Global Warming--Hysteria or Fact?

PHOTO CREDIT HERE.

The sky is falling...the sky is falling! No, Chicken Little (aka Al Gore) it is NOT.

In spite of Big Al's big movie success to the contrary, almost all of our record temperatures occurred years ago, not this year.

Says Wesley Pruden of the Washington Times,

The hysteria in certain newspapers and on certain television newscasts, fueled by academics eager to publish lest they perish, is just what media do. Last winter, it was avian flu; this summer, it's the arrival of the loudly promised global warming, and next winter, it will be something else. Hysteria over global warming -- the notion that we're all soon to be dead and we might as well lie down and enjoy it -- has become the received religion of modern science.

In reality, the reason for the hysteria is more because that, while, says Pruden, "It's observable fact that the Earth has warmed more than a degree over the past century; the weather always warms and cools over the centuries, brought about by solar activity and other natural phenomena."

Of course, as Pruden continues "Modern Scientific Man," and the humanists on the non-believing left are (says me) "obsessed with the notion that since there is no ordained order in the universe, it must have been man who did it."

But, of course, in typical emotional fashion, the world of those whose developmental progress is stuck at about 12, DOES revolve around them, doesn't it?

Not to say we shouldn't be responsible in the way we live our lives. Though since furthering US dependency on Arab or Venezuelan oil seems a little like shooting oneself in the foot, we definitely should be developing technology for alternative fuels in the longer run, and we should be drilling for oil in a minisule section of Alaska and building more refineries in Conus in the shorter term.

If we insist on depending on radical islamofascists for our energy, whose misguided stupidity is that but our own?

International mega corp interests cannot be placed ahead of our country's basic needs. But, global warming is NOT the reason to become energy self-sufficient. Common sense and maintenance of our own autonomy is. One thing I know for sure is: In the marketplace, it's always better to be in a position of choice, n'est-ce pas, mes amis?

Pruden began his Aug 8 editorial with the following:

Once upon a time in August, every year, every girl in town was a hottie. So were the men and boys. You could look it up.

Everybody complained about the heat but neither ex-vice presidents nor newspaper columnists, old wives or even television evangelists waxed hysterical about it. You could look that up, too. And if you did you would see that we've been here before, and the sky, despite everything the calamity howlers are telling you, is not falling this summer, either.

The record of the summer of 1930, now swiftly fading into ancient history, puts our summer in the shade. Between June 1 and Aug. 31 of that year Washington recorded 21 days when the temperature soared to 100 degrees or more. "That summer has never been approached," Patrick Michaels, a professor of natural resources at Virginia Tech and senior fellow for environmental studies at the Cato Institute, tells Cybercast News Service. "And it's not going to be approached this year."

Between July 19 and Aug. 9 of 1930, records were set nine times. These marks still stand three-quarters of a century later. It's enough to give everybody but Al Gore pause. And it wasn't just in Washington, where bloviation and man-made hot air are enough to keep the mercury bubbling but not enough to broil the upper atmosphere. (It's no coincidence that temperatures on Capitol Hill are usually warmer than in the more polite precincts of the nation's capital.)

Full article here.

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“The attempts of environmentalists to bolster the myth of human-induced 'global warming' by the cynical, nay gleeful, exploitation of non-equilibrium climatic events is downright immoral.” --Philip Stott, Professor of Biogeography, University of London, in a letter to The Times, November, 2000.