Article...TREE HUGGIN', HIPPIE CRAP, WHY GLOBAL WARMING WON'T KILL US ALL...
By: Shane Dale
etherzone.com
Good news, people: we’re not going to die! Global warming, the greenhouse effect, that darn hole in the ozone layer… it’s not gonna kill us! Turns out we’re gonna pull through after all.
What, you don’t buy it? The left and the media (one in the same) have told you otherwise, right? Environmentalists are telling us we must take immediate action to prevent catastrophe.
I know. It’s pretty convincing, what with all the talk of disaster coming from the liberals in Congress and the leftist environmental nuts on a daily basis. Letting us know all about the guilt we should feel for destroying our planet. For shame. Is it too late? Can we still reverse the trend if we change our everyday lives quickly enough?
Who cares? As Eric Cartman would say, it’s "nothin’ but a bunch of tree huggin’, hippie crap," anyway. And I’ll prove it.
Not to say that I aim to silence those who preach the imminent danger of global warming day and night. Telling the environmentalist nuts not to spread their message of doom and gloom is like telling a three-year-old not to wet the bed.
Anyway, here’s a few reasons why we’re all gonna be okay.
Only a fraction of greenhouse gas emissions which cause global warming are caused by human activity.
Climatologists agree that no more than five percent - and as little as two percent - of greenhouse gas emissions are directly caused by us and our "environmentally unfriendly" everyday activities. According to globalwarming.org, at much as 98 percent of these emissions are caused by natural phenomenon, primarily water vapor. Either way, humans are merely a blip on the geological radar, and always have been.
CO2 Science Magazine has all but completely refuted the idea of carbon dioxide emissions on their website, as the cause for recent rising global temperatures. co2science.com And what if carbon dioxide was a factor? Did you know that there are more trees in the United States today than there were when Christopher Columbus first arrived here? The fact is that only five percent of this country’s land has been industrialized. The federal government owns four times that much.
"Yeah, but that’s pretty sneaky of you because that five percent includes Alaska, which is huge… right?" Actually, it’s five percent excluding Alaska. So there.
Changes in the sun correlate directly with changes in the earth’s mean global temperature.
According to a recent scientific study which used observations from such data as tree rings, pollens, and oxygen isotopes in ice cores (yeah all right, I’m not even going to pretend I know what all of that means), the average temperature of the earth fluctuates directly with the amount of solar activity (i.e. sun spots) over the course of a given year. For example, the period during the 17th century known as the "little ice age," when Earth’s temperature was slightly cooler than it is now, occurred at the same time when sun spots were occurring at an exceptionally lower rate than average. Sun spot counts have been much higher in this century than in previous ones, leading to a slight increase in the earth’s temperature. Incidentally, this is not the hottest that the earth has been over the past thousand years; the high point of the past millennium, temperature wise, occurred approximately 800 years ago. My God, would we have gotten an earful back then or what?
"But then, how do you explain the hole in the ozone layer?" Simple: the sun causes the "hole" when it emits more radiation than usual, and it replenishes it when the radiation levels off. What, you think ozone is irreplaceable? Simply put, the sun giveth and the sun taketh away. And then the sun giveth again. And so on.
Lunar oscillations are also, in part, responsible for the earth’s temperature variability.
"But surely the sun can’t be entirely to blame for the earth’s recent warming trend, right?" Okay, try this: an astronomer by the name of Gerald Bond of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University has recently discovered a connection between moon cycles and the warming and cooling of our planet over the years. Bond found what he believes to be a 1,500 to 1,800-year cycle in the earth’s temperature that correlates with the different movements of the moon in connection to the earth. According to Bond, this means that the earth is in the middle of a warming trend. This trend will continue to gradually warm the earth through the 24th century, according to this cycle. And this, of course, means we won’t be hearing the end of how the way we live is destroying the planet for at least another 400 years.
Even if humans were the sole cause of global warming, we still wouldn’t burn up and die.
All right, let’s throw the scientific evidence out the window for a minute - something which is nothing new to the environmentalist nuts of the country - and let’s suppose that for the sake of argument, we human beings have been single-handedly destroying and heating up this planet due to our selfish, callous lifestyles. All right, first of all, the global temperature has risen 0.45 degrees Celsius (slightly over a degree Fahrenheit) over the past century. In other words, after all the pollution, filth, garbage and so forth that we miserable people have accumulated on this planet, we’ve managed to raise the global temperature barely a single degree. Call me a right-wing nut, but I think we’ll be all right.
Beyond that, 70 percent of the warming that has occurred over the past hundred years occurred before 1940. Seems to me we’ve most likely become a far more industrialized nation the past 61 years than the 39 before it. Add to that the facts that the earth has actually cooled slightly over the past 18 years, and industrial pollution has decreased in this country by 32 percent during the past 30 years due to more effective clean-up methods, and one might begin to understand my lack of concern.
One final note on the matter: did you know that Tucson was hotter during the 1890s than the 1990s? It’s true.
Two recent scientific surveys reveal skepticism within the climatology community.
A 1992 Gallup survey found that four out of five climatologists (81 percent to be precise) believed that either: 1. Earth’s global temperature has not risen over the past 100 years, 2. The specific reasons as to why warming was occurring (if at all) was at this point unknown, or 3. Increasing temperatures over the course of the past hundred years was merely a natural variation.
Further, a survey conducted in 1997 revealed that only 17 percent of climatologists believed that global warming was not a natural phenomenon. So the next time someone from Greenpeace tells you there’s a consensus among scientists that global warming is occurring and caused by human behavior, know that they’re either simply lying through their liberal teeth, or the basis of their claim is made from the next topic below:
The statement signed by thousands of "scientists" confirming the growing dangers of global warming is erroneous.
Apparently there’s this letter going around, signed by 2,600 "scientists," stating by all who signed that global warming was being caused by humans, and if we didn’t do something to correct the problem quickly, there could be catastrophic consequences. Check this out: only ten percent of the letter’s signatories had an educational background in climate science. So who were the rest of these people? Some of the more humorous occupations of those who signed are landscape architects, gynecologists, and a doctor who practices traditional Chinese medicine.
I don’t think I need to waste one of my valuable sarcastic comments here.
To this day, meteorologists can’t accurately predict the weather five days (or less) from now.
Now this next paragraph is entirely my opinion, but I think it comes with a great deal of common sense.
How often have you heard the TV weatherperson say, thanks to their trusty satellite, that there’s going to be a storm that will "bring some precipitation" five days from now, and either the storm never shows up, or ends up coming along two or three days later than predicted? And we trust these people to predict the weather years, decades, and even centuries from now? Honestly.
And exactly how long has satellite data existed?
Weather satellite data has been around for 20-30 years at most, and it’s hardly a hundred percent dependable. Up until recently, most satellite data used to measure the temperature of the planet was prone to a "heat island" effect around major cities that distorted data due to taking readings from highly urbanized areas. The most recent satellite data, that which is unaffected by this misinformation, is that which has discovered the recent cooling trend of the planet over the past two decades. This information is backed up by the world’s number one commercial forecaster, Accu-Weather, which states in regards to the previously distorted data, "several biases in the data may be responsible for some of this increase." See how much harder it is to argue facts?
The fear of global warming, spread by environmentalist nuts, is far less a genuine concern for the planet than a political concern.
There’s no doubt that environmentalist nuts want us to change our lifestyles, and the sooner the better (and when I say "environmentalist nuts," I’m not talking about level-headed, conservation-minded types who want clean air and water; I’m talking about the far left wackos. You’ll discover what I’m driving at shortly). But why do they want people to alter their lifestyles - and in some cases, give up their livelihoods altogether - in the name of the planet? Simple; it’s not in the name of the planet at all. The whole thing is so damn political it disturbs me that half the country continually buys their crap.
All one has to do to find the truth is to look at what this ridiculous Kyoto Protocol treaty would do to our nation’s economy. First of all, steel, iron, chemical, plastic and rubber corporations would either shut down altogether or move out of the country (the much more likely scenario) where their fossil-fuel emissions levels would be acceptable under the new standards, causing 2.4 million Americans to lose their jobs. Higher energy prices would soon follow, increasing the cost of electricity by at least 55 percent and home heating oil by at least 70. Taxes on gasoline would make it at least 50 cents per gallon more expensive. The average yearly household income would dwindle by $2,700. And car-pooling, new emissions standards, and stiff taxes on owners of trucks and SUVs would naturally soon follow. This treaty would open the floodgates to a massive amount of new laws and regulations, those that heavily restrict personal freedom and greatly empower the government.
But of course, this is exactly what the "environmental-socialists" want, which is what I’ve decided to call them from now on (after all, "environmentalist" sounds a lot better than "socialist," does it not?). All this would create a far greater dependency on the federal government in America, which sounds just fine and dandy to them Thank God the Senate voted 95-0 against this treaty… and I imagine there were even some Democrats in there.
Global warming is another tool to help push forward the environmental-socialists’ agenda.
"Oh come on now, you’re being so over-dramatic and paranoid it’s not even funny." Am I now? Am I really? Enter a resounding piece of evidence in my favor, entitled, "Fifty Difficult Things You Can Do To Save The Earth." This list, compiled by an environmental-socialist named Gar Smith back in 1993, lists 50 things that we as a nation can do, if we put our minds and hearts into it, to save this country. It’s odd to note that this list, as displayed in Earth Island Journal, a magazine that documents and supports leftist environmental claims, doesn’t actually entirely deal with environmental issues. Here are some more memorable examples (both environmental and non) from the list:
1. Bury your car.
4. Have your power lines disconnected.
5. Don’t have children.
15. Try to live, if you can, to within the world average income ($1,250 a year) for 1 month.
21. Raise the minimum wage to a survival income.
22. Enact a maximum wage law. (any slight detection of a socialist agenda yet?)
36. Don't eat anything that comes in a package. (?)
37. Don't buy anything that comes in a box. (??)
44. Stop using toilet paper and Kleenex; use washable cloth. (???)
47. Democratize your workplace; start a union or a collective.
48. Liberate a zoo. (I swear on Rush Limbaugh’s golden microphone this isn’t a joke)
50. Ask your boss if you can take a day off to work on healing the planet ... with pay! ("Uh… sir, can I take the day off to, you know, heal the planet and stuff? And oh yeah, can I get paid for the day too? What do you mean I’m fired?)
Does anything this guy’s pushing seem slightly reminiscent of socialism to you? I hope so. Of course, deciding whether or not this is a positive or a negative is entirely up to you.
The equation is pretty simple: do what the environmental-socialists want us to do, and we’ll begin to see our freedom dwindle away like so much ozone depleted by the sun. Ignore them, and we’ll continue to prosper in our capitalist, freedom-based society.
But then again, I suppose that’s not what we all want. |
