Another fine posting from the Center For Individual Freedom (www.cfif.org):
Don't tell
Al Gore, but it snowed in Phoenix, Arizona this past week. In fact, this month has been the coldest January in Phoenix since 1979.
Global warming, we hardly knew ye.
Considering the "urban heat island" effect that has resulted from Phoenix's explosive population growth during that twenty-eight-year period, National Weather Service meteorologist
Paul Iniguez concedes, "you can only hypothesize how cold it could have gotten."
The timing of this desert cold spell couldn't be more ironic. After all, back in the 1970s, climate change alarmists were trumpeting "global cooling" as the impending crisis.
For example, the always-reliable New York Times lamented plummeting temperatures in its December 29, 1974 edition, warning that "the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade."
Newsweek Magazine echoed this erroneous consensus in 1975, stating that "there are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically, and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth."
Thirty years later, chronic obesity, rather than mass starvation, is the new boogeyman of every nanny-state politician and "health advocate" throughout the country. Even in China, whose proverbial starving children once provided American parents with a basis to order their children to clear their plates, faces increasing obesity.
This 1970s fad, however, didn't pass as abruptly as such other embarrassing '70s fads as disco, El Caminos and
Jimmy Carter.
As recently as 1992, in fact, Newsweek reported that increasing snowfall amounts could reflect sunlight back into space, triggering revived glacier growth in North America.
This tail-chasing confusion amongst climate change alarmists obviously provides amusement for more sober observers. The alarmists' spectacular failure and remarkable pivot should prompt anyone bombarded with predictions of global warming doom to immediately respond, "Remember Global Cooling!"
Unfortunately, the real-world consequences of this environmentalist back-and-forth are anything but amusing.
This fall, Senators
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and
Olympia Snowe (R-ME) commanded Exxon-Mobil to stop donating to private groups who, according to them, "contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth." The Senators' effort to silence free speech ironically came the very same week in which the United Nations admitted that the Kyoto Protocol is failing.
Similarly, Weather Channel climatologist Dr.
Heidi Cullen, host of "The Climate Code," calls for the American Meteorological Society ("AMS") to refuse to approve any television weather reporter who voices skepticism toward global warming alarmism.
For his part, Al Gore has labeled climate change realists "global warming deniers," drawing a sinister parallel to Holocaust deniers.
The simple truth is that the only constant in the world's climate history is change. Periodic ice ages are common throughout the earth's history, regardless of human activity.
Further, critics of environmentalist initiatives such as the Kyoto Protocol have been proven correct, as nations that have passed the Kyoto accord have failed to meet its standards while suffering economic consequences. These realists, however, are increasingly isolated, denounced and even silenced.
The underlying reality is that climate change is not environmentalists' real concern. After all, does anyone really believe that environmentalists fear urban damage due to rising coastlines, when they detest urban society and human development anyway?
Rather, environmentalists' underlying goal is to impose greater power over American lives and achieve greater self-importance. Global warming is merely a trendy vehicle for that agenda. Shrewdly, these environmentalists have latched onto a hypothesis that cannot be proven or disproven for at least several decades (or until their study grants run out), allowing them to impose their agenda through public hysteria in the meantime.
As the global warming echo chamber becomes progressively louder, it is more critical than ever that scientists and citizens engage in free, open, unmolested, honest debate concerning climate change and public policy.
Instead, climate McCarthyism gains increasing momentum. In the battle between free speech and environmental orthodoxy, climate alarmists are on the march... Snow in Phoenix be damned.
So former Vice President Al Gore received an Oscar for his "documentary" entitled An Inconvenient Truth, in which he asked us all to cut back on energy consumption to battle "global warming."
