The Great Global Warming Swindle

One central problem for those who promote the idea of man made global warming is the earth's temperature record - on almost all time scales.

In the last decade, there has been no clear warming trend (as the UK Met Office and IPCC's own figures demonstrate). In the last century, much of the warming occurred prior to 1940, when human emissions of CO2 were relatively small compared to today. During the post-war economic boom (when one would have expected the temperature to rise) the world cooled, from the 1940s till the mid-70s (again, this is evident from accepted data used by the IPCC).

But it's important to look back further in time 1,000 years. The climate record which used to be accepted as the standard account of this period was published in the first IPCC report. But this account posed a problem. A thousand years ago there was time a warm period - apparently warmer than today (known to climatologists as the Medieval Warm Period). This was followed by a relatively cold period (known as the Little Ice Age), from which, over the past two to three hundred years, seem to have made a slow, welcome recovery.

This has all rather undermined the idea that current temperatures were either unusual or alarming. In subsequent IPCC reports the original graph was replaced by another - the famous 'Hockey Stick' (so-called because it looks like one). The Hockey Stick was a lot more dramatic, and was featured proudly on the top of the front page of the new IPCC reports. But was it true? The Hockey Stick debate is very telling, and we urge readers to review the links below. (See linked website.)

Further back in time, still within our current 'interglacial period, we find more warm spells - notably what geologists call the 'Holocene Maximum' when, for a few thousand years, the earth was significantly warmer than we find it today. Over longer time periods of course, the earth has been far, far hotter than it is today (with tropical forests covering much of the earth) and also far, far colder, with much of the earth buried under miles of ice. The Earth's climate has always changed, and changed without any help from us.

But there is another problem, a very major problem, for those who promote the idea of CO2-led global warming. According to global warming theory, if an enhanced greenhouse effect is responsible for warming the earth, then the rate of temperature rise should be greatest in that part of the earth's atmosphere known as the troposphere, specifically in the tropics. And yet the observations, from weather balloons and satellites have consistently shown that not to be the case. I urge readers to look at the Christy et al papers below. The latest one was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (2007).

The tide is turning away from the unbalanced discussion of climate change in the MSM that is dominated by environmentalists and liberal politicians. As the economic threat from cap and trade legislation grows, more reasonable opinion and balanced scientific evidence is appearing largely outside the MSM. This British website is one example of the growing effort to present the other side in the climate change debate and counter the autocratic statements from liberal politicians that "the debate on global warming is over" (presumably just because they say it is.)

I'm positioned somewhere in the center right on the issue of climate change. While I believe it's generally not a good idea to continue increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere endlessly into the future, I also see no significant evidence of global warming at the present time. The factual scientific evidence for global warming is basically non-existent and thus there is no reason to enact the drastic and radical reductions in CO2 output in the Waxman-Markey bill which (amazingly) passed in the House. Given that the evidence for global warming is so limited, why then did the Waxman-Markey bill pass in the House? That question brings up a chain of events which I believe explain how global warming became a central pillar of democrat ideology.

This chain of events starts with the environmental lobby, of which I have some familiarity from my days as a member of the Sierra Club in Califonia back in the 1980s. The most important thing to understand about environmentalists is that they dearly love undeveloped wilderness areas, almost with a religious fervor. I don't blame them for that, because unspoiled wilderness areas are often spectacularly beautiful and certainly worth preserving. Probably the best vacation I ever had was a backpacking trip in Kings Canyon National Park with the Sierra Club in the 1980s. Environmentalist love widlerness in it's original state and they love nature and wild animals. Some of them clearly love wild animals and wilderness areas more than people and view people as the destroyer of their beloved wilderness and wild animals. Most environmentalists are opposed to all economic activity that develops wilderness and even partially developed rural areas and farm land. They oppose all kinds of econmic activity in these areas, including road building, oil & gas production, mining, electric power transmission, and most commerical and residential construction. They want all these areas left as they are now, beause they like undevleoped land in all its natural beauty. But they've never been able to stop all that economic activity in undeveloped areas because economic forces have always pushed congress to open up undeveloped areas for economic activity. The environmental lobby has been continually frustrated by the steady economic development of undeveloped land and the "destruction of the wilderness" (as they see it.)

Then the enviromental lobby was handed a powerful weapon to use in its fight against economic development: a few prominent scientists developed the theory of global warming and made dire forecasts of drastic increases in global temperatures, melting polar icecaps, and rising sea levels. This was a huge lucky break for the environmentalists who quickly realized that this small group of scientists had just handed them the powerful weapon they needed in their attempts to stop economic development and preserve wilderness. The environmental lobby quickly jumped on this new theory of global warming in the 1990s and took full ownership and sponsorship of global warming theory. Finally, they believe they have The Weapon to use to force congress to slow down economic activity in all its forms, especially road building and all those hated skiers driving 4-wheel drive SUVs into the mountains to ski while staying at their second homes and condos (despised by environmentalists) scattered throughout the mountain forests. This is why environmentalists are such staunch and relentless supporters of global warming theory, despite the lack of evidence for global warming: global warming theory is their most powerful weapon against the types of eonomic activity that they dislike. That is the hidden agenda of many Waxman-Markey supporters.

Once environmentalists took full empassioned ownership of global warming theory, democrat politicians followed one of their strongest groups of supporters and also took ownersip and full support of global warming theory. When democrat politicans took ownership of global warming then the liberal mainstream media (in full support of democrat politicans) also assumed ownership and full support for global warming and began to report on global warming as if is a fact and not a theory. In the final link of the chain, when environmentalists and democrats took ownership of global warming theory, then academia also took full ownership of this theory because most of the instructional staff at our colleges is politically liberal and skepticism about global warming became a significant career risk for instructors and an impediment to obtaining grant money from Washington. Global warming opponents have now been all but silenced on campus because opposition to global warming theory is so unpopular in our colleges and is viewed simply as dangerous right-wing ideology, despite all the evidence against global warming theory. The global warming debate as reported by the MSM is now largely a big echo chamber of liberal environmentalists, liberal polticians, liberal journalists, and liberal academics all repeating the same baseless statements to each other in one big mindless feel-good blast of scientific and economic foolishness. Just to make sure you understand the truth, global warming is clearly an unproven theory at this point in time and many top climate scientists are skeptical of this theory, despite what the MSM and democrats say.

Where does this leave us open-minded, free thinking conservatives? How do we stop the insanity of the Waxman-Markey bill? The right strategy for us is not initially a direct frontal assault on global warming theory, because the American public has been relentlessly brainwashed by the MSM into thinking global warming is some kind of fact. That's too tough of a fight to take on intially, although we need to work a parallel track and start pounding away at the false oversimplified, semi-scientific case made for global warming. The main track for our opposition strategy on Waxman-Markey is the economic track. Our key logical points on this track are as follows:

1) First and foremost, the cap and trade approach simply will not work at the global level, because the developing countries won't agree to limit their output of CO2. China, India, Brazil, and other developing countries are not going to consume less coal, oil, and natural gas just because the Sierra Club, Henry Waxhead, and Al Gore believe in global warming theory. They're going to have to see solid proof of actual statistically significant rising temperatures correlated in time with CO2 levels before they limit use of fossil fuels, and without any liberal bureaucrats or environmentalists making phony "adjustments" to historical temperature data or climate foreasting models to get results that support global warming theory. Right now, the historical climate data doesn't support global warming theory, so we're not going to get any limitations on CO2 output from developing countries even if we stupidly cut way back on our own output of CO2 before we have economically viable alternatives to hydrocarbon fuels and coal. If we foolishly cut back on CO2 output now, that will simply push manufacturing and oil refining offshore into the developing countries where even more CO2 will be produced offshore than we eliminate here. Therefore, even if the theory was true, the cap and trade approach would actually make the problem worse by increasing total global production of CO2. A number of senate democrats, in a classic display of the greater wisdom of the senate, have recognized this major flaw in the Waxman-Markey bill and wrote to the President on this subject.

2) The Waxman-Markey bill calls for the U.S. to reduce CO2 emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Assuming US GDP grows by a typical average annual rate of 2.5% during those 15 years, that adds up to a 44.8% increase in GDP while CO2 emissions have to decline by 17%. That means the amount of GDP per ton of CO2 output in America has to increase by 74.5% in only ten years (assuming that ratio hasn't changed significantly since 2005) because the bill, if in some fit of congressional insanity actually passes the Senate, wouldn't become law until 2010. I'll state flatly for the record right here that a 74.5% increase in the amount of GDP per ton of CO2 in only ten years is impossible. Because that is impossible to achieve even in the best case scenario, there's only one way to achieve the 17% reduction in CO2 ouput, and that of course is through a drastic reduction in the growth of economic activity in America. This rate of growth would of course be well below the assumptions in the latest 10-year budget forecast that already calls for $9 trillion more in federal debt in the next ten years. So if Waxman-Markey is actually implemented, you can count on at least another 3 trillion in federal debt to pay for all the extra welfare payments for the additional unemployed American wokers and to offset all the lost tax revenue from the lost economic activity. Waxman-Markey would create a fiscal disaster that is even bigger than the disaster already projected by the Executive Branch, which is now a leaderless beauracracy in full economic drift with no plan to grow our way into a major reduction of that $9 trillion in additional federal debt. Their "plan" is apparently to make good speeches about the perils of rising national debt while doing nothing serious to promote economic growth or to reduce federal spending.

I would start there with those two logical threads on the economic track, while we work a parallel track to unravel the bogus theory of global warming. Now, I return to my first paragraph where I wrote "I believe it's generally not a good idea to continue increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere endlessly into the future." I say that because while there is no signficant evidence for global warming at the present time, there is still the possibility that rising CO2 levels could cause some kind of climate change or have some negative impact on agriculture at some time in the future. So what is the right way to prevent those possible problems from occuring in the future or limit them if they do occur? The answer is simple but not easy to implement: we have to develop alternative energy sources that are economically more attractive than coal and hydrocarbon fuels. Alternative energy sources have to cost less than fossil fuels, without any extra taxes or cap and trade fees added to the cost of fossil fuels. Then the developing countries will stop burning coal because it costs less to use the alternatives and because coal puts a lot of real pollutants into our atmosphere, such as sulphur dioxide, mercrury, and uranium. I believe the Chinese and Brazilians (and of course we Americans) would like to stop burning coal and instead use nuclear power, solar power, and wind power, if those sources didn't cost more than coal-fired power and if they could store a substantial amount of the energy from solar and wind power to use when they need it (e.g., when the winds are light). So this is the right path to take to cut back on endless increases in atmospheric CO2 levels: focus our great scientific and engineering talent on developing more cost effective alternative energy sources, more efficient energy storage devices, and more energy-efficient motor vehicles, industrial equipment, appliances, and lighting, WITHOUT crushing the American economy with the insanity of the Waxman-Markey bill. Let's be constructive and optimistic and solve the problem through scientific development and not by implementing the hidden agenda of very slow economic growth held by radical environmentalists. Let's hope and pray that Senator Inhofe is right and Waxman-Markey really is DOA in the senate, and just in case it isn't be sure to call your senators this week on this critical issue. I rest my case and return this forum back to my fellow conservatives.

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