Indoctrination, indoctrination, indoctrination

"Education, education, education" goes the famous Tony Blair soundbite. And we all lapped it up. Mr Blair, like the Conservatives David Cameron, didn't bother with trivialities like real policies or ideas. Just mouth the rhetoric and sound like you mean it - chuck in plenty of "visions" and references to "this nation", "our children's future", "fairness" and other nuanced cliches and watch the polls rise. It turns out that Blair's "vision" of education was founded on that of his teenage heroes - The Soviet Union. What he had in mind was not education, but indoctrination.

It's been reported that failed presidential candidate Al Gore's "documentary" on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, is to be shown in British schools. To me, this represents a criminal example of the indoctrination that now exists in our education system. The truly inconvenient truth for Mr Gore is that his film is rubbish and full of falsehoods - as Canada Free Press demonstrates.

Dr. Chris de Freitas, climate scientist, associate professor, University of Auckland, New Zealand: ”I can assure Mr. Gore that no one from the South Pacific islands have fled to New Zealand because of rising seas. In fact, if Gore consults the data, he will see it shows sea level falling in some parts of the Pacific.”

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, emeritus professor of paleogeophysics & geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden: “We find no alarming sea level rise going on, in the Maldives, Tovalu, Venice, the Persian Gulf and even satellite altimetry if applied properly.”

Dr. Mitchell Taylor, Manager, Wildlife Research Section, Department of Environment, Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada: “Our information is that 7 of 13 populations of polar bears in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (more than half the world’s estimated total) are either stable, or increasing …. Of the three that appear to be declining, only one has been shown to be affected by climate change. No one can say with certainty that climate change has not affected these other populations, but it is also true that we have no information to suggest that it has.”

Dr. Petr Chylek, adjunct professor, Dept. of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada: “Mr. Gore suggests that Greenland melt area increased considerably between 1992 and 2005. But 1992 was exceptionally cold in Greenland and the melt area of ice sheet was exceptionally low due to the cooling caused by volcanic dust emitted from Mt. Pinatubo. If, instead of 1992, Gore had chosen for comparison the year 1991, one in which the melt area was 1% higher than in 2005, he would have to conclude that the ice sheet melt area is shrinking and that perhaps a new ice age is just around the corner.”

Dr. Gary D. Sharp, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, California: “The oceans are now heading into one of their periodic phases of cooling. … Modest changes in temperature are not about to wipe them [coral] out. Neither will increased carbon dioxide, which is a fundamental chemical building block that allows coral reefs to exist at all.”

Dr. R. M. Carter, professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia: “Both the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps are thickening. The temperature at the South Pole has declined by more than 1 degree C since 1950. And the area of sea-ice around the continent has increased over the last 20 years.”

Dr./Cdr. M. R. Morgan, FRMS, formerly advisor to the World Meteorological Organization/climatology research scientist at University of Exeter, U.K.: “From data published by the Canadian Ice Service there has been no precipitous drop off in the amount or thickness of the ice cap since 1970 when reliable over-all coverage became available for the Canadian Arctic.”

Lies, damned lies, statistics and Al Gore films. The same source also provides a check list of questions to ask AGW supporters. One of those is ....

How closely has Earth's climate tracked CO2 levels in the past?

The answer is .....

Over short, medium and long time periods the correlation is very poor. 440 million years ago, when atmospheric CO2 concentrations are estimated to have been over 10 times their current levels, our planet was stuck in the depths of the coldest period in the last half billion years. At other times, high CO2 levels coincided with warm periods, but show no correlation with temperature in the 600 million year geological record. Over the past half million years, the Antarctic ice core records show a remarkable correlation between temperature and CO2. However, these detailed records consistently show that temperature rises occurred some 800 years before CO2 rise, indicating that CO2 is controlled by temperature, not the other way around. In all these records there is no evidence to show that CO2 has ever acted as a climate driver or even as a significant secondary effect to accelerate climate warming. Even over the past century the CO2/warming correlation is poor, with significant cooling taking place between 1940 and 1980 while human produced CO2 emissions were increasing rapidly.