Absolutely Amazing Distortions Related to Global Warming

Absolutely Amazing Distortions Related to Global Warming

By Bill McLaughlin, member of REP Board of Directors, published July 24, 2009, in the Hawaii Reporter

As time has passed, climate scientists and political leaders around the world have become more convinced of the threat of global warming ( or climate change) to our civilization. During the last presidential election, there were only minor differences in the positions of John McCain and Barack Obama on the reality of climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to rising global temperatures.

Leaders of most of the world’s countries meet in Copenhagen, Denmark later this year to work on possible partial solutions to this problem. The U.S. Congress is working on an energy bill that explicitly recognizes the threat of climate change to our nation. (The bill passed the House on June 26 and hearings have started in the Senate.)

What threat, some ask. Let me count the ways with some basic information. Worldwide, the mountain glaciers that provide drinking water to more than a billion people are losing mass.The USGS has estimated that Glacier National Park in Montana, for example, is expected to lose all of its namesake glaciers by 2020.

Retreating glaciers in the Himalayas threaten the drinking water of 20 percent of the world’s population. Major droughts in the Central and Southeast United States, Africa and Australia have been covered extensively in the press. North American forests are suffering horrible beetle attacks because winters are no longer severe enough to keep their populations in check. Thus we now have a year round fire season in California and elsewhere.

The Greenland and Arctic ice caps are thinning. (Yes, Greenland farmers now have a longer growing season, but there are fewer than 60,000 people in Greenland and not many of them are farmers.) NASA has documented major ice loss in Antarctica. I have even seen streams running in Antarctica.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cites data that the Earth’s temperatures are slowly rising. Not that every year is a record, but the trend is clear. It is also clear that the heat content of the ocean is growing, giving us stronger storms, dying coral, and shifts of fish habitats.

There are a few contrarian scientists who remain unconvinced that we are facing a catastrophe, yet they receive a disproportionate amount of attention from climate change denying politicians and special interest groups that have axes to grind. Despite trite references to Galileo, the contrarians’ notions do not stand up to scrutiny in view of the overwhelming evidence linking human behavior to climate change. They are entitled to their opinions, but not their own set of facts.

Still, the deniers persist in misleading the public. For eight years, operatives in the Bush Administration suppressed scientific data and reports from NASA, the Department of Defense, and other federal agencies documenting the warming of our planet. Possibly, the most notorious was the suppression by former oil company employees in the White House of the NASA research by climatologist James Hansen.

Former Congressman John Doolittle of California even initiated legislation to prevent all government agencies from studying climate change and its effects. (Doolittle did not run for re-election in 2008 after disclosure of links between him and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials.)

So deniers try to use irrelevant quotes from prominent scientists, such as Richard Feynman, to make their claims seem more valid. Richard Feynman, who died in 1988, was a great American and one of the greatest physicists of the 20th Century. He understood scientific method, scientific analysis, scientific data, and how to reach a valid scientific conclusion. He would never have stood with the deniers.

Do people ridicule the “hack scientists” who overlook overwhelming evidence so they can chase grant money and other funding from oil and coal companies? Yes, they do! Our nation will never again put up with actors in white coats telling us that smoking is good for our children. Repeating falsehoods over and over again does not make them true. Very few research dollars are being spent on studies to prove the world is flat. To not fund such garbage is not bullying. It is common sense.