Global warming and hot air
By ColumnCredit
February 18, 2010 2:00 AM
The dumbest thing Al Gore ever did was to call it "global warming" instead of climate change. Now the issue is so politicized that either term is fighting words.
Back in 2008, the documentary "Expelled," with Ben Stein, was about researchers being censored for exploring views outside the accepted wisdom of the academic mainstream.
"Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are," Stein said.
At the time, the film was derided as a know-nothing denial of facts. Academe had standards and integrity, and the sort of shunning Stein talked about was unthinkable. Until it wasn't.
The "Climate Storm" broke at the time of the Copenhagen summit when hacked e-mails were released in which scientists admitted things like the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas had been grossly exaggerated. In one e-mail, Professor Jones of the University of East Anglia asked a colleague to delete e-mails relating to the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had been requested in a Freedom of Information Act request.
Jones argued that the requests were invalid because they worked for the United Nations, and that trumped U.S. law. He reassured the colleague that he had persuaded the university to ignore FOIA requests if they came from climate skeptics.
Why would scientists behave this way when researching an issue measured in millennia instead of news cycles? There is a strong element of the end justifying the means in their statements. If proof is needed that a cataclysm is coming, then they'll find it.
We've had warming periods before, like in the Middle Ages, but they seem intent to prove that it is human activity rather than solar storms, magnetic polarity and other unmanageable factors.
Consider this: 71 percent of the Earth is made up of oceans; only 29 percent is land mass and much of that is desert and ice. The six billion people on Earth live on 12 percent of the planet. Yet we persist in thinking that the recent actions of a small species can change the entire ecology and composition of the planet.
We know the planet has looked different in the past. Cape Cod was created by the retreat of a glacier in a warming period, and there are sea fossils at the tops of mountains. Human existence is barely an eyelash flutter in the life of the planet, but we hew to an almost biblical interpretation of the role we play as fruitful stewards of the planet — pure human ego.
There are two agendas at play here. One is interventionist — climate change is a reason to mandate changes in behavior to conform to a preferred ideal. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) contends, for instance, that we have an artificially high number of cows, as they are used for food and agriculture. If there were no demand for red meat, then there would be fewer cows, which would produce less methane. PETA claims methane a major factor in climate change.
People should ride bikes more, so we should tax the ubiquitous American automobile and enforce use of mass transit. These social imperatives about making people behave in a certain correct way for their own good, but those who have this agenda are sanctimonious about it as they save people from themselves and the Earth at the same time.
The other is unyielding — "global warming" is a hoax, as anybody can see when Washington, D.C., is buried in snow. Computer modeling that supposedly proves global warming has been shown unreliable, according to a study by the University of Arizona published last August in Science magazine.
While other researchers questioned the credibility of the study, efforts to reduce emissions and control carbon often spring from a political agenda, not a scientific one, and true believers ignore the fact that government efforts to control emissions not only cost too much, bankrupt state budgets and cost jobs, they also have virtually no impact on global problems.
Both sides ignore the fact that it isn't important why climate change is happening, or even if it is happening. They are so intent on proving the others wrong that they ignore the benefits of cleaner air, new jobs and more efficient technology — even without a "crisis" or "change" or "warming."
We need less debating points, less piety, and more pursuit of cleaner technology as an end in itself. Maybe Al Gore and Ben Stein can make a movie.
Cynthia Stead of Dennis serves as the Cape and Islands' Republican state committeewoman. E-mail her
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