Conservative's Conscience

Al Gore and Global Warming

Environmentalism is the religion de jour, and global warning is its hottest theological concept.  Disbelieve and you’re a heretic.  Do so at the academic level and you get lots of trouble unless you’re a senior professor protected by years of tenure.

For example, Henk Tennekes, Research Director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society, lost his job when he questioned the scientific basis for global warming; Aksel Winn-Nielsen, ex-director of the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization, was labeled a tool of the coal industry because he questioned popular scientific theology, and two Italian professors lost their research funding because they did the same. 

 Al Gore has popularized the subject and he has controlled the debate.  His documentary film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” alleges that the scientific debate is closed.  He says it is generally accepted that the world is warming (which nobody disputes) and that mankind is mostly responsible for it (which many dispute).  He predicts dreadful consequences if we don’t clean up our lives that send harmful emissions into the atmosphere.

 If Gore is right, trillions of dollars must be spent to protect the world from itself; if he’s wrong, trillions of dollars could be wasted.  The stakes on this issue are high.

 It’s easy to find respected scientists who reject Gore’s claims.  Here I limit the contra arguments to those of two men: Timothy Ball, environmental consultant and ex-professor of climatology, University of Winnepeg, and Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 Ball says: 

• “Global warming, as we think we know it, doesn’t exist.”
• “Global warming is not due to human contribution of carbon dioxide (CO2).  This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science.”
• “ … there is no evidence that we are, or ever could cause global climate change ….”
• “These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun.  But there is nothing unusual going on.”
  

Lindzen says: 

• “Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19^th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that.  Since about 1970 … some are now advancing again.  And, frankly, we don’t know why.”
• Malaria is claimed as a “by-product of global warming.”  That is false.  Malaria was once “common in Michigan and Siberia (still is) -- mosquitoes don’t require tropical warmth.”
• “ … the earth and its climate are dynamic.”  Change is normal.  To exploit it as something to fear is bad -- to exploit the fear is much worse.
• “ … global mean temperatures have increased (about) one degree over the past century.”  They have “essentially flat since 1998.”

 On it goes.  One thing is clear.  Scientific debate over global warming is not closed.  And until it is, beware of politicians who sponsor expensive programs to fix a problem that might not exist.

 The sad fact -- Science has become politicized.