I have just published a new book.  It’s called Tales from a Spanish Village and it’s a book I’ve wanted to write for a long time. It deals with my experience as a cultural anthropologist in 1967-68 when I lived in a small peasant village in Spain, collecting material for my doctoral dissertation.  I wrote a book on the anthropology of the village years ago.  But this book is not anthropology, it is a personal account, describing how I adjusted to the community and about the wonderful characters I met along the way.  Many of the chapters deal with these personalities:   the great Isidro Sanz who could easily be mistaken for Don Quixote’s sidekick, Sancho Panza;  my deranged landlady who heeded voices from her stomach; the audacious Brescó; an absolutely brilliant professor; a quick-witted peasant, and the fabled Marieta, grand dame of the region.  The book also details some dramatic events that I witnessed:  Harsh police treatment of Gypsies, a counterfeiting operation, and a great deal more. But above all, I think of it as a frank, sometimes humorous, but basically tender portrait of village Spain at the twilight of the Franco dictatorship when donkeys, mules and peasant carts still pervaded the countryside.  That whole era has now been swept away, but as this book will show, there is much about it worth remembering.  Regards, Richard Barrett

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• A Bibliography for Climate Skeptics

I am creating here a bibliography of the now voluminous and rapidly growing literature  written by those who cast a skeptical eye on the man-made global warming and man-made climate change theses.  I will add to the entries as I continue to follow the literature.  Regards, Richard Barrett

Akasofu, Syun-Ichi                                                                                                                                                                                     2009       “Is the Earth Still Recovering from the ‘Little Ice Age’?”   International Arctic Research Center,                                  Fairbanks, Alaska.

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Alexander, Ralph B.

2009  Global Warming False Alarm: The Bad Science Behind the United Nation’s Assertion That Man-Made                   CO2 Causes Global Warming.  Michigan: Canterbury Publishing.

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Bailey, Ronald

2002   Global Warming and other Eco-Myths:  How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death.  Roseville, California:  Prima Publishing.

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Bast, Joseph L., Hill, Peter J., Rue, Richard C.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      1994   Eco-Sanity:  A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism.  Lanham, Maryland: Madison Books.

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Bell, Larry                                                                                                                                                                                                                        2001  Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax.  Austin                                                              Texas: Greenleaf Book Group.

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Booker, Christopher & North, Richard

2007    Scared to Death:  From BSE to Global Warming, How Scares are Costing Us the Earth.  London: Continuum books.

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Booker, Christopher

2009  The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession With ‘Climate

Change Turning out to be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?

London: Continuum Books.

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Carter, Robert M.

2010  Climate: The Counter Consensus. London: Stacey International

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Crichton, Michael

2004    State of Fear: A Novel. New York: Avon Books.

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Gerondeau, Christian

2010  Climate: The Great Delusion, A Study of the Climatic, Economic and

Political Unrealities. London: Stacey International.

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Glover, Peter C. & Economides, Michael J.

2010    Energy and Climate Wars: How Naive Politicians, Green Ideologues, and Media Elites are                                         Undermining the Truth About Energy and Climate.  New York: Continuum Books.

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Goklany, Indur M.

2007    The Improving State of the World:  Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet.  Washington D.C.:  Cato institute.

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Goreham, Steve

2010  Climatism!: Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s  Hottest Topic. New Lenox, Illinois: New                    Lenox Books.

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Hoffman, Doug L. &  Simmons, Allen

2008  The Resilient Earth, Science, Global Warming and the Future of Humanity.  USA: Booksurge.

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Horner, Christopher C.                                                                                                                                                                             2007   The Politically Correct Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.  Washington D.C.                                      Regnery Publishing, Inc.

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Horner, Christopher C.

2008   Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You                                 Misinformed. Washington D.C.:  Regnery Publishing, Inc.

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Huber, Peter W. & Mills, Mark P.

2005  The Bottomless Well, The Twilight of Fuel, The Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run out of                        Energy.  New York: Basic Books.

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Kininmonth, William

2004    Climate Change: A Natural Hazard. Brentwood: Multi-Science Publishing.

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Labohm, Hans, Rozenddaal, Simon, Thoenes, Dick

2004   Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma. Brentwood:

Multi-Science Publishing.

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Lawson, Nigel

2008   An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming. New York,

London:  Overlook Duckworth.

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Lindzen, Richard

1992    ”Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus.”  Cato Institute, Vol. 15, No. 2, Spring.

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Lomborg, Bjorn

2001    The Skeptical Environmentalist:  Measuring the Real State of the World.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

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Lomborg, Bjorn

2007    Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.  New York: Vintage Books.

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Meyer, Warren

2007   A Skeptical Layman’s Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming.  USA: Lulu Enterprises, Inc.

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Michaels, Patrick J.  & Balling, Robert C. Jr.

2000    The Satanic Gasses:  Clearing The Air About Global Warming.  Washington, D.C.:  Cato Institute  Michaels, Patrick J.

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Michaels, Patrick J.

2004    Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by  Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.                       Washington D.C.: Cato Institute.

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Michaels, Patrick J. &  Balling, Robert C. Jr.

2009   Climate Of Extremes:  Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know About.  Washington D.C.:  Cato Institute.

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Milloy, Steve

2009   Green Hell:  How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.  USA:  Regnery Publishing, Inc.

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Montford, A.W.

2010    The Hockey Stick Illusion:  Climategate and the Corruption of Science.  London:  Stacey International.

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Moore, Thomas G.

1998    Climate of Fear:  Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Global Warming.  Washington, D.C.:  Cato Institute.

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Mosher, Steven & Fuller Thomas W.

2010   Climategate:The Crutape Letters. Createspace.

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Plimer, Ian

2009  Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, The Missing Science. Lanham,

Maryland: Taylor Trade Publishing.

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Singer, Fred S. & Avery, Dennis T.

2007   Unstoppable Global Warming, Every 1,500 Years.  Lanham,

Maryland:  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

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Solomon, Lawrence

2008    The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria,                              Political  Persecution, and Fraud.  USA: Richard Vigilante Books.

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Soon, Willie & Baliunas, Sallie                                                                                                                                                                  2003   “Proxy Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years.”  Climate Research, Vol 23: 89-110.

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Spencer, Roy W.

2008    Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians, and                     Misguided Policies that Hurt The Poor. New York: Encounter Books.

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Sussman, Brian

2010  Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming

Scam. Washington D.C. WND Books.  USA: Richard Vigilante Books.

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Svensmark, Henrik & Calder, Nigel

2008    The Chilling Stars: A Cosmic View of climate change.  Cambridge:

Icon Books.

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Taylor, Peter

2009    Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory.  Forest Row,

East Sussex: Clairview.

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The following quotations are from people who believe that the economic activities of our industrial way of life are upsetting the normal rhythms of our climatic system, and, if not corrected, will lead to horrific damage in the future.  They  include environmentalists, political activists and the occasional scientist.  Many of these people have been good enough to provide dates for their predictions, or at least a general time frame for the damage that is likely to occur.  These are the most useful predictions because they can be tested against the trials of time.  Vague generalities (like those frequently issued by the IPCC) are not at all helpful.  In future, therefore, I would hope that when doomsday predictions are made, they will be accompanied by dates or some concrete time frame for their accomplishment.

I have gleaned these quotations from my reading and from the internet.  One internet source was particularly valuable titled “117 Years of Failed Climate and Environmental Predictions.”  I encourage all readers to consult that wonderful site.  The only way I can improve upon it is by continually updating these predictions (and many are coming due in the very near future).  Regards, Richard Barrett

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March 20, 2000, from The Independent, According to Dr David Viner of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, snowfall in Britain would become “a very rare and exciting event” and “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

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September 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger signing California’s anti-emmissions law, “We simply must do everything in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late…The science is clear.   The global warming debate is over.”

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1990 Actress Meryl Streep  ”By the year 2000–that’s less than ten years away–earth’s climate will be warmer than it’s been in over 100,000 years.  If we don’t do something, there’ll be enormous calamities in a very short time.”

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April 2008, Media Mogul Ted Turner on Charlie Rose (On not taking drastic action to correct global warming)  ”Not doing it will be catastrophic.  We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow.  Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.”  [Strictly speaking, this is not a failed prediction.  It won't be until at least 2048 that our church-going and pie-baking neighbors come after us for their noonday meal.  But the prediction is so bizarre that I include it here.]

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January 1970 Life Magazine  ”Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support …the following predictions:  In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

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Earth Day 1970  Kenneth Watt, ecologist  ”At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

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Earth Day 1970  Kenneth Watt, ecologist  ”The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years.  If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000.  This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

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April 28, 1975  Newsweek  ”There are ominous signs that Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically….The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it….The central fact is that…the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down….If the climate change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.”

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1976 Lowell Ponte in “The Cooling,”  ”This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people.  If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.”

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July 9, 1971, Washington Post   “In the next 50 years fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun’s rays that the Earth’s average temperature could fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to ten years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”

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June, 1975, Nigel Calder in International Wildlife   ” The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.”

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June 30, 1989, Associated Press  U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER, SAYS GREENHOUSE  EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP–entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.  Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program.  He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect.

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Sept 19, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch  ”New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.”

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December 5, 1989, Dallas Morning News   “Some predictions for the next decade are not difficult to make…Americans may see the ’80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates.

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1990 Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund, “(By) 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…”(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers…The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”

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April 18, 1990, Denver Post   “Giant sand dunes may turn Plains to desert–huge sand dunes extending east from Colorado’s Front Range may be on the verge of breaking through the thin topsoil, transforming America’s rolling High Plains into a desert, new research suggests.  The giant sand dunes discovered by NASA satellite photos are expected to re-emerge over the next 20 t0 50 years, depending on how fast average temperatures rise from the suspected ‘greenhouse effect’ scientists believe”

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1991 Edward Goldsmith, 5000 Days to Save the Planet  ”By 2000, British and American oil will have diminished to a trickle….Ozone depletion and global warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary reprieve by buying up the produce of the South.  Unrest among the hungry and the ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North’s greater military might.  A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change the way we live….At present rates of exploitation there may be no rainforest left in 10 years.  If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years.”

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April 22, 1990  ABC, The Miracle Planet   “I think we’re in trouble.  When you realize how little time we have left–we are now given not 10 years to save the rainforests, but in many cases five years.  Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens.  And nothing is happening.”

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February 1993, Thomas E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution   “Most of the great environmental struggles will be either won or lost in the 1990s and by the next century it will be too late.”

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November 7, 1997, BBC  (A commentator) “It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Ninos are going to become more frequent, and they’re going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we’ll go into a permanent El Nino.  So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we’ll have El Nino upon El Nino, and that will become the norm.  And you’ll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years.”

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July 26, 1999 The Birmingham Post  ”Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming.  A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people.”

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October 15, 1990  Carl Sagan  ”The planet could face an ‘ecological and agricultural catastrophe’ by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”

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Sept 11, 1999, The Guardian   “A report last week claimed that within a decade, the disease (malaria) will be common again on the Spanish coast.  The effects of global warming are coming home to roost in the developed world.”

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March 29, 2001,  CNN  ”In ten years time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels.”   [Next year we'll know if this extremely unlikely prediction comes true.]

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1988 or 1989, Dr. James Hansen (In an interview with author Rob Reiss.  Reiss asked how the greenhouse effect  was likely to affect the neighborhood below Hansen’s office in NYC in the next 20 years).  Hansen, looking out the window, answered:  ”The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water.  And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds.  And the same birds won’t be there.  The trees in the median strip will change….There will be more police cars….[since] you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”  [I am thankful to WUWT for this account.]

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1969  Lubos Moti, Czech physicist  ”It is now pretty clearly agreed that CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000.  This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees fahrenheit.  This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet.  Goodbye New York.  Goodbye Washington, for that matter.

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2005  Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation, “Scholars are predicting that 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2010 because of rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, weather-induced flooding and other serious environmental changes.”

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Oct 20, 2009, Gordon Brown UK Prime Minister (referring to the Copenhagen climate conference):  ”World leaders have 50 days to save the Earth from  irreversible global warming.”

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June 2008, Ted Alvarez, Backpacker Magazine Blogs, “you could potentially sail, kayak, or even swim to the North Pole by the end of the summer.  Climate scientists say that the Arctic ice…is currently on track to melt sometime in 2008.”   [Shortly after this prediction was made, a Russian icebreaker was trapped in the ice of the Northwest Passage for a week.]

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1992, Al Gore   “Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis.  The time for debate is over.  The science is settled.”

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May 31, 2006  Al Gore,  on CBS Early Show   “…the debate among the scientists is over.  There is no more debate.  We face a planetary emergency.  There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the science…Well, I guess in some quarters, there’s still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the Earth is flat instead of round.”   [The "bibliography for climate skeptics (above) suggests that there are some "serious people" still willing to debate.]

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January 2000  Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund commenting (in a NY Times interview) on the mild winters in New York City.  ”But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996.  For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.”

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2008  Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) on a visit to Britain, “The recent warm winters that Britain has experienced are a sign that the climate is changing.”  [Two exceptionally cold winters followed.  The 2009-10 winter may be the coldest experienced in the UK since 1683.]

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June 11, 1986   Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) in testimony to Congress (according to the Milwaukee Journal) “Hansen predicted global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years, ‘which is about the warmest the earth has been in the last 100,000 years.’”

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June 8, 1972   Christian Science Monitor  ”Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.”

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May 15, 1989  Associated Press  ”Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide [USA] two degrees by 2010.”

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