inessential musings

Contrary to what you might have heard from our mainstream media, the “global warming” debate rages on. And while there’s no contesting there have been slight increases in global temperature in its relative recent history, it should be noted that there have been similar temperature fluctuations, both hot and cold, throughout Earth’s longer history.

I’ve considered as much global warming “science” as I’ve been able to digest and concluded that what we’re experiencing, this phenomenon that’s made more than a few careers and become a darling of our mainstream media, is no more than a natural occurrence. And mass marketing at its finest.

I’m certainly not alone in my semi-scientific conclusions. John Stossel’s recent “Give Me a Break” segment about global warming asserts that much, if not most, “scientific” data we’ve been fed comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of “2000 scientists who agree” that global warming is being caused by humans. Included in that group are members of Greenpeace and other activist groups as well as governments that have supported the Kyoto treaty.

Now, I’m no scientist. But when you scrutinize the supporting data proffered by global warming activists, it becomes abundantly clear that it’s being manipulated to support a preconceived theory rather than reach a scientific conclusion based on historical data. Why? Because there are careers now being supported by a segment of the public’s belief that, if we stop driving SUVs, we can affect the relationship between the planet and the sun. Have our egos gotten the better of our senses? We’re being scammed!

And the scam is being supported by any number of Hollywood elitists (read, actors who crave media face time) and other hangers-on who want to feel relevant by association. And our liberal media, let’s not forget its roll. It loves any excuse to report things controversial or, at the least, alarming.

Understand that I’m not holding Stossel up as an expert, and I certainly don’t always agree with him, but he does try to clear away the hype and give us a view through the prism of logic and common sense. And sometimes, when presented with the simple basics, the smoke and mirrors fall away. Give the video below a watch and see if you don’t come away with, at the very least, a better understanding of the relevant issues and the key players. The debate is by no means over.

Update on Oct 30, 2007 at 09:58AM by

Doug

For those of you seeking a more technical critique of the assertions and allusions contained in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the positions taken by the various groups supporting the concept of so-called “global warming,” I direct you to a report by Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI) entitled 35 Inconvenient Truths, the Errors in Al Gore’s Movie. It’s dry, analytical reading but it debunks the legs upon which the whole global warming theory precariously teeters. I highly recommend you read it. It may help those of you presently “on the GW fence” decide where you stand, and may change the minds of some of you who took with a grain of salt everything Al Gore had to say on the subject.

“Readers of the long list of errors described in this memorandum will decide for themselves whether Mr. Gore was acting in good faith. However, in this connection it is significant that each of the 35 errors listed below misstates the conclusions of the scientific literature or states that there is a threat where there is none or exaggerates the threat where there may be one. All of the errors point in one direction – towards undue alarmism. Not one of the errors falls in the direction of underestimating the degree of concern in the scientific community. The likelihood that all 35 of the errors listed below could have fallen in one direction purely by inadvertence is less than 1 in 34 billion.”