Global Warming Fears Based on Meteorological Snake Oil

by Dave Neuendorf

One of the biggest issues of the ‘90s has been the fear of global warming. This fear has prompted a variety of proposals for international environmental controls. I am convinced that the fear is unfounded, and that the proposed controls are nothing but a shortcut to greater power for government.

The theory behind the global warming scare is that combustion of coal and oil products is increasing the concentration of "greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This in turn would cause the atmosphere to trap heat that would otherwise be radiated into space by warm objects on the earth, thereby raising the average global temperature.

To "test" this theory, some scientists developed computer programs that tried to simulate the effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on the average global temperature. The simulations had to be vastly oversimplified, since even today’s computers are completely inadequate to keep track of the effects of the thousands of variables that affect the global climate. The various simulators predicted that the global temperature would increase anywhere between three and eight degrees F by the year 2100.

The supposed danger of this theoretical warming includes erratic weather and melting of the polar ice caps, among others. Polar ice melting is the most commonly cited disaster, which we are to believe would inundate much of our land by raising the sea level several inches.

Politicians have grabbed the global warming theory as their vehicle for panicked proposals for more government regulations. To bolster our fear, they tout 1997 as the hottest year on record, and cite the one degree F average global temperature increase over the last century as proof of our peril.

Much has been written about the problems with the theory, the computer models used, and the degree of disaster that this all represents. I’ll have to restrict myself to a few key items. First, it turns out that the major factor in determining the variations in the temperature of our planet is solar activity. Unless Bill Clinton can do something about sunspots, nothing he forces us to do is likely to affect global temperatures.

Regarding the actual temperature trends, the data cited by the politicians represents measurements at ground level. The better measurements made using satellite data and weather balloons do not show even the one degree rise in temperature.

Even the ground temperature measurements used to support the global warming case have been carefully selected for effect. The very influential Nature article by B. D. Santer et al shows about 20 years of rising temperatures in the southern hemisphere. When several years before and after the chosen period are added to the study, it becomes obvious that Santer’s time period was chosen just to make the political case, and that there was no statistically significant change in average temperature in the area studied between 1955 and 1995. This is not just junk science; it is meteorological snake oil. Nevertheless, expect Santer to be cited as a scientific authority in upcoming treaty negotiations.

If the Clinton administration comes back from the global warming summit with a treaty to be ratified, the Senate must not be tempted to ratify it. Imposition of any controls on carbon dioxide emission to control global warming can have only one purpose: to further increase federal and UN power over people. Certainly it can’t have the purpose of controlling a problem that doesn’t exist. Emergencies such as war have often been used to accelerate the growth of government. The panic over the artificial global warming crisis is no exception.

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