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Global Warming ? Which Way Are The Armadillos Headed ?
by Randy Barker

Notice how weathermen are either nice and fat and likeable like NBC's Al Roker or skinny and goofy like Fox's Steve Doocy ? And that all weathergirls are good lookers, either blonde or with blonde roots?  I think that's on purpose. It's how networks acknowledge that weather forecasts are for entertainment purposes only and not to be taken seriously. Although there's not much faith in weather predictions to begin with. Even those supposedly sophisticated
Doppler radar forecasts are a joke. Notice that they don't dare go beyond a five-day forecast ? Nobody could take a longer forecast even half-way seriously. It's no wonder networks put on sunny, breezy weather people. They want  folks we won't get upset with when their wild guesses go wrong.

All of which makes the belief in global warming all the more astounding. Why are people so ready to believe that global warming is a fact, that human beings are causing it, that we need to drastically change our lifestyles and that the result if we don't will be an environmental catastrophe within 100 years ? If five-day weather forecasts are a joke, how can a hundred-year weather forecast be taken as gospel ? Nobody seems to be asking critical questions, just accepting the leftist propaganda regurgitated by our liberal media.

The first question one should ask is: Just exactly who is it that's saying there's a problem with global warming ? To get to that answer, it might be instructive to first examine the "more than 2,600 scientists" that Al Gore pointed to during the election as being so concerned they signed a warning letter about global warming. In truth, only 15 of these folks were specialists in the field, and 167 were in specialties that could have something vaguely to do with the climate. The 2,429 others included 73 zoologists, 2 landscape architects, 2 anatomists, a philosopher, a diplomat and several lawyers. And one of the "real scientists" who backed Gore was Dr.Stephen Schneider of Stanford, the same Stephen Schneider who 25 years ago was warning of global cooling and a new ice age.

Global Cooling ? New Ice Age ? Where did that come from? Well, many people have forgotten that Global Cooling was the disaster de jour (or de decade) in the 1970s. The New York Times proclaimed "Earth may be headed for another Ice Age". A cover of Newsweek in1975 also screamed the words "New Ice Age". The editor of New Scientist magazine back then, Nigel Calder, said, "The threat
of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." Science Digest  said "Brace Yourself  for Another Ice Age". And the Christian Science Monitor said "Glaciers have begun to advance" and noted that armadillos were retreating south from Nebraska.

So the messengers are questionable. And the panic in the '70s was about the exact opposite problem. But how about the hysterical message today? Is there global warming ? And, if so, is that bad ?

The truth is, we don't know if we're in a period of unusual global warming or not. There isn't enough data and the way some computer models are being run (ignoring past climatic performance) isn't truly scientific. Plus, more than 17,000 atmospheric scientists have questioned the dire conclusions of the 2,611 Al Gore-type scientists and the 2,700 scientists of the 1995 UN-International Panel of Climate Change.  It is generally accepted, however, that Earth has warmed 1degree F over the last 100 years. And the highly-respected Lawrence Livermore Laboratory says we could be in for a 1.8
degree F rise over the next 200 years, regardless of man's activities. Plus, we are still within the Halocene Interglacial, which means, by definition, that we're in a period of global warming until the next ice age.

How much can man effect global warming? Probably not as much as we might arrogantly think. Mt. Aetna in Sicily, for instance, is currently erupting and spewing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. But even Mt. Aetna doesn't present a huge problem. Only 2 % of the atmosphere is composed of greenhouse gases, the major greenhouse gas being water vapor. But less than 5 % of that 2 % are man-made greenhouse gases. And CO2 from burning fossil fuels account for 0.04 of the CO2 in the total atmosphere.

So what's the worse case scenario here? What happens if we have more CO2  and maybe 1.5 degrees F more warming ? Well, CO2 is what plants use like we use oxygen, and more of it would be beneficial to farming and all natural growth, allowing us to better feed a growing population, especially in the Third World. As for the heat, the hottest time in our present Halocene Interglacial, analgous to what's predicted by 2100, occurred about 3500 B.C. when the great Agricultural Revolution began in the Middle East.

Okay, to summarize, we don't really know if we have a problem and Man is probably not a big part of that  problem, and the problem, if it comes to pass, would not be a problem.

 So why is the United Nations and socialist governments around the world clamoring for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol and reduce our energy use by 35 % by 2012 ? To find the answer, one needs only to follow the money, and the power.

 This boondoggle would cost trillions of dollars a year, most of which the U.S. taxpayers would be expected to pay. And it would cost the economy of the United States even more. While real polluters like China and India get a pass on pollution standards, the U.S. will lose industry and jobs to these Third World competitors. Meanwhile, jealous Europeans would gleefully see America come down a notch. Crackpot scientists would get their programs funded. People who value bottom-feeding suckerfish over farmers and non-endangered
salmon over the lives of firefighters would be emboldened. And America, having surrendered even more sovereignty to the New World Order, would be dragged into a socialistic global governance. How any American could be for anything like that treaty is truly beyond me. And I don't know why President Bush would bother to suggest a compromise proposal to an idiotic idea like this. A realistic energy, conservation and environmental policy is needed.
Watered-down stupidity isn't.

The Far Left of the world has discovered that the environmental movement can be hijacked and used to create the Workers' Paradise that previous socialist regimes have failed to do. They are playing it to the hilt. And playing on people's emotions. Who doesn't have a warm spot in their heart for Nebraska's armadillos ?
Maybe too warm.

Excerpt from NotSo SERIOUS MONEY,
a weekly online financial newsletter
written by randybarker@aol.com