Former President William Jefferson Clinton finds himself at another juncture where “is” is playing a role. The question of whether “is” is really “is” has to do with whether a quote attributed to him is or is not correct.
President Clinton is quoted by Jake Tapper, ABC News senior correspondent, as saying in a Denver speech on Jan. 31: "We just have to slow our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
Tapper then wrote: "At a time that the nation is worried about a recession, is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? 'Slow down the economy'?"
Here is the entire quote, carried at the end of Tapper's blog clarifying the issue:
Clinton: "And maybe . . . the rich countries would say, ‘OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that."But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work."
That is what Clinton said.
A person may think, and rightly so, the previous exercise was rather silly, and that person would be correct.
But this exercise is no more silly than the envirocrats' distortion of the climate change issue.
Of course, the globe's warming. But it is a natural periodic phenomenon that occurs at 1,500-year intervals.
The variations in temperature over the past century are typical for the period.
During the past century, 1900 to 2000, the temperature increase in Fahrenheit degrees was approximately one degree — hardly life-threatening.
The warmest year of the last century was 1934, some 66 years before the turn of the century, and it was before the major impact of vehicular traffic and coal-burning electrical generation plants that was to follow.
The human anatomy is prepared to accommodate substantial ranges of temperature far in excess of 1 degree.
For example, a resident in Phoenix, Ariz., may expect a range in outdoor temperatures of some 70 degrees in a 24-hour period in July from a low of 50 degrees to a high of 120 degrees.
And storms, floods, droughts, tornadoes and hurricanes do not claim hundreds of thousands of lives in Arizona each year.
Let's get real!
Taken in its entirely, the climate conditions in the United States during the last 100 years have been no more life threatening than a reasonable forecast of climate change over the next 100 years.
Al Gore and his merry band of prognosticators have been misleading America, and the rest of the world for too long.
It is time we send Al Gore and his tooth fairy followers back to wherever tooth fairies come from.
Quite seriously, if the global warming issue gets the traction that Al Gore and his followers intend, consequences of major proportions could be brought to bear on the American public.
The Kyoto Protocol has been temporarily shelved, thanks to the courage and intelligence of President George W. Bush, who refused to sign the Protocol for the United States. President Clinton had signed an unratified version and the U.S. Senate at the time, in a symbolic vote, rejected it 98-0.
The Kyoto Protocol would have required the United States to give up 35 percent of its energy by the year 2012 which would have virtually destroyed the U.S. economy and lowered America to the level of a Third-World country.
The Kyoto Protocol still lurks in the wings and remains in the forefront of the minds of those zealots on the left who would destroy America to gain their warped and misguided goals.
We must remember the global mass media has taken up the cause of the global warmers. The demonstrated unscrupulous behavior of the world media will continue to press forward.
Noted climate experts are beginning to come forward to refute the claims of the Al Gore types. They offer studies to refute the political science claims of the media-backed promoters of the global warming agenda.
One such person is the highly respected atmospheric physicist, Dr. S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia.
Dr. Singer states unequivocably, “Al Gore is wrong. I don’t deny global warming exists . . . in fact, I recently co-wrote a book called 'Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years.' I believe, along with my fellow scientists, that climate change is a natural phenomenon . . . The Earth has seen warming cycles like the one we’re experiencing now many times in the past — on average about every 1,500 years.”
Over 80 percent of state climatologists disagree with Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that established the so-called “scientific consensus” on global warming.
E. Ralph Hostetter, a prominent businessman and agricultural publisher, also is a national and local award-winning columnist. He welcomes comments by e-mail sent to eralphhostetter@yahoo.com.
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