Let’s review the logic we are asked to accept from the we-must-act-now-on-global-warming crowd. They tell us that the science is undeniable in showing global warming is both man-made and running wild, and that only liberal policy ideas like carbon taxes and controls on industry can solve the problem.
And they must happen now!
Question this in any way and you are anti-science, because no one can possibly question the data culled from the science.
There is one problem with this, of course, and that is that the data culled from science only has value if we can actually trust it was compiled and presented to us honestly. We already know from the East Anglia e-mail controversy that some climate scientists have a motive to jack up these numbers to make global warming look more serious than it really is. What we don’t always know is how they employ clever tricks to do that.
But we do now, at least in one case. Thanks to the excellent work of the Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett, we know that at least three countries – Australia, Paraguay and Switzerland – appear to have altered some of their meteorological data to exaggerate the rate at which their temperatures are rising.
Burnett writes:
In previous editions of Climate Change Weekly (CCW), I reported weather bureaus in Australia (CCW #139) and Paraguay (CCW #158) were caught adjusting datasets from their temperature gauges. After the adjustment, the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded. Science journalist Markus Schär of the Swiss news weekly Weltwoche discovered the Swiss Meteorological Service (SMS) tampered with its datasets as well.
For example, in Sion and Zurich, SMS adjustments resulted in a doubling of the temperature trend. Schär notes there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperatures, even with data- tampering. As a result, Schär calls the adjustments a “propaganda trick, and not a valid trend.”
In light of significant urbanization resulting in an expanded heat island effect near many temperature gauges, Schär argues the adjustment of raw data to report higher temperatures than are actually measured is unjustifiable. “The corrections ... appear so massive that they represent half of the entire temperature increase,” said Schär.
Even with fudged data, governments have been unable to hide the fact winters in Switzerland and in Central Europe have become colder over the past 20 years, defying predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists.
What this really shows is that the politics of climate change trumps the science. The IPCC and its supporters are so invested in the global warming narrative, they can’t afford to have the data contradict their claims. If global warming isn’t real, isn’t urgent, isn’t beyond all dispute, then everything they’ve built up to support their agenda is called into question – not to mention their attacks on global warming skeptics as “deniers” akin to the Holocaust deniers of World War II.
So when the numbers don’t turn out to be convenient, the numbers are fudged, and this is justified as necessary to prevent the dreaded “deniers” from having something to talk about.
Never forget, folks, what this is all about. It’s about government control. The left never considers the possibility that, if man-made global warming is real, the answer might lie in the innovative work of the private sector to give us cleaner technologies. No. The answer always lies with government. We must tax carbon. We must impose new regulations on manufacturing. We must enforce this through international bodies.
And we must do it now! We’re running out of time!
It’s the same thing they said 20 years ago. The fake urgency is designed to stop all debate so they can just go forward and do what they want to do, just as the fake numbers are designed to stop their critics from questioning their larger premise.
Once again, the global warmists are busted. Eventually, frauds always are.
