A CRITIQUE OF PURPORTED GLOBAL WARMING ‘HYSTERIA’
Christopher C. Horner is an attorney and a Senior Fellow at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2007 book, “This is the key to ‘global warming’ hysteria: unless you are distracted by threats of the Apocalypse, you might question what they demand… the alarmists do whatever they can to avoid actual debate. They declare there is ‘consensus,’ a political concept generally alien to the scientific method. They liken skeptics to Holocaust deniers and demand ‘Nuremberg-style’ trials of the disbelievers. They want to control our lifestyles---and they don’t want you to question their cause. This book will give you the details and the debate that they don’t want you to know about… by uttering these… inconvenient truths, you will first be accused of being a shill for an evil industry. They might call you a criminal… If they ever grant the accuracy of your statements, they will warn you not to repeat them, lest you deflate the fear of global warming.” (Pg. xv)
He states, “The political parties bearing the ‘Green’ name have earned the nickname ‘watermelons’: green on the outside, red [Communist] to the core. In the U.S., the Green Party’s agenda goes well beyond fighting pollution, and includes dramatic plans for wealth redistribution… While the American media’s strident ANTI-anti-communism prevents it from taking seriously any comparisons to communism, the commonality between the greens and the Reds runs dep, beyond the realms of depopulation and inhibiting individual freedoms and capital formation.” (Pg. 7)
He cites “the widespread green tenet that the truth is an article of faith: ‘It isn’t what you can demonstrate, it’s what I believe, and someday I will be able to prove it. In the meantime, I will torture data until it confesses and converts to my worldview.’ This faith has reduced elite environmentalism to little more than a white-collar version of the loon strolling around Lafayette Square… in a sandwich board demanding that you REPENT NOW, THE END IS NEAR.” (Pg. 49)
He presents ‘Top Ten “Global Warming” Myths’: “Myth 8. The science is settled; CO2 causes global warming: … If it is really settled, why don’t the scientists forego the $5 billion of taxpayer money they get every year to research climate? What scientists DO agree on is little and says nothing about Manmade global warming. Namely, they agree that (1) global average temperature is probably about …. 1 degree Fahrenheit---higher than a century ago; (2) atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have risen by about 30 percent over the past two hundred years; and (3) CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and increased greenhouse gases should have a warming effect, all else being equal (which it demonstrably is not)… ‘consensus’… means ending debate in order to ‘move on.’ Stifling debate is inherently anti-scientific.” (Pg. 62-63)
He argues, “Alarmists proclaim the 1990s as the ‘hottest decade’… It turns out that the ‘90s not only fail to live up to the ‘hottest’ title, but coincided with the closure of hundreds of measuring stations (including many in the former Soviet Union as their priorities turned to .. collapse of an empire). If you shut down measuring stations in the cold ports of the world, your average global temperatures will go up. It turns out that the 1990s temperature increases track nicely with these closures…” (Pg. 70)
He asserts, “Gore advisor Dr. James Hansen… claim[s] that the Bush administration has muzzled his criticism of their stance on global warming… Hansen’s shrill cries conjure a picture of Climate Cassandras having mouths stuffed with socks and wrapped with duct tape, crammed into the trunk of an old Buick… This is mostly incorrect. In truth, those whose voices have been run out of the debate… hail from the more sober, ‘look before you leap’ school…” (Pg. 95)
He says, “Remember, if floating ice melts, it has no effect on sea levels---only ice that melts from the land into the sea will raise waters. Basically, if arming is to raise sea levels, Greenland and Antarctica would be culprits. The charts … show Antarctica is not warming.” (Pg. 149)
He says of Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’: “Gore’s testimony affirms the beliefs of the truly passionate, the Global Salvationists: the environmentalists and their fellow believers in the creed that development and technology grind humanity’s billions, plus nature herself, under their jackboots on an unholy roll toward a coal-fired apocalypse. It is this very prediction of disaster that explains the lovefest. The entire parade of global warming horribles is trotted out, including… rising sea levels and ravaged coastal areas, increasing tornadoes, intense heat waves. These dutiful role-players all strolled to place on cue…” (Pg. 212)
He argues, “The supposedly melting Greenland ice sheet is what Gore says will drown us all… The WESTERN edge of Greenland may be experiencing ice-melt---and faster the last few years, but… we know for certain that this is NOT because temperatures on Greenland have been rising. Science reveals this to be more likely a result of cyclical changes in ocean currents…” (Pg. 228)
Of sea-level rise, he says, “Gore fails to remind movie-goers that sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age, at a rate of 1.8 mm per year for the past 8,000 years, and will continue to do so at varying rates until the next ice age. The IPCC does not forecast sea-level rises of ‘eighteen to twenty feet,’ but actually a possible range from four inches to less than three feet over the century, and concludes that current trends may or may not be slightly higher than the trend over the past 150 years.” (Pg. 232)
Of the Kyoto Agreement, he comments, “The effect of Kyoto on the price of consumer goods would be mitigated by the fact that China, Mexico, and India… are NOT bound by Kyoto’s restrictions, and thus would not experience higher manufacturing costs. That is, U.S. manufacturing would be offshored even quicker, and we would become even better customers of the Chinese, except that we would have lower incomes to spend on their goods. If we have fewer steel mills here and more steel mills there, this provides no reduction in CO2.” (Pg. 257-258)
He concludes, “The risks of climate change policy---poverty and coercive wealth redistribution---outweigh the risks that might be expected as climate continues to change… climate has always changed and it always will; Man has always adapted, the wealthiest societies adapt the best; reducing global wealth---as Kyoto will---only ensures we will be even more vulnerable to the one certainty of the global warming debate: unpredictable and occasionally severe weather….” (Pg. 299, 302)
This book will appeal to those skeptical of environmentalists’ and scientists’ warnings about Climate Change and Global Warming.