Posted by
on Sunday, February 11, 2007 11:51:22 AM
Uh-oh. Mark Steyn's ruffling liberal feathers again, but instead of telling the Left what it's all about (like he did in regard to the war) on global warming:Our Thought For The Week comes from the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman: "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."
That would be yours truly: the climate holocaust denier. I wrote last week about "global warming," or "cooling," or "climate change," or (the latest term) "climate disruption" -- for those parts of the world where the climate isn't really changing but you get an occasional blip: a warm day in winter or a flurry of snow in late April, or (for British readers) a summer's day where it rockets up to 58 and cloudy instead of being 54 and drizzling. As a result of my climate holocaust denial, I received a ton of letters along the lines of this one:
"Your piece gave most of my students, most of whom are conservative, a laugh. A journalist's word against six years of peer-reviewed research conducted by world authorities on the subject.
"But, as one my student's [sic] put it: 'Steyn's piece could prove valuable: We often run out of toilet paper here.'
"How is it that you can make a living writing what you do is a wonder. But then, the vulgar wish to be deceived, after all.
"Steve Pierson,
Professor of English."
Presumably Professor Pierson signs himself "Professor of English" to establish his credentials for opining on how I can make a living writing. To be honest, I'm flattered to know I'm being discussed at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, N.Y.: Did I displace Shakespeare? Or Maya Angelou? Or the class where you learn not to put an apostrophe in noun plurals? Has Professor Pierson's judgment of my writing also been peer-reviewed by world authorities?
Not all of us are quite so hung up on credentialization. But, if you are, you might want to read the December issue of the Journal Of Atmospheric And Solar-Terrestrial Physics in which Cornelis de Jager of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Ilya Usoskin of the Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory in Finland test the validity of two current hypotheses on the dependence of climate change on solar energy -- the first being that variations in the tropospheric temperature are caused directly by changes of the solar radiance (total or spectral), the other that cosmic ray fluctuations, caused by the solar/heliospheric modulation, affect the climate via cloud formation. The Finn and the Dutch guy from the A-list institutions with the fancypants monikers writing in the peer-reviewed journal conclude that the former is more likely -- that tropospheric temperatures are more likely affected by variations in the UV radiation flux rather than by those in the CR flux.
Are you thinking maybe it's time to turn over the page to the Anna Nicole Smith "A life in pictures" double spread? Well, that's my point. Most of us aren't reading the science, or even a precis of the science. We're just reading a constant din from the press that "the science is settled," and therefore we no longer need to think about it: The thinking has been done for us. Last week's U.N. IPCC "report," for example, is not the report, but a political summary thereof. As David Warren wrote in the Ottawa Citizen:
"Note that the IPCC report's conclusions were issued first, and the supporting research is now promised for several months from now. What does that tell you?"
Frankly speaking, folks, I don't buy global warming. I don't see proof of it. Al Gore can't provide it, and I'm not buying what the UN is shoveling. We'd be remiss if we forgot that according to Kofi Annan (upon his departure from the UN) global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism.
You can now pick yourselves up off of the floor, and wipe that smirk off your face. Now you know why we called him "Kooky Uncle Kofi."
When the global warming nutters start talking about the temperatures being greater now than what they were in the past, most of them get very irate when I ask them "when did Moses check the thermometer? Was it before or after he received God's Commandments?" When they talk about emissions from cars, they aren't too amused when I condemn Jesus for driving his SUV around Galilee.
These people either have no sense of humor, or can't handle simple logic. The temperatures MAY be rising a degree or two, but that's no reason to run off hysterically like some insane Chicken Little telling the world that Al Gore has a point. (We all know Gore has a point. It's on the top of his head under the tin-foil hat.) Global warming, in my humble opinion, is a ponzi scheme; a chance for scientists and "turd-world" nations to swipe more money from the US. And they're doing it by guilting us into it. "Shame on the US. You use too much gasoline. You pollute the air. You're causing the majority of this."
Yeah, and you guys need to go back to your shrink and get your meds. We do use a lot of gasoline, but if we don't, how is industry supposed to advance? It takes delivery trucks dropping produce at grocery stores, canned goods, eggs, meat, etc. You like your beer and wine? It doesn't magically appear on convenient store shelves. With produce and the like, you need machines to pick it and harvest it. And as for poulluting the air, our air quality is better here than it is abroad where the majority of nations can't even abide by the slimmest environmental protocols. We lead the world in cleaning up our mess (and other's too, it seems), so I don't want to hear the IPCC morons yapping about how this is all our fault. Everything nowadays seems to America's fault.
Point being that now, thanks to Ms. Goodman, the global warming nutters are comparing us to Holocaust deniers. (Except that we KNOW the Holocaust happened, and they still can't PROVE global warming exists.) So, chalk us up in the same column as Mark Steyn. Yes, we're going to deny it's happening until it is proven, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that global warming is occurring. Tell that to the people in New York and the Northeast still trying to dig themselves out of nine feet of snow today. (Personally, if that's what they call global warming, I'll take some of that. It's been over 20 years since I've seen snow like that! And it sure beats the Arizona-is-just-another-seven-letter-word-for-Hell summers here.) So, when the climate shifts enough to drop that in our front yard, and Chicago gets balmy winter days, and intense summer heat, then I'll start caring. Until then, we don't buy the scam.
Publius II