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11.01.2008 0

Policy based on fallacy not prophecy

  • On: 11/20/2008 10:43:35
  • In: Energy Crisis, Global Warming Fraud, and the Environment
  • By Isaac MacMillen

    The recent revelation that the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) lacks the quality control necessary to ensure accurate temperature data has thrown yet another bucket of cold water onto the global warming debate.

    GISS, one of the primary data sources for global warming apologists (including the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]), had announced that this October was the warmest on record. However, fact-checking bloggers pointed out that several “hot spots” were simply using the same data from September, leaving it unchanged. And GISS—which is led by Dr. James Hansen, not-so coincidentally Al Gore’s global warming ideological hero—was forced to backpedal.

    Which is all well and good, as truth did will out. But, as UK journalist Christopher Booker posits, it is a scary thought that world governments are initiating some of the “most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist.”

    Against this backdrop of flimsy evidence and faulty science, President-elect Barack Obama called for tougher limits on carbon emissions in a televised address to the Governors’ Global Climate Summit in California. There, he gave rhetorical support to clean coal and nuclear power, ostensibly to cut carbon emissions.

    But his record gives pause to those who favor such high-tech solutions. During the campaign, Obama stated that he was “not a nuclear proponent,” vowing to only support it if “clean and safe.” The nuclear power industry is already loaded down with so much onerous regulation that Obama would find difficulty expanding it even if he tried.

    Still, the question must be begged: Mr. Obama, how many nuclear power plants should we expect? John McCain promised 45 by 2030. How about you?

    And what about “clean coal”? Mr. Obama knows that much of the technology is still under development and not yet ready for wide-spread use that he contends he may mandate. By forcing coal companies to jump this impossible bar, he will surreptitiously make good on his promise to bankrupt the old coal industry.

    Despite the excitement generated over Obama’s explicitly pro-Green administration, concerned citizens must once again ask about the high price to be paid for this massive “greening” euphoria.

    The same liberals who so viciously castigated President Bush for invading Iraq based on “fraudulent intelligence” are now lining up in enthusiastic support of Obama’s vastly more expensive (and risky) plans, completely ignoring the shaky computer models upon which those plans are built.

    And that brings us back to Mr. Hansen and his now-discredited GISS guesses about global warming. One has to wonder: If Mr. Hansen could be so wrong with all his sophisticated equipment, could Mr. Gore also be wrong despite his phlegmatic bellicosity? And if Mr. Hansen and Mr. Gore are both wrong, should President-Elect Obama really rely on the self-same apologists to lead his crusade against energy independence?

    And while the press is still out on those critical questions, maybe, just maybe, its high-time for the politicians to take the GISS-work out global warming debate.

    Isaac MacMillen is a contributing editor of ALG News Bureau.

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