Global Warming Hoax

It's taken me a little bit of time to pull myself out of exclusively searching for presidential nomination news, but I'm getting there. I was totally wrapped up in that stuff for the last month or so.

I saw this article recently on Powerline about the Global Cooling Alert. I'm going to link here another post they wrote on the same site about global warming, and include this excerpt:

One of the first major magazine pieces that the Trunk and I wrote was called "The Global Warming Hoax." It appeared, as I recall, in 1992 and is not available anywhere on the web. I don't recall what led us to start studying the issue, but we were astonished to find that a theory that commanded such universal political allegiance, even then, had so little scientific support.

The data are too voluminous to reproduce here, but our argument was basically along these lines: 1) The earth's temperatures today are not historically out of line. The earth was warmer a thousand years ago than it is today, and as recently as the 1970's falling temperatures were causing environmentalists (in some cases, the same ones who now push global warming) to warn against a coming ice age--caused, of course, by man's activities. 2) The evidence for global warming consists entirely of computer models. Those models, however, are known to be wrong, since they do not accurately account for past temperatures. (This fact is so elementary that the success of environmentalists in obscuring it is remarkable.) 3) Average emperatures on earth never stand still; they are always either rising or falling. The most obvious potential cause for these fluctuations is variation in the amount of energy emitted by the sun. And, indeed, recent research has shown that variations in solar energy output correspond closely with temperature fluctuations on earth.

Don't believe the hype. There is no doubt that there is fluctuation in the earth's temperature, but that is going to ebb and flow as there are a number of things that will directly affect what's going on with our weather. I do not, however, discount the importance of conscientious living. During my run the other day the thought popped in my mind that it's vitally important to live within our means, and that applies to more than just money matters. Likewise, we shouldn't be wasteful with power, water, etc. and live within our means with respect to those things as well. The application of that phrase is broader than what we usually give it credit for. Nevertheless, global warming is not reaching epidemic proportions. I think it's pretty safe to say that anytime people are ready to fly off the handle about anything, whether it's the economy, global warming, or whatever, you're going to be okay if you take what they say at about 1/4 of the face value.