The Politics of Global Warmingby David A. Noebelhttp://www.summit.org <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
          I woke up this morning only to read in the newspaper (the Colorado Springs Gazette, April 7, 2007) that it's all over, the earth is finished-North America can expect more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires; the coasts will be flooded by rising sea levels; crops will decline due to water shortages and climbing temperatures; Africa will suffer the most; 30 percent of the world's species will disappear; don't live near the coasts, Arctic, mountains, etc.
 
            These are the conclusions of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-humans cause global warming and we must accept the panel's conclusions because of the years of accumulated scientific data supporting it.
 
            How many scientists were involved?  The newspaper claimed "more than 2,500 scientists" gave their predictions of the consequences "of a few degrees increase in temperature."  Of the 2,500, how many are "climate scientists"?  According to S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist at <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />George Mason University, the answer is about 100.  The earth is turning into Hades because 100 scientists say so!  I don't believe it! But it is even stranger than that since, as Singer notes, "there was never a poll taken" amongst these 100 scientists to see if they agree with the final IPCC report-whose summary was written by the U.N. "politically correct" agents of influence! 
 
            But wait-the same newspaper carried a story 14 pages later reporting "Global Warming on Mars?"  It turns out we don't need belching smokestacks and city-choking traffic to heat up a planet.  Changes in surface reflectivity also might do the trick, according to research published in the journal Nature.  You mean to tell me that after we cripple the capitalistic system of Western Civilization to defeat "global warming" that Mars, with no humans presently on site, is also warming?  Yes, according to scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration-about 1.17 degrees Fahrenheit!  And climatologist William Kininmonth says the research "showed there was enough natural climate variability to account for global warming on earth."
 
            But wait again-according to Access to Energy, Neptune is warming, Jupiter is warming, Pluto is warming!  Access to Energy reports, "These observations correlate with the fact that solar activity and the intensity of solar radiation has been rising during this period."  In the interest of scientific understanding, "solar activity" refers to the energy from the sun!  The sun's primary responsibility is to warm the earth to make life possible lest we freeze to death. 
 
            So is there more to global warming than we have been led to believe?  Of course!  Global warming, global cooling, the DDT scare, and a host of other supposed pending catastrophes have been used over the years to bring the capitalistic West to its knees.  And don't forget Al Gore's involvement in the DDT fiasco, which caused the death of millions of children from malaria in Africa.  Gore wrote the foreword to one of the latest printings of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.  Fortunately for African children, the DDT ban has been lifted now that it has been determined that DDT is indeed safe.  Who will tell that to the fifty million who perished?  Will Gore apologize?  Don't hold your breath!
 
            Anyone desiring to know how the "global warming" campaign is supposed to end should read the details in Richard J. Ellis' The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America (University Press of Kansas, 1998, chapter 8). 
 
            Within the pages of Ellis' work, we discover why capitalism must ultimately be destroyed and why America must be gravely diminished in the process.  All the evils of the world are America's fault.  Whatever is wrong in the world can be traced to "corporate capitalism," which is in the process of polluting the whole earth.  The goal is to overthrow capitalism and "create a new non-exploitative society."  One means is to "choke the streets with bicycles in order to slow or bring to a halt auto traffic, or the auto-cracy."  The internal combustion engine will no longer be allowed to pollute Mother Earth.  However, since livestock contribute nearly 18 percent of the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (more than all cars and planes combined) they too need to be eradicated. But that's the minor stuff.
 
            The major stuff involves disposing of "homo sapiens euroamericans."  In case you have trouble with the translation-that's you, or at least most of the readers of this website!  Each euroamerican exhales 2 ½ pounds of carbon dioxide every day-certainly a major cause of global warming. The left's  "heroic resistance to Western industrial civilization," however, will allow human beings to establish lifestyles in harmony with the earth, allowing them to sleep in in the morning, fish or hunt in the afternoon, and sup or make love in the evening!  Sounds to me like Marx's socialistic utopia!
 
            The radical left pictures America as a "vapid, vulgar, materialistic society" whose "wasteful, mindless consumerism" is "eating the planet alive."  Following America's demise, "genuine freedom" will finally emerge.  "Genuine freedom," however, can come about only "by breaking the chains that imprison the wild self within, the self that has not become addicted to comfort, the self that has only spontaneous, natural needs to fulfill." So you are not left in the dark, even though the book is about the dark side of the Left, my word for releasing the "wild self" is "free love."
 
             Nevertheless, Nancy Pelosi vows to fight "global warming" to the bitter end and plans to "base her actions on the moral imperative and the scientific record."  However, since Pelosi is a leftist, by definition she doesn't believe one can legislate morality!  Hence, her only support is the scientific record. 
 
            So let's hear what atmospheric physicist Dr. Singer says about the scientific record: "the data show that the climate warmed between 1900 and 1940, long before humanity used much energy.  But then the climate cooled between 1940 and 1975.  Then it warmed again for a very short period of time, for about five years.  But since 1979, our best measurements show that the climate has been cooling just slightly.  Certainly, it has not been warming.  The surface record continues to go up.  But you have to be very careful with the surface record.  It is taken with thermometers that are mostly located in or near cities.  And as cities expand, they get warmer.  And therefore they affect the readings.  And it's very difficult to eliminate this-what's called the urban heat island effect.  So I personally prefer to trust in weather satellites. . . . And if you look through the summary [of the IPCC], you will find no mention of the fact that the weather satellite observations of the last twenty years show no global warming.  In fact, a slight cooling.  In fact, you will not even find satellites mentioned in the summary."
 
            Dr. Singer wants to know why the U.N. left out the findings of the weather satellites.  He says, "These are the only global observations we have.  These are the best observations we have.  They cover the whole globe.  The surface observations don't cover the whole globe.  They leave out large chunks of the globe.  They don't cover the oceans very well, which is 70 % of the globe. So you see, the  [U.N.] summary uses data selectively, or at least it suppresses data that are inconvenient, that disagree with the paradigm with what they're trying to prove."
 
            What do you think the socialistic, anti-capitalistic U.N. is seeking to prove?  Would you at least consider that it is trying to prove that global warming is America's fault?  America is the world's Satan!  America's leaders are devils.  America is polluting the earth via corporate greed and materialistic consumerism and needs to be destroyed and salted under like Carthage of old.  Unfortunately, America's greens, reds, leftists, secular progressives ("blame America first") and useful idiots continue to assist in her untimely death and burial.
 
            "But you'll never hear," says Rush Limbaugh, "the global warming crowd excoriate China for its environmental sins.  Because China is communist. And since environmentalism is the modern home of the socialist movement, no global warming believer will ever take on a fellow-traveler."
 
            On the other hand, the U.N.'s ode to America's demise will surely sound something like this: 
 
                        Happy consumption
                        Balloons for the kiddies
                        All are identical
                        Homogenized into one
                        Consumptive greedy culture
                        Clean swept bricks and dying trees
                        You are doomed to walk these
                        Dead barren streets
                        Seeking to buy happiness
                        It will not replace the sacred earth
                        You will remain empty 
                        And dead.
 
            In spite of the U.N. and its anti-Americanism, in spite of the fact that America's temperature may increase by two degrees over the next 100 years, in spite of the hate America crowd chanting how terrible America is, in spite of the fact that America's poor are rich compared to all other countries' poor, in spite of all this, the world's living human beings continue to beat a path to her doors-legally and illegally, rich and poor, male and female, red and yellow, black and white. What a country!
 
            P.S.  Just as I was about to send this article into cyberspace, Newsweek International (April 16, 2007 issue) carried an article by MIT's Richard S. Lindzen entitled "Why So Gloomy?"  Lindzen writes, "A warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now.  Much of the alarm over climate change is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate.  There is no evidence, for instance, that extreme weather events are increasing in any systematic way…Indeed, meteorological theory holds that, outside the tropics, weather in a warming world should be less variable, which might be a good thing."
 
            Lindzen also says, "In many other respects, the ill effects of warming are overblown.  Sea levels, for example, have been increasing since the end of the last ice age.  When you look at recent centuries in perspective, ignoring short-term fluctuations, the rate of sea-level rise has been relatively uniform (less than a couple of millimeters a year).  There's even some evidence that the rate was higher in the first half of the twentieth century than in the second half.  Overall, the risk of sea-level rise from global warming is less at almost any given location than that from other causes, such as tectonic motions of the earth's surface."
 
            He concludes, "There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe."
 
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