Luis, a fellow blogger friend, posted a link here last week to an excellent exposé on global warming that was recently aired on his channel 4 in Britain (The Great Global Warning Swindle). I urge anyone who hasn’t seen it to do so, and I applaud the producers for taking a remarkably courageous stand against junk science.
After we viewed the program, my husband and I forwarded the link to quite a few friends. Below is an excerpt from an e-mail he received in response from one of his friends:
Who the hell has 1 hour, 15 minutes and 56 seconds to listen to a bunch of Brits! We are planning a trip for the UK in August. I think I'll probably be speaking with an accent by then. I'm no scientist you understand and Co2 may not be a problem, but it doesn't take a genious to know if 6.3 billion people all start to piss in the streams and dump all their junk there that the water sooner or later is going to get dirty and cause problems. Now take that to 12.6 billion people in a short 40-50 years and so on and it sure looks like a problem. So the solution is don't do it! I remember the steel mills in Pittsburgh and Johnstown and believe me air pollution is a problem. Now take that to the air/atmosphere and I can certainly see a problem on the horizon (Co2 or not). Of course if we run out of gas in the next 50 years because of some more stupidity with gas guzzlers and other waste it won't be a problem.... I guess?
Just a thought.
The hell with it! Let’s have lunch in a week or two.
I believe this e-mail, written by a white-collar professional, political (so-called) ‘conservative’, illustrates exactly what is most wrong with our nation – a stubborn unwillingness by the citizenry to become informed about, and take action against, the forces that are seeking our demise as a free republic. Apathetic malaise will prove to be our undoing, even moreso than the threat posed by Islamic terrorism.
Following is an essay on global warming that has been rattling around in my head for quite some time. It is not a research paper. There are no footnotes, no bibliography. There are no deep descriptions of intricate scientific theory. Simply a recitation of fairly elementary scientific facts, born out by a mountain of evidence culled by an endless list of reputable scientists in the fields of physics and climatology.
All opinions expressed are mine, and are the result of several years of reading scientific articles, applying my own (admittedly very primitive) mathematical models, watching ‘documentaries,’ both pro and con, and observing the (American, especially) political process, especially that involving modern American neo-Marxist ‘environmentalists’. As always, I welcome dissenting opinions, but will not tolerate unfounded leftist propaganda.
First allow me to tell you what I believe is the rationale behind the invention of the theory of global warming. Feel free to precede each of the remarks in the following six paragraphs by ‘I believe’. I do not assert that these opinions are fact, merely educated personal conclusions.
Since the beginning of time, there has always existed a class of people who view themselves as human ‘elite’ – as gods in human form. This class of people believes that it possesses an inherent right to more privileges, more possessions, and more power than the rest of humanity.
Such people have always played the starring roles in the ugly series of oppressions, wars, tyrannies, and even genocides, that have occurred throughout the history of mankind, by seeking to enjoy a life of plenty while also ruling over, and oppressing, their brothers.
The basis for Marxist/Leninist doctrine, and modern socialist philosophy, is rooted in such a mindset.
A majority of those now in leadership positions in modern America, as well as the leadership of most globalist organizations, purport to have the best interests of humanity at heart. But, upon close examination, it becomes apparent that they believe they have an inherent right to enjoy a lifestyle that is a cut above that of the masses, while simultaneously authoring rules that must dictate the boundaries within which the masses must exist.
In order to succeed in such efforts, this elite class must convince the masses that there exist conditions that make necessary a natural suppression of productivity, achievement, creativity, and prosperity, and the resulting fruits of success. In order to do so, fostering ignorance among the populace, and then successfully disseminating disinformation, are necessary.
Both insidious, malevolent agendas are succeeding in America 2007.
In its simplest state, what does the theory of global warming purport and predict?
Supporters of the theory teach (though they do not necessarily believe, since their motive for embracing the theory has little to do with a reverence for truth) that human carbon dioxide emission is demonstrably the major cause of climate warming. If not taken seriously, this human CO2-caused warming could result in worldwide health, environmental, and economic catastrophes.
Proponents of this theory support major reductions in the use of fossil fuels, particularly oil and coal, and a turning toward the sun and wind as sources of energy. And they support Draconian changes in lifestyle and behavior by both individuals, and business and industry, in order to cool the supposedly overheating planet.
In the eyes of global warming advocates, man is an enemy of the earth. In our greed and lack of concern for nature, we have used and abused the natural resources available to us. And by polluting the air with CO2 emissions at an increasingly alarming rate, historically unprecedented global catastrophes are sure to occur. We face dramatic rises in the levels of the oceans as a result of the melting of the polar ice caps. Shoreline communities, and then inland cities and towns, will eventually find themselves under water. The earth’s forests and jungles will eventually be transformed into enormous deserts. Entire species of beautiful and innocent animals (apparently the polar bear, in particular), unable to adapt to the warming of the planet, will be wiped off the face of the earth. Once fertile and productive farmland will turn into desert, resulting in global famine. And insects that once only thrived in tropical climates will migrate north, carrying deadly diseases that, until man disturbed the balance of nature, were unheard of in northern climes.
If we continue to industrialize, and to consume fossil fuels, global apocalypse, because of man’s selfish emission of massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, is a virtual certainty. The culprit is industrialized society, and western man’s selfishness lies at the root of the evil.
What does genuine, non-agenda-driven, science say about all of this?
The power of carbon dioxide to dictate climate change:
CO2 is not a major determiner of climate. It is not even a minor determiner. And, even if it were, man’s contribution to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is negligible.
CO2 forms only a very minute part of our atmosphere, 10 parts per million. Ten parts per million (worth repeating). That might be a significant statistic, if CO2 were actually a pollutant, or a potent poison, but it is not. CO2 is essential to life. Think of the 10 parts per million in this way:
If the entire population of the United States represented the atmosphere, three thousand of us (enough to fill the average large high school auditorium) would represent that portion of the atmosphere comprised of carbon dioxide.
And, since the portion of CO2 in the atmosphere that is created by humans is minute, only about one row of that filled high school auditorium represents the CO2 contribution that we humans produce. One row in a high school auditorium versus the entire population of the United States. Pretty impressive negative power we humans wield, huh? Talk about David taking on the Philistines.
In addition, there have been prolonged periods in history in which the earth and its inhabitants were producing ten times as much CO2 as we are today.
A brief, superficial, but representative, example of naturally-occurring ‘warming trends’:
The present ‘warming trend’ goes back several hundred years to the end of the ‘little ice age’ (the eighteenth century). Not only do scientific studies corroborate the existence of that mini ice age, but illustrations and prints produced during the era consistently portray a cold nature. A prevalent theme is the freezing of the Thames, during which wonderful ice fairs and skating competitions were held on a river that we modern inhabitants of the planet cannot imagine as ever having frozen.
Preceding the ‘little ice age’ there was a Medieval warm period (800-1300), during which humans, animals, and vegetation gradually adapted to a significantly warmer climate. Humans embraced a different lifestyle, and animals and vegetation adapted as well. In Europe, the Medieval warm period resulted in the great age of cathedral builders, and vineyards flourished, even in the north of England.
We have temperature records of Greenland that can be traced back thousands of years to an era in which Greenland was much warmer than it is today. Perma-frost, under the forests of Russia, has melted significantly during past warm eras that lasted hundred of years, and then re-frozen during ensuing cold spells.
Other, even earlier, warm periods have been researched and recorded, with a pronounced and extended one having occurred during the Bronze Age, in what is known as the Holocene Maximum. During this particularly warm period, temperatures remained significantly higher than they are today for more than three thousand years. Interestingly enough, polar bears were around back then, and they adapted, survived, and procreated just fine.
The bottom line in global warming is that global warming is indeed a natural part of earth’s history – past, present and future. It occurs periodically, as does global cooling. And it occurs so gradually that the inhabitants of the planet, both plant and animal, are afforded sufficient time to adapt to the ‘temporary’ (until the next warming/cooling phase kicks in) climate change.
[An aside: I find it fascinating that the majority of advocates of the theory of global warming are also believers in the theory of evolution, and yet, despite the fact that the periodic warming and cooling of the earth occurs over a very long period of time – hundreds, if not thousands, of years -- they do not believe that plants and animals can naturally adapt to the temperature cycles.]
Does industrialization contribute to global warming, as purported by environmentalists?
American industrial production in 1900-1940 was minimal in comparison to the post-WW II era, and yet temperatures consistently rose during those four relatively quiet decades. Indeed, most of the rise in temperature that has been recorded during the earth’s current ‘warming trend’ occurred pre-1940. After WW II, during the unprecedented post-war economic boom, the temperature chart changed. After the war, the earth’s temperatures began a steady, forty-year decline, which spurred apocalyptic predictions of the coming of a second ice age. With the boom in post-war industrial activity, the percentage of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere naturally increased, and yet the earth’s temperature began to fall. And it wasn’t until the recession of the mid-1970s that temperatures began leveling off once again.
Is there any correlation at all between CO2 and the earth’s temperature?
If the production of CO2, or the production of greenhouse gases in general (of which CO2 is only a very small part), is the cause of the earth’s current warming, then, as the CO2 rises, it becomes trapped in the upper atmosphere, and the temperatures in the upper atmosphere should be significantly higher than those on the earth’s surface. There are two reliable ways to measure the temperature in the atmosphere: with satellite readings and weather balloons. And readings taken in both ways always lead to the same results:
Temperature readings taken at both levels (surface and upper atmosphere) consistently show that the earth’s surface is significantly warmer than the temperatures in the higher levels of the atmosphere. Actually, the higher the site at which temperature readings are taken, the lower the readings are.
Most reliable scientific studies that have been conducted in order to determine a correlation between the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the temperature of the earth have resulted in one main conclusion: A rise in the earth’s temperature causes the production of increased CO2, and not the other way around.
Many reliable scientific tests can be performed to analyze the specific relationship between the two over time, including arctic ice core data, glacier advances or retreats, analyses of lake or seafloor sediments, tree cellulose, corals, biological fossils, dust or chemical counts, pollen, tree-line shifts, etc. Analysis of scientific evidence thus obtained has consistently shown that increases in atmospheric CO2 consistently parallel increases in temperature with an approximately eight hundred year lag (i.e., when the earth experiences a warming trend, a commensurate increase in CO2 concentration can always be expected to occur approximately eight hundred years later).
Why?
By far, the largest source of CO2 production emanates from the oceans. Human production of CO2, even during major industrialization periods, is insignificant in comparison.
If the surface of the ocean is heated, it emits CO2; if it is cooled, it absorbs CO2. Yet, when the oceans of the world (which comprise seventy percent of the earth’s surface) are heated, because of their gigantic surface area and enormous average depth, it takes approximately eight centuries for the heating or cooling to take complete effect, and to result in either significant emission, or significant absorption, of CO2.
What about the melting of the polar ice caps?
The polar ice caps are always naturally expanding and contracting, sometimes to a very large degree. Ice is always moving. Nowadays, satellites can detect such movement, so it becomes news. News reports regularly show ice breaking off of arctic glaciers. The ‘spring breakup’, which is what is generally reported as potentially apocalyptic ‘news’, is an annual occurrence in the arctic, and always has been. What the international news media do not show are the re-accumulating of the glaciers the following winter.
As for purported rises in the levels of the oceans, such changes can generally be attributed to local factors, such as land development and the accompanying change in the topography, or worldwide thermal expansion of the oceans. When the latter is the cause, it is never the result of relatively recent (as in within the last few hundred years) melting of polar ice, but rather the result of an enormously slow, up to eight-hundred-year heating of the oceans (whose cause will be discussed later), that has no connection with the activities of man.
What causes appreciable heating and cooling of the oceans?
Solar activity. The sun’s activity is always in continuous and enormous flux. And its influence on the earth’s temperature completely dwarfs the effects of all other conceivable warming components.
Sunspots are intense magnetic fields, whose power is barely conceivable by the mind of man, and certainly not capable of being reproduced here on earth. During periods of high solar activity, more sunspots are created and enormous amounts of solar heat are produced.
During the ‘little ice age’ mentioned above, astronomers observed virtually no sunspot activity, and not until sunspots began reappearing did the warming of the earth resume.
More than four centuries of records of sunspot activity and temperature readings indicate that the two graphs, if placed atop one another, are extraordinarily similar.
Sunspots are not the only solar phenomenon that affects earth’s temperature. Subatomic particles from the sun (cosmic rays) combine with water vapor (again, finding its source primarily in the oceans), and clouds are formed. When the solar winds are strong, fewer cosmic rays reach the earth, and fewer clouds are formed. Since clouds produce a cooling effect, strong solar winds produce a cooling effect on earth.
By using ice core analysis, and geological analysis, astrophysicists have been able to compare solar cosmic ray production (largely dependent upon solar winds and the strength of the solar magnetic field) with earth’s temperature going back thousands of years, and have concluded that, when cosmic rays are abundant, temperatures fall, and when cosmic rays decrease, temperatures rise.
Simply stated, earth’s climate is predominantly controlled by enormous variations in solar activity (in the form of sunspots, solar winds, the solar magnetic field, and cosmic rays).
Who is most responsible for propagating the lie of human-caused global warming?
Neo-Marxist philosophy was dealt a near-fatal blow when President Reagan brought communism to its knees in the 80s. After that, peaceniks and leftist political activists began embracing a pseudo environmental movement – a movement that has much more to do with anti-capitalist philosophy than it does with a desire to preserve the environment.
The International Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-funded organization, has provided the basis for many of the ‘facts’ now popular about global warming. Its message (summarized under the first subheading here, and declared in writing in three assessment reports over the past decade … a fourth is pending) is gradually being declared gospel. Its conclusions are unscientific, anti-industrial, anti-achievement, anti-American, and anti-third-world. They are repeated vigorously by the international media and many leftist American politicians, and their complete disregard for all reputable climate science and physics research is blatant.
The sun and the oceans are not mentioned in the committee’s reports, and man and man’s economic and industrial progress are consistently vilified.
In compiling their reports, IPCC officials regularly censored comments and findings by participating scientists when those comments did not support the human-caused warming theory. Entire sections of these scientists’ studied opinions were deleted, and any comments that indicated that man is not the cause of warming were disallowed. The peer review process was entirely corrupted. Many scientists resigned from the panel in protest against the arbitrary editing of their observations, and the requests of many of them who have asked that their names be removed from the report have been denied.
The study of man-made global warming has become a profitable industry, supported by neo-Marxist philosophy. In the less than two decades since the fall of communism, government funding of global warming studies and programs has increased from less than 200 million to tens of billions of dollars a year. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people are now employed in this new ‘industry’. As a result, the large amount of money that has been fed into this incredibly small area of ‘science’ has succeeded in distorting the overall scientific effort. The conclusion has been pre-ordained, and most of the experiments and studies that are conducted, on the government dollar, are geared to support the pre-determined findings.
Computer models are forever being authored, at government expense, in an effort to predict future climate changes. But such climate models are only as good as the assumptions upon which they are based. Nearly all government-funded models assume that man-made CO2 is the cause of climate change. To the untrained eye, mathematical models that predict future events can look impressive. But when a mathematical model has as its foundation hundreds of assumptions (many of them faulty), simply 'adjusting' one or two of those assumptions to your benefit can result in just about any desired result.
In the British exposé mentioned at the beginning of this essay, a respected American climatologist stated that the above state of affairs is equivalent to having a car in disrepair, and looking into the source of the problem, while ignoring the engine (sun), ignoring the transmission (water vapor/clouds), and focusing on one nut on the right rear wheel (CO2). The science is that bad.
The billions of government dollars spent annually in climate science means that there is a huge cadre of workers who are economically dependent upon global-warming dollars. An entire industry has burgeoned as a result of this junk science -- grant-funded scientists, consultants, ‘environmental journalists’, suppliers and developers of alternative energy sources, and some politicians, all depend, at least in part, on the continued popularity and viability of the theory.
Similarly, those climatologists and physicists who speak out against global warming have a lot to lose. It has become next to impossible for such scientists to get government research proposals funded because of their anti-global-warming public stance. They dare not disagree with the ‘consensus’. They dare not speak out against ‘conventional wisdom’. They are routinely ostracized, vilified, and publicly attacked as being on the payroll of big oil, or big business, despite the fact that few, if any, of them have ever received a dime from either source. One once world-renowned scientist who appears in the British exposé has been the focus of several death threats.
What is an example of the environmentalist scare tactics?
As mentioned above, the international media, upon the urging of leftist politicians, is forever predicting environmental apocalypse – disasters ranging from floods, to worldwide famines, to the extinction of broad areas of wildlife, to the spread of plagues and diseases.
Most of the above scenarios can be dismissed by examining the reasons for the earth’s periodic warming/cooling cycles, and by the realization that the animal and plant kingdoms are forever learning to adapt to gradual changes in their environments.
But let’s look at just the last of these apocalyptic predictions, in order to examine a superb example of disinformation posing as science: the spread of insect-born disease.
Many environmentalists tell us that even a mild rise in the earth’s temperature will cause the spread northward of insect-born diseases that were once contained within tropical climates. The spread of malaria is among their favorite doomsday scenarios.
Mosquitoes are not tropical insects. They thrive in very cold temperatures. They are extremely common in the arctic. The worst malaria outbreak in history occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. During that period, in that coldest of climates, there were a reported thirteen million cases a year, and a total of about 600,000 deaths. Large swarms of malaria-carrying mosquitoes have even been sighted near the Arctic Circle.
If the theory of global warming continues to be accepted as fact, what are the perils?
I believe the perils are three-fold:
Universal acceptance of the theory of global warming will cause a gradual increase in the power that government regulation has over our lives. Industry and accomplishment will be stifled. And the individual freedoms that each citizen enjoys will find themselves increasingly eroded, as the jobs we work at, the homes we build, and the general living of our everyday lives will be more and more forced to abide by stringent government dictates handed down as a result of a left-leaning political allegiance to a bogus science that has the amassing of political power at its core.
Economically, it will mean higher prices for food, housing, medical care, and electricity, as well as eventual massive job losses and drastic reductions in gross domestic product, all the while providing virtually no environmental benefit.
Our children are studying, and becoming unnecessarily alarmed about, a ‘science’ that has no real basis in fact. Our science teachers are being forced, by state dictate, to teach a lie. And, as a result, not only is that lie promulgated, but it is being taught in place of subjects that desperately need teaching if we are to survive as a free nation. The teaching of our roots (American history and Western Civilization), the teaching of math and science and language, all of which foster appreciation for our heritage, and develop the tools with which we need to be equipped to face the many enemies that are breathing down our necks, are finding themselves diluted by the increasing, politically-motivated importance that is being placed on ‘environmental studies’.
The environmentalist movement is the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries. As international public policy places increasing restrictions on industrial emissions of CO2, industrial development in the third world is coming under huge political pressure not to develop.
Environmentalist policies are having a disastrous effect on the world’s poorest people. Environmentalists say that, even if the theory of man-made global warming isn’t entirely true, we should still impose Draconian measures to cut carbon emissions, just in case. This philosophy presumes that imposing said measures would have little negative effect on civilization. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Underdeveloped countries, especially in Africa, are being urged not to explore for, or use, oil or coal, but, instead, to base their ‘development’ on solar and wind power – three times more expensive than more conventional power sources, and incredibly unreliable. The world’s poorest people are gradually being forced to rely on the most expensive, and least reliable, forms of power generation.
When international politics dictate that the third world can only use wind and solar power, what they are really telling them is that they cannot develop or industrialize. Solar panels will never power a steel mill or an automobile factory.
I do not believe that the current cycle of warming that the earth is experiencing has anything at all to do with man-made carbon dioxide. And I believe that those who would have us embrace that belief have far-reaching malevolent intent behind their global campaign.
At the same time, I believe that reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil is a wise course of action, for reasons completely independent of the environmentalists’ leftist propaganda. Conserving natural resources, preventing air and water pollution, and protecting wildlife habitats, are noble and necessary intentions that mankind should always afford a place of importance in its decisions. But to author, and enforce, mandatory state-issued Draconian measures that render progress and freedom fragile at best, on the basis of consensus-based science, amounts to nothing more than economic and societal suicide.
~ joanie