Globaloney Warming

A friend's daughter called me the other day to ask for some sources of information regarding Global Warming Skeptics, since she knew that I was one. She also asked me what the arguments were against Global Warming theory, as presented by said Skeptics, so here goes:

- Global Warmers don't do the science to reach their conclusions, but that doesn't stop them from routinely reaching their conclusions. For example: there's not enough data to support the claims of Global Warmers that man causes anything. A one degree warming in a century has historical and scientific precedent, and it's arguable that it doesn't mean a thing; yet, this is the primary finding upon which they build their case. The same holds true with all other phenomena they attribute to Global Warming. The one time they did the science (the federal government spent billions for a decade long study on Acid Rain in the 70s and 80s) the results ended up refuting virtually all of their conclusions about the origins and effects of Acid Rain.

Thereafter, Global Warmers relied on speculation and "computer models" to "prove" their theories. Computer Models are a substitute not only for independent thinking, but the Scientific Process itself. So, once they conjured up a Computer Model that supported their assumptions, it was no longer necessary to do any real research.

- Global Warmers game the data regarding hurricanes and other such phenomena, misrepresenting the trends in their occurrence and outright ignoring data that challenge their conclusions. According to them, hurricane activity, disappearing glaciers and "dead zones" in our oceans are all automatically a symptom of Global Warming, even though these things have been happening for countless millennia. Hurricane activity in the last several years is "the worst it's ever been" (and thus a proof of man's involvement), even though it's not the worst it's ever been, even in the past century. But no matter. They're on a mission here.

The "plight" of glaciers is another one my favorites, as Global Warmers have - in their rhetoric - assigned to Glaciers the same status as the Bald Eagle or the Snail Darter. Glaciers are an endangered species, and yet, given that glaciers were created with the most recent Ice Age and the advance of wintry conditions from the North Pole as they headed south, isn't it inevitable that the glaciers would disappear when that Ice Age diminished, as it has for countless millions of years, as it is doing now? Why is it impossible for Global Warmers to believe that we are merely experiencing the tail end of an Ice Age?

Global Warmers also ignore other causes for any warming the Earth has experienced, including unprecedented sunspot activity, volcanoes, the natural cycle of warming and cooling the Earth goes through every 10 to 50 thousand years, or any combination of the three.

- Global Warmers regularly cook the books on the data. In the 90's, when global weather satellites refuted their theory by showing far less warming of the Earth in the past 50 years than ground-based temperature measurements, satellite measurements were discredited and excluded. Never mind that satellites provide 90% of the useful data on weather patterns and climatological trends. In the case of temperatures only, satellites are no good. They can't even agree how much the Earth has warmed. Within the Global Warming community, it might be .75 of a degree, it might be 1.50 degrees. Such inconclusiveness in observations doesn't give one a warm fuzzy regarding the righteousness of their conclusions, if you'll forgive the expression.

- Global Warmers keep moving the bar in defining which pollutants are evil: in the 70s and 80s, it was Ozone, hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide and CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) that were the villains. Well, we banned CFCs and drastically reduced all the others. Left without a bogeyman, the Global Warmers decided to criminalize CO2. This was their most inspired move yet. CO2 can't be eliminated because the Earth produces it naturally and the very existence of all life depends on it. Thus, they arbitrarily decide that certain "levels" of CO2 are bad, and if it is a "problem" that is beyond our capacity to fix, all the better, as Global Warmers would happily enslave the world to their vision of environmentalism.

- Global Warmers keep changing the Paradigm. It used to be that they obsessed on Global Cooling, which was all the rage in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, seeing as how all that pollution in the atmosphere would act as a blanket and reflect the sun's rays away from the earth. When Global Cooling was decisively disproved, leaving them with egg on their face, the same crowd embraced Global Warming. The new theory posited that "Greenhouse Gases" would trap warmth that would normally escape into space, thus melting the ice caps, changing weather patterns, and wreaking other environmental havoc. Unfortunately, the data did not support large swaths of their model, and now that aspects of Global Warming are being disproved, they have changed their rhetoric to include the term "Climate Change". That way, if the Earth actually cools, Global Warmers can blame that on CO2 emissions. The phenomenon called "Climate Change" also lets the Al Gores of the world blame any and all weather disasters on CO2 emissions, facts be damned.

This Paradigm shift happens in smaller ways too. In America in the 70s, the source of the problem was auto exhaust, but now that that is fixed, it's coal fired power plants. The Big Problem used to be Acid Rain. Once that was found to be a myth, they changed gears and moved on to Smog. After the U.S. got Smog under control, the problem became Global Warming. And so on.

- Global Warmers seek solutions solely from the United States, and ignore the pollution of the rest of the world. Their initiatives for the next century demand nothing of Developing Countries, much less industrial powerhouses like China and India. Beijing alone produces more smog than the Top 20 cities in the U.S. India continues to use CFCs for refrigerants even though there is legitimate consensus that these chemicals destroy the ozone layer. The net of all this is that enforcing their vision on the U.S. alone will accomplish nothing except the likely destruction of the U.S.

- Global Warmers are oblivious of the costs of their initiatives. To them, there is no price that is too high to pay in order to reduce things that they define as pollutants. Case in point: In the past twenty years, the reduction of Greenhouse Gases in automobiles came at the cost of reducing engine fuel efficiency by over 30%. Think of that: your car that gets 20 mpg could get 30 mpg except for some of the more onerous pollution controls. The cost for restoring that fuel efficiency would be a modest proportionate increase of hydrocarbons and CO2. Here's where it really gets good: if we were burning 30% less fuel, there would be an enormous offset in total pollution from cars, but don't bother telling this to the Global Warming crowd; you'll just make their heads hurt by challenging their orthodoxy with facts.

- Global Warmers routinely overstate the impact of Global Warming. For example, they overhype Natural Disasters, such as the Flooding Coastlines scenario. Al Gore posited a rise of 10 feet in the next 50 years when all "credible" claims by actual climatologists posited perhaps 18 inches, and the Putz still won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. And never mind that there is no evidence to back up even the more conservative scenarios. Global Warming scaremongers are righteous, and righteous makes right, facts be damned. They also refuse to investigate the possibility that Global Warming - if it exists - may actually be beneficial, such as in increasing the growing season in northern climes, for example.

- Global Warmers attempt to criminalize opposition to their views, including politicians, laymen, other scientists and even opposing climatologists. There is no room for a reasoned debate, and no challenging their views on anything, much less the gaping inconsistencies in their model. Anybody who does so is excoriated, shouted down and otherwise harassed. They are very much like the adherents of certain religions who dogmatically cling to their version of reality only, and attempt to repudiate all others.

Unfortunately, the have the resources of the federal government to support them in their environmental jihad; not a positive development for Truth or a reasoned debate.

The fact that the vast majority of Environmental scientists adhere to the Global Warming religion so slavishly is disturbing. Their lack of skepticism about any of their science is disturbing. Their lack of concern about the vast and improbable claims made on their behalf by eco-terrorists like Al Gore is most disturbing. Gore says ten foot floods when the scientists know this to be fraud, yet they say nothing. What do scientists have if not their credibility? Their willingness to be toadies to radicals tells me all I need to know about their integrity, or lack thereof.

Finally, if you really want to understand the Global Warming crowd, you must Follow The Money. Global Warming really got legs when Democrats started figuring out ways to use it to leverage more money out of the pockets of American industry and the American taxpayer. Cap and trade is one example, where the Feds will sell licenses to pollute, raking in untold billions while doing nothing to reduce pollution. "Green" technologies is another moneymaker, starting with Ethanol, wind and solar, and pressing on with moss-covered automobiles that will run off CO2, killing two birds with one stone, as it were. The endless grants by the Federal government, several states and numerous tax exempt foundations all "committed to the cause" ensures that Global Warming science will be highly profitable for at least the next century.

But, the grand-daddy of them all is the Kyoto Protocols, whereby we surrender countless billions to those paragons of virtue at The United Nations in the form of Carbon Credits. This was the heart and soul of the plan that was unanimously rejected by the US Senate during the Clinton Presidency. The premise was that the United States - since we consume more energy per capita than other countries and thus produce a disproportionate share of the evil CO2 - must pay "developing" nations extortion money as an "offset" to our pollution. There's three important points here:

- There are no restrictions or reduction goals set for "developing" countries, including India, China and Russia, the worst polluters in the world. That's right: all of the worst offenders are exempt because they are "developing" nations, and the benchmarks for defining one as a polluter were based on historical averages over the past decades, not on current pollution. Ironically, the UN has no hard data on these countries because they don't measure it, thus drastically underestimating the pollution produced by The Big Three of Pollution.

- There is no limit as to the pollution that the Developing Nations can produce, so there is actually a perverse incentive for them to produce more that could then be sold the U.S. in the form of Carbon Offsets. Thus, we are actually paying them to produce more pollution, so they can they sell it to us in return for more of our money.

- Our billions would literally be subsidizing the so-called "Developing" countries, all of which already have massive trade surpluses with the U.S. So, as we impoverish ourselves and become less competitive in world trade, China, Russia, India and other nations become richer, using our money to bury us in the world economy.

The net result of all this, of course, is that we will end up with much more pollution than what we started with, and the greatest irony of all is that the one nation that outstrips all others in the development and deployment of the technology that actually cleans our air - the United States - would be destroyed.

Only a Democrat could think up such a plan.