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Global warming insanity?
By Paul Driessen
web posted September 10, 2007
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority," Marcus
Aurelius opined, "but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the
insane."
An even worse fate would be to end up in minority status and an asylum.
Recent developments suggest that this might be the destiny of climate
change alarmists.
Now that NASA has corrected its US temperature records, the hottest year
on record is no longer 1998, but 1934. Five of the ten hottest years
since 1880 were between 1920 and 1940 ? and the 15 hottest years since
1880 are spread across seven decades. This suggests natural variation,
not a warming trend.
Plant and insect remains found at the base of Greenland's ice sheet
indicate that, just 400,000 years ago, the island was blanketed in
forests and basking in temperatures perhaps 27 degrees F warmer than today.
Land area temperatures in South America, Africa and Australia have
declined slightly over the last few years. Since 1998, sea surface
temperatures over much of the world have decreased slightly, while
globally averaged atmospheric temperatures have shown no change.
Many US temperature gauges are near air-conditioning exhausts, hot
asphalt and other heat sources. Their readings are thus too high and
must be revised downward ? along with claims about rising temperatures.
Over the past 650,000 years, global temperatures almost always rose or
fell first ? followed centuries later by changes in atmospheric carbon
dioxide levels, as warming oceans exhaled CO2 or cooling seas absorbed
the gas. (This inconvenient fact is what Al Gore is referring to when he
says the temperature-CO2 relationship "is actually very complicated.")
More scientists are pointing to solar energy levels, cosmic rays and
clouds as determinants of climate ? and saying CO2 plays only a minor
role. Thousands of scientists have questioned claims that humans are
causing catastrophic climate change, and over the past year dozens have
publicly switched from believers to skeptics about climate Armageddon
theories. There is obviously no consensus on climate change.
Latvia and seven other eastern European countries are threatening legal
action against EU decisions to restrict their emissions, as they work to
grow their economies after decades of impoverishment under Communism.
China and India refuse to sacrifice economic growth to concerns about
climate chaos.
China has surpassed the US as the world's leading CO2 emitter ? and EU
carbon dioxide emissions have increased faster than those in the United
States, where both population and economic growth have been
substantially higher than in Western Europe.
During the just-concluded UN climate conference in Vienna, a number of
industrialized countries rejected binding targets of 25-40% greenhouse
gas reductions by 2020 ? while a bloc of 77 developing nations said
industrialized countries should reduce their emissions 80% by that date.
The response of climate alarmists is fodder for psychological textbooks.
Greenpeace says cataclysm skeptics are "climate criminals." NASA
scientist James Hansen calls us "court jesters." /Grist/ magazine wants
"Nuremberg-style war crimes trials." Robert Kennedy, Jr. says we should
be treated like "traitors."
Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit
refused to reveal the methodology for his dire-sounding temperature
data. "Why should I make the data available," he asked, "when your aim
is to find something wrong with it?" And Senator Barbara Boxer turned
climate hearings into inquisitions for catastrophe skeptics, while
Congressman Jim Costa walked out on a witness who pointed out that
proposed legislation would dramatically increase energy and food prices,
cost millions of jobs, and severely hurt poor families ? while doing
nothing to stabilize global temperatures.
/Newsweek/ said climate holocaust "deniers" had received $19 million from
industry, to subvert the "consensus" it claims exists about global
warming. It made no mention of the $50 BILLION that alarmists and other
beneficiaries have received since 1990 from governments, foundations and
corporations ? or of its 1975 article, which declared that scientists are
"almost unanimous" in believing that a major COOLING TREND would usher in
reduced agricultural productivity, famines and perhaps even a new Little
Ice Age.
(/Newsweek/ contributing editor Robert Samuelson called the global
warming "denial machine" article "highly contrived" and based on
"discredited" accusations about industry funding.)
Alarmists have blamed global warming for hurricanes, tornadoes, malaria,
and even the Minneapolis bridge collapse, terrorism, Italian suicides,
teenage drinking and "irritability" in mice. By combining far-fetched
speculation with various computer-generated temperature projections and
worst-case scenarios, they concoct even more ominous auguries, like this
whopper from London's Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre:
If CO2 levels keep rising, global temperatures could soar, ice caps
could melt, oceans could rise dozens of feet ? and all that extra water
pressure could destabilize Earth's crust, squeeze out magma and cause
volcanoes to erupt. The volcanic gases and dust could then cool the
earth, and cause a new ice age.
A 1993 blockbuster movie used a similar what-if pyramid scheme to
generate terrifying encounters with raptors and tyrannosaurs. But when
the lights came up, people knew it was just a movie.
When it comes to climate change, however, many seem unable to separate
science from science fiction ? or even distinguish between
headline-grabbing pronouncements, preposterous disaster flicks like "The
Day After Tomorrow," and pseudo-documentaries like "An Inconvenient
Truth" and "The 11th Hour." Instead of fostering rational discourse and
responsible action, alarmists insist that we "do something" immediately
to prevent climate cataclysm.
Al Gore is buying carbon offset indulgences. Leonardo DiCaprio is
replacing his incandescent lightbulbs. Cheryl Crow promotes one square
per trip to the ladies room. Cate Blanchett will wash her hair less
often in her new $10-million Australian mansion. Cameron Diaz promotes
"indigenous" lifestyles in Third World countries.
But they all support laws mandating greatly reduced energy use and
economic growth ? outside of Hollywood and Nashville's Belle Meade area.
In response, Congress has introduced a half-dozen "climate
stabilization" bills ? and state legislatures are reviewing 375 more ?
even as the scientific "consensus" fades, Europe's united front on
emissions trading collapses, and countries in the Asia-Pacific
Partnership reject mandatory greenhouse gas cutbacks in favor of steady
technological progress in pollution control and energy efficiency.
These bills would cost American consumers many billions of dollars a
year. But they would reduce average global temperatures by a tiny
fraction of the 0.2 degrees F that scientists say the Kyoto Protocol
would accomplish by 2050 (assuming CO2 really is a primary cause of
climate change).
It's time to ask: At what point do symbolic gestures and political
grandstanding become "doing something" about climate change? At what
point do they amount to insanity?
Many suspect that anxiety about climate change was never really about
preventing a global warming ? or global cooling ? catastrophe. Instead,
they say, the real purpose is controlling energy use, economic growth
and people's lives. Alarmist efforts to intimidate climate catastrophe
skeptics and legislate mandatory energy restrictions suggest that these
suspicions are valid, and that climate doomsayers are becoming
increasingly desperate. ESR
/Paul Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ? Black death
(www.Eco-Imperialism.com ) and senior
policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Center for the
Defense of Free Enterprise, whose new book (Freezing in the Dark)
reveals how environmental pressure groups raise money and promote
policies that restrict energy development and hurt poor families./
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