Trackbacked at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler:
A current cause célèbre is Global Warming. Former Vice President, and all-around failure, Al Gore, is currently trumpeting global warming as an impending doom of civilization; we’re all going to melt within our lifetimes.
And it’s a good thing too, since only 32 years ago we were going to freeze.
From NewsBusters:
From the Jun 24, 1974, Time Magazine, entitled: “Another Ice Age?“:
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin’s Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth’s surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
The earth’s current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: “I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.”
Huh? According to Gore:
For me, this issue is in a special category because of what I believe is at stake. I am particularly concerned because the vast majority of the most respected environmental scientists from all over the world have sounded a clear and urgent alarm. The international community – including the United States – began a massive effort several years ago to assemble the most accurate scientific assessment of the growing evidence that the earth’s environment is sustaining severe and potentially irreparable damage from the unprecedented accumulation of pollution in the global atmosphere.
In essence, these scientists are telling the people of every nation that global warming caused by human activities is becoming a serious threat to our common future. I am also troubled that the Bush/Cheney Administration does not seem to hear the warnings of the scientific community in the same way that most of us do.
I don’t think there is any longer a credible basis for doubting that the earth’s atmosphere is heating up because of global warming.
So the evidence is overwhelming and undeniable.
Global Warming is real. It is happening already and the anticipated consequences are unacceptable. But it is important to understand that this crisis is actually just a symptom of a deeper underlying cause.
The problem is that our world is now confronting a five-alarm fire that calls for bold moral and political leadership from the United States of America.
It is going to be so much nicer when the Leftwing Moonbats get their stories and facts straight. Am I going to burn or freeze?
Editor’s note: As long as my supply of Moon Pies and RC Colas keep coming in I’m not going to worry too much either way. Personally I think ‘ole Mother Earth is a lot tougher than most give her credit for. But if you want the Straight Scoop check out my buddy joe-6-pack at geosciblog. He’s a Geology and Environmental Science guru, knows what he’s talking about, and puts this high-tech environmental stuff in easy English – sort of.
Global Warming, Al Gore, ice age, Moonbat
