Global warming: The press is being suckered

[oracle]

<font>Global warming: The press is being suckered (http://www.starnewspapers.com/star/spedit/col/04-co1.htm)</font>

Sunday, January 4, 2004

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By Michael J. Bowers

Star columnist
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Why should I believe what the newspapers tell me about global warming today, when two decades ago, they lied to me about the AIDS crisis?

If you were born before 1976 or so, you know what I'm talking about: the phony heterosexual AIDS scare of the mid-1980s.

The disease emerged in America in 1981 as one that was mainly restricted to homosexual men. In fact, it was first called GRIDS: gay-related immune deficiency syndrome.

Then a few other groups started contracting the disease. For example, drug users who employed dirty needles, and unwitting people who received a transplant of contaminated blood.

It was only logical that people in these two unfortunate situations would be at risk. At the same time, it was quite illogical that a straight American who did not use drugs would be at risk

.But the press couldn't abide this truth. To progressive reporters, it wasn't right that AIDS should be restricted to homosexuals and drug users. It wasn't fair to stigmatize these groups. They needed to be protected.

And so they rolled out one of the biggest hoaxes of the century. For some five years, they issued a drumbeat of warnings that it was only a matter of time for straight people: Soon we too would start dying in large numbers.

A typical example of this scare-mongering appeared in the Feb. 16, 1987, issue of Time magazine. The cover read: "The Big Chill: How Heterosexuals Are Coping With AIDS."

...

Now, 20 years later, the tale of gloom and doom is global warming. Or perhaps we should call it global hyping. I see political considerations again. The reporters spreading the alarm are anti-car.

A prominent theme is that the ice at the North Pole is melting. Thus water levels will rise all over the world, threatening property and people.

This may happen. But if it does, so what? It's happened before. Humans will just have to adapt. Who ever promised us a planet that would never, ever change?

For instance, up to 11,000 years ago, one could walk from Alaska to Siberia over a strip of land 55 miles long. But then, the seas rose 300 feet, and the Bering Land Bridge became the Bering Strait. Now, if you want to get to Siberia, you have to swim.

But you know what? Despite this major rearrangement of terrain, Earth and its creatures managed to survive. Who woulda thought?

Now here's another hot tip. The continents are drifting apart!

...


Click here to read more (http://www.starnewspapers.com/star/spedit/col/04-co1.htm)

[Naturalized-Texan]

Bowers is partially correct. The current warmng (about 1 degree Celsius in the past 120 years) is nothing more than the natural recovery from the 400-year Little Ice Age that ended about 1880. More than half of that warming occurred before 1940. There is no scientific evidence that the warming is caused by human activity, including cars.

[Keith J]

And the idea of the sea level rising from melting of any floating ice is a violation of the laws of physics. Ice floats because it expands as it freezes from water. Any FLOATING ice that melts does NOT raise sea level. Now if you are talking about warming the ocean and the resulting sea leve rise, you are ignoring the issue of ocean currents.
You are not going to warm any ocean water deeper than 50 meters as ocean cuirrents limit local heating.

The continents ARE drifting and some areas are subducting, that is naturally SINKING from tectonic activity. Other areas are subsiding from natural and man-made causes but its NOT sea level rising.

[PaulRevere]

I don't think that the press is being "suckered". I believe that they are willingly ignorant and intentionally filter out any noise that repudiates the myth that global warming is caused by human activity.

The fact is that global climate has fluctuated throughout history and prehistory. Cold spells were recorded in the 14th and late 17th centuries. During the Roman Empire, vineyards dotted the southern Britain landscape. There is no factual basis to blame human economic activity of the present warming trend any more than there is to blame Cromagnon Man's camp fires on the end of the last ice age. The watermelon environmentalists are using this hoax as a tool to further their leftist agenda and the press are all-too-willing dupes.

[justin]

A biologist friend once told me that it is ignorant to think that humans have such an effect on our environment that we could change the world cilmate.

[Keith J]

Science is cause and effect. Finding both. And drawing conclusive relationship. Most of the environmental/ecological "studies" are effect studies with predetermined causes. Rash conclusions studying the range of possible effects which generate dire consequences of inaction in order to secure future study grants. A pyramid scheme.

[Desertrat06]

To a limited extent, I believe there is a certain amount of warming going on. This doesn't mean I believe it's a world-wide phenomenon.

Some of the clues, to me, are the northward expansion of the ranges of temperature-sensitive animals and insects. As example, the white wing dove which once nested only in southern Texas and on down into Mexico is now nesting much farther north--as far north as Wichita Falls. (There are other examples...)

Flowers are blooming as much as two months earlier than historical records show, in parts of England. The melting of Canadian glaciers is accelerating; the Arctic ice pack is now melting more during summers, than in the past.

One weakness of the "Homo Sap dunnit!" argument about Globular Worming is that many of the northern hemisphere's temperature measurements are taken in or near major metropolitan areas. We know that the masses of houses, pavement, and concrete serve as heat sinks and do not cool down as much at night as does open country, just as they heat more during daylight hours. Nearby rural areas lying downwind of metro areas are also affected.

I have read that measurements of CO2 in the air blowing onto the US from the Pacific is higher than of CO2 at the Atlantic coast. I conclude that our farms and forests are "doing a good job". Note that younger, growing trees absorb more CO2 than old-growth, mature trees. (Teenagers eat more than Old Farts.)

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif, 'Rat

[Keith J]

"Rat, there you go using the leftist casual observations to make a conclusion. Whitewings? Easy. The freeze that wiped out the citrus in the Rio Grande Valley (and Ruby Red Grapefruit) destroyed the natural nesting habitat forcing a northern shift. What the birds found was they could cope just as well as their non-mirgating cousins, those would be rock doves. Feral pigeons. Flying rats.

On gardens, handouts and grain fields, the Whitewings are doing just fine and as a plus, they are sheltered from hunting. The only thing preying on Whitewings in the city are cats. Just roost on thin limbs and all is fine. Its also very easy for Whitewings to survive when countless suburban homeowners are feeding them 50 pounds of wild bird mix a month. Yes, free food makes vagrants.

Flowers blooming earlier? Come on now...its not temperature alone that makes flowers bloom! Diurnal cycle length is the key. Winter wheat here in the south doesn't head when the temps start to rise due to an Indian Winter and spring wheat endures much colder temps when the heads emerge. Why are flowers blooming earlier? Its called a cultivar. Earlier to market is more desireable and cross pollination/gene pool improvements are the difference.

The urban heating effect is called urban heat islands. And they DO influence weather on the micro scale. Using this data is far from accurate.


Landfills which do not decompose the paper products are sinks of carbon. Carbon that was for most cases, recently removed from the atmosphere.

[Bluemoon_Rising]

Naturalized Texan writes, "Bowers is partially correct. The current warmng (about 1 degree Celsius in the past 120 years) is nothing more than the natural recovery from the 400-year Little Ice Age that ended about 1880. More than half of that warming occurred before 1940. There is no scientific evidence that the warming is caused by human activity, including cars."

Just so, NT, and moreover, Michael Mann's "hockey stick" theory of sharply rising temperatures, the mainstay of warming enthusiasts, has been recently repudiated by more and more reports showing that the last century was in fact not appreciably warmer than other, pre-industrial periods. Indeed, a strong case is being built for solar, not human, activity.

And then there's Lomborg's recent vindication:


[ QUOTE ]
Lomborg, a professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, traces the origin of his book to a chance reading of an interview with the late Julian Simon, whose attacks on environmental pessimism always raised the hackles of environmentalists. Being a self-described "old left-wing Greenpeace member," Lomborg was appalled at Simon's views and supposed them to be "simple, American right-wing propaganda." .

"I was provoked," Lomborg explains. "I had never really questioned my belief in an ever deteriorating environment--and here was Simon, telling me to put my beliefs under the statistical microscope." Being a professor of statistics, he made a class project of checking the data and refuting Simon. But a funny thing happened on the way to debunking Simon: "Not everything he said was correct but--contrary to our expectations--it turned out that a surprisingly large amount of his points stood up to scrutiny and conflicted with what we believed ourselves to know."

Thus chastened, Lomborg set out in The Skeptical Environmentalist to refute what he calls the litany:

We are all familiar with the Litany: the environment is in poor shape here in Earth. Our resources are running out. The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat. The air and water are becoming ever more polluted. The planet's species are becoming extinct in vast numbers--we kill off more than 40,000 each year. The forests are disappearing, fish stocks are collapsing and the coral reefs are dying. We are defiling our Earth, the fertile topsoil is disappearing; we are paving over nature, destroying the wilderness, decimating the biosphere, and will end up killing ourselves in the process. The world's ecosystem is breaking down. We are fast approaching the absolute limit of viability, and the limits of growth are becoming apparent.[2]

"There is just one problem," Lomborg adds. The litany "does not seem to be backed up by the available evidence." The Skeptical Environmentalist reviews trend data, primarily from UN or other government sources, for hundreds of environmental variables and finds that most aspects of the world's environment are either improving or are not catastrophic as the public imagines. Lomborg quickly adds that he is not saying that the environment is fine, that there is no cause for worry, or that civilization should be content with the current state of things. The point of assessing and comparing various environmental trends is to help policymakers set priorities among different environmental problems. "When things are improving," Lomborg writes, "we know we are on the right track. Although perhaps not at the right speed." Conversely, misleading perceptions lead to misallocation of resources, especially in wealthy countries.[3] As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found in an internal study more than a decade ago, funding priorities are often in inverse proportion to the seriousness of environmental problems.[4]

SEE LINK (http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.15242/pub_detail.asp)

[/ QUOTE ]

[ducktapehero]

Global warming huh? THEN HOW COME IT IS 2 FRIGGIN DEGREES OUTSIDE?????????????????

[CaliGirl]

[ QUOTE ]
ducktapehero said:
Global warming huh? THEN HOW COME IT IS 2 FRIGGIN DEGREES OUTSIDE?????????????????

[/ QUOTE ]

Get a grip duck! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rotflmbo.gif Is that the norm for where you live? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon127.gif Just pushing some buttons at your end. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon16.gif

[ducktapehero]

It's pretty cold, I live in the Ozarks. I must admit though, we were in the 70's a few days ago. Typical Missouri weather.

[Belisarius]

Wisconsin is frigid, wind chill last night was down to -30 and the normal temp was like -10. It was very, very cold. It isn't global warming.

[Desertrat06]

Whitewing nesting habitat is in trees/brush which allows clear vision from the nest. Citrus trees don't provide this (nor do Salt Cedars, as alleged by the Sierra Club). Sorry, but the change became truly significant in 1986, following the hurricane which hit into northern Mexico late in that year. Whitewings came back north after their earlier migration; stayed the winter, and then expanded northward thereafter.

Growing seasons ARE affected by temperatures. Check your Farmer's Almanac "when to plant" map. A very beneficial effect of Globular Worming would be the increase possible in wheat production in Russia and Canada...

I'm fully aware of heat islands. There are--and have been--rainfall islands, as well. Back when Gary, Indiana, was a steel town, the rainfall downwind of the mills doubled from prior averages, due to the particulate matter emitted.

Another localized effect, but over a larger area, is the change in temperature behavior in southern England and in France's Normandy Coast. After they quit heating and fueling with coal, the fogs of the Sherlock Holmes era became a thing of the past. More clear skies, which meant lower low temperatures in winter in both areas.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif, 'Rat

[FatherTime]

[ QUOTE ]
Belisarius said:
Wisconsin is frigid, wind chill last night was down to -30 and the normal temp was like -10. It was very, very cold. It isn't global warming.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bel-

Here in MinneSNOWta, the lakes now have 2feet of ice on the surface, making it alot easier for some folks to get to work these days...they just drive "cross-lakes".

Guess that new-fangled global warming device folks down south keep talking about doesn't do a whole lot up here. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

BTW: Greenbay sucks and Brett favre swallows. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon128.gif

Regards,

-FT (a very bitter Vik-queens fan)

[Rhino]

[ QUOTE ]
Desertrat06 said:
Growing seasons ARE affected by temperatures. Check your Farmer's Almanac "when to plant" map.

[/ QUOTE ]
Can't. The FBI confiscated my almanac.

[DesertFox]

With or without a search warrant?

[Rhino]

Without. I didn't have a concealed carry permit, so it was in plain view.

[DesertFox]

Well, there's the reason. I keep mine hidden under a pile of bills. They'd never look there.

[Wyatt_Junker]

I have a concealed armpit. Its kinda like packing heat though. I probably could hold up a bank with it. Just fan my arms around like a chicken and let the tellers pass out.

[Rhino]

Do me a favor. Let me know so I won't be there, LOL!

[Bluemoon_Rising]

Hey, ducktapehero, you got that right. Man alive, I know something about that Missouri weather. I took my initial MOS training there at Fort Leonard Wood a year before I flipped over to another MOS. I was born and raised in Phoenix. That was the first time in my young life that I had ever seen real snow.

Early December in '78 a damn blizzard blew through one day during bivouac week. The very next day the temperatures were in the 50s, the day after that, the 70s! Within a 72-hour period of time, we went from freezing our arses off to slogging through ankle-deep mud and sweating them off. Nuts!

Ah, but then in Germany, for first time, I saw "the rain comin' down on a sunny day." A little CCR weather. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif