In just a few days, President Obama will be in Copenhagen, Denmark, with a large group of influential people from around the world, discussing what to do to prevent our globe from frying like an egg on a hot sidewalk.
That last part is an exaggeration, of course, but the attitude among most of the attendees seems too similar to the fairy tale about Chicken Little, who ran around the barnyard screaming “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
Former Vice President Al Gore has spent eight years roaming the world with a message just about as dire, and received a Nobel Prize for his efforts. Now Bloomberg reports that Mr. Gore has seen his net worth soar from $2 million when he left office to more than $100 million now. He stands to make billions personally if “cap and trade” passes because of his stake in the newly created agency that will lay billions of penalties on entities that produce more carbon emissions than the agency deems allowable.
If this happens, it will make America’s fabled “robber barons” from another era look like neighborhood kids with a lemonade stand.
What makes this James Bond or Michael Crichton story so fascinating is that a growing majority of the world’s scientists are proclaiming loudly: “The sky is not falling!” The world is not frying in CO2! It’s actually cooling, and has been for some time!
I feel reasonably certain that our friend Al is truly persuaded that he’s telling the truth, or less likely, has persuaded himself of it. And of course, many of the pictures he shows and stats and figures he relates are factual. It’s just that he has drawn some wrong, and terribly damaging, conclusions from them. Just like Chicken Little, who saw dark and low-hanging clouds over her, and felt the sky was falling. Facts right, conclusion wrong.
Incontrovertible facts have now surfaced that contradict Gore’s conclusions. Hard evidence and common sense confirm that:
Solar energy is the real source of global warming — and it always has been cyclical. The world’s average temperature waxes and wanes according to activities on the sun, and there is no evidence using observed data over any time period you might choose, that carbon dioxide (CO2) has any effect on temperature or climate. A “greenhouse effect” linked to industrial emissions of CO2 is simply a myth. As reported in the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, oxygen isotope records from ice cores taken in Greenland show that planet Earth has had four major warm periods during the past 5,000 years. Three of those warm periods preceded industrial society, before man ever discharged CO2. Carbon dioxide had nothing to do with the warming. In fact, there have been periods when carbon dioxide has been present in the Earth’s atmosphere at 20 times today’s concentrations, with no dire consequences.
Carbon dioxide itself is not a pollutant; it’s a life-giving gas, tied intricately to the life of green plants. Plant life takes CO2 and uses it to produce oxygen. But even if it were a bad thing, it makes up just .0386 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere — of which one one-thousandth of a percent is from human activity. As reported increasingly on factual news programs, and of great consternation to Gore and those who are still sounding alarms, the Earth is getting cooler, not warmer. The period from January 2007 through September 2009 show the sharpest drop in temperature in recorded history. The Arctic icepack grew by 370,000 square miles (1.5 times the size of Texas) in the past two years. The most recent Antarctic snowmelt during austral summer of 2007-2008 is the lowest ever recorded. The Antarctic ice cover is now 30% greater than its average over the last 30 years. And the polar bear population in the northern arena has increased, to a projected 32,000. Even at the Kyoto convention, the Chicken Littles themselves projected that, if the whole world jumped on board and managed to reduce carbon emissions to zero — in a hurried 20 years of all-out commitment and urgency — the net effect on the world temperature would be about 1 degree. Can you spell "insignificant”? So of course, our Nobel winner and his troop of scientists and enlightened world leaders are scrambling and trying to explain all of this. They’re saying all these things are just “temporary aberrations” and not relevant to their projections — which is exactly the point. Earth’s temperature is related to changes and aberrations on the sun, as it has always been, and is affected little if at all by man’s machinery.
I’ve heard one top solar physicist say, “It’s the height of presumption and hubris for man to think that he can affect or warp the temperature of this whole vast planet by his puny activities. The sun rules our climate, and the sun alone.”
What’s sinister about all this is that 67 senators are ready to vote for a cap-and-trade carbon tax that will cripple American industry and our own ability to produce essential oil and coal while we try to come up with alternatives — and make Gore the world’s first “carbon billionaire.” If drastically wrong decisions are made by our president in Copenhagen, we will likely lose our status as the world leader in productivity, and be drawn into a world governing body that will tell us what we can and cannot do.
Please compare and seriously consider two statements:
1) “Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.” — Barack Obama, Nov. 19, 2008
2) “With all due respect, Mr. President, that is not true. We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now. After controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather-related events. The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior. Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.” — Signed by more than 100 of the world’s top scientists and researchers in an open letter to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the L.A. Times, March 30, 2009.
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