CLIMATIC HYSTERIATAINMENT

No need anymore to broach the subject of the hacked emails about supposed lying about climate-change data, because it looks very likely that there was no such lying. The British scientists involved have adequately explained their use of words, such as "tricking" the data to mean the reconciling of databases; i.e., they apparently used the word "trick" to mean "massage" the data, to make them correlatable. Nothing in the hacked emails looks like a smoking gun. If there were, we would certainly have heard more about it from real scientists, not the news-entertainers, who have now fallen silent on the topic, too. (One of their ploys: create doubt without support, then cast about for something else.)

Where's the evidence other than that some British scientists used their odd, idiosyncratic language? In truth, there's a great deal of other, independent, evidence from a variety of studies about global climate change--e.g., re the ice caps--even if there had been some collusion at that single British research center (which, as I said, looks doubtful).

The linked Youtube video of an RT.com telecast is risible. It indicates more what the government of Russia wants to disperse about global climate change than it does about the actual science of global climate change. For, RT.com is "Russia Today," the new, well funded, state-run, state-owned Russian-government news agency of RIA Novosti, whose mission statement reads, "to present the Russian point of view" (I obtained this from RT.com; also see Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)>), when actually it presents the Russian GOVERNMENT's point of view. It is a cheerleader for the Kremlin, just as FOX Entertainment-"News" and the rabid Michelle Malkin are cheerleaders for the U.S. Republican Party and very conservative American ideology, including being anti-climate-change science (no matter what the science says).

With the recent 10% drop in the American public's belief in the science of global warming, Fox Entertainment-"News" has been successful in this matter, just as it was in creating the hysteria about Pres. Obama's "plan" to propagandize and brainwash America's elementary-school children. Remember that? It certainly was entertaining, in an hysteria-creating sort of way. See a pattern?

Addressing the Malkin article--that there was a conspiracy to suppress a paper by an EPA researcher--here's this article, a fairly recent one, from the NY Times, which obtained those four emails and more, under the Freedom of Information Act, and interviewed the EPA researcher, who, it turns out is not a climate scientist (this frequently is the case): <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/science/earth/25epa.html?_r=1>.

Then, there's last week's (21 Jan. 2010) release of a report by NASA showing, among other things, that 2008 was only slightly cooler than 2005 which was the warmest year on record. It is a disingenuous reading of data to claim that the Planet is cooling when only one year is cooler than a previous year, especially when that year (2005) was the warmest since the 1880s. The trend is continuously upward with only small deviations from the upward trend. Please read the Agence France Press article (<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/22-5>) and/or the NASA article (<http://climate.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=249>).

I will be glad to consider (again) the argument that climate scientists in the 1970s said that the Planet was cooling. That has been adequately denied by the one scientist who supposedly claimed the Planet was cooling (he did not, as he says). You can easily find his statements online. That the Planet was supposedly cooling was based on a sensationalist news article or two written in the general press to grab attention. Climate scientists did not claim the Planet was cooling. That fiction should have been dropped by now.

Present evidence that climate scientists said the Planet was cooling in the 1970s. (Even if they did, it would be of only historical interest.) Present evidence that the Planet is currently cooling (away from the long-term warming trend). Present evidence that counters the consensus, among climate scientists, not just an isolated few, that the Planet is warming and that there's the probability, to a significant degree, that it is due to anthropogenic causes.

This should be a matter of science, not a creation of Fox Entertainment-"News" and Michelle Malkin and Sen. Inhofe. The science is of the utmost importance to civilization. We can, and must, do without the ideologically motivated, hysteria-creating, news-entertainers.

ANCIENT CLIMATE CHANGE AND CIVILIZATION

North Africa underwent massive climate changes in the 4th and early 3rd millennia BCE as result of natural climate change. It had been a region of savanna land--scattered trees and grasses and some flowing rivers--much like those Sahelian areas to the south of the Sahara (even today), with much the same flora and fauna, as depicted on Saharan cave paintings. Yes, by the time of the Romans, it was a full-blown desert south of the north African coast, but the coast, at least around Carthage (present-day Tunisia) was producing a lot of grain.

It is thought (with research ongoing, especially by the Western Sahara Project in southwestern Algeria) that the resulting eastward migration of peoples fleeing the uneven desiccation of North Africa might have spurred the development of the first civilizations in the Nile River valley and Mesopotamia. Climate change caused migration which spurred the development of civilization (when the hydraulic civilizations developed from the control of water for irrigation which occurred as the result of governmental structures).

It is interesting to consider that the thinking behind why the pig became taboo in the diet of peoples in southwest Asia (the various Semites) is because (according to the school of Cultural Materialism) the pig is naturally a forest animal whose diet consists of forest substances, such as roots, tubers, acorns, nuts, grubs; thus it became destructive to the remaining forest ecology of southwest Asia as it desiccated. So, the best way to prevent the raising of pigs and save the land was to make pigs taboo, literally not what the gods say is "clean" to eat.

Those various peoples had centuries to adjust to the massive changes in regional climate by changing their diet, etc. I'm afraid that we today will not have much time (anyone ready to change your diet?). Many scientists are now thinking that we are facing massive climate changes that could occur almost like flipping a switch.

We have ample evidence of civilizations destroying their base ecology. Seems patently obvious we are doing the same. Is our civilization different so that we can forestall the worst?