"Oceans lash our coasts. Deserts Burn. The sky provides
no shelter. Turmoil of Biblical proportions threatens not just our weather but
life itself. Global Warming is upon us."
Those words aren't from the
preview trailer of the silly, overblown, over dramatic film, "Day After
Tomorrow" that invaded movie theaters a few years ago. And they aren't just
carefully selected "scare" words developed from a sweep through a thesaurus.
These are the opening words to yet another hysterical diatribe passing as news
these days on the subject of Global Warming. This particularly silly one greeted
readers of a recent issue of Playboy Magazine. The article was, of course,
accompanied by the obligatory pictures of smokes stacks belching over a city and
the melting of ice burgs.
You hear it everywhere. Global
Warming is a fact. It is here. It is now unstoppable. The Polar Ice Cap is
melting. Polar Bears are endangered. Greenland is actually turning green!
Hurricanes are blowing with more force. Tornadoes are growing in numbers. Water
levels are increasing, threatening to flood New York City. Human existence is
threatened. And, of course, the deserts are starting to burn. We are assured
that scientists are in near total agreement with the assessment.
The
media is in a frenzy, rushing to report the latest news release from special
interest groups with the latest report or prediction. Al Gore is rushing his hi
tech docudrama to the theaters to whip up more frenzy. Corporations are being
forced to turn "green" to show their "corporate social responsibility" in the
wake of the coming disaster.
Global Warming has become a euphemism for a
political agenda. There is Socialism, Capitalism and Global Warmingism. It has
become a religion run by fanatics reminiscent of the leaders of the darkest days
of the Inquisition that nearly destroyed civil society only a few hundred years
ago. We are not to question the great god of Global Warming. Those who do
are separated from civil society and labeled as heretics.
So how can
anyone question the decrees handed down from the Ivory Towers to the unwashed
masses? Answer: every religion has its heretics.
The simple truth is
there is no scientific consensus on Global Warming. In fact, as the media frenzy
screams global warming, there are a growing number of scientists who are
expressing their doubts.
In 1992, just prior to the UN's Earth Summit in
Rio de Janeiro, 425 scientists and other intellectual leaders signed The
Heidelberg Appeal, a quiet call for reason in dealing with the climate change
issue. Neither a statement or corporate interests, nor a denial of environmental
problems, the Heidelberg Appeal expresses a conviction that modern society is
the best equipped in human history to solve the world's ills, provided that they
do not sacrifice science, intellectual honesty and common sense to political
opportunism and irrational fears. Today, the Heidelberg Appeal has been signed
by more than 4,000 scientists and leaders from 100 countries, including more
than 70 Nobel Prize winners.
Also in 1992, another statement from some
47 atmospheric scientists was issued saying "such policies (greenhouse global
warming theories) derive from highly uncertain scientific theories. The
statement cited a survey of atmospheric scientists, conducted in the summer of
1991, "confirms that there is no consensus about the cause of the slight warming
observed during the past century." The statement went on to say, "We are
disturbed that activists, anxious to stop energy and economic growth, are
pushing ahead with drastic policies without taking notice of recent changes in
the underlying science."
In 1995, over 85 scientists and climate experts
from research labs and universities worldwide, signed the Leipzig Declaration in
answer to the International Symposium on the Greenhouse Controversy, held in
Leipzig, Germany that year. In part, the Declaration says; "In a world in which
poverty is the greatest social pollutant, any restriction on energy use that
inhibits economic growth should be viewed with caution. For these reasons, we
consider 'carbon taxes' and other drastic control policies - lacking credible
support from the underlying science - to be ill-advised, premature, wrought with
economic danger, and likely to be counterproductive."
In 1997, a Gallop
Poll of eminent North American climatologists shows that 83% did not support the
claims of the green house theory of Global Warming.
In 1998, The Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) issued a petition for signature by
atmospheric scientists saying there is no scientific evidence indicating that
greenhouse gases cause global warming. That petition was signed by more than
17,000 scientists and leaders involved in the issue.
Global Warming
scaremongers have tried to discredit these statements from the opposition,
saying either they are too old to be counted in today's debate or that they
weren't signed by real scientists. Neither is true. One only has to look at the
signers on the documents and statements to know who and what they are. The
relevance of the documents can be answered in two ways. First, most of the
signers of these documents from the 1990's hold the same positions today.
Second, as is the fallacy in the Global Warming debate, such drastic climate
changes, as described in the scaremongers diatribes, would not come about
overnight. Though the proponents would have you believe otherwise, 15 years is
but a microsecond in the study of the earth's activities.
However, there
is great question about the validity of the documents promoted by the Global
Warming crowd. There is strong, documented evidence to show they care little
about sound science and facts and much more about their political agenda.
For example, in May of 1996, unannounced and possibly unauthorized
changes to the United Nation's report on climate change touched off a firestorm
of controversy within the scientific community. The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), the science group that advises the United Nations on the
global warming issue, presented a draft of its report in December 1995, and it
was approved by the delegations. However, when the printed report appeared in
May 1996, it was discovered that substantial changes and deletions had been made
to the body of the report to make it conform to the Policymakers Summery.
Specifically, two key paragraphs written by the scientists were deleted. They
said:
1. "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that
we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse
gases."
2. "No study to date had positively attributed all or part of the
climate change to .man-made causes."
That was not the last time data has
been manipulated by the IPCC to fit its political agenda. In 2005, a federal
hurricane research scientist named Chris Landsea resigned from the UN-sponsored
IPCC climate assessment team because his group's leader had politicized the
process. Landsea said in his resignation letter, "It is beyond me why my
colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent
hurricane activity had been due to global warming." He went onto say, "I
personally cannot in good faith contribute to a process that I view as being
both motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically
unsound."
In 2006, the voices of reason are speaking out
louder than ever. Professor Bob Carter, a geologist at James Cook University,
Queensland, Australia, says the global warming theory is neither environmental
or scientific, but rather, "a self-created political fiasco." Carter explains
that "Climate changes occur naturally all the time, partly in predicable cycles
and partly in unpredictable cycles."
Meanwhile, more than 60 leading
international climate change experts have gone on record to urge Canada's new
Prime Minster to carefully review global warming policies, warning that
'"Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists
to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the
cause."
In April, 2006, using temperature readings from the past 100
years, 1,000 computer simulations and the evidence left in ancient tree rings,
Duke University scientists announced that "the magnitude of future global
warming will likely fall well short of current highest predictions." The study
was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the
Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Gabriele Hegerl of
Duke's Nicholas Schools of the Environment and Earth Sciences said her study
discounts dire predictions of skyrocketing temperatures.
In 2004 the
Heartland Institute published a report by Dr. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P.
Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT). Dr. Lindzen reported that global warming is unlikely to be a
dangerous future problem, with or without the implementation of such programs as
the Kyoto Protocol. Lindzen, a member of the IPCC and one of the world's leading
climatologists, said that alarmist media claims to the contrary are fueled more
by politics than by science.
Said Dr. Lindzen, "With respect to
science, consensus is often simply a sop to scientific illiteracy. After all, if
what you are told is alleged to be supported by all scientists, then why do you
have to bother to understand it? You can simply go back to treating it as a
matter of religious belief, and you never have to defend this belief except to
claim that you are supported by all scientists except for a handful of corrupted
heretics."
So why, if scientists are
researching the issue and if there is no consensus that global warming is a
reality, is this voice not being heard? Why is a near panic building in the news
media, on Capitol Hill and in research labs across the nation and in the
international community?
Answer: fear and money.
Simply put,
scientists know where the grants will come from to pay their salaries. Dr.
Patrick Michaels, a leading opponent to the global warming scaremongers, calls
it the federal/science paradigm. He describes it this way: Tax $ = Grants =
Positive Feedback Loop to Get more Grants.
Says Dr. Michaels, "What
worker bee scientist is going to write a proposal saying that global warming is
exaggerated and he doesn't need the money? Certainly no one wanting advancement
in the agency! There is no alternative to this process when paradigms compete
with each other for finite funding." The only ones who can openly oppose the
party line of the day are those who don't need the grants or who have some other
source of funding. There aren't
many.
The money is in global warming because it's being pushed by a political
agenda that wants power. Power in Washington. Power on the international stage.
Power over economic development. Power over international monetary decisions.
Power over energy. In short, power over the motor of the world. It's driven by
literally thousands of large and small non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
sanctioned by the United Nations, and implemented by a horde of bureaucrats,
university academics and an ignorant but pliable news media.
Case
in point. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) used to
publish the journal Science. Since 2000, it has published roughly 75
commentaries which have supported the idea that global warming is a serious
problem requiring massive solutions. Now, the AAAS acts as a massive lobbying
operation pushing this agenda. Taxpayers have now provided $20 billion into the
scientific community for global warming work.
Moreover, Science and its
British counterpart Nature won't publish articles to the contrary of the agenda.
If a scientist wants the prestige of being published, then he must carry the
global warming banner.
According to Dr. Michaels, this is how it works:
"They take a little truth and distort it or study it into a lot of revenue for
them. Them = Academia + Environmental non governmental organizations + private
scientific fields + Government + all the associated public and private
organizations supporting this shell."
Concludes Dr. Michaels in his
landmark book, Meltdown, "This junk science works for the fish movement, smart
growth, sustaining development, rapid transit, wet lands, critical areas, water
rights, property rights, fossil fuels, logging, justifying huge government and
environmental land wildlife corridor buy ups with public money, changing
regulatory laws, changing high court opinions, escalating enforcement codes, on
and on." It's all thrown into the offering plate as the taxpayer sits in
the pew of the Church of Global Warming.
Federal spending on climate
research has ballooned since the early 1990's from a few hundred million dollars
to $1.7 billion today. As Dr. Michaels points out, scientists who don't toe the
party line don't share in that bounty.
Blasphemy or not, here's the truth
about Global Warming.
As reported by Dr. Lindzen, "The global
mean temperature is never constant, and it has no choice but to increase or
decrease - both of which it does on all known time scales. That this quantity
has increased about 0.6 degrees C (or about 1 degree F) over the past century is
likely. A relevant question is whether this is anything to worry
about."
Professor Bob Carter says the pubic has been brainwashed by
politicians and bureaucrats into believing world industrialization has created
"climate change" that will lead to widespread disaster. However, he shows that a
period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940 before
industrialization really began, followed by a cooling between 1940 and 1965, a
period during which human-caused emissions were accelerating.
In fact, looking deeper into history reveals that global warming and
cooling are simply a regular occurrence. According to Robert Essenhigh,
Professor of energy conservation at Ohio State University, the ice sheets at the
poles have been melting since the early 1900's and the Earth's warming had begun
about the middle 1600s.
That warming trend followed a 300 - 400 year
cooling period, commonly known as the Little Ice Age, which came after the much
hotter Medieval Warm Period, running roughly A.D.900 to 1300. During that
period, the Vikings had two settlements on the west coast of Greenland. The
settlements vanished with the onset of the Little Ice Age. This is the same area
global warming scare mongers are panicked over because some grass is now growing
there. In fact, history shows such growth is nothing new.
We are told,
however that man-made carbon dioxide is the source of the global warming
problem. As Professor Essenhigh asks, "what has carbon dioxide to do with
this"?
He explains, "the two principled thermal-absorbing and
thermal-emitting compounds in the atmosphere are water and carbon dioxide.
However - and this point is continually missed - the ratio of water to carbon
dioxide is something like 30-to-1 as an average value. At the top it is
something like 100-to-1. This means that the carbon dioxide is simply
'noise' in the water concentration, and anything carbon dioxide could do, water
has already done." "So," he asks, "if the carbon dioxide is increasing, is it
the carbon dioxide driving the temperature or is the rising temperature driving
up the carbon dioxide"? In other words, the carbon dioxide issue is
irrelevant to the debate over global warming.
But what
about all of those storms? We can see the weather changing before our eyes,
we're told. We are experiencing death, destruction, plagues, extinction,
biblical catastrophes at alarming rates. Any fool can see. Those reports
simply show how effective the propaganda machine has been.
The truth
about the hurricanes is that during the past 35 years, the average number of
"significant" tropical cyclones in the southern regions, including the Pacific
Ocean and the Southern Indian Ocean, is about 28.5 storms per year. The
breakdown by decade is: 1970s - 32.9; 1980s- 27.8; 1990s - 29.1; and the 2000s,
so far - 25.0 It is interesting to note that so far in the 2000s the numbers are
actually below average. Even if one calculates just the last ten years it only
amounts to 28.5 - well within the average.
The fact is, researchers are
now looking into Hurricane Katrina to determine its true strength. It is
currently listed as a category 4 storm. But will probably be downgraded to a
category 3. It is important to remember that the disaster of New Orleans was a
result of bad government not taking care of the levies. There was relatively
little actual hurricane damage.
Ice is melting on the edge of the caps
because it always melts in the summer. But research shows that the core of the
ice is actually thicker than ever. And the burning deserts? Well, that's what
deserts do, isn't it?
It's easy to distort the facts when you start from
the premise that global warming is a fact and then one must only gather details
to support the premise. It's easy to find film footage of natural occurrences
like melting ice and beached whales and then put your own caption on it --
especially when you are armed with millions of dollars in grant money and an
impressive title to go with it. A published report in a prestigious magazine
accompanied by a news story in a major news paper will lead to speeches in front
of a gathering of ones peers and on to a book deal. It's good to go along to get
along.
So look out this summer. The Global Warming machine will be in
full charge mode as Al Gore invades theaters with his new documentary entitled
"An Inconvenient Truth." The primal panic will reach a deafening scream, sure to
drown out the voice of reason and truth. The one that says there is no global
warming!
Tom DeWeese is president of the American Policy Center and editor of the
DeWeese Report. Contact information: apcmail@americanpolicy.org