THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 296, November 10, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE "NEAR-VIRTUAL REALITY" OF MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING
THE FULL STORY
By Dennis T. Avery
THE COMING OBAMA PRESIDENCY & U.S. CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY: THE IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING THE
LONG, PROVEN RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOLAR ACTIVITY & THE EARTH'S CLIMATE -- THE IMPORTANCE OF REALIZING
THAT WE ARE NOW IN A PERIOD OF GLOBAL COOLING, THAT THE MOST RECENT PERIOD OF NATURAL, SOLAR-LINKED
GLOBAL WARMING HAS COME TO AN END, THAT CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS INTO THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE HAVE
NOTHING TO WITH GLOBAL WARMING & COOLING CYCLES
“As Barack Obama shifts from a waking dream to the real
world, he faces the near-virtual reality of climate change.
He has to move decisively.” (Ian McEwan, “A New Dawn,”
Wall Street Journal, November 8-9, 2008.)
What is near-virtual reality? I’m fascinated that McEwan starts his sermon upholding his belief in man-made global
warming by quoting George Berkeley, the 18th-century Irish philosopher. Berkeley contended that the physical world
does not exist; that it’s a “virtual” product of our minds.
That’s pretty much the case with man-made global warming.
Temperatures are lower today than in 1940. Over the past two years, global temperatures recorded by Britain’s Hadley
Centre and the U.S. satellites have dropped sharply, by about 0.6 degree Celsius.
The ice which used to fill Alaska’s Glacier Bay has retreated 57 miles since 1800, but the glacier gained mass during
2008, because the sun became less active, temperatures fell, and 20 feet of Alaskan snowfall turned to ice this Spring.
There was nothing surprising about such a shift, unless your computer model keeps predicting a continuing rapid
decline in ice and an inevitable man-made increase in the earth’s temperatures.
Samuel Johnson famously refuted Berkeley’s idea of virtual reality by kicking a stone and watching his foot bounce
off of the rock. The world’s thermometers are likewise refuting man-made global warming by dropping sharply, while
atmospheric CO2 increased another 5 percent in the past decade.
McEwan makes a vital point, however.
“In an age of electronic media, where rumor, opinion, and
fact are tightly interleaved, and where politicians must
sing to compete for our love, public affairs have the
quality of a waking dream . . . whose precise connection
to the world of kickable stones is obscure, though we are
certain it exists.”
McEwan says Barack Obama might succeed in “tipping the nations toward a low-carbon future simply because people
think he can.”
“There are fears that Mr. Obama will move too cautiously on climate change for political reasons, and that would be a
tragic error,” McEwan warns. He says, if Obama went to next year’s Copenhagen summit with a bold emissions
reduction commitment, “he would become a hero of the planet, for good.”
The idea must be tempting. However, Gordon Brown has put his Prime Minister’s chair at risk in Britain by demanding
new green taxes and more dramatic emissions cuts while the planet is cooling. The London Observer said in June,
2008, that 60 percent of Britons doubt our global warming is man-made.
Inevitably, charging ourselves hefty prices for emitting CO2 will cost a lot of money, which the Congress will gleefully
collect and distribute to its favored recipients. Based on the world’s recent erratic temperatures, moreover, it won’t make
any difference to global warming.
Falling thermometers underline the importance of understanding the 1,500-year solar-linked climate cycle, revealed since
1984 in hundreds of peer-reviewed studies of oxygen isotopes (in ice cores and cave stalagmites), seabed microfossils,
fossil pollen, and carbon 14 all over world.
Sunspots had predicted the recent temperature drop since 2000, and sunspots have a 79 percent correlation with our
past thermometer record (with a ten year lag). The correlation between our temperatures and CO2 is a dismissive 22
percent and falling as we speak.
Before we dismantle the most productive economy in history, maybe the new Obama administration should at least
examine the long, proven relationship between the sun’s activity and our climate.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Dennis T. Avery is an environmental economist for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and is the Director of
the Institute's Center for Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org). Formerly he was a
senior policy analyst for the United
States Department of State, where he won the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement. He is the co-author, with
atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, of the book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years (Blue Ridge Summit,
Pennsylvania: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). Avery's book, Saving the Planet With Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental
Triumph of High-Yield Farming (Washington, D.C.: Hudson Institute, 1995), continues to be popular as a readable overview
of realistic agriculture for the future and for today. Readers may write Avery at Post Office Box 202, Churchville, Virginia, 24421.
Email: cgfi@hughes.net
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity