By: George Noga – February 1, 2013
Why do some people still cling to the man-made global warming myth? As the headline above suggests, it has transmogrified into a religion. As all religions, it is based on faith in things unseen; it has its high priests and dogma. It is replete with its own sacraments (bio-fuel, windmills, ethanol) and demons (coal, oil, CO2). As a religion its core beliefs are unassailable and impervious to all countervailing facts and logic. It is harsh toward apostates, labeling them deniers. However, its high priests and numeraries succumb to all the usual temptations of money, power, politics and arrogance.
Their co-coreligionists, i.e. the state sycophant media, serve as enablers by their grotesquely distorted reporting. Let’s examine recent reportage (and non reportage) to see how this works.
- An acolyte of the warmist religion recently emailed me, gleefully citing a media story about the melting of the polar ice cap. That’s true enough insofar as it goes. However, the media never report that the antarctic ice cap has been increasing for many years. And oh by the way, the antarctic ice cap is 10 times larger that its arctic counterpart.
- Recently the media have been flogging the story about 2012 being the hottest year in the lower 48 states by a full degree Fahrenheit. Again, a true statement. But did the media report 2008 was cooler than 2006 by 2 degrees? Did they report 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 all were cooler than 1998 by a greater margin than 2012 was hotter than 1998? Did they note the continental US is only 1.58% of earth’s land mass?
- It is an uncontested fact there has been no warming trend for the past 16 years. So, what does the media do? They glom on to the fact that the decade including 1998 was the warmest on record. Given 1998 was the hottest year, it follows statistically almost automatically the same decade would be the warmest decade. This media misdirection is solely to assuage readers’ anxiety from unwanted facts counter to their religion.
- What the media ignore can be equally significant. The US Department of Energy reports US CO2 emissions are the lowest in 20 years (by 14%) despite 50 million more people. You didn’t read this in your local paper because these incredible gains result from free market hydraulic fracking and not windmills, solar or government diktats. By the way, have the media reported it has been nearly 2,300 days since a Cat 3 storm hit the USA? So much for climate change and the purported increase in extreme weather events.
- Arguably the greatest failure of the global warming religion (and its media stooges) is to account for temperature readings from planets and moons in our solar system. NASA has taken readings from several bodies over many years and they closely track changes in Earth’s temperature. Unless there are CO2 belching SUVs on Mars and Triton, this can mean only one thing: temperature changes result from solar activity. When faced with such overwhelming evidence, warmists do what one would expect – they totally ignore it.
Thus far I have failed to mention the ultimate apostasy, i.e. the amount of warming now projected for the remainder of the century is a net benefit to mankind. I am going to miss the warming religion when its final adherent figuratively closes the door and turns out the lights much as I have come to miss the former Soviet Union. They have much in common. Both were religions based on deeply flawed premises; they became funny (in a pathetic way) as their stars faded. And, they were such inviting targets to write about. But religions never die and there are a few die-hard commies around as there will be a similar number of warmists in a few years.
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