Inconvenient Global Warming Myths

When audiences ask Christopher Horner, author of the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming, why he hasn’t made a video of his rebuttal to former Vice President Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” he responds, “Well, just imagine 90 minutes of icebergs not melting…”

Horner works for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank which seeks free market solutions to environmental problems. “Climate change has never been secure,” the author of the Politically Incorrect New York Times bestseller points out. “This has nothing to do with the impact of humankind.”

“Weather has always been unpredictable and severe.”

“What about this 20 feet of sea level rise?” he asks. “It is now anywhere within a few inches.”

“Sea levels have always risen and receded.”

“The ‘90’s were the hottest decade on record except… they weren’t…,” continued Horner. “Since 1998, we should have warmed 4 or 5 degrees, but it has cooled. They have no explanation for it.” He imagines that the environmentalists object, “Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”

Horner stated that perhaps one of the most significant ways that humans could have impacted the global temperature is one often overlooked. “Want to warm the world? Pave it. Paving makes things warmer. This is neither surprising nor unprecedented.” This is the kind of simple truth that green scientists go to great lengths to avoid and trivialize, according to Horner.

Married to a woman from Denmark, Horner laughs at the idea that “windmills” are considered new technology in the U.S. He feels that the so-called solutions to this global dilemma are more problematic than the presumed crisis itself. The environmental agenda is largely funded by taxpayers, drawing from the resources of government departments such as Education, he claims. “Environmentalists often see humans as the problem, a parasite on the earth,” says Horner.

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