2007 Melmania Archive

 

 

“TO WARM, OR NOT TO WARM?”

Leonard Melman

JANUARY 31, 2007

 

Just for the record, I turned 65 a few weeks ago - and in all those years, I have seldom seen a gathering storm of frenzy on a worldwide basis such as we are seeing about Global Warming. Suddenly, a ‘tipping point’ has been reached where it has become the greatest concern of the public here in Canada and in many other nations of the world, surpassing health, the economy and even the taste of beer.

Newspapers are now carrying special sections about Global Warming, weather channels cannot seem to give a simple forecast without relating it to Global Warming and Al Gore, in one surpassing move, has re-taken the limelight, thanks to his widely acclaimed and Academy Award-winning movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

The website for the movie gives us a hint to the degree of public frenzy that is building by declaring,

“Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced...”

Canada’s “Globe and Mail” national newspaper just carried a front page banner headline entitled, “The fallout of global warming: 1,000 years” with the sub-headline, “Scientists confirm in stark terms climate change ‘unequivocal’”

Strange, isn’t it, that they would use that specific number once used by the Nazis to describe the length of time they would dominate the world? As I recall, their Reich lasted twelve years - not one thousand. I guess the number has a nice ring to it.

Frankly, your editor is enormously skeptical about the whole theatrical - AND DANGEROUS - extravaganza. Here are some of my reasons.

The science offered in support of Global Warming is tainted by political motivation. It is strange indeed that the vast majority of the most radical advocates of the whole Global Warming picture are from the political Left. One of the strongest characteristics of the Left is the belief that government knows best, that government should regulate society. We have seen this consistent belief in a hundred directions and we are seeing it now in this particular frenzy.

But this one is inherently dangerous, and here is why. Since the goal is to save “Mother Earth” from the destructive ravages of humanity, virtual every category of human action that could conceivably affect the planet must be open to regulation. Some obvious examples come immediately to mind, such as:

• The vehicles we drive

• The fuels we use

• The frequency and distance of our travels

• How industry produces its goods from land use to plant use to all manner of transportation facilities

• The entire spectrum of oil refining

• Tar sands production of petroleum, specifically including the use of natural gas to separate the petroleum from the sands

• All manner of construction methodology

• How our homes are heated and cooled

• How agriculture is conducted specifically including which fertilizers are used

• Massive fuel taxation to discourage consumption

• Materials used in auto manufacture, aiming toward hybrid vehicles or materials to provide safety while weighing less

• Every conceivable alternative source of power

And the list can go on, limited only by the human imagination - and the trend toward super-regulation will be worldwide, since the greatest impetus is now coming from the United Nations and their recently published warnings about impending climate-induced doom to our beloved (and only) planet.

It is also worth noting that the scientists, climatologists, et al - and the universities supporting them - who are providing most of the ‘facts’ for these reports are directly in line to benefit the most from the allocation of government monies to study this supposedly dire and drastic problem.

Given the history of government regulations, we can offer some predictions with at least a moderate degree of confidence. The costs of manufacturing, distributing and selling the world’s goods will rise. Plant efficiency will fall. Unemployment will rise. Government bureaucracies will grow to astonishing levels, requiring enormous expenditures of scarce tax dollars. And, as these effects negatively impact the world’s economies, government financial stimulation will rise - thereby providing an effective breeding ground for advancing inflation - which ultimately should have a positive impact on the world of precious metals.

There is a quote in the Globe and Mail with which I take great umbrage and it goes like this: “(the report) concludes the higher temperatures observed during the past fifty years are so dramatically different from anything in the climate record that the last half-century period was likely the hottest in at least the past 1,300 years.”

I BEG YOUR PARDON???????

As it happens, your editor’s passionate hobby for his entire lifetime has been climatology and I have gathered a great deal of information about the world’s weather records - information that makes the G&M’s quote sound like utter rubbish. Here are some very interesting facts.

• The highest temperature ever recorded in Europe, 122 F, occurred one hundred and twenty-six years ago!

• The highest temperature ever recorded in Australia, 126 F, occurred one hundred and eighteen years ago!

• South America’s record high, 120 F, took place 101 years ago!

• Oceania’s record high, 108 F, took place 94 years ago!

• North America’s record high, 134 F, took place 93 years ago!

• Africa (and the world’s) record high, 136 F, took place 84 years ago!

• Asia’s record high, 129 F, took place a ‘mere’ 64 years ago!

Not one extreme high temperature record in any continent on Earth has occurred in the last half-century, directly contradicting the G&M statement, a statement, I fear, which will be taken as some sort of Gospel truth by the majority of the reading public.

The same picture unfolds for Canada and the USA. Of the fifty American states, the vast majority of the all-time record highs were set in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Only FOUR have been set since 1990, far below what would normally be expected from even neutral numerical distribution. Canada’s picture is very much the same. Every single “warmest temperature on record” for each province was set BEFORE THE CONCLUSION OF WWII!

How could this be if we were truly under as powerful a trend as is claimed for Global Warming? After all, a trend is easy to identify. For example, the trend in both Track and Field athletics and Swimming for decades has been toward improving performances. Sure enough, an examination of the record books shows that virtually every record has been set and re-set in just the past few years. If the concept of a powerful trend toward Global Warming, particularly that portion of warming that has been accredited to human action, is valid, we should have seen the setting and re-setting of all-time highs within just the past very few years - but as has been demonstrated above, that is absolutely not the case.

Somehow, true facts must get out, because unless the steamroller of Global Warming is derailed, the world will be inundated by a tidal wave of gigantic proportion, but it will not be one induced by climate, but rather one created by and enforced by the coercive powers of world-wide governments.

As a lover of individual freedom, I would hate to see that happen, particularly if the supposed justification for the entire process is proven to be without merit.