Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

Now here is a great way to end 2007 - today, on December 20, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a report titled: "Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007" - Merry Christmas! You can find the complete report here: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb. It is well worth the time to read. For a brief preview, following is the introduction to their report:

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists. In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics "appear to be expanding rather than shrinking." Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears "bite the dust." (LINK) In addition, many scientists who are also progressive environmentalists believe climate fear promotion has "co-opted" the green movement. (LINK)

This blockbuster Senate report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. This new "consensus busters" report is poised to redefine the debate.

Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated.

"Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media," Paldor wrote. [Note: See also July 2007 Senate report detailing how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation - LINK ]

Scientists from Around the World Dissent

This new report details how teams of international scientists are dissenting from the UN IPCC's view of climate science. In such nations as Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Russia, New Zealand and France, nations, scientists banded together in 2007 to oppose climate alarmism. In addition, over 100 prominent international scientists sent an open letter in December 2007 to the UN stating attempts to control climate were "futile." (LINK)

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, recently converted from a believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. Patterson noted that the notion of a "consensus" of scientists aligned with the UN IPCC or former Vice President Al Gore is false. "I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority."

This new committee report, a first of its kind, comes after the UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri implied that there were only “about a dozen" skeptical scientists left in the world. (LINK) Former Vice President Gore has claimed that scientists skeptical of climate change are akin to "flat Earth society members" and similar in number to those who "believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona." (LINK) & (LINK)

The distinguished scientists featured in this new report are experts in diverse fields, including: climatology; oceanography; geology; biology; glaciology; biogeography; meteorology; oceanography; economics; chemistry; mathematics; environmental sciences; engineering; physics and paleoclimatology. Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Gore.

Additionally, these scientists hail from prestigious institutions worldwide, including: Harvard University; NASA; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the UN IPCC; the Danish National Space Center; U.S. Department of Energy; Princeton University; the Environmental Protection Agency; University of Pennsylvania; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the International Arctic Research Centre; the Pasteur Institute in Paris; the Belgian Weather Institute; Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; the University of Helsinki; the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., France, and Russia; the University of Pretoria; University of Notre Dame; Stockholm University; University of Melbourne; University of Columbia; the World Federation of Scientists; and the University of London.

The voices of many of these hundreds of scientists serve as a direct challenge to the often media-hyped "consensus" that the debate is "settled."

A May 2007 Senate report detailed scientists who had recently converted from believers in man-made global warming to skepticism. [See May 15, 2007 report: Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics: Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research - (LINK) ]

The report counters the claims made by the promoters of man-made global warming fears that the number of skeptical scientists is dwindling.

(The attached photo is of an interesting arch up on Canaan Mountain. See: http://www.powerletters.blogspot.com/)

Pope Criticizes Global Warming Prophets

The Daily Mail reports that Pope Benedict: “has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.” (See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=501316.)

His remarks will be made in his annual message for World Peace Day on January 1, but they were released as delegates from all over the world convened on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali for UN climate change talks, the Daily Mail explains. (Aside: By the way, I'm not a Catholic, but the Pope’s right. Proposed Global Warming solutions sometimes cause more harm than good. What’s more, sometimes the proposed ‘solutions’ aren’t solutions at all. For example, Bali is currently deforesting their island in order to create more farmland on which to grow their “green” bio-fuels from castor oil plants.)

Pope Benedict also believes that “fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.”

“Efforts to protect the environment should seek ‘agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances’,” according to the Pope.

In the message entitled “The Human Family, A Community of Peace” the Pope says:

“Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow. It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.

“If the protection of the environment involves costs, they should be justly distributed, taking due account of the different levels of development of various countries and the need for solidarity with future generations.

“Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken.”

The evangelical environmental movement, which is just as dogmatic in its assumptions as any religion, is merely another manifestation of neo-paganism. They worship the earth and demand sacrifice from one and all to sate their greed.

The Pope also said that the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind. And it's certainly very true that current “global warming” policies hurt the very poor, as “sustainable development” often means cutting off any ability for poorer, less developed nations to economically progress, and thus they stay mired in third-world conditions. The Pope could also be concerned for a possible culling of the human population programs as well. Obviously these tenuous global warming theory and its proposed solutions have a definite anti-human slant.

The Pope isn’t the first Catholic leader to take on this new pagan religion. In October, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, caused an outcry when he noted that the atmospheric temperature of Mars had risen by 0.5 degrees Celsius. “The industrial-military complex up on Mars can't be blamed for that,” he said in a criticism of Australian scientists who had claimed that carbon emissions would force temperatures on earth to rise by almost five degrees by 2070 unless drastic solutions were enforced.

Letter to the St. George Spectrum

On November 27 our local newspaper, the St. George Spectrum, ran a column titled: “Let’s get started building alternative energy infrastructure” (see: http://www.thespectrum.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071127/OPINION/711270316/1014/OPINION) which I found to be so naive in its acceptance of the most outrageous alarmist exagerations and simplistic in its approach to solving a complex problem (energy supply and global climate change) that I just had to sit down and write the following response to that column. I was not able to pare my response down to a mere 200 words, so my response didn’t qualify as a “letter to the editor.” But since the column itself ran 501 words, I cut my response down to a comparable bare-bones 500 words. You'll note that there wasn’t space in 500 words to cite all my sources, but I invite you to explore the reading lists, articles, and links found in the previous entries on this very same web log. Plus, I've added a couple of graphics to this entry that I wasn't able to include in my submission to the newspaper (if you click on the graphic, you can see it full-sized.) Anyway, following is my submission to the newspaper, which has not yet been published (and who knows if it ever will be?):

In the November 27 column, Art Porter spoke of the IPCC study as if the results united scientists in consensus that man’s emissions of CO2 were causing catastrophic global warming and natural disasters. The fact is, the study’s results support no such conclusions, something easily verified from reading the studies readily available, rather than accepting sensationalistic headlines.

Read the IPCC study itself (written by scientists,) and not the “Summary for Policy Makers” (written by politicians,) and you will find that scientists agree on only three points: the global mean temperature has probably increased in the past century, CO2 is one of the greenhouse gases, and mankind emits CO2. However, only a minority of the world’s scientists believe that man’s emissions of CO2 have affected the global temperature and that the increase in temperature could cause global problems. The majority understand that:

1. The mean temperature of the whole solar system is increasing due to solar radiation.
2. CO2 is a trace gas in our atmosphere (0.038%,) less than 5% of which is manmade.
3. Water vapor is 97% of the green house gases in our atmosphere and is left out of the global climate models, which is why the weatherman’s predictions are barely valid for today, never mind in 100 years.

4. The Earth isn’t nearly as warm now as it was in medieval times, when Vikings farmed Greenland.

Unfortunately the unfounded fear of global warming has resulted in the propagation of a non-solution: the premature imposition of alternative energy. Alternative energy technologies should be developed – as the market demands. Sadly, alternative energy technology companies are impatient with our market system and are pressuring governments to fund the early adoption of their products.

Politicians realize that outright funding would increase taxes, and cost them their jobs. So their new strategy is to force utilities to adopt expensive technologies and pass these costs on to the public. Alternative energy currently costs twenty times per kilowatt what clean coal power costs.

So, why would much of the electrical industry embrace the myth of man-made Global Warming? Pure self interest. These corporations are allowed a fixed profit on approved expenses. A mandated “renewable energy portfolio” is a huge expense on which to charge their rate of return. In this scenario alternative technology manufacturers win, politicians win, investor owned utilities win, but rate payers (you and me) lose, and we lose big.

Further, diverting funds into alternative energy technology reduces the resources available to solve real environmental problems, such as unfiltered emissions from coal-fired power plants in China, India, and Brazil; deforestation, which causes localized droughts, erosion, and flooding; over pumping of aquifers, resulting in droughts and contamination of water supplies; and unchecked urban sprawl, which increases fossil fuel consumption and vehicular emissions.

Wasting our limited resources and money on a non-solution to a non-problem is not only foolish, it’s immoral. CO2 is not a legitimate threat and we need to get off this bandwagon and deal with the real problems in our world.

Global Warming: "The Greatest Scam in History"

OK, if you think that a mere electrical engineer such as myself can’t know anything about Global Warming, in spite of all the books, reports, and research that I’ve studied (you can find my reading lists below), how do you feel about the founder of the Weather Channel, a meteorologist with 55 years of experience in the field? Below is what he’s recently written on the subject, reprinted with his permission. You can also find his comments, along with links to his research (copied below for your convenience), posted on his blog at: http://www.kusi.com/home/11131801.html. Enjoy:

COMMENTS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

By John Coleman

jcoleman@kusi.com

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM.

Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data back in the late 1990's to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental wacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda.

Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.

However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you "believe in." It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won't believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I suspect you might like to say to me, "John, look the research that supports the case for global warming was done by research scientists; people with PH D's in Meteorology. They are employed by major universities and important research institutions. Their work has been reviewed by other scientists with PH D's. They have to know a lot more about it than you do. Come on, John, get with it. The experts say our pollution has created an strong and increasing greenhouse effect and a rapid, out of control global warming is underway that will sky rocket temperatures, destroy agriculture, melt the ice caps, flood the coastlines and end life as we know it. How can you dissent from this crisis? You must be a bit nutty.

Allow me, please, to explain how I think this all came about. Our universities have become somewhat isolated from the rest of us. There is a culture and attitudes and values and pressures on campus that are very different. I know this group well. My father and my older brother were both PHD-University types. I was raised in the university culture. Any person who spends a decade at a university obtaining a PHD in Meteorology and become a research scientist, more likely than not, becomes a part of that single minded culture. They all look askance at the rest of us, certain of their superiority. They respect government and disrespect business, particularly big business. They are environmentalists above all else.

And, there is something else. These scientists know that if they do research and results are in no way alarming, their research will gather dust on the shelf and their research careers will languish. But if they do research that sounds alarms, they will become well known and respected and receive scholarly awards and, very importantly, more research dollars will come flooding their way.

So when these researchers did climate change studies in the late 90's they were eager to produce findings that would be important and be widely noticed and trigger more research funding. It was easy for them to manipulate the data to come up with the results they wanted to make headlines and at the same time drive their environmental agendas. Then their like minded PHD colleagues reviewed their work and hastened to endorse it without question.

There were a few who didn't fit the mold. They did ask questions and raised objections. They did research with contradictory results. The environmental elitists berated them brushed their studies aside.

I have learned since the Ice Age is coming scare in the 1970's to always be a skeptic about research. In the case of global warming, I didn't accept media accounts. Instead I read dozens of the scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct when I assure you there is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. It is all a scam, the result of bad science.

I am not alone in this assessment. There are hundreds of other meteorologists, many of them PH D's, who are as certain as I am that this global warming frenzy is based on bad science and is not valid.

I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped.

The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway.

I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.

Some people may want to see the research behind my dismissive attitude about Global Warming. If you want to wade through scientific jargon, here are some relevant websites:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NRCreport.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NAS.M&M.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM03.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/Climate_L.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM-W05-background.pdf

http://www.icecap.us/

The Canadian Broadcasting Company's Cable News Network produced an excellent documentary on Global Warming. It is titled "Doomsday Called Off ". Here are the YouTube URLs to watch it in five parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Professor Bob Carter delivered a 35 minute lecture on global warming. If you are in an academic mood, it is excellent. It was recorded and posted in four parts on Youtube. Here are the links:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Al “Milli Vanilli” Gore

When Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 12, 2007 for his promotion of his new religion of man-made Global Warming, I was reminded of the time when Milli Vanilli was awarded the Grammy for Best New Artist back in 1990. For those of you who don’t remember Milli Vanilli, they were a group who had five insipid songs that were popular back in 1989-1990, and, as it was later revealed, were fronted by two male models from Germany who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket and so had to lip synch to the songs actually being performed in the background by others. Of course, we didn’t know that they were frauds back in 1990, we just knew that the music was terrible. My disappointment when they won the Grammy award was only offset later when it was revealed that they were just pretty faces and that the bad music was someone else’s fault and that they had to return the award. Well! There appeared to be some justice in the universe after all.

But now Al Gore is the pretty face that has hijacked the work of a bunch of homely scientists who worked behind the scenes on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) Worse, he’s not only stolen the credit for their work, he’s also distorted the results of their studies to the point of being unrecognizable, causing many of those same scientists to request that their names be removed from the report.

Nearly every single point that Al “Milli Vanilli” Gore makes in his book and movie is contradicted by the science in the report made by the IPCC (NOT in the Summary for Policy Makers, which was written by politicians and NOT the scientists):

1. CO2 is that dirty smoke pouring out of chimneys? Nope – CO2 is an invisible gas that is at worst plant food.
2. Global warming is causing the glaciers to recede? Nope – a drop in ambient moisture is causing some glaciers to recede in the Northern Hemisphere.
3. Global warming will cause drinking water to be in short supply for 40% of the world? Nope – in most of the world, drinking water comes from melting snow and the annual average snowfall has been increasing.
4. Our summer temperatures are higher now than ever before in the history of the world? Nope – our summers are not as warm as they were during the medieval times.
5. An increase of CO2 in our atmosphere is causing the atmosphere to trap more heat? Nope – the relation is the opposite – the increase in global temperatures is causing the oceans to release more CO2 into the atmosphere.
6. Global warming is causing more frequent and more violent hurricanes? Nope – as the average global temperature increases, decreasing the temperature differential between the arctic and the tropic, hurricanes will decrease in frequency and ferocity.
7. Global warming causes more frequent and more violent tornados? Nope – the same goes for tornados as goes for hurricanes. Besides which, the frequency of strong tornados has decreased since 1940.
8. Global warming has caused droughts in Africa and North America? Nope – local consumption of water from local lakes and over pumping of aquifers has, on a localized basis, caused some droughts.
9. Man-made Global Warming has caused the polar ice caps to melt? Nope – natural variations in the earth’s temperature cycle are variously causing the Artic to warm and then cool. Greenland, for example, is cooler today than during the Viking times when they settled there, grew crops, and named it “Greenland.”
10. Polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to Global Warming? Nope – populations of polar bears are presently increasing, and they didn’t go extinct during the medieval warming period between the Ice Age and the Little Ice Age in the 1800’s.
11. Global warming is harming populations of birds and bugs? Nope – all populations of birds and bugs and crops and people are thriving in a slightly warmer environment.
12. Malaria is migrating north and increasing due to Global Warming? Nope – mosquitoes that carry malaria have no problem in the cold north, as evidenced by the malaria epidemics in Russia and Alaska during the 1800’s; malaria is presently increasing around the world due to the decrease in the application of effective pesticides like DDT.
13. The Antarctic ice shelf is melting? Nope – when studied as a whole, the ice shelf in Antarctica is increasing.
14. Global warming will cause the sea levels to rise 20 feet, wiping out all coastal areas? Nope – the IPCC predicts that the sea could rise a maximum of 4 inches, but probably something less, and that is due to shifting tectonic plates.
15. If the US would adopt the Kyoto Protocol, Global Warming could be averted? Nope – if the US Congress ratified the Kyoto treaty, signed by President Clinton in the late 90’s, world-wide emissions would only increase as the US shut down our power plants and factories and they moved to China, India, and Brazil, which are exempted from the Kyoto treaty, and which emit far worse gases than CO2 (NOx and Sox – the cause of acid rain.)
16. If the European Union can adopt the Kyoto Protocol, why can’t the US? Actually, since ratifying the Kyoto Treaty, the European Union’s emissions have only increased, and more dramatically than those in the US. They have only been able to “meet” their emissions targets by taking retroactive credit for Great Britain’s switch from old coal fired power plants BEFORE signing the treaty.
17. We can switch to non-emitting power sources economically? Nope – the lowest, pie-in-the-sky estimates for the cost of abandoning our clean coal fired power, which include the presumption of new inventions in the future, is $2,000,000,000,000 per year – 17% of our GDP.

And finally, why do these weathermen think they can predict the average Earth’s temperature to within 1° 100 years into the future, when they aren’t that accurate on this week’s predictions? Plus, if this 1° increase were so terrible, why are Americans migrating by the thousands from the Great White North down to the Sun Belts in Florida, California, Arizona, and St. George, Utah? Let’s see Al “Milli Vanilli” Gore tackle that one! The answer is, he can’t. And I’m looking forward to the day that he has to return his Nobel Peace Price in shame and slink off to be ridiculed in the history books.

Governor Huntsman’s Californication with Arnold

The Utah Governor’s “Blue Ribbon Advisory Committee (BRAC) on Climate Change” wants to enact California-style legislation here in Utah, supposedly to combat “Global Warming,” which has been calculated to cost every household in the state about $32,000, but with no discernable improvement in the air quality what-so-ever. And who wants an electrical power system like California anyway? This very Labor Day the electrical distribution system in Southern California failed them and left them without air conditioning during a heat wave (see: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/weather/09/03/heat.wave.ap/index.html.) Plus I happen to have inside information that the only reason Southern California’s electrical transmission system didn’t melt down was because their distribution system went down first - it was the weakest link.

Further, the average residential rate in California is $0.14/kWh vs. the average in Utah which is $0.08/kWh vs. my co-op, Dixie Escalante, which is $0.05/kWh. So you can see why I’m so against adopting ANYTHING that California is doing in the field of electricity – they obviously don’t know what they’re doing. I am convinced that Governor Arnold is peddling his failed energy policies to Utah so that the whole state of Utah will also become un-competitive, so that California’s industries will stop migrating to Utah. The sad thing is that our naive governor has bought Arnold’s bill of goods, hook line and sinker. Of course no one on the Governor’s hand-picked Blue Ribbon Committee knows anything about the science of the issue – they’ve taken what they’ve been spoon-fed wholly on faith – the group is largely comprised of miscellaneous mayors or special interest group activists. The whole lot have based their fear and panic on a regurgitation of a summary of the UN-funded IPCC study that is terribly flawed and outright wrong (the “summary” was written by anti-American politicians and not by the scientists and does not accurately reflect the findings of the study at all) and so have decided to sacrifice 15% of our economy to this imaginary monster. What a bunch of morons – the politicians, I mean, not the special interest groups’ lobbyists – I’m impressed that these lobbyists seem to have convinced the politicians that man-made CO2 is affecting the climate and so need to buy their products. They must have hired that smooth-talking guy from the movie: Thank You For Smoking.

Anyway, I don’t claim to be an expert in climatology, but I am a licensed professional electrical engineer and have bothered to read a lot of background material on this subject, including the scientific chapters of UN study itself, three books (so far,) and a ton of related scientific studies that are freely available on the internet. Of course, the science is practically superfluous in this case since the BRAC is loaded (17 out of 20) with members who have already decided that their mission in life is to subsidize the solar panel and windmill industry by doubling everyone’s electricity bills, so we definitely have an uphill battle ahead of us. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Stabbing Mother Earth in the Back

Back in the 70’s when I was a kid growing up in Lukachukai, Arizona, in the very heart of the Navajo Reservation, my Navajo classmates (in their more militant moments) would criticize the white man’s agriculture processes. They would say that to plow the ground was to stab Mother Earth in the back. Even as a kid I knew that that notion was ridiculous – totally lacking in scale. Even back then I knew that a plow in the ground was no more than combing the hair of Mother Earth, and I said as much to my unreceptive classmates. Now that we’re in the 21st century nearly 40 years later, and with the power of the internet, I can put a pencil to this problem: a simple on-line search quickly finds that the earth has a diameter of 7926 miles (at the equator), or 41,849,280 feet; a plow is 8 to 12 inches long, so call it one foot, which means that the plow is only penetrating 0.0000024% of Mother Earth’s back – really just a very light back scratch.

Now fast forward to 2007: as an adult I see the same ignorance of scale of the earth and its atmosphere among the politicians and media of the developed world, including the United States. These poor uninformed alarmists think that our manmade CO2 emissions are affecting our climate – maybe they’re confused by the thick smog that they can see in their cities, largely emanating from automobiles’ unfiltered exhaust pipes, as opposed to the invisible and harmless breath that we all exhale. Either way, they certainly don’t understand anything about the relative scale involved when discussing CO2 and the atmosphere. The earth’s atmosphere, which by the way is what distinguishes God’s Green Earth from uninhabitable Mars, is primarily made up of Nitrogen (78%), Oxygen (21%), and Argon (1%.) CO2, the next most common gas, makes up only 0.038% of the atmosphere. Of that, man has contributed about 3%. Hmm… 3% of 0.038% - that sounds a lot like your chances of winning the lottery – essentially zero. Anyway, the rest of the CO2 in the atmosphere (97%) comes from natural sources, primarily that big mass of water that we call the ocean, which releases CO2 when it heats up and absorbs it back when it cools. So, even if we were to reduce mankind’s CO2 emissions to zero, which would require the elimination of all electricity production, transportation, and even our collective exhalations, we still would not be able to affect the earth’s temperature that one measly degree over the course of the next century for which the religion of Global Warming is renting their garments.

All of which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be good stewards of Mother Earth – we absolutely should. Genesis 1:26 tells us: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth…” I believe that when God gave Man dominion “over all the earth” he also gave us the obligation to be responsible stewards, and we still have that responsibility today. I believe that we should maximize the use of our natural resources and keep our environment clean. We did the right thing when we eliminated the real pollutants, SO2 (smog) and NOx, from the electric power generation process here in America – good for us. And by the way, producing harmless CO2 rather than SO2 as an output of generating electricity only shows how efficient and clean our generation process has really gotten. I’m also glad we switched to unleaded gasoline and required catalytic converters on our cars here in America – we all breathe easier because of it. During the 70’s we all “pitched in” and picked up the trash along our highways, making them look decent again. It was the right thing to do. You only have to look at horrific quality of the environment in China, India, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, or Latin America to really appreciate how much we’ve improved the environment in the United States of America since I was a kid the 60’s.

So with all of these huge strides in fixing our environment, why is it that we’re paying any attention to the well funded and very vocal cabal of politicians and media that want to steal our time and money and throw them to the manufacturers of windmills and solar panels under the guise of solving a non-existent problem? How stupid are we? Especially when we have REAL problems that require our time and money. For example, why are NONE of the politicians or media trying to solve our crippling debt problem? How is it possible that in the space of my lifetime we’ve gone from being the world’s biggest creditor to the world’s biggest debtor? How long will it be before China cuts off our allowance and leaves us to stew in the sweltering dark like California on Labor Day? How about we devote a little time and money to our debt problem?! Debt reduction may not be as sexy as Global Warming, but it has real tangible benefits and consequences.