However, we have proven over the past discussions that it is quite possible to be a global warming doubter and a true believer in science. In fact, if one reviews our discussions this week and in the past in this blog on the topic, there is probably now more scientific evidence and reality supporting the doubter angle than the Al Gore angle. Contrary to what Mr. Gore and his advocate would claim, the science on global warming is not settled.
The discussion continues today:
1) The Freedomworks website does wonderful work relative to freedom and liberty and the political class’s continual battle to reduce both in Americans’ lives. One theory on global warming is that it may actually be a cover for more power grabbing by politicians in their effort to control our lives.
Thus, it is not surprising that Freedomworks would be interested in exposing any fallacies relative to global warming. They recently ran a great piece by writer Jon Gabriel who compiled some of the dire environmental predictions that led up to the first Earth Day in 1970. Take a step back in time and see what the climate “experts” in 1970 were predicting, based on what Al Gore would call “settled science:”
1. "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." - Harvard biologist George Wald
2. "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." - Washington University biologist Barry Commoner
3. "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." - New York Times editorial
4. "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." - Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
5. "Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born... [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." - Paul Ehrlich
6. "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," - Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day
7. "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions.... By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." - North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter
8. "In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution... by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." - Life Magazine
9. "At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." - Ecologist Kenneth Watt
10. "Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." - Paul Ehrlich
11. "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate... that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, 'Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, 'I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" - Ecologist Kenneth Watt
12. "[One] theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." - Newsweek magazine
13. "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." - Kenneth Watt
Well, what happened since 1970? We did NOT see mass starvation, we did NOT the dawn of a new Ice Age, we did NOT run out of oil, we did NOT see the end of human civilization.
Yes, we did take rational steps to protect the environment. We used science and technology to improve air quality and fuel efficiency and farming. But fortunately, we did not react willy-nilly to bold predictions by noted media outlets and scientists to rush into stupid solutions to non-problems.
We should not do the same thing now relative to global warming and climate change. The time is now for a rational discussion based on ALL science, not the hysteria of global warming advocates who are not better than the incorrect Earth Day predictors from over 40 years ago.
2) While Al Gore types claim that global warming advocates have all of the world’s scientists on their side, a NewsMax article by Matthew Vadum from April 22, 2014 actually discusses the research of some scientists who claim that the gradual warming of the planet over the past 100 or so years has actually been more beneficial than detrimental to mankind.
His basis for this kindly view of global warming comes from the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). Their analysis is basically the exact opposite of the recently released United Nations report on global warming. That report points to imminent danger from global warming and climate change and which selfishly wants the U.N. to gain more reasonability in managing the world’s affairs. However, "Contrary to popular belief, climate change thus far has had positive effects, and the net benefits of warming are likely to be positive for the foreseeable future," according to the report by NCPA senior fellow H. Sterling Burnett.
The gist of the NCPA analysis is that the small increase in the earth’s temperature over the past 100 years has helped increase farming production and helped reduce heating costs, resulting in increasing the world’s economic output by 1.4%. Given how close to poverty much of the world lives, this increase in economic growth is critical to the well being and improved living conditions of billions of people.
Conversely, dropping worldwide temperatures, according to the NCPA, historically reduces farming output and diverts wealth and resources to cooling, reducing economic growth: "Cooling kills, and that is what is to fear. Warming periods throughout history — which the [global warming] alarmists airbrushed out of history — have always been called 'climate optima,' for very good reasons," according to Christopher C. Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the author of two best-selling books on the climate debate.
While the article acknowledges that levels of carbon dioxide, a principal greenhouse gas, have risen to 380 parts per million, up from 280 parts per million 150 years ago, quoted experts make the case that higher levels of carbon dioxide have made farmers more productive. Increased carbon dioxide levels may help to fertilize plants and also allow plants to use water more efficiently. With the slightly increased temperatures, there is a lower rate of plant killing frosts and longer growing seasons.
The article goes into great detail on how farming output has been increasing as a result of the small amount of global warming in Africa and elsewhere. Those additional details can be accessed at the original article itself:
For all I know the NCPA can be a front organization for the oil industry. However, at least one news source thought they and their expert referrals were credible scientists and thus, shouldn’t their opinions, research, and findings also be included in the discussion on global warming and climate change? Failure to include such opinions and views could make us look as stupid to future generations as the 1970 Earth Day forecasters look to us today.
3) Consider an April 14, 2014 article written by B. Christopher Lee for the Western Journalism website. Mr. Lee writes about a former global warming advocate and scientist who left Al Gore’s flock to join the doubter side of the argument. James Lovelock is a geophysicist who has spent most of his career on the side of man-made activities are causing global warming.
In a recent BBC interview, he maintained that the United Nations ripped many of its recent climate change allegations right out of a book he wrote nearly ten years ago: “The last [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report is very similar to the statements I made in my book, [“The Revenge of Gaia"]. It’s almost as if they’ve copied it.”
According to the article, Lovelock now disagrees with his own research and no longer subscribes to the Al Gore theories of climate change and global warming: “I’m not funded by some government department or commercial body or anything like that, If I make a mistake, then I can go public with it – and you have to, because it is only by making mistakes that you can move ahead.”
He maintains other scientists are also in agreement with him but risk losing their government and other grants which prevent them from speaking up and telling the world what they and their research really found out. Other quotes from the scientist in the article include:
- “They all talk, they pass laws, they do things, as if they knew what was happening. I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess.”
- “Fudging the data in any way [what numerous global warming scientists have been accused of doing] whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science.”
- “Science is going down the drain terribly fast. It keeps dividing itself up into expertizes and these expertizes probably don’t know much about the others.”
He went on to estimate that ‘about 80 percent of measurements reported regarding the atmospheric damage “were either faked, or incompletely done.”’
The article also points out another courageous scientist, Dr. Richard Tol, who was a lead author on the latest U.N. climate change report. is also having his own doubts on the effects of mankind on the climate. So much so that Tol has since had his name removed from the U.N.‘s IPCC report, concluding the “idea that climate change poses an existential threat to humankind is laughable.”
More proof that the science is not settled. That will do it for today but more doubter information and research tomorrow.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
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Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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