KRT NEWS SERVICE
Sept. 23, 2004, n.p.

© 2004, KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS. Distributed by KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE Information Services.

Alarmists Would Wreck Economy to Combat a Global-Warming Threat

By Dennis T. Avery

     WASHINGTON--Should America plunge its economy into a prolonged recession by drastically cutting back on the fossil fuels that energize the world's most advanced and prosperous society?

     Should we abandon our cars and air-conditioners in favor of rationed-electricity from thousands of noisy, erratic windmills?

     Should we simply turn on backs on huge amounts of low-grade petroleum and coal that could cost-effectively power the globe for at least 300 years?

     Global warming alarmists are calling for these unnecessary actions and urging us to buy into a flawed computer-generated theory of pending disaster that simply ignores the fact that Earth's temperature has inched up only one degree over the last 120 years.

     A slew of new studies provide convincing evidence that the current warming is part of an unstoppable, moderate and solar-driven 1,500-year climate cycle that has been going on for a million years.

     Yet persistent voices continue to insist that Earth is warming dangerously due to human emissions of carbon dioxide.

     If that's true, why did virtually all of the warming we've had occur before 1940 when the world had comparatively few factories and automobiles--and, of course, few carbon-dioxide emissions?

     The Greenhouse Theory says trapped carbon-dioxide emissions will heat the atmosphere above us and then the heat will radiate down to warm the Earth. But that hasn't happened. The atmosphere is warming much more slowly than the Earth's surface--only about 1 degree Centigrade per 300 years, according to weather satellites.

     According to Greenhouse Theory, the polar regions are supposed to overheat first--but the polar regions are cooling. Arctic temperatures were higher in the 1930s. Twenty-one Antarctic surface stations show a decline of 0.08 degrees Centigrade since 1979.

     In fact, we know the Earth has a varied climate history. Medieval monks wrote that 12th century was very warm; and humans prospered. During the Little Ice Age in 1816, the Connecticut summer was 2.5 degrees colder than the average for the last 200 years. London held its last ice festival on the Thames River in 1814 because the river quit freezing.

     The Earth's climate cycle is tied to a tiny variation in solar activity that we now can measure from space with satellite instruments. The 1,500-year cycle is confirmed around the globe: in the Greenland ice sheet, in Antarctic glaciers, in seabed sediments from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, in the relocations of primitive Andean villages, and in cave stalagmites from Ireland, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

     The North American Pollen Data Base shows the Earth's vegetation was completely reorganized by climate change no less than nine times in the past 14,000 years. That's once every 1,650 years.

     The evidence is well-documented and massive. Humanity could stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, but it wouldn't stop the inexorable solar-driven climate cycle that has slowly warmed and cooled our planet for all of recorded history.

     We should enjoy the current warming, not be thrust into despair by it. When it ends in another few centuries, the Earth will turn colder. That's when humans will really need to worry about heat.

     The pseudo-scientists, avid environmentalists and weather-vane politicians want us to spend trillions of dollars to prevent the return of what history calls the Medieval Climate Optimum--the finest weather humanity can recall.

About the Author

     Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, www.hudsoninstitute.org. Readers may write him at Hudson/DC, 1015 18th Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C. 20036. For information about Hudson's funding, please go to http://www.hudson.org/invest/index.cfm?fuseaction=recognition.

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KRT News Service  Sept. 23, 2004; Lexile Score: 1130; 5K, SIRS Researcher