Bad Science Equals Bad Policies

Regarding "‘Neglected topic’ winner: climate change", (Tuesday page B11), NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof declares that the reason there is no action on global warming is because of the "disjunction between scientific consensus and popular perception" of Americans.  He then proposes that the primary reason for the disjunction "is that when Democrats, led by Al Gore, championed climate change, Republicans instinctively grew suspicious."

 

His article follows the tiresome tried and true formula of Global Warmers to prove man-caused pollution as the source of climate change: a) Trot out the indisputable fact that there has been a significant rise in atmospheric CO2; b) Show correlation between pollution levels and global warming; c) Cite polls that show Republicans to be "climate deniers" who obstruct any solution.

 

This formula is simplistic on any number of levels, starting with the fact that historical efforts to control CO2 in America - mostly by onerous regulation - have driven most of America's manufacturing capacity to countries like China and India, where there is no meaningful pollution control of any kind.  So thanks, Global Warmers: you actually managed to drive CO2 levels up by orders of magnitude with those ill-conceived policies.

 

Beyond that, there is a much more straightforward means to account for rising CO2 levels and prove they are man-made.  Since mankind has practiced agriculture, biomes like forests, grasslands and wetlands with a very high capacity to absorb CO2 have been replaced with the biome that is the absolute worst at absorbing CO2: cropland, which now equals 20% of total land area on Earth. 

 

So why are these realities never any part of the climate change debate?  Because it deprives Global Warmers of the opportunity to blame America, and it deprives them of the ability to continue confiscating our money so as to implement their "solutions".  Transforming the Earth for agriculture and the migration of manufacturing to the worlds' major polluters are the two elephants in the Global Warmers' living room, and until they start talking about them, sensible people will always question their conclusions, not to mention their judgment. 

 

Pete Smith

Cypress, TX