“Oceans lash our coasts. Deserts Burn. The sky provides no shelter. Turmoil of Biblical proportions threatens not just our weather but life itself. Global Warming is upon us.”
Those words aren’t from the preview trailer of the silly, overblown, over dramatic film, “Day After Tomorrow” that invaded movie theaters a few years ago. And they aren’t just carefully selected “scare” words developed from a sweep through a thesaurus. These are the opening words to yet another hysterical diatribe passing as news these days on the subject of Global Warming. This particularly silly one greeted readers of a recent issue of Playboy Magazine. The article was, of course, accompanied by the obligatory pictures of smokestacks belching over a city and the melting of icebergs.
You hear it everywhere. Catastrophic Global Warming is a fact. It is here. It is now unstoppable. The Polar Ice Cap is melting. Polar Bears are endangered. Greenland is actually turning green! Hurricanes are blowing with more force. Tornadoes are growing in numbers. Water levels are increasing, threatening to flood New York City. Human existence is threatened. And, of course, the deserts are starting to burn. We are assured that scientists are in near total agreement with the assessment.
The media is in a frenzy, rushing to report the latest news release from special interest groups with the latest report or prediction. Al Gore is rushing his hi tech docudrama to the theaters to whip up more frenzy. Corporations are being forced to turn “green” to show their “corporate social responsibility” in the wake of the coming disaster.
Catastrophic “Human-Caused” Global Warming has become a euphemism for a political agenda. It has become a religion run by fanatics reminiscent of the leaders of the darkest days of the Inquisition that nearly destroyed civil society only a few hundred years ago. We are not to question the great god of Catastrophic Global Warming. Those who do are separated from civil society and labeled as heretics.
So how can anyone question the decrees handed down from the Ivory Towers to the unwashed masses? Answer: every religion has its heretics.
The simple truth is there is no scientific consensus on Catastrophic “Human Caused” Global Warming. In fact, as the media frenzy screams global warming, there are a growing number of scientists who are expressing their doubts.
In 1992, just prior to the UN’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 425 scientists and other intellectual leaders signed The Heidelberg Appeal, a quiet call for reason in dealing with the climate change issue. Neither a statement or corporate interests, nor a denial of environmental problems, the Heidelberg Appeal expresses a conviction that modern society is the best equipped in human history to solve the world’s ills, provided that they do not sacrifice science, intellectual honesty and common sense to political opportunism and irrational fears. Today, the Heidelberg Appeal has been signed by more than 4,000 scientists and leaders from 100 countries, including more than 70 Nobel Prize winners.
Also in 1992, another statement from some 47 atmospheric scientists was issued saying “such policies (greenhouse global warming theories) derive from highly uncertain scientific theories. The statement cited a survey of atmospheric scientists, conducted in the summer of 1991, “confirms that there is no consensus about the cause of the slight warming observed during the past century.” The statement went on to say, “We are disturbed that activists, anxious to stop energy and economic growth, are pushing ahead with drastic policies without taking notice of recent changes in the underlying science.”
In 1995, over 85 scientists and climate experts from research labs and universities worldwide, signed the Leipzig Declaration in answer to the International Symposium on the Greenhouse Controversy, held in Leipzig, Germany that year. In part, the Declaration says; “In a world in which poverty is the greatest social pollutant, any restriction on energy use that inhibits economic growth should be viewed with caution. For these reasons, we consider
