Inhofe: Climategate Shows There's No Global Warming Consensus

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I find it amazing that even with such egregious behavior having been exposed that people like Romm continue with even more and worse behavior.
I suspect Joe will never waiver from his movement until he is in the after life.
His pitch becomes more contrived and unfounded every day.
His followers are the most duped people on the planet.
Confused and mistaking baseless attributions and supposition for evidence of a CO2 emissions linking to climate change.
Idiots all as they look around and see stuff they are certain comes from human causes.
Joe, ethics man, ethics.

Seve Oregon of OR 3:04PM March 24, 2010

How stupid is everyone to think Science is Consensual??????You people would be living in a Cold Cave ,Too stupid to discover Fire if it were up to a consensus.....How long have you been indoctrinated in Orwellian DoubleSpeak and irrational garbage to ever think it Was?????Check infowars.com,globalresearch.ca asap.Leave the Matrix of Politically Correct Stupidity you live in.....

Aldous Huxley of WY 12:33PM March 24, 2010

Kudos to U.S. News for presenting both sides of the debate. You are ethically light years ahead of Time and Newsweek.
Here's a partial list of reasons to be skeptical of manmade global warming:
1. The CRU destroyed the underlying climate data, rendering replication of their results, and thus compliance with the scientific method, impossible!
2. The Climategate emails clearly show that the climate scientists were rigging the peer review process. The end result was a mutual admiration society.
3. The Climategate emails reveal doubts about current warming among the climate "scientists."
4. The Climategate computer code (especially "Harry--Read Me") shows with about 99% certainty that the climate "scientists" were simply making up numbers to obtain the desired results.
5. CO2 contributes to only 4-9% of the greenhouse effect. Only about 4% of CO2 is man-made. Water vapor accounts for 90%-95% of greenhouse gases.
6. There have been many times when the temperature has been higher than it is now globally, including the Medieval Warming Period, the Holocene, the Jurassic, and the Eemian.
7. Increases in CO2 have historically FOLLOWED increases in temperature by about 800 years. This strongly suggests that high terperatures have caused increased CO2, not the other way around.
8. Phil Jones of the CRU admits that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995. He also said that the 1976-1998 warming was similar to the 1860-1880 and 1910-1940 warmings.
9. Solar activity has a higher statistical correlation with temperature than CO2 has with temperature.
10. Mars has warmed about 0.5 degreesC since the 1970's, which is about the same amount that earth has warmed in the same period.
11. 2008 and 2009 were the coolest two years of the decade.
12. Antarctica has 90% of earth's ice and has been growing for 30 years.
13. The Arctic sea ice has grown in the last two years and has returned to 1979 levels.
14. The polar bear population is increasing. (Polar bears can swim 60 miles, BTW.)
15. According to satellite data, the sea level has been decreasing since 2005.
16. The IPCC's claims about Himalayan glaciers, increased natural disasters, African agriculture, Amazonian forests and Netherlands topography were all false and have all been forced to be retracted.
17. NASA's weather stations have been cherry-picked, and often are situated near hot asphalt, air-conditioners, etc.!@#$*?
18. A British court ruled that Al Gore's movie contained nine factual errors, and must be considered propaganda. Others have identified 35 errors.
19. The warmists complain about $ millions of oil company money involved in this debate but conveniently ignore the corrupting influence of (a) $ billions from government grants that go only to warmists -- not to skeptics and (b) biased academic institutions which reward the politically correct and persecute the polically incorrect.

Seekeroftruth of CA 12:22PM March 24, 2010

Great comments. Clearly most of the posters here are from the "10th Place Trophy" generation where facts and reality don't matter too much as long as nobody's feelings get hurt. I love those who act like Inhofe's funding has any significance in discussing the true scientific facts. If you are one of those people, you have to understand that you are just incomprehensibly stupid, and no amount of soothing by your mother or Obama, will change that fact. You are not mentally equipped for this debate, or any adult conversation.
To the three of you that are left, the old "most of the science is right, but the skeptics are stuck on the same few things" is just as asinine. First of all MOST of the science DOESN'T EXIST. The temperature records that you all cherish represent about 10-15% of the earth surface, and those were taken with instruments that have never been collectively calibrated or validated against each other. Furthermore the skeptics are stuck on VERY SIGNIFICANT THINGS. Like say, the fact that the troposhpheric warming that THE ENTIRE THEORY RESTS ON has never happend. Or that the rate at which the atmosphere exhausts CO2 has been incomprehensibly misstated, so that fools like you believe that billions of tons of CO2 added to the atmosphere just sit there forever. A real scientist knows that this defies the law of gravity and Newtonian mechanics. Remember that our planet is constantly traveling a million miles an hour through a vacuum. And most of all atmospheric CO2 is measured from the top of a volcano in the middle of the ocean. Meanwhile these two things are the SOURCE of over 90% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere. This is the same as going camping in the dead of winter and not being concerned about freezing because you measured the air temperature right above the campfire and found it to be 130.
Its clear to real scientist (not wannabe posers trying to impress their progressive friends at wine tastings) that what this entire theory REALLY rests on is the fact that there's a sucker born every minute. And you all validate that theory IN ITS ENTIRETY. Mommy's little scientists...

Deuce of OH 11:34AM March 24, 2010

Icarus would apparently have you believe that if you put CO2 in a jar and shine infrared light on it, it will heat indefinitely. This little soundbite has been showing up word for word all over blogs recently, clearly distributed by the undying Alarmist agenda. Taken to its logical end, Icarus is describing a perpetual energy machine, a perpetual mechanism for converting energy to work/heat with no loss of efficiency. For those of you who may have been duped by this, just know that the First Law of Thermodynamics is nothing more than the explicit statement that this is not possible. He also misrepresents that this happens throughout the atmosphere when actually it only takes place, THEORETICALLY, in a very thin layer of the upper troposphere where the air is not dense enough to affect surface temperatures anyway. Though much to Icarus's lamet, we haven't seen this ACTUALLY happen in 31 years and counting.
The fact is, the sun is orders of magnitude bigger than the earth (roughly the same size relationship as a golfball has to Earth). While it is true that CO2 in the atmosphere does absorb slightly more infrared radiation empiraclly, our planet is so overwhelmed by infrared radiation from the sun already, that all of the CO2 in the troposphere is and always has been absorbing the maximum amount of infrared possible. This is a fundamental fact of the greenhouse effect. And because our atmosphere is held in place by gravity, no additional CO2 will collect in the troposphere to cause the theorized warming unless our planet gains a significant amount of mass, at which point we have REAL problems.
Everything about this issue screams CON!!!! From planted half-truths like Icarus's, to the billions of YOUR dollars that will be exchanged by a few greedy elites, to the fact that the very concept of Carbon futures trading was borne of Ken Lay and the Enron Banditos. I am a chemical physicist, with 15 years in the sciences. And I will tell you in no uncertain terms, that NOBODY is even close to being able to perfectly quantify and predict the earth's exact energy balance to within fractions of a degree. And it took 15 years of study just to know enough to grasp this. We know some stuff very well. We are ever improving our ability to measure new things. But we are about one step out of the starting blocks as far as the whole system is concerned. If you think you know the science you have been conned. If you think ANYONE knows the science you have been conned. If you think "James Inhofe is an anti-science, holocaust denier, Republican creationist" then you have been distracted from the truth and available facts, and need to acknowledge and accept your gullibility. That is simply not the issue. The issue is one of scientific truth and in this case it is far far far from even being established. Believing that it is will be the costliest thing you ever let your ego do to your rational mind. Reject this con!

Deuce of OH 11:13AM March 24, 2010

We have known for decades what the result of continued greenhouse gas emissions would be, and that is the warming world we are seeing now.
A simple laboratory experiment shows quite clearly that carbon dioxide is more transparent to visible light than to infrared radiation (i.e. heat) which is why the sun today continues to warm the Earth while the resultant heat finds it harder to escape - rather like adding an extra blanket to your bed.
Just as you can't help but be warmer with that extra blanket, so the Earth can't help but be warmer with all the extra billions of tons of greenhouse gas we have been adding to the atmosphere. That's why the world is warming at around 0.2 degrees C per decade... it's why the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps are melting, why glaciers are shrinking worldwide, why plants and animals are migrating polewards and uphill, why moisture in the atmosphere is increasing, why we are seeing fewer cold nights and shorter winters, why sea level is rising, and so on. Politicians may lie to us and say that there is no problem, but the natural world tells a different story.
The key thing to remember is that, like it or not, we are now in charge of the Earth's climate and it is in our power to alter its course. We can carry on as we are going and deal with an accelerating global disaster in future decades, or we can take action now and have some chance of reducing destruction and loss of life. It really is up to us.

Icarus 8:47AM March 24, 2010

Global warming (climate change) alarmists are extremely fearful of "unprecedented" warming that took place from the mid-70's to the late 90's. Unfortunately for the alarmists (and fortunately for the rest of us) recent warming was far from "unprecedented." On this web page are a bunch of peer-reviewed studies that reveal how modest recent warming was compared to past warmings:
http://www.c3headlines.com/temperature-charts-historical-proxies.html

Art Ford of CA 7:40AM March 24, 2010

"The [Center for American Progress] receives approximately $25 million per year in funding from a variety of sources, including individuals (George Soros), foundations, and corporations." (Wikipedia) Since they are a 501(c)(3) organization they DO NOT disclose who finances their activities. So, to be transparent, please tell us who funds them, then we can compare apples to apples.
Otherwise you're right, just follow the money. Inhofe supporters are definitely getting a better return on their investment.
"America's most influential climate blogger Joe Romm" Isn't he the one who tried to spin Copenhagen as a success, climategate as a skeptics' conspiracy, cap and trade legislation as world-changing, and recently refused to debate Roger Pielke Jr (a non-skeptic and liberal)?

Inhofe for Prez of OK 12:33AM March 24, 2010

Best rebuttal out there by Jay Richards. In your blogs, just quote one or more of a dozen of these and give Jay Richards' logic and common sense wings. This should be taught in the classroom to inoculate our youth against the rising flood of propaganda manufactured by Big Government, Big Media and Big Academia working in concert just as George Orwell predicted in his book, "1984".
http://thegovmonitor.com/world_news/united_states/when-not-to-believe-the-science-of-scientists-26425.html

John A. Jauregui of ID 12:32AM March 24, 2010

This article is part of a head-to-head between Inhofe and "America's most influential climate blogger" Joe Romm. These are two heavy hitters! I follow this stuff closely, so don't really need to read these two to know what they're going to say.
But as for who's right— all you need to know is who's paying the bill.
"In the 2008 election cycle, Senator Inhofe’s largest campaign donors represented the oil and gas ($446,900 in donations), leadership pacs ($316,720) and electric utilities ($221,654) industries/categories. In 2010, his largest donors represented the oil and gas ($429,950) and electric utilities ($206,654)." (Source: Wikipedia; citations omitted).
That's right... Inhofe is a paid stooge for the nation's biggest polluters, who are desperate and will say anything to avoid having to clean up their dirty operations.
Romm works for the Center for American Progress, which gets over 60% of its funding from non-profit foundations.
You make the call...

Fredo of CA 10:14PM March 23, 2010