Ecoterrorism at work

Friday's Dodge City Daily Global editorial column ran an op-ed piece on "Global Warming" attributed to the Hays Daily News with no author's name given. After reading it, I saw why the author declined to be identified. It was fraught with error, misinformation, innuendo, and personal agenda.

The writer begins with the widely accepted fact that the earth's atmosphere is undergoing warming and provides a very short paragraph of actual "numbers" to "prove" that global warming is occurring when, in fact, no one with any knowledge about the earth-atmosphere ecosystem today contests that it is occurring.

The writer claims that Scientists (What scientists? Climatologists? Physicists? Medical researchers?) predict that global temperatures (What "global temperature"? Average daily? Average Annual? Average decadal?) will rise by 2 to 10 degrees (Degrees what? F or C?) by the end of this century.

This is pure environment terrorism meant only to scare you into swallowing the writers agenda which appears to be: Bush is bad. Big business is bad. Let's do some feel good environmental stuff even if we don't know what it will do to the earth's climate. Furthermore, no source for these "numbers" is given leaving us to assume they are correct based upon the fact that anyone able to write an op-ed on global warming must, per force, be an expert in the field.

At this point the writer obviously feels that no one needs to question exactly "why" global warming is occurring. Instead, this pundit immediately leaps to the conclusion that the whole problem is somehow the fault of corporate greed, bureaucratic incompetence, and the Bush administration.

As an atmospheric scientist of nearly 40 years, let me set the record straight. Is global warming occurring? Yes. Is it caused by greenhouse gasses like carbondioxide (only one of the greenhouse gasses involved, by the way)? Yes. Is there irrefutable evidence that humans are causing the problem. No.

Consider the following points from the National Center for Policy Analysis.

A Gallup poll found that only 17 percent of the members of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society think that the warming of the 20th century has been a result of greenhouse gas emissions - principally CO2 from burning fossil fuels.

Only 13 percent of the scientists responding to a survey conducted by the environmental organization Greenpeace believe catastrophic climate change will result from continuing current patterns of energy use.

More than 100 noted scientists, including the former president of the National Academy of Sciences, signed a letter declaring that costly actions to reduce greenhouse gases are not justified by the best available evidence.

Here's the SOURCE for this information. I'll let you read it and decide for yourself.

There are two more things you should think about insofar as "global warming" is concerned.

Paleoclimatologists are quick to point out that the earth's climate is a long term affair while the alarm over global warming is based entirely on extremely short term data sets. That is to say, there have been other periods of both global warming and global cooling throughout the existence of the earth's climate. In short, there were periods of global warming in between each of the major ice ages. How do we know that we aren't just experiencing another of these? The answer is, we don't - so don't panic.

Finally, if we are going to blame global warming on carbondioxide emissions, we had better have another think. Mark Bahner has posted an excellent website that covers the global warming topic quite nicely. Go and look at THIS if you are concerned about global warming. Especially look at his "What will happen to us?" page and his Figure #1 in particular. You will see that for the decadal increase in Carbondioxide emissions will likely drop to near zero in the next decade or two meaning that we don't really need the Kyoto Protocol agreement, the problem is already solving itself.

This AUTHOR is happy to provide additional supporting data and research to anyone who is seriously interested in the topic. As always, name callers and crack-pots will be ignored.