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Thursday, January 15, 2009

So Much for Global Warming

Forerunner, "WorldWatch," January-February 2009

If nothing else, it would be great theater to watch Al Gore and all the other apostles of global warming have to explain before Congress why America should spend billions of dollars on "green" initiatives like "cap and trade" when the data show the earth has not experienced overall warming since 2001. Of course, this will never happen because, as Gore and the mainstream media have already stated, the debate is over. Global warming, caused by human activity, is a fact and here to stay, whether we like it or not and all facts to the contrary notwithstanding.

Other than this "debate is over" statement being an out-and-out lie, it is audacious and tyrannical in its dismissal of the opposing viewpoint and its adherents. The idea of imminent and catastrophic climate change has become so politically correct that any naysaying is summarily condemned as heresy—and the naysayer, be he genius or merely commonsensical, is hysterically tagged as a "climate-change skeptic," a label that will kill any of his hopes for promotion, grant money, or media attention, should he desire it.

But the rest of us, the average Joe and Jane Public, have noticed that the weather patterns over the past few years have not supported all the hot air coming from the global warming crowd. In fact, Lord Christopher Monckton, who once advised British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, reported in his keynote address to the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change that temperatures "have been plummeting at a rate equivalent to 11 Fahrenheit degrees per century throughout the four years since Gore launched his mawkish, sci-fi comedy horror B-movie [An Inconvenient Truth]."1 In other words, the earth is cooling faster than it was warming!

How has this happened? Clearly, despite humanity's tendency to pollute and corrupt various areas on the planet—a tendency God promises to punish mankind for (Revelation 11:18)—the ability of man to effect drastic, catastrophic climate change, short of a nuclear exchange, is nominal. While many scientists claim that routine human activities like driving automobiles and mowing lawns cause global warming, they have so far been unable to marshal the facts to support this assertion. Even adding bovine flatulence to the mix—an action gaining support among greens worldwide—cannot account for climate change.

David mused, though admittedly on another subject, "What is man?" (Psalm 8:4). Next to the great processes of nature that God designed and that we still do not understand or appreciate, mankind stands puny and weak. It would take a force of far greater energy and magnitude to produce sudden, global climate change. That colossal force is our own sun.

Recent observations of the sun, compared to historical records of sunspot activity, tell us what is actually happening. John L. Casey, Director of the Space and Science Research Center, states in a January 1, 2009, letter to then-President-elect Barack Obama's nominated science adviser, Dr. John Holdren, and nominated NOAA administrator, Dr. Jane Lubchenco: "[G]lobal warming is over; a new cold climate has arrived."

Casey's letter explains that our instruments are detecting no significant sunspot or solar flare activity. Solar activity is a measure of the sun's overall power output, which varies in cycles of 11 years. Yet, in this cycle, the sun has been alarmingly quiet—so quiet that some scientists wonder if we are entering a new Maunder Minimum, a climate event that signals frigid winters and cold summers and that can last as long as a century. Writes Casey:

According to national and international sources that monitor the Sun, what is happening on and in the Sun is nothing short of record setting, astounding, and at the same time worrisome. The solar wind is at its lowest level in fifty years. The surface movement on the Sun has slowed to record rates and according to NASA's previous announcements is "off the bottom of the charts." Most telling is the current prolonged lack of sunspots between the normal 11 year solar cycles 23 and 24 which is about to set a one hundred year record for time without sunspots. NASA also has long since forecast that cycle 25 will be "one of the weakest in centuries." All of these events in combination leave little doubt that a "solar hibernation" lasting several decades delivering the coldest weather in over two centuries has in fact arrived.2

The unfortunate—and perhaps ultimately tragic—reality is that these scientific facts make no difference to those pushing the global warming agenda. The reason for this political shrug of the shoulders is that for a long time the environmental movement has been less interested in nature than in money and control. Its adherents have rather used nature to their advantage to extort money from both the public and private sectors and to wrest political control to force draconian changes on governments, particularly the United States. That nature is not cooperating by cooling instead of warming has forced the environmental movement cynically to change its focus from "global warming" to "climate change."

This means that its aims to legislate "cap and trade" rules will move forward. Its insistence on often unreliable3 compact fluorescent light bulbs—which due to containing five milligrams of mercury are themselves hazardous if broken, and thus they cannot simply be thrown away4—will continue. Though on-site measurements show the opposite, its hysterical claims that sea levels are rising and that various Pacific islands such as the Maldives and Tuvalu will succumb to the waves will still be brought forward as "proof" of catastrophic climate change.5 And most famously, pictures of polar bears on supposedly shrinking icebergs will still be used to tug at our heartstrings (of course, data that the polar bear population is actually holding steady or even rising slightly will go unmentioned).6

In the meantime, we might do well to buy a good coat.

Endnotes

1 Lord Christopher Monckton, "Great Is Truth, and Mighty Above All Things," Telegraph.co.uk, March 12, 2009 (http://www.heartland.org/full/24881/Great_Is_Truth_and_Mighty_Above_All_Things.html).
2 John L. Casey, Space and Science Research Center Press Release, January 8, 2009 (http://www.spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ssrcpressrelease12009.doc).
3
Leora Broydo Vestel, "Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don't Work?" NYTimes.com, March 27, 2009 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/business/energy-environment/28bulbs.html?_r=2&hp).
4 Joseph Farah, "Consumers in dark over risks of new light bulbs," WND.com, March 16, 2007 (http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55213).
5 Christopher Booker, "Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told,'" Telegraph.co.uk, March 28, 2009 (
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html).
6 Juliet O'Neill, "Canada not holding back on polar bear protection: Prentice," Canwest News Service, March 19, 2009(http://www.canada.com/Technology/story.html?id=1406966).