Debunking Global Warming

Trust it to come from the National Spot. The Spot reprinted a "special report" that appeared in the Financial Spot from Big Tobacco, Big Oil shill Fred Singer entitled "The Case Against Global Warming." It's part of the swill coming out of this week's International Conference on Climate Change in New York sponsored by the Heartland Institute which doesn't sound remotely like what it is, a front group for the fossil fuel industry.

Singer posits all the old garbage about causes of global warming. Naturally the Spot carefully ensures that Singer's background is nowhere to be found in his unchallenged and astonishingly informative scientific assessment.

Singer's new band, that calls itself the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (AKA the International Fossil Fuel Industry Panel on Climate Change) issued a bold open letter to UN Secretary General Bam urging that the world abandon the futile fight against greenhouse gas emissions and instead focus on adapting to the inevitable warming. The letter was signed by a host of impressive sounding folks, many of whom are directly linked to the fossil fuel industry, the denialist movement or far right wing think tanks including these jokers:

Warren Anderson, US(co-author of Fire and Ice)

Dennis Avery, US(director of the Center for Global Food Issues, Hudson Institute)

Franco Battaglia, Italy(professor of environmental chemistry at the University of Modena)

Robert Carter, Australia(”Professor Carter, whose background is in marine geology, appears to have little, if any, standing in the Australian climate science community;” well known climate change skeptic)

Richard Courtney, UK(Technical Editor for CoalTrans International (journal of the international coal trading industry), was a Senior Material Scientist of the National Coal Board and a Science and Technology spokesman of the British Association of Colliery Management)

Joseph d’Aleo, US(retired meteorologist & well known climate change skeptic)

Fred Goldberg, Sweden(associate professor at the Royal School of Technology in Stockholm)

Vincent Gray, New Zealand(founding member New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, which has the stated aim of “refuting what it believes are unfounded claims about anthropogenic (man-made) global warming.”)

Klaus Heiss, Austria(economist, Science & Environmental Policy Project)

Craig Idso, US(founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, funded by Western Fuels and Exxon Mobil)

Zbigniew Jaworowski, Poland(professor at the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw & global warming skeptic)

Olavi Karner, Estonia(Tartu Observatory)

Madhav Khandekar, Canada(retired Environment Canada meteorologist, on the scientific advisory board of Friends of Science, published in Energy & Environment)

William Kininmonth, Australia(past head of head of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, known Australian climate change skeptic; listed as “Director of the Australasian Climate Research Institute,” but the Institute is listed as simply a trading name for “Kininmonth, William Robert”, and is based at his private residence)

Hans Labohm, Netherlands(economist, author of Man-Made Global Warming: Uravelling a Dogma)

Christopher Monckton, UK(we all know his lardship; connected with the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), formerly the Frontiers of Freedom’s Center for Science and Public Policy, which promotes the views of global warming skeptics)

Lubos Motl, Czech Republic(theoretical physicist who works on string theory and conceptual problems of quantum gravity)

Tom Segalstadt, Norway(head of the Geological Museum within the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo, IPCC reviewer)

S. Fred Singer, US(Whom we also all know; former space scientist and government scientific administrator, runs the Science and Environmental Policy Project and has been connected with numerous conservative think tanks, including Cato, American Enterprise Institute, and of course, the tobacco industry)

Dick Thoenes, Netherlands(emeritus professor of chemical engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, co-author of Man-Made Global Warming: Uravelling a Dogma)

Anton Uriarte, Spain(professor of Physical Geography at the University of the Basque Country

Gerd Weber, Germany(works for the ‘Gesamtverband des Deutschen Steinkohlenbergbaus’ (Association of German coal producers)

C'mon. The Association of German Coal Producers, Big Tobacco, the American Enterprise Institute, one-man "Institutes", Friends of Science, climate change outfits funded by Exxon, the British Association of Colliery Management? None of these connections, of course, are relevant to the National Spot. They would only confuse its readers.