I have been following the story of the ozone hole above the Antarctic for years. There is a strong correlation between Congress convening in Washington and the appearance of the hole in the ozone. Whenever they recess, the hole magically disappears.
Posted on 05/29/2004 8:06:51 AM PDT by The Scourge of Yazid
I don't know how many of you receive the New York Times Book Review. I suppose it's limited to people who subscribe to the sunday edition of the NYT, which I'm sure doesn't include many FReepers, though I could be wrong about that.
Anyway, I was curious if any of you have seen the column on the last page of this weekend's Book Review (Chronicle: Environment), written by Verlyn Klinkenborg. I'll try to sumarrize it as neatly as I can without boring you to tears.
Klinkenborg's argument can basically be reduced to two main-though not very perceptive-thoughts:
1. We have a global warming crisis, which is caused by emissions created by humans beings.
2. Even though we're all aware of this crisis, we are either too indolent and/or callous to solve it.
I think that that his thesis can be boiled down to one paragraph:
To most scientists, global warming is a truly scary hypothesis. The evidence overwhelmingly shows, as predicted, that human behavior is altering the climate, with potentially catastrophic results. And yet it seems strangely difficult to scare or reason or argue Americans, the critical audience to reach, into recognizing the truth and acting on it.
Now, I don't want to get bogged down in technical arguments as to the merits or demerits of the case for global warming. Yes, it's been proven that there has been a slight increase in the mean temperature recorded over the past few years. I'm not here to debate whether or not this will have beneficial or negative consequences-or both-for our planet.
I'm simply soliciting your opinions regarding the sheer arrogance displayed by Klinkenborg in the assumptions and conclusions he arrives at during the course of this article.
He continually places the blame for global warming at the feet of the United States: "...the country with the highest emissions and the most excessive consumption, as well as enormous potential to produce innovative technologies-knows and seems to care the least about global warming.", while obscuring the responsibilities of other G-7, not to mention third world, nations.
For example, Klinkenborg never even raises the issue of China and India's own depletion of the Ozone Layer-which should concern him if he were consistent in his beliefs-during their drive to industrialize their respective countries.
Instead of asking the rhetorical question: "Why have Americans refused to face up to Global Warming?" I think Verlyn-and what kind of WASPish, preppie name is that anyway(?)-should ask himself why he could devote the equivalent of a two page article to this issue, and not bring up the fact that the United States is only part of the problem/solution and not the sole custodian of this planet?
I would not read the New York if it were the last rag on earth.
I haven't read the article (not wishing to give a hit to the NYT) but will make several comments anyway:
1) Every story from the leftist media states that there is overwhelming evidence that global warming (higher temperatures) due to greenhouse gas emissions. What there is is evidence that the CO2 concentration has increased significantly - maybe 20-30% over the last 40 years. The assumption is that this is due to human-caused emissions. Some scientists then wrote computer programs to predict the effect of the increased CO2 emissions on temperatures. Every program so far has greatly overestimated the CO2 effects.
2) While the USA signed the Kyoto Treaty, Clinton refused to send it for ratification to the Senate. On their own, the Senate voted 95-0 against the treaty content, stating that it would severely affect the economy. Did Kerry vote against it?
3) China and India probably have very little to do with the ozone layer depletion (another scientific hoax?) -- there is little air conditioning and no aerosol deodorants used in those countries.
Interestingly, my guess is that those who control the NYT probably consider the comparison to Pravda a compliment.
I have heard this issue debated and I seriously question the science behind his claim of global warming. With algore as the leading spokesman for global warming, I think we all need to take a giant step back away from this. We all know how clear thinking he is now don't we.
What a disaster that would be. Not!
His book-even though at times a little tendentious-is full of evidence that points to the precipitous decline of the NYT since the stewardship of Howell Raines over the editorial page.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/books/review/30KLINKEN.html
Quote:
the Times's new publisher, Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr ... was a sixties anti-war activist who famously declared that in a confrontation between an American and a North Vietnamese soldier he'd want to see the American get shot."
Unquote.
Stanley Kurtz (NRO on line, June 5, 2001)
Well, two points. First, global warming is pseudo-science. We should be concerned about the environment and pollution, but we should spend our money sensibly. The Kyoto treaty was a huge boondoggle, designed to favor China, India, and Russia while putting the screws mainly to the U.S. It's chief covert purpose, I would guess, was to weaken the American economy and undermine the west.
Second point. The New York Times used to be the only available source of international news, short of subscribing to foreign newspapers, which were hard to get outside a few big cities. I subscribed to it for maybe 30 years and held my nose, because I could read between the lines and learn a few facts. Now, with the internet, that is no longer necessary. Plus the NY Times no longer even bothers to bury inconvenient news at the bottom of p. 38. They just don't print it at all. So it has lost its monopoly on the news. There's no longer any reason to hold your nose and buy it.
“Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
”There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
”Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.”
To read the reports from the UN and in the public press, one would think that the existence of global warming is a proven fact, and that human activity as its root cause is widely accepted in the scientific community.
One would also think that the only scientifically valid remedy for this grim situation is for the US and other nations to urgently adopt the Kyoto Accords, which call for draconian reductions in fossil full usage and, if implemented, would certainly create tremendous economic dislocation for our people and for those living in other countries.
Al Gore himself, whom many in the US believe should have been our president, made the following statement about global warming in New York City on the January 15, 2004 – the coldest day in the city’s history since 1957.
I am particularly concerned because the vast majority of the most respected environmental scientists from all over the world have sounded a clear and urgent alarm. The international community – including the United States – began a massive effort several years ago to assemble the most accurate scientific assessment of the growing evidence that the earth’s environment is sustaining severe and potentially irreparable damage from the unprecedented accumulation of pollution in the global atmosphere. In essence, these scientists are telling the people of every nation that global warming caused by human activities is becoming a serious threat to our common future.
And yet, only three months earlier, on November 4, 2003 the Canadian National Post reported the following:
The growing number of scientists who dispute the [Kyoto] treaty's scientific foundation have become increasingly vocal, regularly pushing their case in the media as groundbreaking studies continue to be published that pull the rug out from under Kyoto's shaky edifice.
Of these, none may have the long-term impact of the paper published yesterday in the prestigious British journal Energy and Environment, which explains how one of the fundamental scientific pillars of the Kyoto Accord is based on flawed calculations, incorrect data and a biased selection of climate records.
The paper's authors, Toronto-based analyst Steve McIntyre and University of Guelph economics professor Ross McKitrick, obtained the original data used by Michael Mann of the University of Virginia to support the notion that the 20th-century temperature rise was unprecedented in the past millennium. A detailed audit revealed numerous errors in the data. After correcting these and updating the source records they showed that based on Mann's own methodologies, his original conclusion was flawed. Mann's original version resulted in the famous "hockey stick" graph that purported to show 900 years of relative temperature stability (the shaft of the hockey stick) followed by a sharp increase (the blade) in the 20th century.
The corrected version of the last thousand years actually contradicts the view promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and removes the foundation for claims of 20th-century uniqueness.
So who’s right? Is global warming a real threat caused by human activity, or isn’t it? Obviously, there is vigorous debate on both sides of the question, and the science is far from settled.
But it is clear to anyone who will look closely that there are an awful lot social engineers in our own nation, in governments around the world and at the UN who have a vested interest in human-induced global warming being true.
An urgent need to save the planet from catastrophic environmental disaster would be just the thing to justify UN control of every square inch or cubic centimeter of the world’s land, air and water.
Imagine the power you would have if you were in a position – by virtue of your authority to save the world’s environment – to decide which human activities were environmentally permissible and which were not
You could tell people where to live. You could impose so-called “smart development” and stuff people into densely populated urban areas in order to save open space, an often stated pillar of the environmentalist agenda. (As it happens, there is so much unoccupied space in the continental US that every person in the country could be given a half acre plot and still fit entirely within the state of Texas, leaving the rest of the country entirely unpopulated. I know. I’ve done the math.)
If you were named Environmental Czar, your could tell people what they could do with their land and regulate their housing. You could tell them how much water they could have in their toilets, and how much heat, air conditioning and electricity they could use. You could control the amount of television they watch by rationing of electrical power. You could tell them what they were allowed to drive, and how much gas they could use. You could force them out of their cars and into public transportation (See Earth in the Balance, by Al Gore). You could impose manufacturing production quotas and regulate the world’s industries to the point where you would essentially own them. You could even tell people how many children they are allowed to have.
You would, in fact, rule the world and all the people in it.
Now wanting to rule the world is nothing new. People have been trying to do that since the first humans pressed beyond their own local habitat and realized that there were other people living in the next valley. In the 20th century, the drive to rule the world achieved its greatest expression with rise of socialism and the Communist empire. Back then, the social engineers believed that they could achieve ultimate Power Over Others by commanding every aspect of the economy. But of course, that didn’t work. Draconian government control of the economy proved unsustainable, to borrow the environmentalists’ favorite word. Thus Communism collapsed, leaving over 100 million murder victims in its wake, and with it went the dreams of millions of social engineers around the world who looked to it as a model for humanity and their ticket to power.
The environmentalist movement has given these people a new home, and a new theory for seizing power. The Kyoto Accords would have gone a long way towards imposing on the world’s most productive nations the kind of control that had vanished for the social engineers when communism and its weak sister socialism finally ended up in the ash heap of history.
And to anyone who won’t get with the program, all that is needed is to scream: “You want to destroy the environment!”
So perhaps it is not surprising that when confronted with a very reasonable caution about imposing the far-reaching, burdensome and society-changing Kyoto Accords in the face of conflicting scientific evidence about global warming, we have people like John Kerry publicly attacking George Bush’s motives in deciding to abandon the treaty once and for all. (It had previously been rejected by a 95-0 vote in the US Senate during Bill Clinton’s administration and was politically dead anyway.)
According to Mr. Kerry, in his February 9, 2003 speech at the Kennedy School of Government in Boston: “Nowhere is there a more determined, more dangerous, more concerted frontal and stealth assault on our values and our future than the Bush Administration's disregard for the environment.”
Well my own position is that when it comes to concerted frontal and stealth assaults on the core values and future of the American people, people like John Kerry and his social engineering colleagues in the environmentalist movement are right up there with the best of them.
Sounds like the nutty Al Gore view of the future. If the government had stayed in the operation of asylums for the mentally disturbed we wouldn't even be discussing this phony problem.
I know that the NYT has a certain predisposition to slant the news to suit their own ideological nostrums. I was just somewhat chagrined that they chose this particular forum to launch a partisan assault against the Bush Administration.
It seems as if Klinkenborg's cursory mention of several new releases dealing with Global Warming was merely a pretext to insert his own political viewpoints into the NYT Book Review.
Not the past "few years." There has been a .3C (or 1F) degree rise in temperature over the past 100 years. The debate is whether the rise is attributable to normal fluctuations in global temperature or driven by fossil fuel emissions. Given that man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have only risen from .006 to .004 of the total greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, a very small increase, and given also that in the Middle Ages, when there were no man-made greenhouse gases, temperatures were substantially warmer than they are now, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the rise we've seen over the past hundred years is a normal fluctuation.
Being perfectly reasonable, however, has no appeal to those who claim a catastrophe is upon us.
"I am Algore dammit!
"I drive a solar powered SUV! I can bend steel beams with my irises!"
(Thus spoke Gore-athrusta.)
I didn't mean to imply that this was my characterization of what was occurring. I was merely trying to highlight the fact that this is a new tack taken by the extremist wing of the environmental mov't.
The fact that they've only been the standard-bearers for this issue since the early 90s, shows you the importance they assign to political opportunism, vs. genuine concerns about our planet's ecology.
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