Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of GasYou may want to give credit where credit is due the next time you fill your car with gasoline. There is a direct connection between Global Warming and $4-a- gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. Thank you Al Gore. Keep up the good work and soon we'll pay $6 a gallon.
This big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future boils down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud! What a scam!
The future of our civilization lies in the balance -- says the chief crackpot.
That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees.
Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. The future of our civilization is in the balance.
With a preacher’s zeal warning of the approaching Biblical Apocalypse, Mr. Gore talks of terror and tells hapless, scientifically illiterate people that we are all complicit in the destruction of the planet and the end of the life we know.
It's time for a rebuttal.There is no significant man-made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.
Since its creation, paleoclimatologists say Earth has shifted between two basic climate extremes: ice ages and “Interglacial Periods”.
For the past 10,000 years the Earth has been in an Interglacial Period. Nature, not man, is warming the Earth. In those periods glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly, from our point of view, an interglacial period beats the deadly rigors of an ice age. But Al Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed Nature during this interglacial period and are producing unprecedented, out-of-control warming.
Nonsense. There was a significant worldwide natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar Cycle, with lots of sunspots and solar flares, peaked. That ended in 1998. Since then the Sun has gone quiet, emitting fewer and fewer Sun spots, and global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. Al, where’s the global warming?
The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Really?
Al wants to create panic about man-made global warming. But analysis shows the purportedly apocalyptic trend is taking a ten-year break due to a lack of Solar activity, a lack of Sun Spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.
What about the science behind the global warming frenzy? Thousands of pages of research papers, including huge documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, complicated math and complex theories all point to ONE culprit. Carbon Dioxide. An increase in Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.
Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The science is flawed; the hypothesis is wrong; the data is manipulated. And the scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.
The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper. One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy. Revelle’s paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming. It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
Charles Keeling, another researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, set up a system to make continuous CO2 measurements. His graph of these increases has now become known as the Keeling Curve. When Charles Keeling died in 2005, his son David, also at Scripps, took over the measurements.
Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.
All the computer models, all of the other findings, all of the other angles of study, all come back to and are based on CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas. It is not.
Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide. It is a natural component of our atmosphere. It has been there since time began. It is absorbed and emitted by the oceans. It is used by every living plant to trigger photosynthesis. Nothing would be green without it. And we humans; we create it. Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.
The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research that argues CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming. Scientists have developed complex, creative theories requiring elaborate calculations performed by massive computer models that -- surprise, surprise -- agree with the original apocalyptic hypotheses that attracted the billions of research dollars. This passes as proof.
Global Warming Scientists present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. Research organizations and scientists who are building careers on this theory crank out the research papers. Then the IPCC holds big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. Scientists endorse each other’s papers, which are summarized and voted on and -- surprise, surprise -- the self-serving, log-rolling voters assert that global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.
A few historical facts. The internal combustion engine and gasoline were big polluters at first. Gasoline engines continued to produce smog through the 1960’s. Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue. Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today’s cars.
At first, gasoline engines exhausted carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and water vapor without restraint, leading to a pall of smog hanging over most US cities. It's different now; most city air is clean by all health measures as a result of the improvements made to internal combustion engines and to pollution control. The environmentalists -- in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles -- were aimed at a good target forty years ago. No longer. Now they have targeted carbon dioxide. That is the rub. Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.
Many independent research projects have shown that CO2 is NOT creating a major greenhouse effects and is NOT causing an increase in temperatures. Nevertheless, environmentalists have subjected us to an intense campaign claiming that burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming. A myth. The new Flat-Earth proposition.
Why has the global warming fraud, with all its predictions of dire consequences, become so widely believed, accepted and regarded as a real threat to planet Earth? That is the most amazing part of the story.
First, Global Warming has the backing of the United Nations, a major world force. Second, it has the backing of a former Vice President. Third, it has the endorsement of Hollywood. Fourth, environmentalists realize it's a money-maker. Thus, due to the persuasive power of environmentalists, the UN, Al Gore, Hollywood and some profit-seekers predicting the arrival of Doomsday if we ignore their warnings, the naive and credulous media has opened itself to this new religion.
The media loves a crisis. From YK2 to killer bees, our media thrives and excels when the opportunity to magnify fear arises. In addition to gullibility, naivete and credulity, add the liberal bias of our media into reporting and every snowstorm becomes the start of a new Ice Age. With Al Gore, the UN, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press all baying in unison about the Global Warming peril, how can people think straight? It's tough.
Who stands against that flood of babble? Not politicians. Almost every Governor, most Senators and most Congress people, both candidates for President, and most other elected officials on all levels of government are all riding the Al Gore Global Warming express. That is one crowded bus.
On the other hand, on May 20th, a list of over 31,000 scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, 500 scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the opposition every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC. There was an International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York in March of this year. One hundred gave presentations. Attendance was limited to 600 people. Every seat was taken. There are a half dozen excellent internet sites that debunk global warming.
The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. Because of it tapping known oil reserves and building new refineries has been blocked. Where did that get us? To where we are today -- with gas at $4 a gallon. Self-induced tight supplies have reminded Americans of the link between supply and demand. Gasoline prices have soared because global demand for oil is high -- and rising.
Then there is the bungling of ethanol. The ethanol folly is creating a food crisis throughput the world – it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget-busting for many.
The global warming myth has led to surges in both energy and food prices. We pay for it every time we fill our gas tanks. We pay again at the supermarket. Not only is it running up gasoline prices, it has changed government policy impacting our taxes, our utility bills and the entire focus of government funding. Worse still, Congress is considering a cap-and-trade carbon credits policy. Citizens will pay needlessly for that, too. The cap-and-trade plan will do one thing: add more costs. It is impossible to lower aggregate energy needs. Thus, a cap-and-trade program will collect more fees from those who must have more energy. Thus, everyone will feel the pinch in taxes and the price of goods and services. But AGGREGATE energy use will NEVER decrease. NEVER.
Thus, the Global Warming hysteria is, indeed, threatening our civilization. Not because global warming is real; it is not. But because people are easily duped into believing the cartoonish Doomsday predictions amplified thorugh a bi-polar media that alternates between fear and smug superiority. Chicken Littles and Al "God" Gore. Is it possible for humans to act any sillier? Yes. But the current silliness is enough for now.
