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Global Warming Alarmists

Cal

Well-known member
Something to Worry About By Nick Schulz
31 Mar 2006
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=033106F

The alarm bells are ringing louder than ever in global warming circles. An impressive amount of ink has been spilled to scare you in to thinking that the planet is doomed if we don't do something about climate change, and soon.


As alarmists flood the media with scare stories, however, they are distracting the public from the economic and practical realities that will determine planetary health. And they are doing so just as some less heralded news reports demonstrate that the alarmists' prescription for our ailing planet is failing badly.


But first, the alarm bells. Consider:


This week Time magazine has a "special report" on global warming with the cover blaring "Be Worried. Be Very Worried."

Australian alarmist Tim Flannery has a new doomsday book out "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What I t Means for Life on Earth."

The Washington Post recently featured a front page article about melting ice in Antarctica.

ABCNews recently attacked skeptic scientists such as the University of Virginia's Pat Michaels.

A cover story in the New Republic this month attacked the popular writer Michael Crichton for his skeptical views on catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.

The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert recently published a book with the telling title "Field Notes From a Catastrophe."

And the Advertising Council and Environmental Defense have just launched the first "public awareness" campaign on global warming.

Phew. That's considerable output in just a few weeks. And later this year Al Gore has an alarmist documentary he has produced coming out called An Inconvenient Truth so expect the bells to keep tolling.


According to Time, "the global climate seems to be crashing around us," and that "this is precisely what [scientists] have been warning would happen if we continued pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping the heat that flows from the sun and raising global temperatures." Time points to heat waves, floods, storms fires and glacial melts as evidence that we've reached a "tipping point" and says "scientists have been calling this shot for decades."


Time is right about scientists issuing warnings for decades. It just hasn't always been about global warming. Three decades ago, as Rich Karlgaard of Forbes reminds us this week, Newsweek magazine was warning not about global warming, but about global cooling. And the rhetoric was just as alarmist then. According to Newsweek at the time, "There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically...with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth."


But just because scientists and their acolytes in the media were badly wrong a mere thirty years ago, doesn't mean they are wrong today. It doesn't mean they are right, but let's stipulate that the planet is warming and greenhouse gases due to man's activities have some effect. What then should we do?


Alarmists have called for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and pushed for a global treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, to enforce reductions in emissions. All along, skeptics have pointed out that mandating curbs on greenhouse gas emissions is unlikely to work -- the technologies to do so don't yet exist so reducing emissions means a costly reduction in energy use, one that would place considerable burdens on the poorest in society. Evidence is beginning to come in that bolsters the skeptics' arguments.


The countries of Europe have been the most enthusiastic proponents of the Kyoto Protocol. And in recent years they have been trying to meet their targets under the treaty. Trying, but failing.


According to a recent report compiling statistics from the European Environment Agency:


"Total greenhouse gas emissions in the EU-15 decreased by a mere 1.7% between 1990 and 2003 with CO2 alone growing by 3.4%... Under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the EU has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 8% compared to 1990 levels."


Even Britain, whose Tony Blair has frequently been one of the chief boosters of Kyoto-like reductions, will not make its targets, according to a report just out this week.


Keep in mind that the overall effect of Kyoto, while costly, would be insignificant -- no bang for a lot of bucks. As Bjorn Lomborg and many others have pointed out, using the assumptions of alarmists, Kyoto would delay the warming of the planet for a mere six years. In other words, the earth's temperature in, say, 2100 without Kyoto in effect will be reached in 2106 instead if Kyoto is widely adopted.


To achieve the ultimate goals of the alarmists, it would require several Kyotos to meet their demands. And if Europe, the most enthusiastic backer of Kyoto can't meet its emissions targets under Kyoto, what hope is there that many more draconian Kyoto-like initiatives are possible?


It is curious that the alarmists are largely silent on the failures of Kyoto in Europe. Skeptics have been pointing out the economic and technological realities of mandatory emissions reductions for years now. Skeptics have also raised alternative ways of tackling problems associated with climate change and extreme climate scenarios -- problems that exist whether or not we pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.


But so blinded are the alarmists that they are largely ignoring potentially beneficial initiatives. One such effort is the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate Change (AP6) which is backed by the governments of the United States, India, China, South Korea, Japan and Australia. The AP6 is designed to permit the robust economic growth that the developing world so badly needs while beginning to address concerns over pollution, energy efficiency and emissions. To get a sense of how out of touch the alarmists are on practical realities, in its nine(!) articles on global warming in its latest special issue, Time didn't devote a single one to AP6.


Amazingly, one article Time suggests "maybe we can begin by living more like the average Chinese or Indian – before they start living like us." According to the CIA World Factbook, the per capita GDP on India is $3,400 a year, and $6,200 a year in China. In the United States it's $41,800. So yes, Time is indeed advocating cutting living standards by as much as ten times. If you want something to "be worried" about, as Time asserts on its cover, well there you have it.


Nick Schulz is Editor in Chief of TCSDaily.com.
 

Cal

Well-known member
Combating "warming" is still up for debate
By George Will

Apr 2, 2006


WASHINGTON -- So, "the debate is over.'' Time magazine says so. Last week's cover story exhorted readers to "Be Worried. Be Very Worried,'' and ABC News concurred in several stories. So did Montana's governor, speaking on ABC. And there was polling about global warming, gathered by Time and ABC in collaboration.

Eighty-five percent of Americans say warming is probably happening and 62 percent say it threatens them personally. The National Academy of Sciences says the rise in the earth's surface temperature has been about one degree Fahrenheit in the last century. Did 85 percent of Americans notice? Of course not. They got their anxiety from journalism calculated to produce it. Never mind that one degree might be the margin of error when measuring the planet's temperature. To take a person's temperature, you put a thermometer in an orifice, or under an arm. Taking the temperature of our churning planet, with its tectonic plates sliding around over a molten core, involves limited precision.

Why have Americans been dilatory about becoming as worried -- as very worried -- as Time and ABC think proper? An article on ABC's Web site wonders ominously, "Was Confusion Over Global Warming a Con Job?'' It suggests there has been a misinformation campaign implying that scientists might not be unanimous, a campaign by -- how did you guess? -- big oil. And the coal industry. But speaking of coal ...

Recently, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer flew with ABC's George Stephanopoulos over Glacier National Park's receding glaciers. But Schweitzer offered hope: Everyone, buy Montana coal. New technologies can, he said, burn it while removing carbon causes of global warming.

Stephanopoulos noted that such technologies are at least four years away and "all the scientists'' say something must be done "right now.'' Schweitzer, quickly recovering from hopefulness and returning to the "be worried, be very worried'' message, said "it's even more critical than that'' because China and India are going to "put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with conventional coal-fired generators than all of the rest of the planet has during the last 150 years.''

That is one reason why the Clinton administration never submitted the Kyoto accord on global warming for Senate ratification. In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 that the accord would disproportionately burden America while being too permissive toward major polluters that are America's trade competitors.

While worrying about Montana's receding glaciers, Schweitzer, who is 50, should also worry about the fact that when he was 20 he was told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling:

Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.''
Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed'' that we must "prepare for the next ice age.''
The Christian Science Monitor ("Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster than Even Experts Expect,'' Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers "have begun to advance,'' "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter'' and "the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool.''
Newsweek agreed ("The Cooling World,'' April 28, 1975) that meteorologists "are almost unanimous'' that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that The New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said "may mark the return to another ice age.''
The Times (May 21, 1975) also said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable'' now that it is "well established'' that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950.''
In fact, the earth is always experiencing either warming or cooling. But suppose the scientists and their journalistic conduits, who today say they were so spectacularly wrong so recently, are now correct. Suppose the earth is warming and suppose the warming is caused by human activity. Are we sure there will be proportionate benefits from whatever climate change can be purchased at the cost of slowing economic growth and spending trillions? Are we sure the consequences of climate change -- remember, a thick sheet of ice once covered the Middle West -- must be bad?

Or has the science-journalism complex decided that debate about these questions, too, is "over''?

About the mystery that vexes ABC -- Why have Americans been slow to get in lock step concerning global warming? -- perhaps the "problem'' is not big oil or big coal, both of which have discovered there is big money to be made from tax breaks and other subsidies justified in the name of combating carbon. Perhaps the problem is big crusading journalism.


George F. Will is a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner, whose columns are syndicated in more than 400 magazines and newspapers worldwide.

Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/georgewill/2006/04/02/192190.html
 

sw

Well-known member
Cal,
I will not apologize for the conceited arrogant a hole of a governor we have, I did not vote for him. He is on the environmental side of everything and I hope that the people that did vote for him realize what they have done as he has used intimidation not persuasion to get people to believe in him. He embarrasses this state but everybody thinks he is next to god and Bill Clinton :oops:
 

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