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Global Warming: The Perversion of Science Commentary
b y Alan Caruba 3/1/03 Editor's note: Alan's new book, Warning Signs, is hot off the press. If you have enjoyed Alan's columns, you'll love his book. Check it out. Who are you going to believe? The Green claim of global warming or the huge piles of snow left behind by the latest record-setting blizzard? The one thing that the claim of global warming has achieved is the debasement and perversion of science. This corruption has been foisted on the world by environmentalists who hate science that does not conform to their political and social agendas. They use the facade of science to advance their ceaseless attacks on industrialization and modern technology. Their purpose is to force the reduction of energy sources, primarily petroleum, but including coal, and, surprisingly, nuclear energy, the cleanest form. If they could claim that hydroelectric energy was a form of pollution, they would. The latest example of their willingness to completely reverse reality is a claim by Melissa Carey, a so-called "climate change policy specialist" with the Environmental Defense fund. On February 20, a reporter for CNSnews, Marc Morano, quoted her as saying the blizzard that immobilized the East Coast of the United States was, in her view, proof that global warming was occurring. She was quoted saying that "increased extreme events like this are very, very much in line with the predictions of climate models, definitely." The Earth is not experiencing increased extreme events. It is simply experiencing natural events, blizzards, hurricanes, and floods that have been part of its climate for its 4.5 billion years of existance. Climatic cycles such as the El Nino contribute to swings in the number of events, as does the Sun, that has cycles of high magnetic discharges. It is not global warming. It is just the weather. Claims that the so-called science of global warming is "settled" are hogwash. As Paul Georgia pointed out in a recent commentary on Tech Central Station, "One can find a half dozen National Academy of Sciences reports from the last five years that argue that not only is the science not settled, but that scientists are operating in almost complete ignorance of many of the most basic and key assumptions behind the theory." This, of course, does not disturb Ms. Carey and the army of Greens who have been insisting for years now that global warming is real. It is not. It is not even science. It is politics, as seen in the United Nations' effort to force the world to accept its Kyoto Treaty in order to reduce energy use. The claim is that greenhouse gases produced by human activity will doom the Earth. Not surprisingly, the greenhouse gases claim is disputed by figures for 2001 released by the U.S. Energy Department. Greenhouse gas emissions, for the first time since 1991, actually dropped. These are emissions composed primarily of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is essential to the growth of crops, forests, and all vegetation on the face of the Earth. Humans emit CO2 every time they exhale. The Greens are so desperate to advance the Big Lie of global warming that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change literally offers forty different scenarios to support its specious claim, in the hope that one of them might actually prove correct. That's not science. That's science fiction. If the "debate" over global warming was just something confined to the Greens and the thousands of scientists who dispute it, one could assign it to academia, but the U.S. has invested nearly $20 billion dollars in research since 1990. Its conclusion for this insane amount of investment is that the science does not support rapid and intense cuts in energy emissions. We do not need to reduce energy use. It is the key to a successful economy here, and around the world. The Earth has been warming ever since the last Ice Age. You better hope it continues to enjoy its current cycle of moderate weather because another Ice Age, predicted in the 1970s by the very same Greens advocating a catastrophic global warming today, will make the Earth a cold place on which to live. So far, the only real hot air has been coming from people who can look at a huge blizzard of snow and claim it proves that global warming is real. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alan Caruba is the author of "A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam,"
and a pocket guide, The United Nations Versus The United States, both
are available exclusively from www.anxietycenter.com, the Internet
site of The National Anxiety Center. He also writes "Warning
Signs", a weekly commentary posted on the Internet site. In January,
Merril Press will publish a collection of his columns. |