By Jeremy Wick
College Republicans
Recently, NBC's chief environmental affairs analyst Anne Thompson once said there is no doubt that man is responsible for global warming"" and every scientist worth their weight in beaker solvent agrees that the globe has been warming steadily over the past four decades.
One problem, though - the past two-plus years have seen a precipitous decline in global temperatures that negated the increase of the prior eight-year period (1998-2006). We're talking a whole 0.2 degrees Celsius! Then there's the nasty problem of the ""little Ice Age"" which appeared to be sending the world into an icy new era during the 1970s.
With world temperatures already depressed far below normal levels, the subsequent rise over the following three decades becomes much more ominous. It is exactly this kind of clever accounting that is responsible for the hysterical call for enormous curbing of carbon-dioxide emissions and the institution of crippling cap-and-trade schemes all across the world which target emission-heavy industries like coal-fired power plants for extinction.
As recently as Nov. 9, Al Gore wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times in which he maintains that the planet continues to issue ""apocalyptic warnings"" to mankind.
Meanwhile, nations across the Northern Hemisphere have been setting record lows and early-snowfall marks. A recent global-warming march in Washington, D.C., witnessed below freezing temperatures on a day with a normal high of 56, and a meeting of British Parliament to discuss measures to fight climate change on Oct. 29 was met with an unusually early snowfall.
And as if Goreophile James Hansen at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies didn't need to dig his proverbial hole any deeper (he's already seen as Al Gore's ""chief scientific ally""), his institute released erroneous figures this week claiming the warmest October on record. However, according to Christopher Booker of the Telegraph, ""scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all."" Instead, two blogs skeptical of global warming showed that the data had been carried over from the previous month.
Then there is the all-important follow-up question to global warming - how do you fight it? Scientists and politicians the world over praised the historical Kyoto treaty as a bold step in the right direction. Then, figures came out in The Wall Street Journal from the United Nations Framework on Climate Change showing that between 2000 and 2004, the United States cut emissions growth five-fold while the EU-15 doubled their emissions growth. Meanwhile, the two biggest polluters in the world - China and India - enjoy exemptions from Kyoto as ""developing nations.""
Now, an article from The New York Times on Oct. 6 outlines the European Union's attempts to enforce clean-energy standards on its member nations. One such nation, Poland, gets 90 percent of its energy from domestic coal sources converted to energy in aging, inefficient plants. Under the new system, Poland and several other former Soviet bloc states would be forced into a very unwanted alternative - importing Russian natural gas while constructing expensive nuclear power plants to replace the dirty and outdated coal plants.
No matter which side any particular observer may fall on in this debate, one thing has become ominously clear - the verbiage is changing. It is rare to hear the words ""global warming"" coming from anyone but rabid environmentalists these days, while ""climate change"" is the term du jour. Perhaps a modicum of backpedaling in light of hard evidence against their once prominent beliefs? You decide.
Jeremy Wick is a senior majoring in economics and history. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
