Global Warming:
Where is the HEAT??
In a commercial a few years ago a hamburger restaurant chain challenged one of their competitors with the big question: "Where is the beef?" I don’t know if this challenging question helped the chain’s market position, but it sure caught on as a catchy slogan and a buzz phrase in the news and around the dinner table. Today in the beginning of the 21st century I have two more appropriate questions to ask:
Where is the HEAT? and Where is the SCIENCE?
What our nation is getting on the issue of global warming is more hype than heat, and more scam than science. Just a few years ago, in the 1970’s, the big hype and scare was global cooling. The promoters of these scare tactics hoped we had forgotten that, but we haven’t, nor should we. Let us now consider the two questions at hand.
First Question: "Where is the HEAT?"
Let’s look at the facts! Of course the pro-global warming crowd does not want you to know the facts, because the facts hurt their cause. During the Clinton Administration, I watched Environmental Protection Agency head, Carol Browner, be interviewed. Three times she was asked to give the actual temperature data on which the proposed global warming crisis was based. She avoided giving the facts and went off on tangents to explain what their computer model suggested might happen and what possible disasters might come upon our universe. That interview presented hype and fear, but no facts.The Washington Times, National Weekly Edition
stated, "Since 1870, the Earth’s temperature has risen one-half of one degree Celsius, and most of the rise occurred before World War II. …Since 1979 scientific research through U.S. government satellite and balloon measurements show that the earth’s temperature is actually cooling - - very slightly - - .307 degrees Celsius."1Scientist Robert Balling, Jr., Director of the Laboratory of Climatology at Arizona State University, examined the temperature records from 57 European ground stations over the last 250 years. What were his findings? He said, "There had been no warming in Europe during the past 65 years. Despite the effects of urbanization and the recovery of the Little Ice Age, Europe warmed only .58 º Celsius during the past 250 years, with all of the warming taking place between 1890 and the mid-1930s…Finally, the European warming between 1890 and the mid-1930s occurred at the same time as an increase in the output of the sun."
2An in-depth study released by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine states:
"The average temperature of the Earth has varied within a range of about 3º C during the past 3,000 years. It is currently increasing as the Earth recovers from a period that is known as the Little Ice Age, as shown in Figure 1."
3"Compiled U.S. surface temperatures have increased about 0.5 °C per century, which is consistent with other historical values of 0.4 to 0.5 °C per century during the recovery from the Little Ice Age (13-17). This temperature change is slight as compared with other natural variations, as shown in Figure 6. Three intermediate trends are evident, including the decreasing trend used to justify fears of "global cooling" in the 1970s."
4 2"While the average temperature change taking place as the Earth recovers from the Little Ice Age is so slight that it is difficult to discern, its environmental effects are measurable. Glacier shortening and the 7 inches per century rise in sea level are examples. There are additional climate changes that are correlated with this rise in temperature and may be caused by it.
Greenland, for example, is beginning to turn green again, as it was 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Climate Optimum (11). Arctic sea ice is decreasing somewhat (75), but Antarctic ice is not decreasing and may be increasing, due to increased snow (76-79).
In the United States, rainfall is increasing at about 1.8 inches per century, and the number of severe tornados is decreasing, as shown in Figures 7 and 8. If world temperatures continue to rise at the current rate, they will reach those of the Medieval Climate Optimum about 2 centuries from now. Historical reports of that period record the growing of warm weather crops in localities too cold for that purpose today, so it is to be expected that the area of more temperate climate will expand as it did then. This is already being observed, as studies at higher altitudes have reported increases in amount and diversity of plant and animal life by more than 50% (12,80).
All of the observed climate changes are gradual, moderate, and entirely within the bounds of ordinary natural changes that have occurred during the benign period of the past few thousand years.
There is no indication whatever in the experimental data that an abrupt or remarkable change in any of the ordinary natural climate variables is beginning or will begin to take place."
5The global warming alarmists do not want to talk about the facts, they would rather frighten you with their wild speculated scenarios. But I prefer the facts. The facts tell us, that the average temperature increase over the past 100 years is 0.5°C and this is all in the range of normality.
So where is the HEAT? It is minimal and in the range of normality.Second Question: "Where is the SCIENCE
?" In 1996, The IntergovernmentalPanel of Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations Organization, released its report "The Science of Climate Change 1995." It addressed the issue of the human impact on the earth’s climate and was hailed by the media as the latest and most authoritative statement on global warming. Soon after its release, there was a protest by some scientist of the handling of this document and the version of it that was released to the media.
The Wall Street Journal carried this article titled "A Major Deception on Global Warming," by Frederick Seitz. In the editorial, Seitz had this to say:"In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process th
than the events that led to this IPCC report. 3
A comparison between the report approved by the contributing scientists and the published version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had met and accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version.
But more than 15 sections in Chapter 8 of the report--the key chapter setting out the scientific evidence for and against a human influence over climate--were changed or deleted after the scientists charged with examining this question had accepted the supposedly final text.
Few of these changes were merely cosmetic; nearly all worked to remove hints of the skepticism with which many scientists regard claims that human activities are having a major impact on climate in general and on global warming in particular.
If they lead to carbon taxes and restraints on economic growth, they will have a major and almost certainly destructive impact on the economies of the world. Whatever the intent was of those who made these significant changes, their effect is to deceive policy makers and the public into believing that the scientific evidence shows human activities are causing global warming."6
A month later another article appeared in The Wall Street Journal, titled "Coverup in the Greenhouse?" Here are a few lines from this article written by S. Fred Singer, President of The Science & Environmental Policy Project:
"The IPCC summary itself, a political document, is economical with the truth: It has problems with selective presentation of facts, not the least of which is that it totally ignores global temperature data gathered by weather satellites, which contradict the results of models used to predict a substantial future warming.
In this crusade to provide a scientific cover for political action, they are misusing the work of respected scientists who never made extravagant claims about future warming. It is clear that politicians and activists striving for international controls on energy use
are anxious to stipulate that the science is settled and trying to marginalize the growing number of scientific critics."7
John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel and a television meteorologist for more than 54 years, has called global warming alarmism, "The Greatest Scam in history". He says the data supporting catastrophic, human-induced global warming has been "manipulated." Furthermore he believes scientists with a political agenda have manufactured a crisis. He says, "Scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long-term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming."8
We can see from these statements by sound authorities and experts, there is no scientific conclusion. The truth is, there has been scientific manipulation of the facts for a desired outcome. That is the reason Dr. Frederick Seitz and several other credible 4
scientists started the "Petition Project" that states that Global Warming is not a crisis and that we should all oppose higher energy tax schemes as well as the Kyoto Treaty. How many have signed this "Petition Project?"
19,000 Scientists have signed the Petition!
Where is the Heat?
It is little, normal and natural. Where is the Science? It is limited, to be certain, and used to promote a certain political, and economical outcome?I therefore, stand for common sense and sound science
in this day of political scam.Dr. Gary S. Urich, Pastor/Engineer
Retired Senior Engineer, Professional Engineer
2006 Secretary of the SBC Pastor Conferenc
