Okay, this is a little late, but still worth celebrating. The Zephyrs of the Northwest Nerds Rotisserie Baseball League have just completed back-to-back championships! I rode the same power that has the Boston Red Sox in the World Series as I had David Ortiz, Mike Lowell, and Jason Varitek on my team. For the first time, I also had Ichiro which paid off in spades with a great batting average and over a third of my stolen bases. On the pitching side, I rode some pitchers who fly under the radar. I got 14 wins out of Joe Blanton, 15 from Dan Haren, and 17 from Kelvim Escobar. And, to top things off, I was carrying JJ Putz who locked down 40 saves this year!

All in all a fun year. Thanks to other managers in the league (Steve, Bob, and Rick) for making it another great run with much suspense right up to the end. And a special thanks to the commissioner (Steve) for the championship trophies and pennants!

Is it just me, or is this starting to smack of desperation? Al Gore and the IPCC are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to raise awareness of the problem of global climate change. This is the same group that awarded a peace prize to Yasser Arafat who was a cold-blooded murderer before getting the prize and was a cold-blooded murderer after getting the prize. This is the same group that gave a prize to former president Jimmy Carter primarily for being willing to speak against George W. Bush in any way shape or form. Many of their recent prizes have been given to make a political point and to shore up credibility for someone who would otherwise have none. The most recent prize certainly qualifies as the consensus that Gore and the IPCC claim exists seems to be falling apart around them.

Just days before winning the prize, Gore and his film were found to be biased and containing inaccuracies (No! Really?) by the UK High Court. As reported here in the Daily Mail, the judge found that schools would have to actually tell students that this wasn’t clean science:

This means that teachers will have to warn pupils that there are other opinions on global warming and they should not necessarily accept the views of the film.

I’m not one to suggest questions of science should be decided by the law, so let’s talk about what scientists think. The thing is, it’s not even that the consensus is breaking down. There never was one. S. Fred Singer (Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia) summarizes it well in this digest of a speech he gave at Hillsdale college this summer. Here he explains how the latest IPCC report obfuscates the fact that there is no consensus and how the statement released by the American Meteorological Society is not representative:

… there is no such consensus: An increasing number of climate scientists are raising serious questions about the political rush to judgment on this issue. For example, the widely touted “consensus” of 2,500 scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an illusion: Most of the panelists have no scientific qualifications, and many of the others object to some part of the IPCC’s report. The Associated Press reported recently that only 52 climate scientists contributed to the report’s “Summary for Policymakers.”

Likewise, only about a dozen members of the governing board voted on the “consensus statement” on climate change by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). Rank and file AMS scientists never had a say, which is why so many of them are now openly rebelling. Estimates of skepticism within the AMS regarding man-made global warming are well over 50 percent.

So, of the thousands of scientists supposedly supporting the IPCC, only 52 contributed to the part of the report that politicians and reporters would actually read. Furthermore, organizations are claiming uniform support for their statements from large numbers of people. That’s not only inappropriate, it doesn’t even pass the smell test.

I think the kicker comes from Dr. William Gray, a world renown meteorologist, who effectively calls Gore and the IPCC liars. You can read about his recent speech in (of all places) the Sydney Morning Herald. He starts by calling the awarding of the Peace Prize as “ridiculous” and calls the committee “people who don’t understand how the atmosphere works.” Here are some money quotes:

“We’re brainwashing our children,” said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. “They’re going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It’s ridiculous.”

[...]

“The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures,” Dr Gray said.

He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.

“It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong,” he said. “But they also know that they’d never get any grants if they spoke out. I don’t care about grants.”

And there would be the key to all of this: money. This has moved past a small handful of true believers to those who just want to stay employed. It’s become clear that the only way you get grant money in climate studies anymore is to do research that supports the theory that global climate change is man-made.

This would all be just humorous posturing if not for the consequences that Professor Singer points out in his speech. The advocates of this hand-waving want dramatic economic and cultural changes to fix this supposed problem. The result, no matter how you cut it, is going to be very damaging to national economies which will trickle down to a lower quality of life for most of the inhabitants of the planet. Make no mistake that these are very dangerous ideas. Not to mention the problems that get ignored while we spend our time on this wild goose chase.

Dr. Gray argues that this current warming cycle has peaked and we will begin cooling in the next ten to fifteen years. All I can say is “Faster, please!”