Hoax of the Century
With publication of “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, the hunt was on for the “missing link.” Fame and fortune awaited the scientist who found the link proving Darwin right: that man evolved from a monkey.
In 1912, success! In a gravel pit near Piltdown in East Sussex, there was found the cranium of a man with the jaw of an ape.
“Darwin Theory Proved True,” ran the banner headline.
Evolution skeptics were pilloried, and three English scientists were knighted for validating Piltdown Man.
It wasn’t until 1953, after generations of biology students had been taught about Piltdown Man, that closer inspection discovered that the cranium belonged to a medieval Englishman, the bones had been dyed to look older and the jaw belonged to an orangutan whose teeth had been filed down to look human.
The scientific discovery of the century became the hoax of the century. But Piltdown Man was not alone. There was Nebraska Man.
In 1922, Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, identified a tooth fossil found in Nebraska to be that of an “anthropoid ape.” He used his discovery to mock William Jennings Bryan, newly elected to Congress, as “the most distinguished primate which the State of Nebraska has yet produced.”
Invited to testify at the Scopes trial, however, Osborn begged off. For, by 1925, Nebraska Man’s tooth had been traced to a wild pig, and Creationist Duane Gish, a biochemist, had remarked of Osborn’s Nebraska Man, “I believe this is a case in which a scientist made a man out of a pig, and the pig made a monkey out of the scientist.”
These stories are wonderfully told in Eugene Windchy’s 2009 “The End of Darwinism.” But if Piltdown Man and his American cousin Nebraska Man were the hoaxes of the 20th century, global warming is the great hoax of the 21st. In a matter of months, what have we learned:
— In its 2007 report claiming that the Himalayan glaciers are melting, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relied on a 1999 news story in a popular science journal, based on one interview with a little-known Indian scientist who said this was pure “speculation,” not supported by any research. The IPCC also misreported the supposed date of the glaciers’ meltdown as 2035. The Indian had suggested 2350.
— The IPCC report that global warming is going to kill 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields 50 percent has been found to be alarmist propaganda.
— The IPCC 2007 report declared 55 percent of Holland to be below sea level, an exaggeration of over 100 percent.
— While endless keening is heard over the Arctic ice cap, we hear almost nothing of the 2009 report of the British Antarctica Survey that the sea ice cap of Antarctica has been expanding by 100,000 square kilometers a decade for 30 years. That translates into 3,800 square miles of new Antarctic ice every year.
— Though America endured one of the worst winters ever, while the 2009 hurricane season was among the mildest, the warmers say this proves nothing. But when our winters were mild and the 2005 hurricane season brought four major storms to the U.S. coast, Katrina among them, the warmers said this validated their theory.
You can’t have it both ways.
— The Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University, which provides the scientific backup for the IPCC, apparently threw out the basic data on which it based claims of a rise in global temperatures for the century. And a hacker into its e-mail files found CRU “scientists” had squelched the publication of dissenting views.
What we learned in a year’s time: Polar bears are not vanishing. Sea levels are not rising at anything like the 20-foot surge this century was to bring. Cities are not sinking. Beaches are not disappearing. Temperatures have not been rising since the late 1990s. And, in historic terms, our global warming is not at all unprecedented.
Dennis Avery of Hudson Institute wrote a decade ago that from A.D. 900 to 1300, the Earth warmed by 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit, a period known as the Little Climate Optimum.
How horrible was it?
“The Vikings discovered and settled Greenland around A.D. 950. Greenland was then so warm that thousands of colonists supported themselves by pasturing cattle on what is now frozen tundra. During this great global warming, Europe built the looming castles and soaring cathedrals that even today stun tourists with their size, beauty and engineering excellence. These colossal buildings required the investment of millions of man-hours — which could be spared from farming because of higher crop yields.”
Today’s global warming hysteria is the hoax of the 21st century. H.L. Mencken had it right: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
I don’t have time to debate you point for point on this, but just consider this for a minute. China wouldn’t be exploring the north pole for shipping routes if the ice up there wasn’t melting: http://bit.ly/9vQbq8
The hoax of the century is the idea that “intelligent design” is a brilliant intellectual revolution that has overturned Darwinism. This is merely the US Republican Party’s version of Lysenkoism, the anti-Darwinist biology adopted in Stalin’s USSR for ideological reasons, with disastrous consequences for Soviet science, as well as requiring the persecution of any dissenters. But if that’s the way you want your declining, bankrupt country to go, fair enough.
It would be instructive to go back a year, when I pointed out most of this, and see which of the rabid TAC bloggers were in denial of the real science; which of them NEEDED this global warming as solely cause of man hoax.
Brian, wanna debate? Bring it bro.
“While endless keening is heard over the Arctic ice cap, we hear almost nothing of the 2009 report of the British Antarctica Survey that the sea ice cap of Antarctica has been expanding by 100,000 square kilometers a decade for 30 years. That translates into 3,800 square miles of new Antarctic ice every year.”
Couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t mention the DEPTH of the ice, a substance which, as it softens, expands in width. Take a cube out of the refrigerator, Pat, and place it on the kitchen table. Does the resulting meltwater confine itself to the small area delineated by the bottom of the cube?
No.
Apparently, the adherents of the Temple of Global Warming will not have any questioning of their core tenets, no matter how inaccurate.
“Settled science” they say. Yet none of the more than twenty global warming models agree with each other. Would any other branch of sicience say that it is settled? Would physics which will not tolerate two models, both of which have proved to be quite reliable in their own proper area (Relativity/Quantum), say things are settled.
Oh and none yes NONE of the more than twenty predicted the last decade of global cooling.
This is a belief system and mythology of the progressive left that begs psychological investigation much like the right’s belief that murdering people overseas for bogus reasons helps reduce terrorism rather than create it.
One need not to be a Creationist to oppose weather fraud and defend Western civilization, particularly since the motives of those at the center of the weather fraud scam are the same as the motives of the Marxists, the Neocons, and all the Big Government con-artists in between: wealth transfer (to themselves) via government “remedies”; post-Christian or anti-Christian, utopianist pimping; and power madness.
Remember how Al Gore explained away his crony-capitalism and weather-fraud profiteering via the Energy Department by saying: “I absolutely believe in investing in ways that are consistent with my values and beliefs.” So what?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environment/03gore.html
Similarly, DoD-connected, war profiteering Neocon Stephan Rosen once signed a New American Century letter saying he is serving a just cause because ‘Israel’s fight against terrorism is our fight.’” No doubt, he is also pursuing his “values and beliefs” and turning a profit to boot. So what?
http://www.libertariantoday.com/2010/02/case-study-in-war-profiteering-and.html
Another incarnations of the scam might have been a high-living Bolshevik Marxist in the Soviet Union justifying his own murderous decadence by declaring: “I am well-rewarded for serving the cause of social and economic justice, so what?”
Whether its weather fraud, the War on Terror, or “economic stimulus” wealth transfers to Goldman Sachs, what all of these grifters seem to have in common is the leveraging of Big Government into self-enriching power grabs at the expense of average Americans, and the concept of Western (Christian) civilization itself.
The furious struggle to save the West is not between Western governments and Islam, but rather between Christians and other freedom-loving enemies of tyranny vs. Big Government-connected thieves, usurpers, and saboteurs.
I don’t believe that Pat’s qoute by Mencken fully applies in our situation. Most reasonable Americans are already alarmed by staggering deficits, endless wars, unresponsive politicians, etc… To such a populace, I’m not even sure that legislation related to “combatting” global warming would be welcome even if the theory was scientifically sound (and it isn’t in my opinion). In other words, it’s hard to scare a population that is anxious about matters such as a faltering economy with abstractions like global climate patterns.
“The Vikings discovered and settled Greenland around A.D. 950. Greenland was then so warm that thousands of colonists supported themselves by pasturing cattle on what is now frozen tundra. ”
If Pat can’t be bothered to read the scientific literature , he should pull his knuckles out of the slush long enough to mush up to Greenland and help with the spring planting-
As The Economist has noted, the place is once again growing enough grain to keep itself in beer , and export some vodka. Welcome to the Postmodern Warm Period
When I was a college student, early ’70s, the then-current climate hysteria was the coming ice age, even on a Newsweek cover, IIRC. Where did that howler go? Consider the earth as a living body: With massive widespread droughts and higher temps occurring, doesn’t it make sense that the stored water (icepack) is being released into the atmosphere to cool and rehydrate? Isn’t that what’s happening this winter? Humans perspire (and drink water) for the same reasons. Would the Divine provide less for the planet body than for the human body? The global temps are up but they will come down – graph them & it’ll likely resemble the sine wave that best represents the progress of man in his society, culture, economy, etc., and his environmental conditions.
Boy, just when I get to thinking that Pat’s ideas are the way for conservatism to go he just can’t let go of the worst kind of things for it.
Not that being skeptical of global warming claims is going wrong at all, but calling it a hoax already is. And, many many times worse, so is still flirting with the denial of evolution which is just essentially bottom-trawling for the ignorant.
I would have thought that the Republicans had enough of that already with Mr. Bush, essentially selling the party to the foot-stomping, snake-handling morons of the sort enamored of John Hagee and the like.
Shame, Pat, shame. It isn’t 1925 anymore when the Scopes trial was held, and most of the people in the country even then looked upon Bryant as a religious nut and Tennessee was positively embarrassed at what it had wrought.
Do you really wanna make the signal political difference in the country to be between … uneducated, ignorant boobs who support the Republican Party and everyone else? Between … the slack-jawed and the rest of modern America? To make intelligent, educated people embarrassed to be identified as Republican or conservative?
Yeesh.
Adam Rurik – If you’re into the science:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/18/arctic-ice-thickness-measured-from-buoys/
“You can also see in the 2007J graph above that the ice has thickened at least half a metre since March, 2008. In most fields of science, that is considered an increase rather than a “decline.” ”
This article has a really good explanation of why the “junk science” guys who are collecting data to prove global warming are making false assumptions about their readings.
@TomB
Good points. Contempt for liberal/left-liberal/Marxist conventional wisdom need not mean rushing into the arms of those still under the undue sway of Hebrew story-tellers with over-active imaginations and conceited delusions. We’ve had enough of that already in the Neocons.
There’s a lot of science on both sides. I personally believe in global warming, but I also know for a fact that there are other reasons to support climate legislation. Preserve nature, reduce oil addiction, clean the air, clean the water, help small business etc. While you may not believe the temperatures will kill us in 50 years, there are plenty of unsustainable aspects of our culture that need to be addresses anyway.
Pat has persuaded me that the thousand strong IPCC crew are mere tyros in the disinformation game , taking four years to dribble five factoids into 16,000 paragraphs of mind-numblingly factual text.
This is hardly competitive. Assisted by only a handful of amateur statisticians, National Review’s highly professional fact uncheckers can be relied upon to cram six scientific whoppers into a hundred column inches each and every week.
When Barney Rebble decloaks, I’ll direct him to the nearest library where he can begin reading the oceanography literature for himself instead of relying on the ever so disinterested Mr Watt, who has , true to form, gone cherry picking on thin ice:–
http://www.farnorthscience.com/2007/12/17/climate-news/northern-sea-ice-takes-a-big-hit-in-2007/
@TomB
“Not that being skeptical of global warming claims is going wrong at all, but calling it a hoax already is.”
Agreed. The subject of anthropogenic global warming needs further research but calling it a hoax is premature. The predictive climate models need further verification and validation before they are used as the basis of sweeping legislation. Unfortunately, flinging around day-to-day temperature outliers and reports about snowstorms here-or-there is going to continue because it tends to resonate with the average American to a far greater degree than say climate prediction uncertainties.
Mr. Buchanan, you should read a bit more deeply into the subject before opining. Every factual claim you make with respect to climate change is either misleading or false. Given your position as a shaper of public opinion, your ignorance is culpable.
“Mr. Rebble,” if WUWT told me the sun rose in the East, I’d look westward in the morning. Watt, Eschenbach, D’Aleo, et al. are specialists in innuendo and statistical abuse, as Mr. Seitz’s link makes clear with yet another example of their cherry-picking ways.
A timely story from the NY Times entitled “Darwin Foes Add Warming To Targets”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/science/earth/04climate.html
As I said, nothing wrong with being an AGW skeptic, but in addition to just being dumb, calling it a hoax now already is being used as dupe now too by the evolution deniers trying to hitch their ridiculous wagon to this new star.
Lots of reasons to be very skeptical of AGW, and to even doubt it strongly. (Esp. the “anthropogenic” part.) And no doubt Al Gore’s involvement gives off great wafts of faddish, shallow, hypocritical and self-interested smells. But don’t be a denier or hoax-caller yet folks: Read even the most vociferous skeptics carefully like McIntyre and Bishop Hill and Anthony Watts: They are very very careful to deny being deniers.
Unless of course you don’t mind being used by the evolution-deniers….
What’s wrong with being an evolution denier?
As the theory is stated by Darwin and 20th centuryl evolutionists, there is no evidence to support it. You know, the theory of gradual evolution, starting with a little mouse like creature and ending with Einstein. The theory that says temporary day to day changes are inherited. The theory that says all of us, including Finns, were Negroes 30,000 years ago or 100,000 years ago but lost their pigment because the sun is paler in Finland than along the equator.. Duh.
The current theories about genes and DNA refute Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Jan Rogozinski wrote:
“What’s wrong with being an evolution denier?”
Nothing, assuming you don’t mind being either mightily confused, or just stark nuts.
Look, Jan, one couldn’t put together a better illustration than your post of how the creationists confuse people via word games so as to disguise the fact that they are just stark nuts.
“Evolution,” whether meant as regards all animals except humans or even including humans, isn’t a theory, it’s a fact. It’s a fact as proven as almost as any other scientific fact you care to name. Biological entities have changed, and you go back far enough in the fossil record and you no longer find any of homo sapiens because we didn’t exist then. But you find lots of our evolutionary predecessors.
So Darwin’s theory wasn’t “of evolution.” Despite the fact that prior to him not much mention was paid to fossils, the fact that some evolution of some biological entities had gone on was already very well known and talked about.
Instead, Darwin’s grand theory was of the *mechanism” of evolution; what came to be called “natural selection.” But because genes and DNA weren’t even known then Darwin himself said that he did not know precisely how his theorized mechanism worked. And thus in any number of ways—scientifically important but nit-picking on the level we are talking about—his speculations as to how the *details* of his grand theory worked in this way or that might turn out to be wrong. For instance, he speculated that natural selection would tend to always work extremely slowly whereas now there is some good evidence that sometimes it works somewhat faster in at least some circumstances.
However, these are just *details* not undermining his grand theory. And even as to his details it is nothing short of a monument to human intelligence and courage how Darwin got so few wrong given that he *didn’t* know about genes, and given that at the time he wrote he basically bucked not only religion but the science that existed at the time too which strongly suggested that the earth was too young for his grand theory to be true.
So, it is on the level of such details—where modern science freely argues—that the creationists will seize upon to say “See! Science itself admits Darwin was wrong!” to thereby confuse and falsely imply to people that major scientists themselves don’t believe in Darwin’s grand theory.
And then, even worse but absolutely necessary to get to the point of their stark nuttiness, their next step is to further confuse people by talking of evolution *itself* as being Darwin’s theory as you did. But of course this is the point of *all* their attempted confusion because as regards humans especially this is *exactly* where they want to go: Denying evolution itself altogether so as to get to creationism.
Deny big chunks of Darwinism all you want, Jan, maybe even a big big chunk of it whereby Darwin (and still most scientists) postulate that “natural selection” works entirely via random (genetic) changes. Indeed deny *all* of Darwin’s theory of natural selection totally if you want: It’s still only a theory about a mechanism. You still have the stark fact of evolution staring you in the face, and as regards denying that, you might as well deny the sun.
It is worth noting that it was scientists who exposed Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man as hoaxes.
It is also worth noting that these hoaxes did not contradict the underlying strength of evolutionary theory, and despite the “hoaxes of the 20th Century” the theory is today stronger than ever. For all but the religiously-driven (like Duane Gish) the science is settled.
Buchanan risks falling into the same flawed thinking that said “aha! Piltdown Man/Nebraska Man proves evolution false!” Holding up “Climate Gate” or other isolated shenanigans as proof that somehow the entire field of climatology is a hoax is questionable to say the least.
Time will tell if “Climate Gate” winds up being the death blow to AGW, or a mere bump in the road like Piltdown Man.
Speaking of time, Mr. Buchanan might do well to look up what happened to those Vikings who colonized Greenland.
As the latest hot history of science paper reveals that Galileo may have fudged his theorizing , bending data that would have lent more credit to Tyco Brahe’s than Copernicus.
I wait with bated breath for Tom Bethell to declare victory over Solarsystemism, and Pat to come down hard on the Great Heliocentric Hoax