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| Saturday, September 15, 2007 9:54 PM If you're wondering who's largely to blame for the alleged heating up of the climate you need look no further than Jane Fonda. That's what "Freakanomics" columnists Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt suggest in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. "If you were asked to name the biggest global warming villains of the past 30 years, here's one name that probably wouldn't spring to mind: Jane Fonda. But should it?" the authors ask. According to Editor & Publisher, the two cite Fonda's anti-nuclear thriller "The China Syndrome," which opened just 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, as helping stoke "a widespread panic." Fonda, E&P notes became a high-profile anti-nuke activist in an already-strong movement that resulted in the nuclear industry halting plans for expansion. "And so," the authors continue, "instead of becoming a nation with clean and cheap nuclear energy, as once seemed inevitable, the United States kept building power plants that burned coal and other fossil fuels. Today such plants account for 40 percent of the country's energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions. Anyone hunting for a global-warming villain can't help blaming those power plants -- and can't help wondering too about the unintended consequences of Jane Fonda." Despite Fonda's anti-nuke campaign, the columnists say that the "big news" is that with global warming fears mounting, "nuclear power may be making a comeback in the United States," with plans for two dozen reactors on the drawing boards. "Will they get built?" E&P asks, explaining that "It may all depend on what kind of thrillers Hollywood has in the pipeline." Neither E&P nor the Times columnists bothered to note that all those CO2 emissions contribute a barely measurable part of the greenhouse gasses present in the atmosphere. According to Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology, called by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world: "There’s been warming over the past 150 years, and even though it’s less than one degree Celsius, something had to cause it. The usual suspect is the 'greenhouse effect,' various atmospheric gases trapping solar energy, preventing it being reflected back into space. "Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor ... "And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide." |
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| 31,000 Scientists Debunk Al Gore and Global Warming Monday, May 19, 2008 4:24 PM By: Philip V. Brennan An incredible 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science, including 9,021 Ph.D.s, have signed a petition that flatly denies Al Gore’s claims that human-caused global warming is a settled scientific fact. Gore calls scientists and others who question the reality of human-caused global warming “deniers” and claims they are a tiny minority among the scientific community who he insists almost universally agree that the planet is being threatened by the alleged warming of the earth. Gore told CBS’ Leslie Stahl on "60 Minutes" recently, "I think those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat." These 31,072 scientists do not believe the world is flat, and they say there is no convincing scientific evidence that so-called greenhouse gasses are causing catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate. On Monday, Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, (OISM) announced the results of a drive asking scientists to sign a petition stating: “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto Japan in December 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limit on greenhouse gasses would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.” The petition went on to say, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the earth.” Robinson explained that the purpose of OISM’s petition project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. Despite Gore’s extravagant claims, the petition shows that no such consensus or settled science exists. In 2001, OISM circulated what was known as the Oregon Petition, and according to Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe and author of “The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud,” that effort, spearheaded by Dr. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences and of Rockefeller University, gathered an astounding 17,800 signatures. To establish that the effort was bona fide, and not spawned by kooks on the fringes of science, as global warming advocates often label the skeptics, the 2001 effort was spearheaded by Dr. Seitz, a towering figure in the world of science. Solomon wrote, “The Oregon Petition garnered an astounding 17,800 signatures, a number all the more astounding because of the unequivocal stance that these scientists took: Not only did they dispute that there was convincing evidence of harm from carbon dioxide emissions, they asserted that Kyoto itself would harm the global environment because increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the earth.” According to Dr. Robinson, “As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.” Solomon asked, “How many scientists does it take to establish that a consensus does not exist on global warming?” |