Orwell was right
Thursday, January 29, 2009
By Bob Stuart
A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
- George Orwell
In last week’s News&Guide, Todd Wilkinson takes aim at scientists and others who disagree with global warming alarmists. Titled “Climate change deniers gave us market collapse,” he also makes the outrageous claim that “those who insisted the world economy cannot afford to reduce carbon emissions are the same voices whose ideology led to a world economy now in ruin.”
Oh my God!
Wilkinson doesn’t identify the culprits, but implies that liberty, free market capitalism, and John McCain supporters are to blame for both global warming and our economic ruin. “Millions of Americans are living with the consequences of their Libertarian economic conceit,” he said.
First, let’s recall that John McCain was fully onboard the global warming bandwagon. “I will make global warming a priority,” he said.
Second, our economic crisis is not a result of free-market capitalism, but of its destruction by a government, enabled by the Federal Reserve, that prints, spends and borrows money vastly beyond its means. And as for liberty – as government grows, it shrinks.
Wilkinson’s Op-Ed resembles most articles on climate change by defending the alarmists and denigrating their opponents. The use of the word “denier” is particularly offensive and inflammatory, as it’s meant to conjure up images of Holocaust deniers, and stifle debate.
The fact is, hundreds of highly credentialed scientists are opposed to the science and scare tactics of the UN IPCC and their minions. In December, 650 scientists put their name to a US Senate report challenging the IPCC contention that there’s a scientific consensus, and are speaking out against the UN’s climate change position. Sadly, that story wasn’t covered in the popular press.
Al Gore and his cause can’t be dismissed, Wilkinson said, “by invoking cryptic countervailing anecdotes.” That is true, but they can be by invoking hard science. Try icecap.us and junkscience.com for opposing viewpoints, and climatedebatedaily.com for a side by side presentation of both sides of the issue.
Wilkinson (and Gore, et al.) claims that the “burning of fossil fuels,” specifically carbon dioxide emissions, cause climate change. Global warming alarmists have gone so far as to label carbon dioxide (C02) a pollutant. Let’s see what a prominent climate scientist has to say about it:
“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a naturally occurring, beneficial trace gas in the atmosphere. There is no empirical evidence that levels double or even triple those of today will be harmful, climatically or otherwise. As a vital element in plant photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is the basis of the planetary food chain – literally the staff of life. Its increase in the atmosphere leads mainly to the greening of the planet. To label carbon dioxide a ‘pollutant’ is an abuse of language, logic and science.” – Robert M. Carter, Ph.D., Professor of Environmental and Earth Sciences, James Cook University.
Wilkinson invokes none other than James Hansen and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies to defend his cause. They recently claimed that October of 2008 was the hottest October on record. Unfortunately (for them), they were caught using September temperatures and claiming they were October’s.
The London Telegraph also reports that, in 2007, Hansen was forced “to revise his published figures for U.S. surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.”
So, what’s the motivation for controlling C02 emissions and thereby energy? Concentrating wealth and power in the hands of global elites and further eroding national sovereignty – “global problems need global solutions.”
And what’s the solution? Carbon taxes, cap and trade schemes and billions of dollars thrown at a non-existent problem that will further cripple our economy and hurt especially the poor and middle class.
There are real environmental crises Wilkinson and others should be addressing. Access to clean water for millions of the world’s poor is one of them.
Orwell was right, but the truth is out there, and if enough people find it, truth and sanity may yet prevail. PJH
PERMALINK:
Orwell was right | Planet JH News Article: Right Wing Local
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