Am I Equal To A Holocaust Denier?!

According to Ellen Goodman, in The Boston Globe, folks like me who question whether or not man is killing the earth by causing global warming, are no different than a holocaust denier. I quote, "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."

Impossible to deny? She's dumber than a box of rocks if she really believes that.

To me, Americans seem to be such a fickle bunch.

We point fingers at, say, the British, and wonder how they can stomach still having a monarchy. Their Prime Minister and Parliament determine and make laws and the monarchy is largely a symbolic one.

But right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. we worship the George Clooneys and the Sean Penns of the world, simply because they are pretty good at pretending to be other people.

No kidding; I'd rather have a symbolic monarchy to capture our attention than to worship the movie actors and popular musicians in America like we do.

Al Gore is making the rounds of the entire world, hawking his film about how man is killing the earth. He will not debate the points in his film, and even has cancelled a recent debate in Denmark with a scientist who was to discuss with his problems that he and fellow scientists there have with many points in Mr. Gore's film. Not to mention that Mr. Gore doesn't even live up to the points that he thinks the world should live by to stop global warming.

Mr. Gore was even at the Grammys the other night, and remarked that all of those stars were an important part of the environmental movement. Yeah, with their multiple mansions and private jets. Sure Al, they're SO environmentally conscious. Carbon neutral, my big corn-fed rear end!

But many Americans are swallowing it, hook, line, and sinker, and I've read more than a few blog posts over the past year about how "An Inconvenient Truth" has scared the writers into taking action of one sort or another.

I just think that, although many Americans are well educated, we're still very susceptible to what famous people say. Movie stars are the gods of modern America.

We will laugh at "Bat Boy" headlines in the Weekly World News, yet blindly swallow what Al Gore says in his movie.

I don't get too upset at this, well, not much. I remember the famous Carl Sagan, who, every time he was given a chance to speak, telling everyone to "only trust things that can be proven by the five senses." But for me, each and every one of us CHOOSES what we believe. We are all responsible for whose voice we follow. Most of the most important things in our lives, the very things that make life worth living, are beyond the realm of the five senses; love, friendship, happiness, joy, peace, kindnes. Just to name a few.

The scientific method, which only uses empirical data (knowledge gained through the five senses), is undergoing a sea change.

(Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of the scientific method, I make my living with it.)

But the politicizing of science is at an all-time high. It seems as if there are lines being drawn, and those scientists who think man caused global warming, and those scientists who disagree are starting to fight a public battle that will probably only get more fierce. Science has moved out of the facts business, and started also telling us which idealogical side of this issue we should be on.

I read comments recently, by Václav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic about the modern global warming folks: "Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me." AND "Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.". (read on Harvard physicist Lubos Motl's blog The Reference Frame, found via Norma's blog Collecting My Thoughts)

I think Czech president Klaus said exactly what I could not put into words. Basically that the old environmental movement, based on the "earth is a living organism and man is just a parasite trying to kill her" frame of reference has become the modern day global warming crowd, led by the Al Gore's of the world.

I know this post is just a mish-mash of stuff, but I think that, in the same way many scientists discount religious beliefs due to empiricism, the man-is-causing-global-warming crowd is using the same tactics on those who do not believe that man has that much impact on global climate.

Any and all voices to the contrary are to be shouted down and to become targets of ridicule. If the man-is-causing-global-warming crowd repeats it's mantra enough times, and shouts down dissenting scientists as owned by the oil companies, then they'll "win" the hearts and minds of the masses.

I don't doubt that the earth is warming. A whole 0.7C in the past 100 years.

But I DO question whether man is the cause of this; there are unanswered points that bother me.

First, science has supposedly proven that the earth has undergone climate changes, back and forth, cold and hot, for thousands of years. So why all the hullabaloo about the cycle of climate change we are in now? The earth went through repeated cycles, from way before the industrial revolution, how did man cause the past cycles, because to me, if we're causing this one, we must have caused the past ones, right? In the 90s, when Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines, scientists claimed that the eruption sent more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere than man has produced since the beginning of the industrial revolution. If that is true, how can man be blamed for global warming? Pinatubo's eruption isn't the only major volcanic eruption of the past 300 years!

The sun undergoes periodic changes, and cycles through periods when it burns hotter and not-quite-as-hot. In fact, science has shown that Mars is going through a cycle of heating and increased CO2 in it's atmosphere, and man isn't there to cause Mars's CO2 rise. To see this, and to still claim that man is the cause of the rise in CO2 on the earth, but the same thing is happening the same way, and at the same time, on Mars, seems a bit outrageous to me. Yet the man-is-causing-global-warming types dismiss this kind of dissent. Why? I'd like to know why Mars is seeing similar CO2 increases in it's atmosphere. Could it be that the sun is in a hot period and causing this similar CO2 rise IN BOTH PLANETS? I've yet to see a man-is-causing-global-warming adherent give a plausible response to this.


Al Gore's (and his believers) call to make changes in the world's industries only includes America and Europe. India and China, BY FAR the largest industrial polluters in the world, are curiously not being required to make any changes. I read recently that China plans to build 2,200 coal-fired power plants in the next 20 years or so.

Yes. Two Thousand Two Hundred coal-fired power plants.

I would suspect the Indian's will do something on a similar scale. Both economies are seeing explosive growth. Why do the Al Gore's of the world want to put controls on America's and Europe's industrial output and let China and India, which already pollute more than we ever will, get a free pass? These prohibitions, put on the west's economies, can ONLY destroy theses economies, while allowing India and China to grow and pollute uncontrollably. What kind of nonsense is that? Idiocy!

So that's my little rant about the notion that man is causing global warming. I make no claim that man doesn't have some impact, but if we haven't even done the damage equal to one of the many volcanic eruptions of the past 300 years, how can we be blamed for the earth's median temperature rising less than one degree C?

Finally, climate IS change by it's nature. Just as local weather changes day by day, the cycles in the overall weather patterns in the earth change. Always have, always will. Just because things are changing, doesn't mean man is the primary cause. When I was in high school in the late 70s we were warned that the earth had already begun the slide into the next ice age, and 30 years later, the earth is warming, billions will die, and it's all man's fault? I just don't buy it. I just don't.

I've said on this blog many times, I know I'm not the sharpest pencil in the cup, but until someone can lay these concerns of mine to rest, I'm not buying the notion that global warming period we're entering is harmful in the first place, and that man is causing it!

That is all, carry on.