Here is an example of Ms Coulter's "work". She must bang these out pretty quick, because there is no evidence of depth of research or a search for the truth. Instead, it is merely another platform for her to call liberals names.
I don't expect many of my conservative friends to actually read this, because I removed the nifty little pictures of Ms Coulter from the original column (along with the pleas to buy her latest book, and some ads for a sponsor named OtherSingles.com).
I've annotated with my comments in <...>:
Global Warming: The French Connection
May 28, 2003
INASMUCH AS June is around the corner and it's still winter, it is time to revisit the issue of "global warming." A sparrow does not a spring make, but in the Druid religion of environmentalism, every warm summer's breeze prompts apocalyptic demands for a ban on aerosol spray and paper bags. So where is global warming when we need it?
<Incomprehensible gibberish - no facts yet...>
In 1998, President Clinton denounced Republicans for opposing his environmental policies, citing Florida's inordinately warm weather: "June was the hottest month they had ever had – hotter than any July or August they had ever had." This, after the Senate rejected the Kyoto Treaty by the slender margin of 95-0. In fact, all the world's major industrial powers initially rejected the treaty, including Japan. That's right: Even Kyoto rejected Kyoto.
<Half truth. Currently, 180 nations have signed the Kyoto Treaty. After Bush pulled out, it of course had to be reworked, since a major player was out.>
That same year, CNN's Margaret Carlson remarked that when her neighbors experienced temperate weather at Christmas, global warming was the word on everyone's lips. Adding to the world's supply of hot air, she said global warming was the big sleeper issue.
<Hmm, no facts there, just a jab at CNN>
Well, this year, Washington, D.C., had the coldest February in a quarter-century. What are the scientific conclusions of Ms. Carlson's neighbors now? In a single day in February, New York got its fourth-deepest snowfall since 1869. Baltimore got more snow in February than in any other month in recorded history. I wish there were global warming.
<Coulter obviously does not understand macro issues. Just because it is cold one day in New York, does not mean there is no global warming. Again, not a single fact that is relevant to the discussion.>
In 1995, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced a computer model purportedly proving "a discernible human influence on global climate." According to the U.N., there was not enough evidence to determine if Saddam Hussein was a threat, but the evidence is in on global warming.
<Ok, one fact - global warming has been modeled. Then, another snide remark>
The key to the U.N.'s global warming study was man's use of aerosol spray. You have to know the French were involved in a study concluding that Arrid Extra Dry is destroying the Earth. In a world in which everyone smelled, the French would be at no disadvantage. Aerosol spray. How convenient.
<Man, she must just bang this stuff out, considering how vacuous it is.>
According to global-warming hysterics, global warming would begin at the poles, melt the ice caps, and then the oceans would rise. On the basis of such fatuous theories, in August 1998, the host of NPR's "Science Friday," Ira Flatow, told his listeners to look out their windows and imagine the ocean in their own back yards. Explaining that receding glaciers in Antarctica would dramatically lift sea levels, he warned that their grandchildren could be "hanging fishing poles out of New York skyscrapers," thus qualifying as the world's all-time greatest "fishing story."
<Ah, ok, a fact. Global warming will eventually melt the poles. Scientists agree that if global warming occurs, poles will melt. A fact! Hurray!>
Since then, evidence disproving "global warming" has been pouring in. God knows how many trees had to be sacrificed to print new data refuting global warming.
<A rather cheeky statement from someone who has caused a lot of trees to die for no good reason other than lining her pockets>
In January 2002, the journal Science published the findings of scientists who had been measuring the vast West Antarctic ice sheet. Far from melting, it turns out the ice sheet is growing thicker. The researchers were Dr. Ian R. Joughin, an engineer at the jet propulsion laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Pasadena, Calif., and Dr. Slawek Tulaczyk, a professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
<Ah, finally onto the meat of her point. Some studies have shown a thickening of the ice sheet. More below.>
About the same time, the journal Nature published the findings of scientist Peter Doran and his colleagues at the University of Illinois. Rather than using the U.N.'s "computer models," the researchers took actual temperature readings. It turned out temperatures in the Antarctic have been getting slightly colder – not warmer – for the last 30 years.
<Good. Another point, this time Doran's climate study. Let's here what Doran actually said about his own results:
"We're not saying anything close to 'the Earth's climate is not warming,'" as an animated Peter Doran of the University of Illinois at Chicago puts it.
and
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is thickening because a few of its ice streams - Antarctica's glacial equivalent of rivers - have been damming up for 200 years, causing a backup that is continually growing.
But Tulaczyk is quick to point out, "our results do not indicate that the whole Antarctic Ice Sheet is growing, merely that 5-6 percent of the ice sheet is currently thickening, and there is no direct causal link between these ice sheets thickening and temperature increase or decrease."
Doran cautions: "All the continents on Earth are warming except Antarctica, which could be just a delayed response. Our 35-year trend analysis highlights the heterogeneous nature of the trends in Antarctica, and the models need to catch up to match the mixed signals."
Tulaczyk agrees. "Climate models need to be improved to explain cooling. They do not currently account for spatial or temporal variabilities such as cooling. And these new aspects of ice-sheet behavior need to be incorporated into glaciological models of ice-sheet flow."
The real story, as Doran puts it, is that Antarctica is the most data sparse continent on Earth; much more research and a lot more time is needed. These are processes that occur over thousands of years and these measurements only represent a few years.
Doran concludes, "it's an evolving process."
So, Doran himself urges caution, proclaims that the continents are indeed warming, and that the data collected for Antarctica is too small to reach conclusions.
Another crop of Coulter half-truths. Pick out what she needs to make her point, and throw away the rest. She would make a great creationist scientist.>
The chief scientist for Environmental Defense, Michael Oppenheimer, responded to the new findings by urging caution and warning that "there is simply not enough data to make a broad statement about all of Antarctica." That's interesting. We didn't have to wait for more data when lunatics curtailed the use of nuclear energy in this country on the basis of the movie "The China Syndrome." That was hard scientific evidence.
<As echoed by the scientists who originally collected the data: NOT ENOUGH DATA. I think maybe Coulter should be sent for a few years to collect some. Make herself useful.>
We didn't wait for more data when DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) was banned on the basis of Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," which brainwashed children into believing DDT would kill all the birds. American soldiers in World War II were bathed in DDT. Jews rescued from Nazi death camps were doused in DDT. It was a miracle invention: Tiny amounts of DDT kill disease-carrying insects with no harm to humans, protecting them from malaria, dengue and typhus. But in 1972, the U.S. banned one of the greatest inventions in modern history.
Now environmentalists are in a panic that African nations will use DDT to save millions of lives. Last year, 80,000 people in Uganda alone died of malaria, half of them children. The United States and Europe have threatened to ban Ugandan imports if they use DDT to stop this scourge. Environmentalists would prefer that millions of Africans die so that white liberals may continue gazing upon rare birds.
<Again, half truths. Destroying the ecosystem with DDT would probably lead to environmental disaster and famine on the scale of Somalia, killing millions. But, that wouldn't prove her point, would it? How many reputable scientists want to see us bring back DDT?>
Liberals don't care about the environment. The core of environmentalism is a hatred for mankind. They want mass infanticide, zero population growth, reduced standards of living and vegetarianism. Most crucially, they want Americans to stop with their infernal deodorant use.
<Ah, onto the real point of the column. Because liberals really hate mankind, we'd like to see mass infanticide. And you get paid for this crap, Ms Coulter? Boy, you are a shining disciple of PT Barnum> |
