Chill out over global warming

AR182

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i admit that i don't know anything about the global warming issue but i find this article to be interesting considering al gore's 'the sky's falling" spiel.....


By David Harsanyi
Denver Post Staff Columnist


You'll often hear the left lecture about the importance of dissent in a free society.

Why not give it a whirl?

Start by challenging global warming hysteria next time you're at a LoDo cocktail party and see what happens.

Admittedly, I possess virtually no expertise in science. That puts me in exactly the same position as most dogmatic environmentalists who want to craft public policy around global warming fears.

The only inconvenient truth about global warming, contends Colorado State University's Bill Gray, is that a genuine debate has never actually taken place. Hundreds of scientists, many of them prominent in the field, agree.

Gray is perhaps the world's foremost hurricane expert. His Tropical Storm Forecast sets the standard. Yet, his criticism of the global warming "hoax" makes him an outcast.

"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."

Gray directs me to a 1975 Newsweek article that whipped up a different fear: a coming ice age.

"Climatologists," reads the piece, "are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change. ... The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."

Thank God they did nothing. Imagine how warm we'd be?

Another highly respected climatologist, Roger Pielke Sr. at the University of Colorado, is also skeptical.

Pielke contends there isn't enough intellectual diversity in the debate. He claims a few vocal individuals are quoted "over and over" again, when in fact there are a variety of opinions.

I ask him: How do we fix the public perception that the debate is over?

"Quite frankly," says Pielke, who runs the Climate Science Weblog (climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu), "I think the media is in the ideal position to do that. If the media honestly presented the views out there, which they rarely do, things would change. There aren't just two sides here. There are a range of opinions on this issue. A lot of scientists out there that are very capable of presenting other views are not being heard."

Al Gore (not a scientist) has definitely been heard
and heard and heard. His documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," is so important, in fact, that Gore crisscrosses the nation destroying the atmosphere just to tell us about it.
"Let's just say a crowd of baby boomers and yuppies have hijacked this thing," Gray says. "It's about politics. Very few people have experience with some real data. I think that there is so much general lack of knowledge on this. I've been at this over 50 years down in the trenches working, thinking and teaching."

Gray acknowledges that we've had some warming the past 30 years. "I don't question that," he explains. "And humans might have caused a very slight amount of this warming. Very slight. But this warming trend is not going to keep on going. My belief is that three, four years from now, the globe will start to cool again, as it did from the middle '40s to the middle '70s."

Both Gray and Pielke say there are many younger scientists who voice their concerns about global warming hysteria privately but would never jeopardize their careers by speaking up.

"Plenty of young people tell me they don't believe it," he says. "But they won't touch this at all. If they're smart, they'll say: 'I'm going to let this run its course.' It's a sort of mild McCarthyism. I just believe in telling the truth the best I can. I was brought up that way."

So next time you're with some progressive friends, dissent. Tell 'em you're not sold on this global warming stuff.

Back away slowly. You'll probably be called a fascist.

Don't worry, you're not. A true fascist is anyone who wants to take away my air conditioning or force me to ride a bike.
 

SpursDynasty

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AR182 said:
"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."

Sort of like how they brainwashed smoking tobbaco was acceptable and the thing to do.

It goes both ways, IMO.
 

samayam

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Good article indeed. People call me ignorant and close minded when I tell them what I think about global warming. But the funny thing is that they are the ones who are ignorant and close minded and short sighted to boot. What bothers me is that human beings have the audacity to think that we can forever change the climate of the globe, when in reality the globe has changed climates time and time again and will continue to do so no matter what Al Gore says.
 

smurphy

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Jul 31, 2004
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The truth is most likely in the middle of the 2 popular views.

Yes - the climate has cycles, and yes - the overall climate has also been affected by industrial activities of human beings.

The basic idea of global warming should not be dismissed, because it is true to an extent. The science is there and indeniable.. It's also not wise to panic and start worshipping jackasses like Al Gore, as if they are experts.

Every opinion is out there. People tend to get drawn to the one that serves their political view and wallet - rather than form one based on non partisan research.
 

Marco

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Reading this thread reminds me of a 60 Minutes interview about 3 months ago in which scientists were interviewed about their opinions on the subject and the policy in effect of having their findings sent to the feds for proofreading/editing, where most of their writings were toned down if they wrote of ill effects to come.....whole paragraphs were eliminated in some cases....

Where does freedom of the press play into this equation?

Shouldn't scientists be able to post their own findings for further scrutiny by the public and the rest of the scientific community?

Basically I'm supposed to believe some lawyers edited version of things to come instead of reading a scientists opinion of what is to come, without having a chance to think about what the scientist is really writing about and coming to my own conclusion as to who I believe in....the documents are edited enough to become watered down versions that have no bite left in them whatsoever compared to the original documents....

If the doomday scientists are correct, you won't know it until its here, because Washington will have effectively covered it up.
 
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