November, 2007
The Debate is Not Over
Ashley Emans
Maybe he can’t take the “heat”, but Al Gore refuses to listen to the many rebuttals to global warming
Since the 1800s, Earth’s average temperature has risen one degree. Out of this fact, politicians have created the myth of global warming. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased 30% in the same amount of time, leading many to fear a greenhouse effect in the future. However, all reasonable human efforts cannot alter future weather.
The Ad Council, known for producing public service announcements on reducing global warming, says on their website “Reversing the global warming trend is possible.” The idea of turning our earth’s temperature up or down at will like a thermostat is ridiculous. “’Reversing” warming would require reducing carbon-dioxide emissions by 60-80%, which is simply impossible. The world economy would implode,” said Patrick J. Michaels in the National Review Online. Besides, it is water vapor, not carbon dioxide, which is the primary cause of the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide does play a role, but not that much of one. It is estimated that the sun has caused 50% of this minimal amount of alleged global warming between 1900 and 2000.
It is also impossible to tie weather catastrophes with global warming. For one thing, Category 4 and 5 hurricanes are at the same levels now as they were in the 1950s. Global warming is defined as the reduction of temperature differences between the equator and the poles. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less tropical storms, as was learned in 4th grade science class.
The New York Times was reporting on global cooling up until the late 1970s. The earth goes through cyclical temperature changes every couple of thousand years. There has been, and will be, both global cooling and then warming regardless of human activity.
Some scientists say human-induced global warming is real and many more say it is false. Only the former get any real press. “The very attempt to silence all who disagree about global warming ought to raise red flags,” said Thomas Sowell on Townhall.com. If these scientists were actually dedicated to science, one would hope they would be interested in exploring all of the evidence presented, instead of refusing to acknowledge anything that doesn’t fit with the liberal dogma of reversing industrialization.
These environmentalists (the same ones who ruined our nuclear power industry in the 1970s) want to halt living standards for everyone. It is these same people who today cause the death of millions of black babies in Africa because of the DDT ban.
In Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” he claimed 48 Nobel Prize winning scientists believed having Bush as President hurt science. What was omitted was the fact they were 48 out of 527 members of a Kerry ‘04 advocacy group. But we can forgive him for that oversight since he invented the Internet. Said Richard Lindzen in the Wall Street Journal: “In 1992, (Al Gore) ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism.”
Lindzen believes global warming has been “hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research... Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today.” Scientists who blow the whistle on the false hype of climate change lose their grant money and are ostracized by peers. So, the skewed science perpetuates itself.