Inside Politics

FATALLY FLAWED

“Ultimately the whole case for a Copenhagen treaty rests on the projections of the computer models relied on by the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC). These show that, as CO2 levels continue to rise, so temperatures must follow, leading inexorably to catastrophe - unless mankind takes the most drastic action to cut down on its emissions of CO2,” Christopher Booker writes in the London Telegraph.

But, as more and more eminent scientists have recently been pointing out, the only reason why the computer models predict that rising CO2 must cause temperatures to rise is that this is what they were programmed to show,” Mr. Booker said.

“What world-ranking physicists such as professor Richard Lindzen of MIT and professor Will Happer of Princeton have been arguing is that the models are fatally flawed because they do not take proper account of all sorts of other factors which play a key part in shaping the worlds climate - such as shifts in ocean currents, the effects of magnetic activity on the sun and the ‘feedback from clouds and water vapor, far and away the most important greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, which counteracts any impact from the rise in CO2.

“The greatest ally this growing army of ‘skeptical scientists can point to is what has actually been happening to the climate in recent years. No one can predict with certainty where temperatures will be in 100 years time, but the one thing that is indisputable is that, as CO2 levels continue to rise, the trend in global temperatures has not recently been rising as the computer models predicted, but has been flattening out and even dropping.

“In other words, it becomes increasingly clear that the models were wrong - because their programming was biased according to a theory which now looks ever more questionable. Yet it is on their projections that the world is now faced with by far the most expensive set of measures ever proposed by politicians in history.”

BLAME GAME

“The other day, I wrote that President Obama has ‘run out of both charm and ideas.’ I was too kind,” New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin writes.

“To judge from the string of whoppers in his dreary jobs speech [Tuesday], he’s also run out of facts. And he’s still whining about the problems he inherited and blaming Republicans,” Mr. Goodwin said.

“He might as well be barking at the moon. That’s sort of what he is doing, because the American people are tuning him out at a stunning pace.

“The latest Gallup Poll gives him a record low 47 percent approval. Only 26 percent in another poll say he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Naturally, his press secretary attacks the pollsters, likening them to children with crayons.

“And Obama plunges on with his blame-game act. It’s tired, unpresidential and ineffective, all the more so because he’s banking on a bill of goods to prop himself up.

“The most egregious example came when Obama said [Tuesday] the $700 billion bank-bailout fund, or TARP, was ‘launched hastily under the last administration’ and was ‘flawed.’

“Here are the facts. George Bush was in the White House, but Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. Obama himself, as a senator, voted for the bailout in October 2008. …

“The record is clear: The $700 billion bailout was crafted on a bipartisan basis, with Obama’s support and encouragement, and he has controlled most of the money. For him to now claim otherwise is disgraceful.”

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