A patronizing infomercial on local global warming ran on the opinion page of this newspaper several weeks ago, thick with saccharine, politically-correct admonitions. It was written by a marketing consultant for the Essex County Greenbelt Association.
Now the good-natured Gordon Baird has taken aim at a recent letter writer with the temerity to question the thinking of Al Gore, Michael Moore and their acolytes.
What disturbs me is not the proposition of global warming, which in and of itself is not an objectionable thesis; it is the agenda-driven politicization of scientific inquiry, and the concomitant intellectual dishonesty and censorship, that is so offensive.
The moniker "global warming," by its very name, admits consideration of a single possibility of climate change. It is not only a name, not only a political-environmental movement; it is a religion — the word of God, apparently, literally. I read that Pope Benedict has announced that ecological offenses are new sins. (Galileo Galilei, put under house arrest by Pope Urban VIII and forbidden to publish in the last years of his life, must be trembling in his grave, muttering, 'Not again!').
The anthropogenic global warming thesis obscures what are actually several discrete questions: Is there climate change? If so, is it warming or cooling? If the climate is changing, how is it driven, i.e., by circumstances beyond our control, such as solar activity, or by human activity? The "political-environmental movement" would prefer to bundle the package for marketing purposes, and has successfully created a consciousness wherein climate warming and human activity are viewed conceptually as synonymous.
Even a cursory research of reputable publications illuminates the skepticism in the scientific community concerning the topic of climate change. Increasingly, scientists look to solar activity as the overriding determinant of climate change on Earth, and some believe that if climate change is in our future, it is likely to be a cooling change, which is seen as far more devastating to mankind than a warming change.
In 1991, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles. Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. In our current cycle the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of activity, if continued several more years, could result in what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.
It was such a solar event that ushered in a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted until 1715, with devastating effect.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany observed that the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, explaining the 1-degree Celsius increase in the Earth's temperature over the last 100 years, which has nothing to do with carbon emissions. Moreover, as the recent letter writer noted, the Earth's temperature decreased by a startling six-tenths of a degree this past year alone — astounding scientists around the world.
Those of you who do not perceive the pursuit of truth as the zealous defense of an entrenched position, and the censorship and persecution of eminent scientists as the way to knowledge, might profit from reading a recently published book by Lawrence Solomon, entitled, "The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud — and Those Who Are Too Fearful To Do So."
My mind remains open. It is far from settled as to whether climate change is in our future, and if so, whether it will be cooling or warming, or by what trigger initiated.
What is clear, is that there are efforts afoot that have nothing to do with science to drive a political-environmental agenda. I think I'll pass on Al Gore and Michael Moore doing my thinking for me. Let's leave science to the scientists — so we may get to the truth of our future.
Doug Hill, and wife Kristin, make their home in Lanesville.
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