inconvenient Facts – An Inconvenient Truth = more climate change lies. While the temptation is strong to ignore Brokaw’s hysterical propaganda, the orchestrated media blitz portraying the film as measured and reflective of the thinking of climatologists and meteorologists is so outrageously inaccurate that comment on Brokaw’s fiction is essential.
The first comment that comes to mind is that it is pieces such as Gore’s and Brokaw’s that suggest neither science nor logic is a strong point of politicians and newsmen. Both indulge in superficial statements backed by politically motivated “scientists” who are rapidly becoming part of a smaller and smaller cadre of the “true believers” in significant anthropogenic global warming. Yet both these self-anointed experts would have you believe there exists a strong consensus among credible climatologists and meteorologists that anthropogenic global warming is both significant and catastrophic. Bunk on both counts.
By taking isolated events and using them to illustrate perfectly natural changes (e.g., cyclic changes in polar ice, mountain glaciers, cyclic weather patterns, and drought) as examples of significant anthropogenic global warming, Brokaw does the public a great disservice. No attempt is made to link such changes with human activity short of the usual attempt to use a correlation between increased CO2 and a small amount of recent warming. Contrary to the the hysteria promoted by Brokaw and Gore, any such correlation is both highly superficial and has not been demonstrated to be causative. In any event, an accurate extraction of the human component of total CO2 is based on assumptions that have yet to be proven.
According to Dr. Robert C. Balling (professor and specialist in greenhouse effect and climate change at Arizona Statue University climatology program) in his recent piece, Give a Hoot, Don’t Call it “Pollute”, during “most of the history of the Earth, CO2 levels were very much higher than the level we see today.” In fact, as ocean life evolved “Earth's ecosystem drew down the CO2 levels to a few thousand parts per million” from the more than 70,000 ppm just prior to the emergence of living organisms on Earth. Compare that with today’s level of atmospheric CO2 of less than 400 ppm.
Natural forces have always been at work to alter the level of atmospheric CO2. Dr. Balling notes that in its recent climate history Earth has experienced drops in atmospheric CO2 level that were “perilously close to the 100 ppm level below which plants would no longer be capable of photosynthesis”, a condition in which “the global ecosystem would suffocate.” Clearly, too low a level of atmospheric CO2 is far more dangerous to Earth’s ecosystem than an historically slightly elevated level as has been observed over the past several hundred years. Dr. Balling concludes, “the levels of [atmospheric CO2] have fluctuated enormously over the history of the Earth, and the ecosystems of the planet have evolved to cope with these variations.”
Yet purveyors of doom and gloom “global warming” like Gore and Brokaw claim that a relatively small increase in atmospheric CO2 would be “unprecedented” leading to “catastrophic” conditions for humans.
An inconveniently missing argument in both Brokaw and Gore’s docufictions[1] is a credible explanation why a relatively small change in atmospheric CO2 from any source (natural or otherwise), even if it were pervasive and long term, justifies their characterizations of such an occurrence as either devastating or catastrophic.
Among the many false claims, as Brokaw lavishes praise on Gore's docufiction we find the typical statement, "It's the same science that we are drawing upon and it's irrefutable ...". Bunk + bunk = more bunk.
The claim of "more vicious hurricanes like Katrina" as a consequence of assumed human-induced global warming does not stand up to scrutiny. No credible meteorologist associates Katrina with global warming. In fact, the global warming theory being promoted by the "true believers" has polar regions warming first and more rapidly than other areas of the globe. Yet Antarctica has been in a prolonged coolling trend with thickening ice for decades.
Further, hurricanes are natural devices to moderate tropical heat and polar cold. Hurricanes act as conveyors of tropical heat to the poles. In general, the greater the temperature difference between tropics and poles, the greater number and strength of hurricanes. So if the poles are going to warm fastest and first, it stands to reason that the temperature gradient between tropics and poles will be reduced. This is not a condition that is likely to increase the frequency or severity of hurricanes. To the contrary, just the opposite is likely.
Both Gore and Brokaw have raised hysterical images of coastal cities being inundated. This facet of their hysteria is so much nonsense that cannot be supported by credible science. These “Chicken Little” purveyors of global warming propaganda are reduced to making misleading statements and outright lies to try to sell their fiction. Their claims that rising ocean waters from “global warming” will inundate coastal cities brings to mind another similar example of grossly exaggerated claims found in the April 9, 2001 issue of Time magazine. That article claimed global warming’s rising sea levels were the reason a lighthouse on a North Carolina barrier island was being relocated. The truth is that the barrier island was eroding due to natural processes that had nothing whatsoever to do with global warming!
Brokaw makes a similar claim regarding the South Pacific island of Tuvalu – that it is going to be swallowed by water seeping through the ground because of global warming. In fact, Tuvalu is sinking – a natural and ongoing geological process. Do you know that the entire Indian subcontinent is sinking below the Asian continent, forcing up the Himalaya Mountains? While the reasons for Tuvalu and India sinking are related, they have nothing to do with global warming.
From where is all this melting water that will raise the oceans high enough to swallow New York City going to come? Melting polar ice caps? That will be a mighty task considering both the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps are in the process of thickening[2]
Remember the images of icebergs calving into the ocean? The image is designed to have you believe that melting from global warming is causing this natural process. In fact, icebergs are calving as the thickening interior ice mantle expands toward the ocean until its edge is over warmer waters and the ice front can no longer maintain its integrity.
Concerns about polar bear surviving a warming phase that would seasonably reduce the Arctic ice shelf ignore the reality that both polar regions are totally free of ice during Earth’s normal climate (when it is not locked in an Ice Era). Even during Ice Eras, normal variability in polar ice is extreme when one considers the vast difference between polar conditions during the height of an Ice Age and the long relatively warm periods of an Interglacial. Yet even the warmest periods of an Interglacial are cold when compared with Earth’s typical climate (that which was the norm during the reign of dinosaurs).
The political nature of proponents of significant anthropogenic global warming[3] is revealed in a recent press release[4] of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works has noted “Brokaw’s lack of objectivity and balance on the issue of global warming.” Key elements of the Committee’s majority press release state:
Brokaw’s partisan past and his reliance on scientists who openly endorsed Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004 and who are financially affiliated with left wing environmental groups, has resulted in a documentary that is devoid of balance and objectivity.
Former Colorado state climatologist (as of July 1, 2006) and professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences at Colorado State University, Senior Research Scientist in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and a Senior Research Associate position in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC), Roger Pielke, Sr, viewed an advance copy of the Brokaw’s special and declared that it contained “errors and misconceptions.”
“The show relied on just a few scientists with a particular personal viewpoint on this subject which misleads the public on the broader view that is actually held by most climate scientists,” Pielke wrote on July 7.
Brokaw … has recently lavished praise on former Vice President Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Brokaw does not disclose the potential and known biases of the scientists he chose to feature.
Brokaw presents NASA’s James Hansen as an authority on climate change without revealing to viewers the extensive political and financial ties that Hansen has to Democrat Party partisans. Hansen … received a $250,000 grant from the charitable foundation headed by former Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz.
Hansen … acted as a consultant to Gore's slide-show presentations on global warming, on which Gore’s movie is based. Hansen has actively promoted Gore and his movie …
Hansen … conceded in a 2003 issue of Natural Science ( http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html ) that the use of “extreme scenarios" to dramatize climate change “may have been appropriate at one time” to drive the public's attention to the issue --- a disturbing admission by a prominent scientist.
Brokaw’s special … features Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. … Brokaw fails to note that Oppenheimer actively campaigned against President George Bush in 2004 and, like Hansen, endorsed Senator Kerry for president. Oppenheimer was affiliated with the partisan group Scientists and Engineers for Change and the green group Environment2004 financially bankrolled in part by the Heinz Foundation where Teresa Heinz-Kerry serves as the chairwoman.
Viewers of Brokaw’s program will not be informed that Oppenheimer personally donated to the group Environment2004 … Oppenheimer also serves as a "science advisor" to the left wing and politically charged group Environmental Defense and was a co-founder of Climate Action Network.
… climatologist Pielke … conclude[s] … Brokaw presents “a narrow view of the issue of natural and human climate variability and change. It is a disappointment that this show … did not use the two hours to present a balanced view on the spectrum of perspectives on the human influences on the climate system,” … Pielke has authored more than 275 peer reviewed journal articles on climate. According to Pielke, Brokaw also presents flawed science in his program.
“Rapid glacial retreat is not a new observation, nor are all glaciers retreating. The Grand Pacific glacier in Glacier Bay National Park, for example, retreated 48 miles from 1794 to 1879, and a further 17 miles by 1916. Large masses of glacial ice breaking from the Antarctic continent are not a new feature of this region,” Pielke noted.
Despite a host of flaws and misrepresentations in the Gore and Brokaw docufictions, the usual suspects in the media portray both films in glowing terms, praising the efforts of these emerging science fiction novices.
Be prepared for more of this propaganda as the summer wears on and the fall elections approach. You can rest assured that some left wing candidates will attempt to ride to victory on the tidal wave of propaganda and disinformation being generated by Gore and Brokaw.
Brokaw's tidal wave of misinformation is a salami sunami of global baloney about global warming.
To better understand the political nature of promoters of the theory of significant anthropogenic global warming, the following well-researched material by Bernard Switalski is worth reviewing:
Author of "Looking Out the Window", an evidence-based examination of the "climate change" issue, Bob Webster, is a 12th-generation descendent of both the Darte family (Connecticut, 1630s) and the Webster family (Massachusetts, 1630s). He is a descendant of Daniel Webster's father, Revolutionary War patriot Ebenezer Webster, who served with General Washington. Bob has always had a strong interest in early American history, our Constitution, U.S. politics, and law. Politically he is a constitutional republican with objectivist and libertarian roots. He has faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and reason over deception and emotion. He is a strong believer in our Constitution as written and views the abandonment of constitutional restraint by the regressive Progressive movement as a great danger to our Republic. His favorite novel is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and believes it should be required reading for all high school students so they can appreciate the cost of tolerating the growth of unconstitutional crushingly powerful central government. He strongly believes, as our Constitution enshrines, that the interests of the individual should be held superior to the interests of the state.
A lifelong interest in meteorology and climatology spurred his strong interest in science. Bob earned his degree in Mathematics at Virginia Tech, graduating in 1964.
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