Crown Environmental Capital Management Solutions

Global Warming 97 Percent ‘Consensus’ Actually 76 People

That 97 percent ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming we have all been hearing so much about over the past couple years was actually the opinion of just 76 people. Global warming alarmists have been altering the scientific data for years; contorting it into statistical pretzels in order to convince people that the planet’s mean temperature is rising at an unnatural and accelerated rate and that human activity is the cause.

Skeptics have been vilified and ridiculed by the believers; compared to flat-earthers or even to holocaust deniers but global warming fanatics are themselves laughably ignorant, regarding the actual, unadulterated scientific data. Without even delving into the, largely, made-up science of “climatology” – a discipline (or lack thereof) that has been around for only thirty years, there are staggeringly obvious reasons why the entire global warming cult is a joke. The most obvious of these reasons is a look at the man who has been most vocal in promoting the myth over the past 12 years; former United States Vice President Al Gore. As with a religious cult, when the leader of the movement is exposed as a fraud, it should automatically cast doubt upon the entire belief-system. When that leader is additionally exposed as having no knowledge of that in which he pretends to believe, it becomes even more apparent that the entire philosophy is a sham.

Quite apart from the fact that Gore has amassed a personal fortune of over $100 million on the back of his climate crusade, one only need to look at the debunking of his signature movie An Inconvenient Truth to perceive the grand deception; as a then-adviser to the British government on climate change, Gore managed to have his movie integrated into the public education curriculum in the United Kingdom. Undoubtedly, this contract, alone, netted the former VP a tidy sum. Facing an unexpected and determined backlash against the film, the British government commissioned research into the movie’s claims and was forced to remove it from UK schools after it was confirmed that there were, in fact, a very great number of inconvenient untruths presented in the film.

Whilst Gore loudly decries the evils of fossil fuels, he made an estimated pre-tax profit of $100 million when he sold his failed Current TV network to the oil-rich nation of Qatar; sponsors of the terrorist-supporting Al Jazeera network that took over Current’s slot in the US cable television market. In total, Gore is now worth an estimated $300 million – a true “1%-er” who owes a large part of his fortune to oil revenues.

As if this wasn’t enough to discredit the entire global warming conspiracy, Gore has done his level best to publicize his mind-numbing lack of scientific knowledge: During a 2009 appearance on Conan O’Brien’s talk show, Gore stated that the temperature of the Earth’s interior was “several million degrees”. It hardly bears stating, of course, that this claim was hilarious in it’s inaccuracy; our planet would be nothing more than a ball of gas, were this actually the case.

Gore himself is the poster-boy for why the proponents of the man-made global warming theory have no credibility, yet these people continue to issue statements and dire predictions that have absolutely no basis in objective scientific research. The oft-promoted 97 percent ‘consensus’ – when one delves into the originating study – is a completely hollow claim. The 97 percent is actually based on the opinions expressed by 76 out of 79 people. The facts of the original survey, from which the famous 97 percent ‘consensus’ was derived, are as follows:

The online survey was conducted in 2008 and contained “up to nine questions”. The 97 percent figure was based upon the answers to two of those questions.

10,257 individuals were invited to participate in the survey. These individuals represented a “broad range of Earth scientists”. Of the 3146 people who actually completed the survey, just 79 of them – by the standards of the survey – were published experts in the field of climate science.

The first of the two questions focused on was “When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?” Hardly a very scientific question; the mere inclusion of the word “generally” immediately strips this particular question of any scientific credential. In answer to this question, 90 percent of respondents answered “risen”. If one were to go into the street and ask ordinary Americans, who express a belief in global warming, how much the Earth’s temperature has risen over the past 100 years, most of the answers will range wildly from six or seven degrees to thirty degrees or more. The actual increase is in dispute, depending on which source one chooses to believe, and ranges – generally – from 0.5 to 1.2 degrees.

The second question honed in on to produce the 97 percent ‘consensus’, was “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” Again hardly a scientific question.“Do you think…” and “significant contributing factor” are both completely unquantifiable terms. Of the few survey participants who could actually claim to be “climate scientists”, 76 of 79 answered “risen” to the first question and 75 out of 77 answered “yes” to the second.

It turns out, therefore, that the famous 97 percent ‘consensus’ on global warming is based upon nothing more than the opinions of 76 – or 75 – people and the answers that they gave to two unscientific and unspecific questions in an online survey.

Meanwhile, there are numerous studies and surveys that show a large number of scientists do not believe that human activity contributes significantly to climate change. One could, arguably, deconstruct any of these studies in a similar fashion, but to do so would be highly disingenuous; it would merely prove that global warming believers are willing to claim that “the science is settled”, based upon the opinions of 76 people, whilst dismissing the opinions of a far greater number who disagree.

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Not tackling crony capitalism or environmental degradation now for the sake of economic recovery will leave a destructive trail in the years ahead.

The sustained fall of the Indian rupee has raised questions about the problems plaguing the Indian economy. While finance minister P Chidambaram has finally stopped blaming external factors solely for the stock market and the rupee plunge, his enumeration of the domestic problems started from the period his predecessor Pranab Mukherjee was in charge.

Pranab presided over a fiscal stimulus package from late-2008 comprising policy rate cuts and increased public spending that partly helped the Indian economy post exceptional growth figures in a period of global distress. Even as the hype over the Indian economy rose to fever pitch in this period, a fundamental mistake was how this clouded our perception of the huge inflow of foreign capital.

This inflow was precipitated by the US Fed’s quantitative easing programme allowing for reduced interest rates and easy availability of dollars which made markets like India an attractive option for foreign institutional investors. Flush with dollars from this and short-term loans from foreign banks to Indian corporates, India missed the bus by not using this to boost foreign exchange reserves. The fiscal stimulus package soon began to rebound as inflation, fiscal deficit and current account deficit rose to uncomfortable levels. To mitigate inflationary pressures, the RBI began hiking policy rates that hurt economic growth. But on a parallel track, a number of developments took place revealing the fault-lines in our growth story.

Unfortunately, the weakening economy is now an ideal excuse to pan these developments. Sections of the industry and government are blaming judicial overreach and environmental activism for diminishing exports and stalled projects. It’s perhaps no exaggeration to posit that a change happened after the struggle against land acquisition at Nandigram. Protests against land acquisition and environmental degradation have, since, erupted with a frequency that has called into question the current development model.

Take Niyamgiri, Kudankulam, Rewari, and Greater Noida. Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh — rightly — made environmental clearances more stringent. But that process of transparency seems to have now become inconvenient. Though UPA-I was synonymous with welfare and public spending, the spectre of crony capitalism overshadowed it, finally assuming gigantic proportions in UPA-II. 

Successive CAG reports have underlined the dubious allocation of precious 2G spectrum and coal blocks. Mining in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Goa has been so blatantly illegal and rapacious that the Supreme Court has had no option but to clamp down on iron-ore export. Now an even bigger scam of public sector banks wantonly writing off corporate loans is brewing.

With elections approaching, the government is rushing to clear projects and bypass regulatory controls. On Monday, it cleared 36 stalled infrastructure projects worth Rs1.83 lakh crore. These belated efforts at quick decision-making may or may not help trigger economic recovery. But not tackling either crony capitalism or environmental degradation will not sustain development for long. 

Nature is known to take its vengeance. Years of so-called development just takes hours to be wiped out. Uttarakhand taught us that much. Proceeding with caution to protect fragile ecologies should become established wisdom. 

Capitalism’s worst enemy is crony capitalism. The 2G scam and the stagnant telecom industry also tell us that much.

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