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More Problems for Weary Global-Warming Advocates

By STEPHEN HOLZER

   

This has not been a good month for advocates of the theory of global warming.

    After a slew of articles concerning the fact that the Earth has not been warming for the last eleven years plus the fact that the trend now seems to be toward cooling, a Court in the UK has dealt yet another blow to the proposition that belief in global warming is a ?science.?

 

    Ironically, this setback occurred in a case actually won by an advocate of the global warming theory.  The advocate had been dismissed from his employment after complaining that his company?s policies were insensitive to preventing global warming?and the Court held the dismissal improper because the company had discriminated against the advocate?s religious/philosophical views:

When it comes to climate change, just have a little faith!

In an unusual case in the United Kingdom, it has been ruled that climate change beliefs should be afforded the same legal protections as religious freedoms.

? When Mr. Nicholson began to gripe and express his environmental sentiments, he was later dismissed. He took his former employers to court, contending that the same laws that protect religious freedoms protected his ?philosophical belief about climate change and the environment.?

Daily Tech. com http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16721

?Global Warming Afforded Same Legal Status as Religion in UK?

    Thus, by relegating belief in global warming (or, as it is now conveniently called, ?climate change?) to a philosophical/religious belief rather than a scientific belief, the plaintiff in the UK case has won his battle but has helped enshrine in law the notion that the belief is essentially based on faith, not evidence.

    Further buffeting global warming advocates comes this report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

NOAA: U.S. Posts Third Coolest-Highest Precipitation for October on Record November 10, 2009

The October 2009 average temperature for the contiguous United States was the third coolest on record for that month according to NOAA?s State of the Climate report issued today. Based on data going back to 1895, the monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis is part of the suite of climate services provided by NOAA.

The average October temperature of 50.8 degrees F was 4.0 degrees F below the 20th Century average. Preliminary data also reveals this was the wettest October on record with average precipitation across the contiguous United States reaching 4.15 inches, 2.04 inches above the 1901-2000 average.

   

Even politicians seem to be getting the message-

   

Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf says the White House focus on deficit reduction could easily kill the cap-and-trade effort. ?I think this means cap-and-trade has to go to the backburner,? he said.

Politico.com http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29471.html ?After spending binge, White House says it will focus on deficits? By Mike Allen & Jim Vandehei

Thus, Al Gore?s mantra of ?An Inconvenient Truth? is increasingly becoming ?Inconvenient Data? for global-warming advocates.  George Will, Newsweek, November 16, 2009, http://www.newsweek.com/id/221608:

 There is much debate about the reasons for, and the importance of, the fact that global warming has not increased for that long [11 years]. What we know is that computer models did not predict this. Which matters, a lot, because we are incessantly exhorted to wager trillions of dollars and diminished freedom on the proposition that computer models are correctly projecting catastrophic global warming. On Nov. 2, The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey Ball reported some inconvenient data. Soon after the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?it shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Thinking Man's Thinking Man?reported that global warming is "unequivocal," there came evidence that the planet's temperature is beginning to cool. "That," Ball writes, "has led to one point of agreement: The models are imperfect."

Full post as published by Environmental Legal Blogs on November 14, 2009 (boomark / email).