"Our young people have a universal negative view of the future. They
don't have the accumulated life experiences to put the environmental
predictions of doom into proper perspective."
(Editor)
Contents
Summary
Every branch of the media, education resources and political life would have
us believe man is totally destroying the environment. The result of this idea
is to cause young people to abandon hope. "Live for the moment - tomorrow is
ruined" they are reminded daily!
Seventeen thousand scientists (half of whom are trained in physics,
geophysics, climate science, meteorology, oceanography, chemistry, biology or
biochemistry) recently signed a petition written by Frederick Seitz, a past
president of the National Academy of Sciences, declaring that there is no
compelling evidence to justify reducing greenhouse gas emissions at all.
(26)
Global Warming
There are three methods used for measuring the temperature of the earth:
- Satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere (accurate to 0,01 degree -
able to measure the temperature increase caused by the moon shining on the
earth!)
- Measuring sondes carried through the atmosphere by weather balloons
- Measurements at established weather stations (source of television
temperature data)
Satellites and balloon sondes give the same results and both
show extremely small if any increase in the earth's temperature.
Surface readings however, show a large increase in temperature in the last
100 years, mainly as a result of urbanization effects that encroach on weather
stations and change locally the physical environment where the temperature is
recorded. (the photo shows a car park acting as a heat sink surrounding a
weather station. Building development would also affect the prevailing
breezes)
Conclusion: One of the fundamental concepts that global warming is based on
(observable rising temperatures on earth) isn't backed up by all the available
evidence - only selective evidence!
Read a full report about temperature measurement:
‘Global Mean Temperature’ and how
it is determined at surface level"
The Kyoto Protocol
How often have you heard in the media that we could fix the environmental
effects of CO
2if only USA would join in with the Kyoto Protocol?
If every country participated in the protocol, the level of CO
2in the atmosphere in 100 years time would rise to 190% of what
it is now. Without Kyoto it is predicted to be 200% higher. Many large
polluting non-developed nations are exempt from complying with the Protocol,
therefore the best that could be expected is maybe 195% of present levels.
(23)
Killing the coal industry to reduce temperatures 1/7th of 1 degree 50 years
hence is justified by treaty advocates as a necessary "first step" of about 30
that must necessarily come. Treaty opponents do a quick cost/benefit analysis
and conclude that treaty supporters have lost their grip on reality.
(26)
Apart from the misleading public debate, the case for the Kyoto Protocol is
pretty threadbare. If the past is any prologue, the case for ratification will
continue to weaken.
(26)
While the Kyoto Protocol envisions significant cuts in greenhouse gas
emissions, scientists on all sides of the debate agree that its impact will be
virtually undetectable.
(26)
Further reading: "Latest Science Debunks
Global Warming Hysteria"
Is CO
2really a problem?
The main absorbers of infrared in the atmosphere (greenhouse effect) are
water vapor and clouds. Even if all other greenhouse gases (such as carbon
dioxide and methane) were to disappear, we would still be left with over 98
percent of the current greenhouse effect. Nevertheless, it is presumed that
increases in carbon dioxide and other minor greenhouse gases will lead to
significant increases in temperature.
(27)
It should be noted that for much of the Earth's history, the atmosphere had
much more carbon dioxide than is currently anticipated for centuries to come.
(27)
Evidence from the analysis of ice cores and after 1958 from direct
atmospheric sampling shows that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has
been increasing since 1800. Before 1800 the density was about 275 parts per
million by volume. Today it is about 355 parts per million by volume. The total
source is estimated to have been increasing exponentially at least until 1973.
From 1973 until 1990 the rate of increase has been much slower, however.
(27)
Conclusion:
- Evidence shows that CO
2has gradually been increasing
- True
- The level of CO
2has been much higher in the past than it is today
- True
- The increase in CO
2aligns closely with industrialization
- False
- Increasing CO
2means much higher global temperatures
- False
The earth won't last forever!
We are using resources at a rate that can't be sustained. Since the earth
only has finite resources, it is true, they must be exhausted sooner or
later.
The important question is: Does it really matter?
The Bible is very clear that Jesus is returning to Earth and it seems not
too far into the future. After that the earth is to be of no further use! The
resources of the Earth don't have to last forever!!
Conclusion:
- Do we plunder the resources we have left?
- No
- Do we fear about the future?
- No
- Do we trust in God to supply all our needs as he has promised?
- Yes
How did the greenhouse hysteria begin?
The present hysteria formally began in the summer of 1988, although
preparations had been put in place at least three years earlier. That was an
especially warm summer in some regions, particularly in the United States. The
abrupt increase in temperature in the late 1970s was too abrupt to be
associated with the smooth increase in carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, James
Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in testimony
before Sen. Al Gore's Committee on Science, Technology and Space, said, in
effect, that he was 99 percent certain that temperature had increased and that
there was some greenhouse warming. He made no statement concerning the relation
between the two.
(27)
Despite the fact that those remarks were virtually meaningless, they led the
environmental advocacy movement to adopt the issue immediately. The growth of
environmental advocacy since the 1970s has been phenomenal. In Europe the
movement centered on the formation of Green parties; in the United States the
movement centered on the development of large public interest advocacy groups.
Those lobbying groups have budgets of several hundred million dollars and
employ about 50,000 people; their support is highly valued by many political
figures. As with any large groups, self-perpetuation becomes a crucial concern.
"Global warming'' has become one of the major battle cries in their fund
raising efforts. At the same time, the media unquestioningly accept the
pronouncements of those groups as objective truth.
(27)
Other scientists quickly agreed that with increasing carbon dioxide some
warming might be expected and that with large enough concentrations of carbon
dioxide the warming might be significant. Nevertheless, there was widespread
skepticism. By early 1989, however, the popular media in Europe and the United
States were declaring that "all scientists'' agreed that warming was real and
catastrophic in its potential.
(27)
In the meantime, the global warming circus was in full swing. Meetings were
going on nonstop. One of the more striking of those meetings was hosted in the
summer of 1989 by Robert Redford (a film star) at his ranch in Sundance, Utah.
Redford proclaimed that it was time to stop research and begin acting. I
suppose that that was a reasonable suggestion for an actor to make, but it is
also indicative of the overall attitude toward science. Barbara Streisand
personally undertook to support the research of Michael Oppenheimer at the
Environmental Defense Fund, although he is primarily an advocate and not a
climatologist. Meryl Streep made an appeal on public television to stop
warming. A bill was even prepared to guarantee Americans a stable climate.
(27)
Claudine Schneider, then a congressman from Rhode Island, acknowledged that
"scientists may disagree, but we can hear Mother Earth, and she is crying.'' It
seemed clear to me that a very dangerous situation was arising, and the danger
was not of "global warming'' itself.
(27)
Further reading: "Latest Science Debunks
environmental hysteria (about 1/3
through from the top of the article)
Why don't we hear much about the opposite view?
As most scientists concerned with climate, I was eager to stay out of what
seemed like a public circus. But in the summer of 1988 Lester Lave, a professor
of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote to me about being dismissed
from a Senate hearing for suggesting that the issue of global warming was
scientifically controversial. I assured him that the issue was not only
controversial but also unlikely. In the winter of 1989 Reginald Newell, a
professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lost
National Science Foundation funding for data analyzes that were failing to show
net warming over the past century. Reviewers suggested that his results were
dangerous to humanity. In the spring of 1989 I was an invited participant at a
global warming symposium at Tufts University. I was the only scientist among a
panel of environmentalists. There were strident calls for immediate action and
ample expressions of impatience with science.
(27)
By the fall of 1989 some media were becoming aware that there was
controversy (Forbes and Reader's Digest were notable in that regard). Cries
followed from environmentalists that skeptics were receiving excessive
exposure. The publication of my paper was followed by a determined effort on
the part of the editor of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,
Richard Hallgren, to solicit rebuttals. Such articles were prepared by Stephen
Schneider and Will Kellogg, a minor scientific administrator for the past
thirty years.
(27)
Outside the world of meteorology, Greenpeace's Jeremy Legett, a geologist by
training, published a book attacking critics of warming---especially me. George
Mitchell, Senate majority leader and father of a prominent environmental
activist, also published a book urging acceptance of the warming problem (World
on Fire: Saving an Endangered Earth). Sen. Gore recently published a book
(Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit). Those are just a few
examples of the rapidly growing publications on warming. Rarely has such meager
science provoked such an outpouring of popularization by individuals who do not
understand the subject in the first place.
(27)
The activities of the Union of Concerned Scientists deserve special mention.
That widely supported organization was originally devoted to nuclear
disarmament. As the cold war began to end, the group began to actively oppose
nuclear power generation. Their position was unpopular with many physicists.
Over the past few years, the organization has turned to the battle against
global warming in a particularly hysterical manner. In 1989 the group began to
circulate a petition urging recognition of global warming as potentially the
great danger to mankind. Most recipients who did not sign were solicited at
least twice more. The petition was eventually signed by 700 scientists
including a great many members of the National Academy of Sciences and Nobel
laureates. Only about three or four of the signers, however, had any
involvement in climatology. Interestingly, the petition had two pages, and on
the second page there was a call for renewed consideration of nuclear power.
When the petition was published in the New York Times, however, the second page
was omitted. In any event, that document helped solidify the public perception
that "all scientists'' agreed with the disaster scenario. Such a disturbing
abuse of scientific authority was not unnoticed. At the 1990 annual meeting of
the National Academy of Sciences, Frank Press, the academy's president, warned
the membership against lending their credibility to issues about which they had
no special knowledge. Special reference was made to the published petition.
(27)
At the same time, political pressures on dissidents from the "popular
vision'' increased. Sen. Gore publicly admonished "skeptics'' in a lengthy New
York Times op-ed piece. In a perverse example of double-speak he associated the
"true believers'' in warming with Galileo. He also referred, in another
article, to the summer of 1988 as the Kristallnacht before the warming
holocaust.
(27)
In addition, a number of the participants have testified to the pressures
placed on them to emphasize results supportive of the current scenario and to
suppress other results. That pressure has frequently been effective, and a
survey of participants reveals substantial disagreement with the final report
they were involved with.
(27)
Perhaps more important are the pressures being brought to bear on scientists
to get the "right" results. Such pressures are inevitable, given how far out on
a limb much of the scientific community has gone.
(27)
I should add that as ever greater numbers of individuals attach themselves
to the warming problem, the pressures against solving the problem grow
proportionally; an inordinate number of individuals and groups depend on the
problem's remaining.
(27)
Read the whole report about the
environmental 'one sided'
reporting
If it is not true, how does the story keep going?
Public perceptions, under the influence of extensive, deceptive, and
one-sided publicity, can become disconnected from reality. For example, Alabama
has had a pronounced cooling trend since 1935. Nevertheless, a poll among
professionals in Alabama found that about 95 percent of the participants
believed that the climate had been warming over the past fifty years and that
the warming was due to the greenhouse effect. Public misconceptions coupled
with a sincere desire to "save the planet'' can force political action even
when politicians are aware of the reality.
(27)
What the above amounts to is a societal instability. At a particular point
in history, a relatively minor suggestion or event serves to mobilize massive
interests. .
(27)
In the past, the same destructive scenario occurred in Nazi Germany under
Hitler's reign. Hitler announced that the cause of Germany's problems was the
Jews. He repeated it enough that people believed it to be true. Without any
factual basis, the repetition made it truth. The common people then became
party to the senseless slaughter of millions of Jews because, as a nation, they
believed statements that had no factual basis!
What can I do about it?
For
our young people - give them a balanced view and some skills to handle this
hysteria.
On a personal level - people often tend to grab onto causes in a
subconscious way to cancel the background anxiety and inherent fear of the
future and of the unknown. The lack of factual basis doesn't matter, since, to
the individual the focused action to a cause feels like a positive counter
attack toward the fears we all tend to have about the future.
The only way to effectively deal with the fear of the future and our own
mortality is to give your life over to Jesus Christ. He has a plan for every
life! He is the only one who gives hope now and beyond the grave! He is the
only way to effectively face your mortality (your death).
More information about how to "
Get it right with God"
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