lwHancock

If you’ve seen Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, you’ll remember the horrific scenes of New York and Florida under water due to melting polar ice caps. In fact, the scenes remind me a lot of the film “Water World,” starring Kevin Costner. If you haven’t seen either film, go rent them then tell me if you don’t think the two are strikingly similar when it gets to the cities under water parts. Be forewarned that the Gore film will scare your children so I don’t advise you allow younger children to watch.

Frame from "An Inconvenient Truth"

The mainstream media has been giving the latest dire flooding predictions of global warming prime time coverage. Last night I watched a documentary on the poor polar bears falling off of the last few remaining ice burgs and drowning in ever rising seas interspersed with commercials from the World Wildlife Fund offering to save the polar bears if you’ll just send them money. Save them from what? Environmentalists scaring off their food with ever increasing photo op sessions?

What they're not telling you is the polar bear population has doubled since the 1950’s and their poplulation continues to climb. They have a very healthy breeding population. The popular photograph (shown below) of a panic stricken mother polar bear and her cub stranded on a craggy ice burg far out to sea and too weak to swim back to shore (supposedly because they were starving and the distance too far) was exposed to be a fraud. The photo was “lifted” from Amanda Byrd’s research photography collection and credit given to someone else. In reality, the photo was taken very close to shore. The mother and her cub were taking an afternoon break and using the ice berg as a play ground. They weren’t stranded and they were in prime health. Besides, polar bears easily swim 60 to 80 miles when seeking new hunting grounds. But I suppose it’s okay to steal other people's intellectual property, misinform, and take false credit when the cause is meant to appear noble. But I digress.

Photo by Amanda Byrd

Global warming models predict that rapidly rising sea levels, brought on by global warming, will place many coastal cities (and much of Florida) under water by the end of the century with sea level rises as much as 20 to 200 feet, depending on who's telling the story.

Are the sea levels rising? Yes. They have been rising for the past 14,000 years as we’ve come out of the last ice age. Why do the sea levels rise? Two reasons: expansion of sea water as the oceans warm and the melting of glaciers and polar ice. Is the sea level rise faster today as the global warming alarmists claim? Curiously, no. Trends are currently (and always have been) well within normal variability and certainly not anywhere close to the rate required to make any of Gore's scary predictions come true.

The University of Colorado just released their latest sea level data. The slope is 3.3 mm per year - less than a foot per century. The trend is linear and shows no acceleration predicted by Gore and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). In fact, if you look at the tail end of the graph's data points, you'll see a tapering off since 2004 (which the trend line doesn't track by nature of how trend lines work). But despite the current data, global warming scientists say seas will rise rapidly some time in the future. That begs the question if we have unprecedented global warming today, the polar ice caps are melting at a much accelerated rate and polar bears are drowning as the ice melts from under them, why don’t we see the oceans rising at an above normal rate now? Of course, the correct and only answer is, and excuse my grammar, it ain't happening.

If you read my previous blog, you’ll see that we’ve been in a global cooling trend for the past decade. This is completely contrary to global warming model predictions. Something is terribly wrong! The earth isn’t obeying Al Gore. Global warming is nowhere to be seen in any credible observational data (not to be confused with the incredible famous fake “hockey stick” charts created by Michael E. Mann, used by Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth,” and used as the basis of predictions by policy makers from the IPCC). The science behind most of Gore’s movie is pure junk, “lifted” and misrepresented studies, and baseless sensational claims, combined with good theatrics and an ominous music score. I especially enjoy the parts where shrieking hits a crescendo. But then again, I’ve always enjoyed science fiction thrillers.

Global warming alarmists would have you believe that most coastal cities and low lying regions will be under water by as early as 2050 creating all new beachfront. That home you bought 20 miles from the shore will be prime beachfront property soon and worth a lot of money I might add. In reality, at the current rate of ocean rise most coastal cities like New Orleans will need to be more concerned about the rate of land sinking -  another well documented issue the global warming folks just haven’t figured out a good story line for yet.

Personally, I think “Water World” is a much better movie and Kevin Costner a much better actor than Al Gore. Costner's fictional character is nothing short of a hero in how he saves the world. Al Gore tries to build saving the world into the “An Inconvenient Truth” plot but fails to make the story line convincing. The  story line is poorly conceived, full of contextual goofs, phoney science, and the acting too melodramatic to suit my taste.

Here are a few videos that take a look at the junk science of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

Al Gore says the debate is over and the science completed. Senator Inhofe makes a convincing presentation to the Senate floor which debunks any notion that either is true.