The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.

Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.

–Washington Post/AP, 1922 [H.T. - Anthony Watts]

I wonder if the AP back then ran pictures of depressed polar bears floating on ice chunks?

For instance:

And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”

–James Delingpole, UK Telegraph

It struck me when I first read this section of the article that this is the exact thing that the intelligent design camp has been saying for years now. Michael Behe even documented his peer-review nightmare here. Intelligent design scientists have been systematically shut out of the peer-review process by being disallowed from the big journals, such as Nature, for years. Michael Behe isn’t the only one. If you haven’t heard of the whole “Sternberg” affair, go and check it out here. The idea that the peer-review system is some type of open process is just a total myth. Robert Higgs wrote about this back in 2007 for Nature:

Journalists, politicians and advocacy groups refer to “peer-reviewed research” and “scientific consensus” as the authoritative last words on controversial matters involving the natural sciences, from climate change to stem-cell research and genetically engineered foods. But many people have an unrealistic view of how the scientific community actually works.

The peer-review process is not, contrary to popular belief, a nearly flawless system of Olympian scrutiny. Any editor of a peer-reviewed journal who desires to reject or accept a submission can easily do so by choosing appropriate referees.

Unfortunately, personal vendettas, ideological conflicts, professional jealousies, methodological disagreements, sheer self-promotion and irresponsibility are as much part of the scientific world as any other. Peer review cannot ensure that research is correct in its procedures and conclusions. A part of the work in every discipline—from the physical sciences to economics—consists of correcting previous mistakes.
At any given time, “scientific consensus” may exist about various matters. Over time, however, new interpretations, tests or observations may demolish that consensus. For instance, in the mid-1970s, an apparent scientific consensus existed that our planet was about to enter another Ice Age. Drastic proposals, such as exploding hydrogen bombs over polar icecaps to melt them. and damming the Bering Strait to prevent icy waters from entering the Pacific, were put forth by reputable scientists and seriously considered by the US government.

The truth is that scientific research at the upper echelons occurs within a fairly small world. Leading researchers attend the same conferences, belong to the same societies, review one another’s work for funding organizations, and so forth. If you do not belong to this tight fraternity, it becomes extremely difficult to gain a hearing for your work, to publish in a “top” journal, to acquire a government grant, to receive an invitation to participate in a scientific conference, or even to place your grad students in decent positions.

“Scientific consensus” often emerges because the members of this exclusive club, and those who support them, have too much invested in the reigning ideas to let go. In this context, it behooves bright young scientists not to rock the boat by challenging anything fundamental or dear to the hearts of those who constitute review committees of funders or journals. The terms “peer review” and “scientific consensus” often serve to suggest a process of disinterested neutrality and saintly pursuit of truth. Like every other human endeavour, however, science is conducted by people with the full range of human emotions and motives.

Good rules of thumb for the non-scientist might be the following: government-funded research that is used to justify that government’s policy should be suspect, whether or not it’s peer-reviewed; and the research of scientists who appear at press conferences in the company of politicians or activists whose agendas they are there to support should be suspect, whether or not the work upholds the consensus opinion.

–Bob Higgs, The Beacon

While I think that it’s great that global warming is in it’s death throws, I think the bigger lesson here is that whenever we hear the words “scientific consensus” it should immediately trigger our skeptic reflex. Science is an ongoing process of revolution and paradigm shift. It always has been. Today’s solid theory is tommorrows waste basket liner. Consensus in world of science is worth about as much as it is in the economics profession. That is to say, not much.

Here’s the money quote:

But amid the crisis there are a few sparks of hope for the future. California has long been an incubator of fresh ideas, many of which spread across the country. If America emerges from its crisis a greener, more economically and politically responsible nation, it is likely that renewal will have begun here. The clues to California’s salvation – and perhaps even the country as a whole – are starting to emerge.

Green jobs are at the forefront of Obama’s ideas on both the economy and the environment.

Jones believes California will once more change itself, and then change the nation. “California remains a beacon of hope… This is a new time for a new direction to grow a new society and a new economy,” Jones has said.

–Paul Harris, The Guardian(UK)

Ok, so a “new economy” based on green jobs is what California needs to get out of the economic depression it’s in now. What would this new economy look like?

The number of solar panels in the state has risen from 500 a decade ago to more than 50,000 now. California generates twice as much energy from solar power as all the other US states combined.

California’s attorney-general, Jerry Brown, recently sued one county government for not paying enough attention to global warming when it came to urban planning.

Every freeway may be lined with fast-food outlets, but California is also the state of Alice Waters, the guru of the slow-food movement, who inspired Michelle Obama to plant a vegetable garden in the White House.

–Paul Harris, The Guardian(UK)

That’s pretty much it. That’s the evidence he gives for a “new” green economy that will turn California around. Solar panels, a global warming lawsuit, and a Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden. Is it any wonder that so many people are mocking the green movement as pseudo-religious idiocy? What America, and California, needs are people who will get back to work making things that people actually need. Food, clothes, tools, etc. at an affordable price, without government interference of any kind. Solar energy is wonderful, but since it still costs about $70,000 dollars to install the third of an acre of solar panels you need just to power a single home, I don’t see that as being very profitable.

This is just more green religion being couched as economics. There is a way to do green right, and with free-market principles perfectly in tact. But that’s not anything that the statists would ever endorse, since it doesn’t line their pockets with government grant money. Pardon me while I wad this story up and throw it in the recycle bin.

Cap and trade is a system dreamed up by tree huggers to help the environment by reducing green house gasses. Specifically, good ol’ carbon dioxide(CO2), to the chagrin of plants everywhere. The way it works is like so:

Now, leaving behind the question of how it’s possible for a naturally ocurring gas like carbon dioxide to be a pollutant, why is this a idea bad? Doesn’t it help the environment to pollute less? Well, sure. But the devil is always in the details. Firstly, how do we know that we need less pollutants. It’s pretty apparent at this point that there is no consensus on the whole global warming issue. Japan recently made headlines by saying that they are re-thinking the whole “man made” part of global warming. There are definitely enough dissenting scientific voices to hold off on something so radical as this. From my view, it’s becoming more and more obvious that the whole global warming movement is a big money scam on the part of an elite group of environmentalists. That makes anything targeted at global warming reduction suspect. Cap and trade itself was born by the Environmental Defense Fund.

And that leads me to the next point. The money factor. The real heart of cap and trade has nothing to do with environmentalism. It’s got everything to do with tax dollars. It’s a total money grab by politicians. Think about it. If there is some pre-set cap that you will have to pay penalties on if you exceed; do you think for one minuite that the “cap” will be sensible? Think again. It will be absurdly low. And anytime budgets get a little tight in Washington, they will just lower the cap and have an instant tax increase, without changing a single IRS rule. And, as I said, the cap will be so low that every company will have to buy credits. Every one. And where will this extra money to buy credits come from? You guessed it. YOU! Remember the first rule of taxation. Companies don’t pay taxes. Individuals do. We pay all of them in the end, as they trickle down.

What’s worse about all this, is that higher energy prices directly hurt the poor first. As these companies have to spend millions more each year to buy credits, they will pass those costs on to the consumer. The ones who will hurt most will be the ones least able to afford it. This is not all just some conservative cynicism. We’ve seen the massive problems with cap and trade in Europe as a result of Kyoto protocols:

And this is the heart of the argument from an economist perspective. The end game here is to force a reduction in output. And the only way to reduce output in any substantial way is to make less product. This means less energy supply and thus higher prices. Every time government gets involved in a certain sector of the market, that market ends up reducing output. And it’s done in the name of helping the consumer. What a crock. The only sector they seem to be increasing output in these days is banking. Credit is in more than adequate supply. And they’re gladly handing out more every day.