essaysfromtheedge

Hot Air Causes Global Warming

This from Drudge today:

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming!"

Are you kidding me?

People have been smoking for centuries, and now it's a problem... not becauses it causes cancer, poor general health, rising health care costs, is a burden to our economy and to society in general. But because it causes... Global Warming?

Is there nothing in this man's fantasies that doesn't relate to his phony science hysteria? Apparently not, because, after his presentation....

....Gore had his staff opened [sic] a stack of cardboard boxes to begin selling his new book, "An Inconvenient Truth, The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It," $19.95, to the U.N. diplomats.

So, it's all evidently a marketing ploy. The Gorester raising money for some future presidential bid (like his former bass, he's denying this, so you know it's true).

One other thing Gore said today:

Gore, who was introduced by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the world faces a "full-scale climate emergency that threatens the future of civilization on earth."

Gore showed computer-generated projections of ocean water rushing in to submerge the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, parts of China, India and other nations, should ice shelves in Antarctica or Greenland melt and slip into the sea.

Now, before you take this too seriously, read this:

http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759

In short, it's a floor speech by Senator James Inhofe Chairman, Senate Environment And Public Works Committee delivered on September 15, 2006. Here is a relevant section:

Here is a quote from Newsweek magazine:

“There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth.”

A headline in the New York Times reads: “Climate Changes Endanger World’s Food Output.” Here is a quote from Time Magazine:

“As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.”

All of this sounds very ominous. That is, until you realize that the three quotes I just read were from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek Magazine and The New York Times, and Time Magazine in 1974.

They weren’t referring to global warming; they were warning of a coming ice age.

Let me repeat, all three of those quotes were published in the 1970’s and warned of a coming ice age.

In addition to global cooling fears, Time Magazine has also reported on global warming. Here is an example:

“[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right… weathermen have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.”

Before you think that this is just another example of the media promoting Vice President Gore’s movie, you need to know that the quote I just read you from Time Magazine was not a recent quote; it was from January 2, 1939.

Yes, in 1939. Nine years before Vice President Gore was born and over three decades before Time Magazine began hyping a coming ice age and almost five decades before they returned to hyping global warming.

Time Magazine in 1951 pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof that the planet was warming.

In 1952, the New York Times noted that the “trump card” of global warming “has been the melting glaciers.”

There are many more examples of the media and scientists flip-flopping between warming and cooling scares.

Here is a quote from the New York Times reporting on fears of an approaching ice age.

“Geologists Think the World May be Frozen Up Again.”

That sentence appeared over 100 years ago in the February 24, 1895 edition of the New York Times.

Let me repeat. 1895, not 1995.

A front page article in the October 7, 1912 New York Times, just a few months after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, declared that a prominent professor “Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age.”

The very same day in 1912, the Los Angeles Times ran an article warning that the “Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.” An August 10, 1923 Washington Post article declared: “Ice Age Coming Here.”

By the 1930’s, the media took a break from reporting on the coming ice age and instead switched gears to promoting global warming:

“America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise” stated an article in the New York Times on March 27, 1933. The media of yesteryear was also not above injecting large amounts of fear and alarmism into their climate articles.

An August 9, 1923 front page article in the Chicago Tribune declared:

“Scientist Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada.” The article quoted a Yale University professor who predicted that large parts of Europe and Asia would be “wiped out” and Switzerland would be “entirely obliterated.”

A December 29, 1974 New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade.”

The article also warned that unless government officials reacted to the coming catastrophe, “mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence” would result. In 1975, the New York Times reported that “A major cooling [was] widely considered to be inevitable.” These past predictions of doom have a familiar ring, don’t they? They sound strikingly similar to our modern media promotion of former Vice president’s brand of climate alarmism.

After more than a century of alternating between global cooling and warming, one would think that this media history would serve a cautionary tale for today’s voices in the media and scientific community who are promoting yet another round of eco-doom.

Much of the 100-year media history on climate change that I have documented here today can be found in a publication titled “Fire and Ice” from the Business and Media Institute. http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice_timeswarns.asp

What can we conclude from this?

First, this is the fourth time in little more than a century that pseudo-science and the media have predicted doom for the planet due to climatic change. First, it was cooling (1895), then warming (1939), then cooling (1974), and now, in this phase of the cycle of hysteria, we're back to warming. So, it's only natural to assume that, 30 years hence, when we are not simmering in our own juices, the pundits will be broadcasting another cooling scare.

Second, the "experts" (who are these people, anyway?) were wrong in 1895, they were wrong in 1939, they were wrong in 1974, and - guess what? - they're wrong now. Read Senator Inhofe's entire speech - it's filled with real science (including links to references) that flatly disprove this notion that we're killing our planet. Remember, no less an "expert" than Ted Danson claimed, in 1989, that if we did nothing to fight global warming, our planet would be uninhabitable in 10 years.

That was 17 years ago.

We're still here.

Which leads to the third, and final, conclusion: the real problem with global warming is all the hot air Al Gore and his ilk are pumping out, like old engines that need a tune-up.

The fear global warming evangelists are producing is self-defeating and pointless. The willing accomplices in the media and pseudo-science community (those "experts" we hear from so frequently) are on a mission to subvert real science, and thus undermine real answers and distract us from real issues that need far more attention than global warming is getting.

Set your watches: on January 27, 2006 Al Gore said that, if we did nothing to fight global warming, our planet would be uninhabitable in 10 years. (Sound Familiar? Maybe Ted needs a writing credit from the Gore people).



Keep your eyes on this one, folks. And ten years from now, when you're sitting comfortably on your porch, enjoying a beautiful evening's sunset, think of Al. It's the least you can do.



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posted by Tomás @ 9/29/2006 02:38:00 PM