Following up from a post last week we thought it might be useful to post examples of excessive hyperbole on the climate issue – from all perspectives on the issue. We’ll do this when we see them or when you send them in. Here are a few:

Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas writing for Tech Central Station 11 November 2004 say, “A recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research by scientists from Princeton and Duke Universities indicates massive wind farms would significantly increase local surface drying and soil heating, which in turn would impact agricultural or range use on or near the wind farm… Wind farms may not be as benign to the environment and weather as its promoters say”. Question for Drs. Soon and Baliunas: Why so quick to highlight the implications of this single climate modeling study, when in the past you have criticized such models as not being “sufficiently accurate” to guide policy?

“You can kiss the planet goodbye,” James Gustave “Gus” Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, in The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 13 November 2004. Speaks for itself.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), speaking of the United States and arctic peoples in a 13 November 2004 BBC news article, “The short-term economic policy of one country should not be able to trump the entire survival of one people.” The BBC article states, “Indigenous people from the Arctic have urged the US to cut greenhouse gas emissions to slow down the current thaw of the polar ice.” Questions for the cryospheric community: What is the relationship between U.S. economic policies and the rate of arctic ice changes? Can we modulate future arctic ice thickness with economic policies? Any studies on these questions?