| 113th Year, 39th Issue | Thursday, May 9, 2002 | Sparta, North Carolina |
To borrow a phrase from the "Poltergeist" films, He's baa-aaak!! After more than a year of blessed respite from Al Gore's doctrinaire environmental sermons, he blessed the New York Times op-ed page with another screed.
Once again, the ugly spectre of 'global warming' is creeping across the nation, aided by those monstrous 'oil company executives'. And Big Al is on a campaign to save us from ourselves. But he knows we're with him because "with folks wearing bikinis in Boston in the middle of April and with the massive melting of ice at both poles and in nearly every mountain glacier on earth, public awareness and concern are growing rapidly." His prescription - "on this Earth Day, more than ever before, we need real, forward-thinking leadership and a renewed focus on the environment.
True leadership means ensuring that we take the necessary steps to leave a cleaner environment for generations to come and that means strengthening environmental protections." Of course that means his view of environmental protection, including implementation of the Kyoto protocol, abolition of the internal combustion engine, legally mandated implementation of solar and wind power, Federal control of land use and probable institutionalization of everyone who disagrees with him. After all, it was one of those anti-environment types that killed Bambi's mother, wasn't it?
One would think that the embarrassment of "Earth in the Balance," with its collection of scientific and factual errors, would be a bit humbling. Then again, having been out of the mainstream, he might have missed a few recent points. Like the fact that Japan, Australia, Canada and Germany have come to the conclusion that the costs of Kyoto certainly outweigh the gains. Or that the basic premises of the IPCC predictions are gradually collapsing as the errors in the modeling become more widely discussed. Or that, in three consecutive summaries, the IPCC has continually revised downward the predictions for warming. Or that competing explanations for observed near-term warming have been offered which are both more defensible and entirely unrelated to human intervention in the environment.
Gore's biggest hurdle is that science is actually gaining momentum over the drivel that passed for "truth" in his prior existence. In 1991, Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen pointed out a clear correlation between sunspot cycles and the Earth's average temperature. The evidence was marginalized and disregarded by the global warming advocates and ignored by the IPCC. As true science will, it arose again when Marsh and Svensmark proved, in 1997, a relationship between solar activity and cloud cover that paralleled the earth's recorded temperature changes. And a reader, Scott Moncrief, brought to my attention the work of Dr. Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and deputy directory of Mount Wilson Observatory. While clearly not as well qualified as Al Gore, she nevertheless has produced work that confirms the conclusions of the Danish scientists and explains the 1945-1970 cooling period (remember when the Ice Age was coming?), something the IPCC dealt with by ignoring it.
With regard to fossil fuel usage and human impact on global warming, her conclusions are direct: "1) No catastrophic human-made global warming effects can be found in the best measurements of climate that we presently have. 2) The longevity, health, welfare and productivity of humans have improved with the use of fossil fuels for energy, and the resulting human wealth has helped produce environmental improvements beneficial to health as well."
But for Al and his camp followers, the cry will continue to be "Do something!" just in case there might be something to the fears they don't understand. And everybody knows those evil corporations are out to ruin the earth, don't they? Better to have a group of scientifically and technically illiterate "environmentalists" deciding energy policy than rely on people who actually work in the field. And, at this point, a digression; Lets have everybody who remembers Earth Day this year raise your hand. Anybody?
Don't expect the science to convince the saviors. Just as the actual lung cancer rates in the county give lie to the Radon crowd without slowing their gospel, you can expect the same from the warming crowd. The pursuit of the cause, the spotlight, and the research dollars becomes a kind of addiction. But you can insist that your representatives justify their positions on these issues on the science rather than the theology if you really care about your future.
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