Global Warming Follies

When it comes to the issue of global warming, it seems that there are three different types of people in the world: those who want to do something to put an end to it, those who don’t believe in it at all and those who really don’t care what happens.

But what do you get when a country’s government finds itself in the process of passing legislation on a topic recent studies have proven to be a myth?

One in the U.S. Senate, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, and the Boxer Substitute Amendment on the side, may do just that.

According to Andrew Wheeler, director of the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works, Congress will be opening its floor to the discussion of the Lieberman-Warner Act and Boxer Substitute Amendment on June 2 to discuss the additions to the Act and the Act itself.

The objective of the Act is to introduce measures that will help protect the environment from what many scientists and politicians believe are harmful greenhouse gases—i.e.,
carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons—through methods such as “deploying advanced
technologies and practices for reducing emissions” and “protecting low-and-middle-income Americans from higher energy cost.”

The opening lines of the act read, “The bill will establish the core of a federal program to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions substantially enough between 2008 and 2050 to avert catastrophic global warming. It will accomplish that purpose without harming America’s economy or imposing hardship on its citizens.”

According to the Heritage Foundation, the Lieberman-Warner bill will produce “very little change in global temperature,” perhaps even less than .07 degrees Celsius.

However, if passed, the amendment to the original bill could harm American citizens financially, said Wheeler.

“The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act calls for the largest tax increase in American political history and, arguably, is the largest re-distribution of wealth ever,” Wheeler said.

In a U.S. Senate Committee of Environment and Public Works (EPW) press release issued on May 20, Ranking Minority Member Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said the Lieberman-Warner bill doesn’t, in any way, stay out of American’s pocketbooks. “Lieberman-Warner will redistribute over $5.6 trillion from American consumers to pet congressional projects. Despite paying for the trillions of dollars mandated by this cap-and-trade scheme, American families and workers will only receive back $800 billion in consumer tax relief—$7 paid for every $1 returned,” Inhofe said.

“No matter how many revisions this bill undergoes, it remains a massive redistribution of wealth, the largest new tax and spend program in our Nation’s history,” Inhofe added.

Yet, while Congress waits to pass or veto acts such as Lieberman-Warner, which many believe will affect the lives of Americans negatively, a study released by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) in 2007 concludes after its 12 pages of charts and calculations that there is no such thing as global warming.

According to the OSIM study, “there are no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases in human hydrocarbon use of in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing or can be expected to cause unfavorable changes in global temperatures, weather or landscape.”

After releasing the 12-page study of charts, graphs and findings to the public, some 31,000 scientists from across the United States read, researched, and accepted this report to be as close to truth as scientifically possible.

In turn, all 31,000 have signed a petition “urging the US government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, and any other similar proposals,” according to the Petition Project’s website.

The petition also states “there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

OISM co-founder Arthur Robinson said the response of 31,000 degree-holding scientists, which include some 9,000 PhDs within the area of physical science, shows there is clearly not a consensus amongst professionals in the field where global warming is concerned.

“The idea that a committee can decide scientific truths is unprecedented,” Robinson said.

“The claim that the point is settled is just not true. There is no consensus on the issue, therefore, the science must be examined,” he added.

“We have a political movement that wants to [restrict] 85% of our energy because of a committee,” Robinson said.

Indeed, Congressional acts such as Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act entail cutting energy sources over time, and according to Robinson these restrictions will have profound effects on the people of the world.

“The currency of technological progress is energy,” he said. “When you deprive the world of energy, you deprive the world of technology, and if you deprive the world of technology, people will die.”

This is why Robinson said he and his team and many other scientific teams across the world who are conducting research on the issue of global warming continue their plight to prove the conventional knowledge false.

Yet, their reports and findings seem to not come into the consideration of politicians as elected officials draft legislation that would affect not only our nation, but the world as well.

And it’s this fact that leaves some wondering: why would Congress try to pass a bill that would harm the lives of its people when the harm the bill is designed to alleviate may not even exist?

Emily Ham is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.