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March 24, 2008
Global Lunacy
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people still think that global warming is happening, that it's a threat, and that its primarily caused by humans.
After all, despite enormous evidence, some people still don't believe we landed on the moon! Never mind that any 'fraud' would necessitate thousands of people being involved (astronauts, families, NASA staff); some people still stubbornly believe that the moon landings were hoaxes. People will believe what they want to believe, as the saying goes.
The way the left tries to squelch a difference of opinion is by trying to demonise it, so that few people dare to challenge the norms they have put forth. Global warming is just the most recent example of this practice.
When I was a kid during the 70's, I remember the articles about global cooling and how there was general agreement that we had perhaps another 10 years worth of oil left. Thirty years later, we're consuming more fossil fuels then ever, and the left is now beating the global warming drum. It's like the boy who cried wolf; how many times before you refuse to be taken in? Of course in that fairy tale the boy eventually DID encounter a wolf, but how can I believe the global warming nutters when they threaten people with differing opinions? Whether the threat comes from a country or the scientists and leaders who support global warming hysteria, it threatens to cut off sane, logical discussion and replace it with panic and regulations which will ruin industries, careers and runs the risk of causing a severe economic downturn.
Data that don't support the notion that global warming is man made get scarcely the popular press that the global warming disciples do. A recent article in The Australian discusses the shocking findings of the NASA Aqua satellite, which collected detailed information on not only temperature but cloud cover and water vapour.The Aqua satellite shows that the dire predictions of the global warming pushers is incorrect and that the earth is capable of adjusting to changing conditions very effectively, while showing that the seasonal arctic ice has rebounded from last year's warm spell.
The earth is a large and complex planet. It has survived over 4.5 billion years of impacts and seen species come and go. It is arrogant to think that half a century of widespread and concerted use of fossil fuels could irreparably harm the planet. What is really happening has little to do with earth concerns and more to do with money concerns. From Al Gore to business, people and companies can make a killing on government mandates and restrictions on consumers. If you read the linked article in the preceding sentence, you'll see that during a seminar sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, environmentalists and corporate leaders willfully ignored slides and presentations that threw cold water on the notion that CO2 levels and climate temperatures are closely linked. In other words, they didn't want to know that even as CO2 levels seem to creep higher, global temperatures don't. (I've added one of the slides below).
Before we turn the world on its head, global warming needs to be sanely discussed and critics questions addressed. What about concerns that true statistical modeling hasn't been used and has resulted in numbers that are fault-ridden but appear alarming? What about the blacklisting of people who raise scientific questions about things like the sun's active cycle and what effect it has on our climate? Some claim the dire predictions are the result of cherry picking numbers that seem shocking, but equally valid data from the same time period that contradicts those assertions are ignored. Why?
People should pause for a minute and look at this critically; a politician, without a science degree, is influencing opinion on a topic of science that even climatologists have difficulty with (weather patterns are notoriously hard to predict due to the number of factors involved). Adherents are out of hand dismissing concrete data that doesn't support their doom and gloom scenario, in a blatant broach of scientific ethics and much of the mainstream media is complicit in this. Where's the rage at this?
More reading:
Blog Critics
Ace of Spades
NASA's Aqua satellite
Junk Science
Kobayashi Maru (blog)
Hot Air
Posted by hanyap at March 24, 2008 6:15 PM