Another take on global
warming
We didn’t
hear much about global warming during the recent political campaigns. However,
that doesn’t mean the issue is settled or that it wasn’t considered challenging
enough to make it into the public discourse. Both Obama and McCain appear to
have bought into the argument that global warming exists and have advocated
energy policies that reflect their beliefs.
Al
Gore, a leading proponent of global warming, has stated on numerous occasions
that the science is settled, that man is the cause and that the power of
government must be used to control it.
Although
his strenuous advocacy was rewarded with a Nobel Peace Prize, he is now being
challenged by a growing list of scientists who disagree with his conclusions.
In September 2007, the Hudson Institute reported that “A new analysis of
peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published
evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming
scares.”
A
history of predictions
A long
list of environmental predications have been made by scientists over the years,
all of which have all been proven wrong. Walter Williams, writing in
Townhall.com’s “Environmentalists’ Wild Predictions,” observed: “At the first
Earth Day celebration in 1969, Nigel Calder warned: ‘The threat of a new ice
age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death
and misery for mankind.’ C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization
said, ‘The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that
it will not soon be reversed.’ In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Gore’s hero and
mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and ‘in the
1970s … hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death …’”
Williams
further noted that “doomsayers have always been wrong, citing as examples
claims that there was ‘little or no chance’ of oil being discovered in
California … In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil
supplies would last only another 13 years … In 1974, the U.S. Geological Survey
advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.”
Examples
of panics that have been caused by rumor, innuendo, false or erroneous research
and incorrect conclusions have been common throughout history, and the experts
always have been wrong. Global
warming fits the historical model of bad science driving public policy that
usually only serves to make the situation worse.
What
were we to do?
Williams
raises some important questions about this: “In 1970, when environmentalists
were making predictions of man-made global cooling and the threat of an ice age
and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy
should we (have) undertaken to prevent such a calamity?
When
Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps
should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire
outcome?
In
1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil
supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have
taken?
Finally,
what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that
they have switched their tune to man-made global warming?”
Fanatical
solutions
Mandating
programs such as Cap and Trade or taxing energy producers and consumers to
regulate carbon emissions are just two of the extreme measures being touted to
save the earth, which many scientists now believe will not accomplish anything,
except to enrich those who participate in the financial windfall that will be
generated by the process that’s developed to save us from ourselves.
Global
warming is just another form of the environmental fanaticism that has been
driving public policy in recent years. What’s next?