A Really Inconvenient Truth
Al Gore says global warming is an inconvenient truth. “Inconvenient” adds a clever twist to the name of the would-be president’s popular documentary and book. But far worthier of scrutiny is the other word in the title: “Truth.”
Man-made global warming, says the former politician and a rising sea of climate alarmists, is not just inconvenient, it’s an unequivocal, undeniable truth. In fact, the truth about global warming is so convincing that “debate in the scientific community is over.”
Says who? Well, the United Nations for starters. On February 2 last year, the United Nations issued a press release highlighting its latest report, which apparently proved “changes in the atmosphere, the oceans and glaciers and ice caps now show unequivocally that the world is warming due to human activities” (emphasis mine throughout). According to Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (unep), Feb. 2, 2007, will perhaps one day be remembered as the day “where the question mark was removed behind the debate on whether climate change has anything to do with human activity on this planet.”
Then in December, at the UN’s circus-like climate conference in Bali, an updated version of the report, produced by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc), was embraced by scientists and world leaders alike. Since then, the report—which is riddled with qualifying statements that corrode the report’s fundamental premise (that global warming is a man-made crisis)—has been touted by the mainstream press as conclusive proof of man-made climate change.
To climate activists, the case is closed on man-made global warming. But is it?
The Test of Truth
Flinging the word truth around is easy. Convicted criminals claim that the truth is they’re innocent; car salesmen say the truth is they can’t afford to drop the price further; a child with brownie mix smeared all over his face argues that he’s telling the truth when he denies running his tongue round the mixing bowl.
The real test of truth is whether or not it conforms with reality and is backed by verified, indisputable facts.
For climate alarmists, the really inconvenient truth is that a burgeoning number of scientists, climate experts and even politicians around the world are discussing facts that clash with the so-called truth that the globe is warming because of human activities.
The real truth is that the theory of man-made global warming—despite being virtually canonized in the UN and the minds of a slew of politicians and celebrities, and naturally in the mainstream media—remains one of the most contentious issues in science.
That contention was on full display in New York City March 2-4. Those who depend solely on the mainstream newsmedia to keep them informed might have missed the headlines about the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute and featuring nearly 100 speakers and 500 attendees skeptical of man-made global warming. The three-day conference occurred in the wake of reports of global cooling and the release of a blockbuster U.S. Senate minority report featuring over 400 prominent scientists disputing the theory of man-made global warming.
The conference testified to one towering truth in the world of science: Debate within the scientific community over global warming is far from dead.
The high-water mark of the conference was the presentation of a report produced by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (nipcc) claiming nature, not human activity, was the cause of climate change. The nipcc is comprised of international scientists and was formed as a counterforce to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
International scientists, climate experts and policymakers at the event listened to lectures and panel discussions exposing the fraud of the global warming “truth,” perused studies and reports showing stark division in the scientific community over global warming, and swapped stories about how they’d been “denied tenure, shut out of scientific conferences and rejected by academic journals because no matter how scrupulous their research,” their conclusions contradicted the truth espoused by the climate change pharisees (National Post, March 10). Many attendees spoke of colleagues too afraid to attend the conference for fear of losing their jobs.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works outlined the staggering scale of the global warming scam in its article “Climate Skeptics Reveal ‘Horror Stories’ of Scientific Repression” (March 6). Take funding for global warming research, for example. Over the past decade, research intended to prove the veracity of man-made global warming has been funded to the tune of $50 billion, while global warming skeptic research has received a comparatively measly $19 million. That’s over 260,000 percent more funding for the alarmists!
During the conference, the Business and Media Institute (bmi), a division of the Media Research Center (America’s largest and most respected watchdog group), also released its comprehensive study on how the mainstream media reports on global warming.
“Of the three networks (abc, nbc and cbs), 80 percent of stories (167 out of 205) didn’t mention skepticism or anyone at all who dissented from global warming.
The lesson: Transforming a lie into truth before an unwitting public is made easier by silencing dissenting opinions. Eighty percent of news stories omitted the opposing view altogether. How fair and objective is that?
In an article on New York’s climate conference in the Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin wrote: “Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, the 2 _-day session poses a stark contrast to the near-unanimous chorus of concern expressed by top U.S. politicians and most of the scientific mainstream” (March 4).
Near-unanimous chorus of concern?
Might the perceived “near-unanimous” concern about man-made global warming be a result of the gag order imposed on thousands of scientists and hundreds of reporters from around the world espousing a dissenting opinion? Any person who watches cbs News or reads the Washington Post would be forgiven for joining the ranks of those who believe global warming is a man-made crisis. Why? Because unanimity is easy when dissenting voices are ignored.
Despite Al Gore and the UN’s claim that the case is closed on global warming, there are dissenting voices. Besides the conference in New York, besides the 400 skeptical scientists that signed the U.S. Senate minority report released a few months ago, countless other studies show dissent in the scientific community over man’s role in global warming. The results of a Canadian survey of 51,000 earth scientists and engineers by the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta, released March 6, showed that 68 percent disagreed with the statement “the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.”
Near-unanimous?
Sliding Standards of Credibility
Later in the Post piece, Eilperin compared the UN-sponsored ipcc report with the nipcc report, pointing out that some of the authors of the nipcc report “were not scientists.” The clear implication is that the nipcc report lacks scientific credibility, which is patently untrue.
But let’s address scientific credibility. According to the bmi study mentioned above, just 15 percent of global warming proponents shown on network television are scientists, while the remaining 85 percent are politicians, celebrities and ordinary men and women (whose viewpoints are often shaped by the mainstream press). Clearly, scientific credibility is not a primary concern of the global warming propaganda machine.
Eilperin concluded her piece with a series of quotes from climate alarmists taking potshots at the so-called quacks who attended the New York conference. Because the media and many politicians are now ignoring the climate skeptics, said Princeton University geosciences professor Michael Oppenheimer, “They have to get together to talk to each other, because nobody else is talking to them.”
Oppenheimer’s remark makes for a tidy soundbite. But in truth, that conference illustrated the rising tide of scientists proving themselves willing to come out and declare man-made global warming to be a giant fraud. The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works reported: “In such nations as Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Russia, Argentina, New Zealand, Portugal and France, groups of scientists have recently spoken out to oppose and debunk man-made climate fears. …
“In January 2008, environmental scientist professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder and director of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, announced publicly that he considered co2-related climate fears to be ‘dangerous nonsense.’
“In addition, at least one scientist publicly pondered reconsidering his view of man-made climate fears after the Senate report of 400 scientists was released in December. ‘It (the Senate 400 scientists report) got me thinking: I’m an environmental scientist, but I’ve never had time to review the “evidence” for the anthropogenic causes of global warming,’ wrote environmental scientist professor Rami Zurayk of the American University in Beirut on Dec. 27, 2007. ‘When I said, in my opening speech for the launch of unep’s (United Nations Environment Program) Global Environment Outlook-4 in Beirut: “There is now irrevocable evidence that climate change is taking place …” I was reading from a statement prepared byunep. Faith-based science it may be, but who has time to review all the evidence? I’ll continue to act on the basis of anthropogenic climate change, but I really need to put some more time into this,’ Zurayk wrote” (op. cit.).
Professor Zurayk’s stark admission raises an interesting question: How many scientists on the man-is-the-cause-of-global-warming bandwagon are there simply because they have followed their colleagues, the UN, Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Bono? How many have proven scientifically that global warming has been induced by man?
Global Red Herring
The collective embrace of man-made global warming as the cause of the growing number of environmental and climate disasters is a globe-encompassing red herring, a giant distraction from the real cause of these natural catastrophes.
There is no doubt natural disasters are becoming more common. What continent on Earth is not affected by floods, droughts, fires, polluted groundwater, soil erosion, acid rain and other such problems? But blaming these catastrophes on an unproven theory based on rickety facts and the biased testimony of Hollywood stars is shallow reasoning.
The theory of man-made global warming has been pushed into the mainstream by mulish academics, politicians and cultural icons in the same manner the anti-God theory of evolution was pushed into the mainstream beginning with the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. And in the same way evolution blinds people to God’s existence, the global warming theory prevents people from seeing that the same God is using environmental and climate disasters as a means of warning mankind!
A major cause of global environmental disasters lies in mankind’s flagrant rejection of the physical laws God established at creation in order to govern environmental and agricultural management. Added to this, the weather and environmental curses besieging our globe are a result of mankind’s widespread disobedience to God’s spiritual law (read Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28).
The Bible tells us that today’s environmental and climate disasters are penalties of broken law, both physical and spiritual. God implemented these penalties not so He could watch joyfully as mankind suffers, but as a means of waking us up to our infractions against His law. These catastrophes are a result of our sins, but they are also evidence of God’s love and His desire for a relationship with mankind!
The most gut-wrenching truth about the theory of man-made global warming is that it prevents men from realizing the presence of their Creator. This theory blinds men to God’s presence in world affairs and His will for our lives! Those who fall prey to this scam—and who fail to consider God’s role in environmental and climate disasters—are missing out on the greatest knowledge any human could ever know!
