Ice will melt and polar bears will die. Humans are destroying the planet, global warming is the bomb, and it’s getting so hot that members of Congress couldn’t bother to read the massive Waxman-Markey pork bill that will save us by controlling CO2.
Last week the House passed the bill at the urging of President Barack Obama, who told House members the need was “urgent.”
Tuesday we received, from the Heartland Institute in Chicago, the results of a study titled, “Climate Change Reconsidered.” The Heartland Institute, you may not know, conducted the study because it felt the original evidence regarding climate change should be examined, with an eye to providing a second opinion about the massive changes Congress is contemplating. What the Institute concluded is that catastrophic global warming theory appears more fraudulent by the day, and without a global warming crisis the government can’t sell this oppressive tax on prosperity.
The Institute says that, “There is no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases in human hydrocarbon use or in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing or can be expected to cause unfavorable changes in global temperatures, weather or landscape.”
The study notes (irrefutably, by the way) that the Earth has been much warmer during the past 3,000 years without catastrophic effects. Warmer weather extends growing seasons and generally improves the habitability of colder regions.
“As coal, oil and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity and productivity of all people,” the Heartland argues, and concludes that “We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as the release of CO2 into the atmosphere because mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere, where it is available for conversion into living things.”
What Waxman-Markey — “cap and trade” — is doing is trying to suppress the release of this CO2, at terrible cost to people in the form of regulating energy producers, business and the like. It is a fool’s errand.
At this point in the debate, Americans are starting to feel deceived, as they should, and scientists are speaking out. In the face of the skepticism, of course, Waxman-Markey marches on in true liberal tradition, i.e., we don’t care what you think, or what the facts are, we’ve got the votes so we’re going to do as we please.
Steve Williams is opinion page editor of the Victorville, California, Daily Press. This essay first appeared on the newspaper’s Web site on July 10, 2009. http://www.vvdailypress.com/opinion/planet-13259-fraud-bears.html
