THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume IX, Issue # 166, September 8, 2007
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
GLOBAL WARMING INSANITY?
By Paul K. Driessen
DOES FANATICAL ADHERENCE TO GLOBAL WARMING THEORY CONSTITUTE A FORM OF MENTAL ILLNESS? ARE
GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS PSYCHOTIC? ARE THEY TOTALLY OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY & THEREFORE RIPE
FOR COMMITMENT TO INSANE ASYLUMS, OR ARE THEY SUBJECT TO PERSONALITY DISORDERS THAT DRIVE THEM TO
SEEK TO IMPOSE SEVERE LIMITS ON ENERGY USE, ECONOMIC GROWTH & HUMAN PROGRESS & TO EXERCISE ABSOLUTE
CONTROL OVER PEOPLE'S LIVES? ARE THE CLIMATE ALARMISTS NUT CASES WHO BELONG IN THE LOONYBIN, OR
ARE THEY DETERMINED SUBVERSIVES WHO MUST BE DISGRACED & NEUTRALIZED, WHETHER THROUGH POLITICAL
ACTION OR CRIMINAL PROSECUTION?
FULL STORY:
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority,” Marcus Aurelius opined, “but to escape finding oneself in the
ranks of the insane.”
An even worse fate would be to end up in minority status and in an asylum. Recent developments suggest that this might
be the destiny of climate change alarmists.
Now that National Aeronautics and Space Administration has corrected its U.S. temperature records, the hottest year on
record is no longer 1998, but 1934. Five of the ten hottest years since 1880 were between 1920 and 1940 – and the 15
hottest years since 1880 are spread across seven decades. This suggests natural variation, not a warming trend.
Plant and insect remains found at the base of Greenland’s ice sheet indicate that, just 400,000 years ago, the island was
blanketed in forests and basking in temperatures perhaps 27 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today.
Land area temperatures in South America, Africa and Australia have declined slightly over the last few years. Since 1998,
sea surface temperatures over much of the world have decreased slightly, while globally averaged atmospheric
temperatures have shown no change.
Many U.S. temperature gauges are near air-conditioning exhausts, hot asphalt, and other heat sources. Their readings are
thus too high and must be revised downward, along with claims about rising temperatures.
Over the past 650,000 years, global temperatures almost always rose or fell first, followed centuries later by changes in
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, as warming oceans exhaled CO2 or cooling seas absorbed the gas. (This inconvenient
fact is what Al Gore is referring to when he says the temperature-CO2 relationship “is actually very complicated.”)
More scientists are pointing to solar energy levels, cosmic rays, and clouds as determinants of climate – and saying CO2
plays only a minor role. Thousands of scientists have questioned claims that humans are causing catastrophic climate
change, and, over the past year, dozens have publicly switched from believers to skeptics about climate Armageddon
theories. There is obviously no consensus on climate change.
Latvia and seven other eastern European countries are threatening legal action against European Union decisions to
restrict their emissions, as they work to grow their economies, after decades of impoverishment under Communism. China
and India refuse to sacrifice economic growth to concerns about climate chaos.
China has surpassed the U.S.A. as the world’s leading CO2 emitter, and EU carbon dioxide emissions have increased
faster than those in the United States, where both population and economic growth have been substantially higher than
in Western Europe.
During the just-concluded United Nations climate conference in Vienna, a number of industrialized countries rejected binding targets
of 25-40% greenhouse gas reductions by 2020, while a bloc of 77 developing nations said industrialized countries should
reduce their emissions 80% by that date.
The response of climate alarmists is fodder for psychology textbooks. Greenpeace says cataclysm skeptics are “climate
criminals.” NASA scientist James Hansen calls us “court jesters.” Grist magazine wants “Nuremberg-style war crimes trials.”
Robert Kennedy, Jr., says we should be treated like “traitors.”
Phil Jones, at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, refused to reveal the methodology for his dire-sounding
temperature data. “Why should I make the data available,” he asked, “when your aim is to find something wrong with it?”
And Senator Barbara Boxer turned climate hearings into inquisitions for catastrophe skeptics, while Congressman Jim Costa
walked out on a witness who pointed out that proposed legislation would dramatically increase energy and food prices, cost
millions of jobs, and severely hurt poor families – while doing nothing to stabilize global temperatures.
Newsweek said climate holocaust “deniers” had received $19 million from industry, to subvert the “consensus” it
claims exists about global warming. It made no mention of the $50 BILLION that alarmists and other beneficiaries have
received since 1990 from governments, foundations and corporations, or of its 1975 article, which declared that scientists are
“almost unanimous” in believing that a major cooling trend would usher in reduced agricultural productivity, famines, and
perhaps even a new Little Ice Age.
(Newsweek contributing editor Robert Samuelson called the global warming "denial machine” article “highly
contrived” and based on “discredited” accusations about industry funding.)
Alarmists have blamed global warming for hurricanes, tornadoes, malaria, and even the Minneapolis bridge collapse,
terrorism, Italian suicides, teenage drinking, and “irritability” in mice. By combining far-fetched speculation with various
computer-generated temperature projections and worst-case scenarios, they concoct even more ominous auguries, like this
whopper from London’s Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre:
If CO2 levels keep rising, global temperatures could soar,
ice caps could melt, oceans could rise dozens of feet, and
all that extra water pressure could destabilize Earth’s crust,
squeeze out magma, and cause volcanoes to erupt. The
volcanic gases and dust could then cool the earth, and
cause a new ice age.
A 1993 blockbuster movie used a similar what-if pyramid scheme to generate terrifying encounters with raptors and
tyrannosaurs. But when the lights came up, people knew it was just a movie.
When it comes to climate change, however, many seem unable to separate science from science fiction, or even distinguish
among headline-grabbing pronouncements, preposterous disaster flicks like “The Day After Tomorrow,” and
pseudo-documentaries like “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The 11th Hour.” Instead of fostering rational discourse and
responsible action, alarmists insist that we “do something” immediately to prevent climate cataclysm.
Al Gore is buying carbon offset indulgences. Leonardo DiCaprio is replacing his incandescent lightbulbs. Cheryl Crow
promotes one square per trip to the ladies room. Cate Blanchett will wash her hair less often in her new $10-million Australian
mansion. Cameron Diaz promotes “indigenous” lifestyles in Third World countries.
But they all support laws mandating greatly reduced energy use and economic growth – outside of Hollywood and
Nashville’s Belle Meade area.
In response, Congress has introduced a half-dozen “climate stabilization” bills – and state legislatures are reviewing 375 more
– even as the scientific “consensus” fades, Europe’s united front on emissions trading collapses, and countries in the
Asia-Pacific Partnership reject mandatory greenhouse gas cutbacks in favor of steady technological progress in pollution
control and energy efficiency.
These bills would cost American consumers many billions of dollars a year. But they would reduce average global
temperatures by a tiny fraction of the 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit that scientists say the Kyoto Protocol would accomplish by 2050
(assuming CO2 really is a primary cause of climate change).
It’s time to ask: At what point do symbolic gestures and political grandstanding become “doing something” about climate
change? At what point do they amount to insanity?
Many suspect that anxiety about climate change was never really about preventing a global warming – or global cooling –
catastrophe. Instead, they say, the real purpose is controlling energy use, economic growth, and people’s lives. Alarmist
efforts to intimidate climate catastrophe skeptics and legislate mandatory energy restrictions suggest that these suspicions
are valid, and that climate doomsayers are becoming increasingly desperate.
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
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality, the Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, and the
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, which can be
obtained at www.Eco-Imperialism.com. Email: pdriessen@cox.net --- Telephone:
(703) 698-6171
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues
Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity