Global Warming Iced

If asking an environmentalist about global warming, they are likely to tell you the Earth is getting warmer so quickly that the glaciers are melting at high speed making sea levels rise so that possibly by next week Manhattan will look like a scene from the movie, “The Day After Tomorrow.” Ok, so maybe not next week… but point taken.

Thanks to senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute Christopher Horner, and his new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, there is now a resource to deflate the global warming hype. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, in turn, advocates a free market approach to protecting the environment.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism is not filled with scientific jargon, but hits all the major issues that are constantly commented on by the media and that frequently show up as true or false questions on exams. For example, Horner offers his own findings on what he grades as the “Top Ten ‘Global Warming’ Myths”:

Myth 10. It’s hot in here! …compared to what? “Present temperatures are warm if you compare today, to say, the 1970’s or to the Ice Age… or compared to the 1930’s or 1998 it is presently cooling,” Horner points out.

Myth 9. The 1990’s were the hottest decade on record. “Of course, “on record” means ‘since we delveloped reliable temperature records,’ which generally means a very short period of time,” Horner notes.

Myth 8. The science is settled; CO2 causes global warming. “Historically, atmospheric CO2 typically increases after warming begins, not before,” Horner explains.

Myth 7. Climate was stable until man came along. “Swallowing this whopper requires burning every basic history and science text, just like ‘witches’ were burned in retaliation for changing climates in the past,” Horner states.

Myth 6. The glaciers are melting! “If glaciers retreating were proof of global warming then glaciers advancing are evidence of global cooling; they cannot both be true and in fact neither is,” Horner argues.

Myth 5. Climate change is raising the sea levels. “Even the distorted United Nations International Panel on Climate Change refutes such breathless claims, finding no statistically significant change in the rate of increase over the past century,” Horner reveals.

Myth 4. Climate change is the greatest threat to the world’s poor. “Climate , or more accurately, weather, remains one of the greatest challenges to the poor,” Horner contends. “Climate change adds nothing to that calculus, however.”

Myth 3. “Global warming” means more frequent, more severe storms. “Storms are cyclical and, that said, are not more frequent or more severe than in the past,” Horner concludes

Myth 2. “Global warming” proposals are about the environment. “Even if accepting every underlying economic and alarmist environmentalist assumption, no one dares say that the expensive Kyoto Protocol would detectably impact climate,” according to Horner.

Myth 1. The U.S. is going it alone on Kyoto and “global warming.” “Nonsense,” argues Horner. “The U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol’s energy rationing scheme, along with 155 other countries, representing most of the world’s population, economic activity and projected future growth.”

I had an oppourtunity to hear Mr. Horner speak at the Heritage Institute recently and he said his motivation for writing the book was to tell the “other side” and to clear up misconceptions that there is only one permissible position in the global warming debate.

“Environmentalism has served for decades as the best excuse to increase government control over you actions, in ways both large and small… indeed with “global warming” no matter how much we sacrificed there would still be more to do. It is the bottomless well of excuses for governmental intervention and authority… this book will give you the details and the debate that they don’t want you to know about,” Horner writes.

Wendy Cook is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.