alt.energy.renewable

March 13, 2008



http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337658,00.html



Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin leads the pack in this year's
contest for biased climate journalism.



Eilperin's March 10 article entitled "Carbon Output Must Near Zero to
Avert Danger, New Studies Say" has the same sort of journalistic
objectivity one might expect from totalitarian state-controlled media.



With nary a critical word about the computer models used to project
increases in global temperature, Eilperin touted two new model-dependent
studies that "suggest that both industrialized and developing nations
must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in
order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and
dry up sources of water worldwide."



And "Using advanced computer models to factor deep-sea warming and other
aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon
dioxide, the scientists, from countries including the United States,
Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must
bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from
rising further."



But none of the models in the studies - nor for that matter any other
mathematical model of global climate - has proven to be particularly
useful. No model has been validated against historical climate data.



So why would any rational person assume that they can be used to predict
future climate or serve as a basis for developing national energy
policy? As reported in this column last December, global climate models
uniformly predict significantly warmer atmospheric temperatures than
have actually occurred.



Such model failure should come as no surprise since they have many
built-in biases, including the unproven assumption that atmospheric
carbon dioxide drives global climate. But all the available real-life
data - including 20th century records and ice-core samples stretching
back 650,000 years - fail to support such a cause-and-effect
relationship.



The ice core samples show, in fact, an opposite relationship. Eilperin,
who has long reported on climate for the Washington Post, must know
about the models' problems, but she apparently chooses not to report it.
In her March 4 Post article, Eilperin mentioned a report by a number of
climate experts from around the world entitled "Nature Not Human
Activity, Rules the Climate." She even interviewed one of the experts
for her story.



A section of that report, entitled "Climate Models Are Not Reliable"
discusses in plain language how climate models don't consider solar
dimming and brightening, don't accurately control for clouds, don't
simulate the potential feedback effects of water vapor, don't explain
many features of the Earth's observed climate, and don't produce
reliable predictions of regional (let alone global) climate change.



At JunkScience.com, we label climate modeling as Playstation®
Climatology, with no disrespect intended toward Sony since its
Playstation games are, in fact, what they purport to be - just games.



Not content with ignoring viewpoints she doesn't like, Eilperin goes on
to diminish, if not ridicule, critics of her apparent point of view.
Eilperin's March 4 article featured four ad hominem attacks from three
environmental activists, abusing those who question global warming
orthodoxy as members of a "flat Earth society" and participants in the
"climate equivalent of Custer's last stand."



If Eilperin wants to poke fun at those who disagree with her on public
policy issues, she ought to write an opinion, rather than a news column.
Another disturbing aspect of Eilperin's article was the accompanying
photo of downtown Beijing. The photo was captioned, "A heavy haze could
be seen in Beijing in August 2007. Two recent reports call for a
heightened global effort to reduce carbon emissions."



The juxtaposition of the article and photo clearly implied that unless
we cut carbon dioxide emissions, U.S. cities would soon look like
Beijing. But as virtually anyone who breathes knows, carbon dioxide is
an invisible gas. Not only can you not see it, there's no possible way
for carbon dioxide emissions to cause smog, haze or whatever was fouling
Beijing's air in the photo.



The irrelevant and misleading nature of the photo has been pointed out
to Eilperin, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell and the paper's
editors. As of the writing of this column, none have responded and it
remains to be seen whether the Washington Post has the journalistic
integrity to remove the photo from its Web site and publish a correction
in its print edition.



It's quite possible that if Eilperin and the many other members of the
mainstream media who so far have been in the tank for global warming
started reporting on the very real debate about climate model validity
rather than simply regurgitating what the agenda-driven modelers tell
them, then we could avert the looming national economic disaster that
Congress is preparing for the next president to sign into law.



Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a
junk science expert, advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar
at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
--



Warmest Regards

Bonzo

"CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on
long, medium and even short time scales." R. Timothy Patterson,
Professor Of Geology, Director Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center,
Carleton University, Canada