Hi Christine,
Gee, if mankind were actually causing global warming then the extremist proponents wouldn't have to try fool the people would they? But that's just what they are doing:
Clinton, Gore blow
hot air on climate
issues
By Paul Bedard
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
ASPEN, Colo.
President Clinton and Vice President Gore are using this
summer's dog days to bolster fearsome warnings that the
globe is warming up, but experts say the duo are overheating
Americans with fudged data.
With greater intensity as the summer days get hotter, the
president has been declaring that the climate is its hottest in 500
years while the vice president has said evidence of global
warming is "piling up" week after week.
But in each case, they are leaving out key facts, according
to climate experts:
While Mr. Clinton is using newly reviewed
2,000-year-old Chinese weather and crop data to make
his case for global warming, he is only looking back 500
years, a time of the sharply cooler "mini-Ice Age," and
ignoring the data showing that the world was warmer
than now.
Mr. Gore's charge last week that "the evidence of global
warming keeps piling up, month after month, week after
week," was made without the obvious context that the
calendar is moving into the dog days of summer.
The government office in charge of temperature readings
claims accurate data only goes back 100 years.
"It's getting silly," said Thomas Gale Moore, a former
member of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors.
"Next they'll be saying it's significantly warmer today than six
months ago [in January]," he added.
"This is what they usually do, play with the data. Depending
on where you start and stop, you can make the data say what
you want," said S. Fred Singer, president of the Science and
Environment Policy Project.
"The public are still not wise to it," he added.
The administration has been using the heat wave to build its
case for a global warming treaty that would sharply reduce
industrial pollutants and provide money to study the issue and
educate the public on global warming.
Mr. Clinton and the vice president have referenced global
warming at each campaign stop. They have suggested global
warming is to blame for the fires in Florida and a recent heat
wave despite climate experts claiming it is an aftereffect of El
Nino and its summer cousin La Nina.
Mr. Gore, for example, held a recent press conference to
blame the daily summer temperature increases on global
warming -- not the arrival of late July and August, commonly
the hottest time of the year.
"Usually the climate does warm in the middle of July. That's
normal," said Mr. Moore.
The president increased his focus on global warming after
returning from China, where he claimed to have received data
dating back to the 15th century showing temperature increases
on the globe.
Speaking at a July 9 Miami Democratic fund-raiser at the
home of film star Sylvester Stallone, Mr. Clinton said, "When I
was in China, I was reminded that one of the reasons we have
weather records going back hundreds of years is that the
Chinese weather people -- what we now call meteorologists --
have literally been keeping detailed records since the 15th
century. And we now know that the five hottest years recorded
since the 1400s all have occurred in the 1990s -- every one of
them."
A week later, he told a gathering of Girls Nation, "There is
ample evidence now that what my wonderful vice president has
been saying for years and years and years is true: that the
climate of the globe is warming at a rate which is unsustainable,
which will lead us to more extreme weather conditions. We
now have records going back over 500 years which we can
use to measure what the temperature was on this planet."
Here to host a weekend retreat of major Democratic
donors, he said early yesterday: "This is not a game. We
cannot afford to go into denial about this."
Elliot Diringer, spokesman for the Council on Environmental
Quality, said the president was referring to soil samples and
tree-ring data. "That type of evidence does suggest climate
change effect in that region," he said.
What Mr. Clinton didn't say, however, is that the Chinese
have kept crop and weather data for over 2,000 years.
According to that information, the weather was warmer
2,000 years ago than it is today.
Mr. Moore, in his new book "Climate of Fear," said Europe
and China were unusually warm from about 800 to 1300. After
that, a "mini-Ice Age" occurred in the 15th century, dropping
temperatures some two to four degrees below those of the
20th Century.
"If you start then, there's no doubt that the world has
warmed since," he said.
"They just conveniently pick their starting point at the
coldest period," Mr. Moore said. "You can't do that in
science."
Mr. Singer said the Chinese data doesn't give temperatures
because the thermometer wasn't invented until 1632. He said
the data instead shows what crops were grown and at what
altitudes.
Tom Ross of the National Climate Data Center said
accurate temperature data collected by the federal government
goes back only 100 years.
"The reliable records began about 1880," he said.
Scientists generally agree that the climate has warmed a
degree over the past several hundred years due to greenhouse
gases being released in the atmosphere.
washtimes.com |
