Pensacola News Journal
December 20, 1997

Kyoto was a bunch of globaloney

Charley Reese

The hot air and heifer dust that flew at the Kyoto meeting on global warming notwithstanding, there's no convincing evidence that either the globe is getting abnormally warmer or that man's activity is the cause of any observable climate changes.

Yeah, I know, the simple-minded like to cite the United Nations report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), but that was a rigged deal and is not a reliable source of information.

Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University, wrote in the Wall Street Journal of that report:

"In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community ... I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report."

He said that more than 15 sections in one chapter were changed or deleted after the scientists charged with examining the question had accepted what they believed would be the final text. It wasn't. Somebody changed it after their review. In legit science, that's a no-no.

Among the deletions Seitz cited were these little gems:

"None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed (climate) change to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases."

"No study to date has positively attributed all or part to anthropogenic (man-caused) causes."

Now, why would those and other caveats be deleted from the report? Obviously because somebody in the U.N. skunkworks wants to claim that global warming as a result of fossil fuel emissions is a fact.

And why would someone do that? To put it bluntly, if you want to amass power, you've got to have an enemy at the gates. The global warming (aka globaloney) has been chosen as the new enemy, which will necessitate an increase in government power. Enemies at the gate always have lots of sponsors.

The thing to remember about claimed global warming is that it is a comparison. Warmer than what? A polar bear's nose? Or warmer than when? One hundred years ago? Two hundred years ago? The fact is that nobody knows what the global average temperature was even 100 years ago because extensive measurements are relatively recent activity.

We do know from geological evidence that the earth has gotten colder and the earth has gotten warmer all on its own without any human input at all. So if, as some claim, the earth is about 1 degree warmer than it was 100 years ago, you cannot infer that it is: (a) caused by man, (b) permanent and progressive or (c) abnormal.

The only thing you can be certain about is increased taxes. If they decide to "cut emissions" they will just tax fossil fuels, which will cut the emissions as fewer and fewer people can afford to buy them.

You can't have prosperity without energy, and the sources are limited: human, animal, wind, solar, water, fossil fuels and nuclear. Unless you want a Third World standard of living and the reintroduction of human slavery, you'd better stick with fossil fuels and nuclear 'cause the others won't cut it with this many mouths to feed.

The idea that Al Gore and Bill Clinton know what they are talking about when it comes to science is laughable. Furthermore, they have an extreme credibility problem. Those crib-to-grave politicians probably wouldn't tell the truth even if it was in their own best interest to do so.

The atmospheric sciences are relatively young, and there is a lot more work to do before anyone can be really certain about much of anything. At the present time, global warming is a theory built on assumptions, speculations and guesses, and it is being pushed by a group of environmental extremists who care more about power than about the natural world.

Write Charley Reese, King Features Syndicate, 235 E. 45th St., New York, NY 10017. E-mail him at OSOreese@aol.com.