Is Global Warming a Sin?

The Nation ^ | 5/14/07

[Omega Man II]

beat the devil by Alexander Cockburn

Is Global Warming a Sin?

[from the May 14, 2007 issue]

In a couple of hundred years historians will be comparing the frenzies over our supposed human contribution to global warming to the tumults at the latter end of the tenth century as the Christian millennium approached. Then as now, the doomsters identified human sinfulness as the propulsive factor in the planet's rapid downward slide. Then as now, a buoyant market throve on fear. The Roman Catholic Church sold indulgences like checks. The sinners established a line of credit against bad behavior and could go on sinning. Today a world market in "carbon credits" is in formation. Those whose "carbon footprint" is small can sell their surplus carbon credits to others less virtuous than themselves.

The modern trade is as fantastical as the medieval one. There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind's sinful contribution--and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed.

[deadrock]

"Could the tide be turning against this Global Warming fraud?"

Right after they abandon PC.

[Paperdoll]

LOL! A classic!

[missnry]

[The KG9 Kid]

I like the constrast that the author draws between 'Carbon Credits' and the sinful indulgence licences that the Roman Catholic Church sold during the Dark Ages.

What depresses me most about this comparison is that the Roman Catholic Church held the Western world in the grip of their insanity for many centuries; "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs".

Are we going to have to wait 500 years for our own Martin Luther and his 95 Theses to unburden us from the superstitious yoke of Eco-fanaticism?

If I had lived in the Dark Ages, I wouldn't have been a fearful servile superstitious nitwit nor would I have let the Papists burn me at the stake for being a heretic. Neither do I intend to let the New Age religionist wackos of the militant environmental movement do the same to me in modern times.

[Old Professer]

Cockburn was staunch in his belief the Clinton’s were guilty of criminal acts in Whitewater but he caved along with the rest when faced with the ultimate power the office of president holds.

[Old Professer]

This just does more to cement the denial position solidly in the fringe territory; they don’t get any more fringe than the Nation when it comes to old-line magazines.

[DJtex]

In the full article, which Rush read from yesterday, Cockburn was enlightened about GW by an ex-US Navy Meteorologist who work had totally soured him on Climate Models. The GW models totally ignore water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas, simply because it is so huge and so impossible to model. We have no idea even how much precip. is falling to Earth at any given period. Also ignoring the effect of water's other forms--liquid and ice--makes CO2 modeling totally bogus.

As the guy told Cockburn: "The effect of CO2 compared to water vapor is like a couple of farts in a hurricane."

Though Cockburn is proud to term himself a radical, GW is not really a liberal issue, not even a radical's issue, it's an anarchist issue, one that is dedicated to the wholesale destruction of industrialized society. Maybe that is why this intellectually honest liberal realizes that it's not really going to help the poor (who will actually suffer the most) and is exposing the GW hoax for what it really is.

[Paperdoll]

Thank you for your explanation of the Global Warming movement, and for the revelation of whom it would and would not benefit.

[MarkeyD]

Kind of sucks they canceled the show, dontcha think?

[ChessExpert]

Thanks for the post. Good article.

From the article:

As Hertzberg says, water in the form of oceans, snow, ice cover, clouds and vapor "is overwhelming in the radiative and energy balance between the Earth and the sun.... Carbon dioxide and the greenhouse gases are, by comparison, the equivalent of a few farts in a hurricane." And water is exactly that component of the Earth's heat balance that the global warming computer models fail to account for.

Missing variables. A classic mistake. Every variable you omit, gives a greater role to CO2. They left out the clouds.

The human carbon footprint is of zero consequence amid these huge forces and volumes, not to mention the role of the giant reactor beneath our feet: the Earth's increasingly hot molten core.

This should be interesting when published. A fellow freeper has mentioned the earth’s core. It stands to reason that it’s behavior is not constant or understood.

Many articles and comments on FreeRepublic have emphasized the sun. And rightly so. The famed computer models that “prove” global warming omit the sun too.

So to catalog major omissions / weaknesses of the theory of global warming (ToGW): it omits the sun, the molten core of the earth, and clouds. And there are more omissions. Well, if you leave out all the important stuff, then it must be man-made CO2.

[unspun]

“Is Global Warming a Sin?”

I don’t know that the Sun can be guilty of a sin.