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RSSUnderstanding global warming
The fallacies of Gore and the data of NASA prove questionable
Several months ago, syndicated radio host Dennis Prager accurately described the three conditions that must hold for global warming theorists to be correct. Number one: The Earth must be warming. Number two: Increasing man-made carbon dioxide emissions are causing the warming trend. And number three: Global warming will be destructive.
There is certainly scientific consensus that man-made carbon dioxide emissions have increased every year during the last decade. But there is no scientific consensus that those emissions have driven temperature upwards.
In one fell swoop, the first two conditions for global warming can be all but thrown out. Since Al Gore released his well-known movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Earth has cooled by approximately one-third of a degree.
In that same time, man-made carbon dioxide emissions have increased. That means that since Gore’s movie, there has actually been a negative correlation between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature, which pokes a hole in his graph that link carbon dioxide emissions and temperature.
Gore also falsely inferred that correlation means causation. He showed that there is a correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide emissions and assumed that the correlation means that one force is causing the other. In the last century, however, along with increasing temperatures, there has also been an increase in the amount of cell phones. Correlation? Yes. Causation? I hope not.
Unfortunately, Gore is not the only person who has published dubious data regarding global warming. Late last year, NASA published a report claiming that November 2008 was the warmest November in recorded history. Skeptical scientists immediately challenged NASA’s data, and NASA came out and apologized, claiming that they accidentally copied the October 2008 temperatures recorded in Russia.
NASA, which is oft-quoted by global warming advocates, has been adding 0.15 degrees Celsius to its U.S. temperature reports since 2000, according to well-known global warming skeptic and statistician Steve McIntyre. According to McIntyre, NASA claimed that the year 2006 was the warmest in recorded history. Well, close, sort of. It was actually the fourth warmest. Number one was 1934, when carbon dioxide emissions were nowhere near today’s levels. In fact, only four of the 11 warmest recorded years have occurred in the last 54 years.
That much of the world and many of our leaders have drunk the global warming Kool-Aid is a testament to the fact that humans generally believe what they want to believe. The left wants to believe that global warming is true because it gives them an excuse to control our lives.
After all, if your “carbon footprint” is destroying Earth, then the government should have the authority to make coal, electricity and gasoline extremely expensive. It’s remarkable that on the one hand, the left wants America to give massive amounts of aid to starving Africans. But on the other hand, the left also wants to subsidize ethanol, which drives up the global prices of corn, milk, meat and eggs. Higher staple food prices are far harder for Africans than for Americans.
I can continue rattling off statistics that cast doubt upon the idea of global warming. I can continue describing unforeseen consequences (higher food prices, rapid deforestation, etc) that have developed as a result of policies that address global warming. But the bottom line is that dogma permeates all levels of this debate, and people currently entrenched in their opinions are likely to remain there.
What those people don’t realize is that every action people take has complex, far-reaching and often unforeseen consequences. Forcibly raising the prices of energy — the lifeblood of every economy — would have many unforeseen and disastrous consequences. But, as usual, the left does not understand the world’s complexity. The left thinks that human actions have predictable, foreseeable consequences.
As author Stephen Covery said, “While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions.”
Jared Sichel is a columnist. He can be reached for comment at Jsichel@tulane.edu.
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Dennis is right on target!!! Finally, Al Gore is being discredited and found to be greedy green - $$$$$
“It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate.”……’All the standard arguments for global warming rely upon conventional “equilibrium” models of the atmosphere, all of which may be false.’
Bjarne Andresen, professor of physics Ørsted Laboratory -University of Copenhagen
Thank you, Mr. Sichel for a well written and reasoned argument. It makes sense. Now, how do we get the message to the President, his science advisors and our legislators before they do something stupid? The Gore steamroller is about to roll over us! Is there any way to stop it? Scientific argument has been replaced by political dogma. The truth no longer matters. CO2 a pollutant! What a joke. It reminds me of what BP (Big Pharma) has done to Cholesterol. But that’s another story.
For the past 15 years I believed global warming was caused by CO2. Now, after many months of research, I’m not so sure. It’s looking more and more to be a natural phenomenon to me. My interest in the subject is great so I launched http://www.energyplanusa.com where I take an objective look at global warming and energy policy. I’ve waded through the wellspring of global warming theory, the United Nation’s IPCC reports, and conclude they lack the ‘smoking gun’ that proves global warming is man-made. Moreover, I’ve come to realize that man-made global warming theory cherry picks facts and ignores contradictory evidence from reliable studies.
I’m dismayed that my own party, the Democrats, the thinkers, have turned a scientific issue into religious zealotry where faith trumps facts. I’m also dismayed that the American press seems content with publishing hearsay, without backing up conclusions and presumptions with facts and evidence. Please, help me get at the truth. If anyone can provide the CO2 smoking gun, I’d be greatly indebted.
Its a real issue that every govt. of the world over need to pay urgent attention to. Apart from CO2, it is dangerous CO, Better known as carbon monoxide’s galloping rise in the air which is a cause of concern. If we dont check it then we’d leave behind us a lackadaisical environment to live in for the posterity for which We shall never be forgiven…..Its a cardinal crime….Let’s do our bit to stem it and make this planet a better place to live on….http://iphone.mobilechamps.com/Love.html
the effect of Global Warming these days is even worst. i think every government should pass stricter laws on Carbon Emissions. we should also concentrate more on renewable energy sources and avoid fossil fuels.
- We should be more concerned about Global Warming and Climate Change because Typhoons are getting much stronger and there are greater incidence of Flooding. take for example the recent Typhoon Ketsana which devastated some countries in South East Asia.