PING!
Posted on 01/14/2007 9:48:50 AM PST by GMMAC
Debunking hot hysteria
Political agendas, massive misinformation fuelling climate debate
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Toronto Sun
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Here are some things you probably haven't heard in all the recent hysteria being spouted about global warming by too many politicians, media and environmental activists. To keep this controversy in perspective:
1. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and has experienced many protracted periods of global warming and cooling that had nothing to do with human beings because we weren't yet alive.
Glaciers melted and ice ages locked the Earth in their grip long before we existed.
Scientists say there have been near-extinctions of life on Earth five times because of climate change and other factors, the last one occurring about 65 million years ago.
FOREST FIRES
None of them had anything to do with post-industrial man putting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels like oil and coal. Erupting volcanoes unleash huge amounts of greenhouse gas. So do forest fires and decomposing plant life.
2. Claims by some environmental activists and media that this year's mild winter or hurricane Katrina were caused by man-made global warming are simply irresponsible.
Serious researchers stress that while climate change obviously affects weather, no single weather episode can be blamed solely or conclusively on global warming caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists know that if they start to make this claim, they'll be asked how, since they can't predict the weather two weeks from now, they can predict it decades or centuries into the future.
In fact, predicting climate change and forecasting weather are different issues. Unfortunately, too many politicians, environmental activists and media who often have a political agenda to ram through the Kyoto accord, are deliberately blurring this important distinction.
This is understandable because the UN treaty is highly controversial.
Many Kyoto critics charge it is more concerned with transferring wealth from the First World to the Third World than seriously reducing man-made greenhouse gases.
3. While there is widespread agreement the world is going through a sustained period of warming, from the 1940s to the 1970s we experienced a period of global cooling, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. Back then, Time, Newsweek and others ran stories predicting a possible new ice age. Oops.
Many scientists believe this cooling period was partially the result of post-industrial man injecting pollutants into the air. These pollutants reflect the sun's rays back into space, unlike greenhouse gases which trap heat.
Ironically, as we continue to clean up these pollutants, as we should, some think this will contribute to global warming.
4. The real debate on global warming is about whether man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing it to happen at an accelerated rate that risks, over time, cataclysmic climate change. Most climate change scientists believe this. A minority don't or argue the man-made effect is not significant. Serious researchers do not hysterically shout down as "global warming deniers" anyone who disagrees with them.
Rather, they argue, there is very strong evidence -- many say it's conclusive -- based on both scientific observation and computer modelling that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing a rapid increase in global warming that cannot be explained by any natural causes.
They say it is prudent to err on the side of caution and reduce these emissions now because of the possible catastrophic climate changes that may result over the coming decades and centuries.
5. One can be skeptical about all this, and Kyoto, and still agree with the argument it makes sense to conserve non-renewable fossil fuels like oil and coal and reduce our reliance on them. But the Cassandras, who claim that every time there's a hurricane, tsunami or heat wave, the direct and sole cause is man-made global warming, usually have a political agenda or don't know what they're talking about, or both.
By the way, without greenhouse gases like water vapour and carbon dioxide, we'd all freeze to death.
PING!
It's political. So is most of history. It might be interesting to note that Congress made Ohms law illegal at one time.
Coal ran out after WWII. All the "experts" said it was gonna happen. So, quit worrying about that fossill fuel.
bump
Any curious normal person with a smattering of science knowledge and politics must conclude that Kyoto is a farce and a fraud having, just once, read the story of its creation, and its creator, that Canadian activist nut case...
Any scientific debate which starts out with a political goal is a waste of time, as far as I'm concerned.
Really?
I would be extremely curious to find documentation on this.
"Science" has had its embarrassing moments for sure.
I believe it was Idaho which came within a vote or two in the legislature to decreeing that pi should be exactly 3.1, because it made computations and life easier for the mentally deficient...
It does not surprise me that Ohm's law was similarly attacked.
Really? Why?
Actually, it was Indiana. Larey Niven narrates this sorry episode in his novel ''Oath Of Fealty''.
They say they can predict general climate changes. Climate, not weather.
Really? Why?
Because scientists, even under the best of times are neither all wise nor competent.
And it's time to plug that into discussions such as global warming and second-hand smoke, which are not popularity contests.
It was Congress that did that. If there are scientists in Congress they are most likely of the caliber of Algore.
Thanks for the tip. I'll get a copy.
That was Tennessee, late 70s. I was living in NC at the time and got a good cackle off it. Wrote a letter suggesting they try to rebuild the capitol dome using that value.
By the way, I am off today because our streets in west Texas are skating rinks, forcast high of under freezing. Algore, where is my Global Warming!?
The correct spelling is Gorebal Warning.
That helps to explain why it is cold in CA and TX today.
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