Top 10 ‘Global-Warming’ Myths
Compiled by Christopher Horner, author of “The Politically Incorrect
Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism” (Regnery — a HUMAN
EVENTS sister company).
10. The U.S. is going it alone on Kyoto and global warming.
Nonsense. The U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol?s energy-rationing
scheme, along with 155 other countries, representing most of the
world?s population, economic activity and projected future growth.
Kyoto is a European treaty with one dozen others, none of whom is in
fact presently reducing its emissions. Similarly, claims that Bush
refused to sign Kyoto, and/or he withdrew, not only are mutually
exclusive but also false. We signed it, Nov. 11, 1998. The Senate
won?t vote on it. Ergo, the (Democratic) Senate is blocking Kyoto.
Gosh.
Don?t demand they behave otherwise, however. Since Kyoto was agreed,
Europe?s CO2 emissions are rising twice as fast as those of the
climate-criminal United States, a gap that is widening in more
recent years. So we should jump on a sinking ship?
Given Al Gore?s proclivity for invoking Winston Churchill in this
drama, it is only appropriate to summarize his claims as such: Never
in the field of political conflict has so much been asked by so few
of so many … for so little.
9. Global-warming proposals are about the environment.
Only if this means that they would make things worse, given that
?wealthier is healthier and cleaner.? Even accepting every
underlying economic and alarmist environmentalist assumption, no one
dares say that the expensive Kyoto Protocol would detectably affect
climate. Imagine how expensive a pact must be — in both financial
and human costs — to so severely ration energy use as the greens
demand. Instead, proponents candidly admit desires to control
others? lifestyles, and supportive industries all hope to make
millions off the deal. Europe?s former environment commissioner
admitted that Kyoto is ?about leveling the playing field for big
businesses worldwide? (in other words, bailing them out).
8. Climate change is the greatest threat to the world’s poor.
Climate — or more accurately, weather — remains one of the
greatest challenges facing the poor. Climate change adds nothing to
that calculus, however. Climate and weather patterns have always
changed, as they always will. Man has always best dealt with this
through wealth creation and technological advance — a.k.a.
adaptation — and most poorly through superstitious casting of
blame, such as burning ?witches.? The wealthiest societies have
always adapted best. One would prefer to face a similar storm in
Florida than Bangladesh. Institutions, infrastructure and affordable
energy are key to dealing with an ever-changing climate, not
rationing energy.
7. Global warming means more frequent, more severe storms.
Here again the alarmists cannot even turn to the wildly distorted
and politicized ?Summary for Policy Makers? of the UN?s IPCC to
support this favorite chestnut of the press.
6. Global warming has doomed the polar bears!
For some reason, Al Gore?s computerized polar bear can?t swim,
unlike the real kind, as one might expect of an animal named Ursa
Maritimus. On the whole, these bears are thriving, if a little less
well in those areas of the Arctic that are cooling (yes, cooling).
Their biggest threat seems to be computer models that air-brush them
from the future, the same models that tell us it is much warmer now
than it is. As usual in this context, you must answer the question:
Who are you going to believe — me or your lying eyes?
5. Climate change is raising the sea levels.
Sea levels rise during interglacial periods such as that in which we
(happily) find ourselves. Even the distorted United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports refute the
hysteria, finding no statistically significant change in the rate of
increase over the past century of man?s greatest influence, despite
green claims of massive melting already occurring. Small island
nations seeking welfare and asylum for their citizens such as in
socially generous New Zealand and Australia have no sea-level rise
at all and in some cases see instead a drop. These societies? real
problem is typically that they have made a mess of their own
situation. One archipelago nation is even spending lavishly to lobby
the European Union for development money to build beachfront hotel
resorts, at the same time it shrieks about a watery and imminent
grave. So, which time are they lying?
4. The glaciers are melting!
As good fortune has it, frozen things do in fact melt or at least
recede after cooling periods mercifully end. The glacial retreat we
read about is selective, however. Glaciers are also advancing all
over, including lonely glaciers nearby their more popular retreating
neighbors. If retreating glaciers were proof of global warming, then
advancing glaciers are evidence of global cooling. They cannot both
be true, and in fact, neither is. Also, retreat often seems to be
unrelated to warming. For example, the snow cap on Mount Kilimanjaro
is receding — despite decades of cooling in Kenya — due to
regional land use and atmospheric moisture.
3. Climate was stable until man came along.
Swallowing this whopper requires burning every basic history and
science text, just as ?witches? were burned in retaliation for
changing climates in ages (we had thought) long past. The ?hockey
stick? chart — poster child for this concept — has been disgraced
and airbrushed from the UN?s alarmist repertoire.
2. The science is settled — CO2 causes global warming.
Al Gore shows his audience a slide of CO2 concentrations, and a
slide of historical temperatures. But for very good reason he does
not combine them in one overlaid slide: Historically, atmospheric
CO2, as often as not, increases after warming. This is typical in
the campaign of claiming ?consensus? to avoid debate (consensus
about what being left unspoken or distorted).
What scientists do agree on is little and says nothing about
man-made global warming, to wit: (1) that global average temperature
is probably about 0.6 degree Celsius — or 1 degree Fahrenheit —
higher than a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of carbon
dioxide have risen by about 30% over the past 200 years; and (3)
that CO2 is one greenhouse gas, some level of an increase of which
presumably would warm the Earth?s atmosphere were all else equal,
which it demonstrably is not.
Until scientists are willing to save the U.S. taxpayer more than $5
billion per year thrown at researching climate, it is fair to
presume the science is not settled.
1. It?s hot in here!
In fact, ?It?s the baseline, stupid.? Claiming that present
temperatures are warm requires a starting point at, say, the 1970s,
or around the Little Ice Age (approximately 1200 A.D to the end of
the 19th Century), or thousands of years ago. Select many other
baselines, for example, compared o the 1930s, or 1000 A.D. — or
1998 — and it is presently cool. Cooling does paint a far more
frightening picture, given that another ice age would be truly
catastrophic, while throughout history, warming periods have always
ushered in prosperity. Maybe that?s why the greens tried ?global
cooling? first.
The claim that the 1990s were the hottest decade on record
specifically targets the intellectually lazy and easily frightened,
ignoring numerous obvious factors. ?On record? obviously means a
very short period, typically the past 100+ years, or since the end
of the Little Ice Age. The National Academies of Science debunked
this claim in 2006. Previously rural measuring stations register
warmer temps after decades of ?sprawl? (growth), cement being warmer
than a pasture.
Bet this sets off all the tree huggers and enviroidiots.
[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)