Climategate 2010: The Inconvenient Facts About Global Warming

Scientists, economists, and other experts present the case against manmade global warming fears at the Heartland Institute’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change. (DON'T MISS PJTV: LIVE COVERAGE AND INTERVIEWS FROM THE CHICAGO CLIMATE CONFERENCE.)

May 18, 2010- by S. T. Karnick

In the wake of the Climategate scandal, panelists and audience members at the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC4) indicated growing confidence that the tide is turning in favor of those who believe that manmade global warming is not a crisis.

More than 700 people — including a good many scientists, along with economists, policy analysts, and legislators — have gathered together since Sunday night, discussing the once-settled but increasingly controversial proposition of an anthroprogenic global warming (AGW) crisis. Any triumphalism was averted by a general agreement to explore real-world facts and test the assertions of alarmists. The presenters and audience members continually asked whether the data says what the modelers say it does.

The conference opened with a Sunday evening dinner at which Canadian statistical analyst Stephen McIntyre presented a meticulous history of the hugely influential “hockey stick” graph — which found an alarming rise of global temperatures since 1979 and led to the IPPC conclusion that AGW is causing a global crisis that requires drastic measures. McIntyre had begun publicly questioning the data several years ago, setting off an effort which ultimately led to the recent Climategate scandal, in which it was shown that the people behind the hockey stick graph knowingly altered the temperature record in a way that expanded a relatively common global temperature change into a shocking heat spike.

Pajamas Media

Ten Notable Apocalypses That (Obviously) Didn't Happen

Apocalyptic predictions such as those warning of global destruction in 2012, are nothing new - they have been around for millennia.

By Mark Strauss

Smithsonian.com, November 12, 2009


1. The First Warnings From Assyria

An Assyrian clay tablet dating to around 2800 B.C. bears the inscription: “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”

The world didn’t end (just look around), and despite the plague of corruption and petulant teenagers, four centuries later the Assyrians would establish an empire that eventually encompassed most of the Near East. The Assyrian Empire came to an abrupt end in 612 B.C., when its capital was attacked by the Babylonian army. Still, by the standards of ancient empires, 18 centuries wasn’t such a bad run.

Smithsonian.com