Presswatch: Global Warmers

...Ecofeminists, eco-radicals, and eco-philosophers had all found their man...

...There is some doubt about what increased greenhouse-gas emissions are doing to the climate," he said...

...Cornington Post that he had been "somewhat puter models cited by the U.N.'s Inter-skeptical that human beings were really governmental Panel on Climate Change, doing anything to affect the weather, but for example, say the global temperature hearing the President and Vice President should have risen by almost i degree state emphatically that the scientific Fahrenheit since 1979...

...Gore also wrote about a "spiritual crisis" that could be resolved only through an "inner ecology that relies on the same principles of balance and holism that characterize a healthy environment...

...S o, right or wrong, the administration will press on with global warming...

...The polar ice caps are melting...

...The rise, therefore, is attributed to the burning of fossil fuel, although whether this has anything to do with climate change is another matter...

...A warmer climate in the U.S., for instance, might reduce the yield of crops like wheat, but it would be likely to raise the yields on vegetables, fruits, and timber...

...But the usually Reno grows suspicious...

...embassies, and the CIA is gathering "environmental intelligence...

...Time called it "an act of leadership," while the New York Times said Congress should "harken to its message," and the late Carl The White House is pretending to know more about these things than it really does...

...November 1997 • The American Spectator Ted: That's right...

...He said the media had fallen victim to a propaganda campaign by oil and coal companies...

...Certainly it was a factor when Clinton chose Gore to be his vice president...

...Global warming salesmen may attribute the rise to the increase in man-made greenhouse gases, but earth's his- tory contradicts them...

...TV mete- doing stand-ups at the White orologists, she said, "have great local House, and peering into the future...

...Diplomats may negotiate recycling treaties, while spooks poke around waste dumps...

...The White House would do everyone a service now by treating global warming as a matter of science and not of self-interest...

...Predicting the temper-that it worked...

...In fact, this was the beginning of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, an ecumenical organization that is now trying to introduce green thinking into 53,000 religious congregations...

...CNN said it had killed the ads because it was covering global warming as a continuing news story, and it denied that Turner had anything to do with its decision...

...After all, he wrote, when "98 percent of the scientists in a given field share one view and 2 percent disagree," the skeptic's theories "should not be given equal weight with the consensus now emerging in the scientific community about the gravity of the danger we face...

...Then the shameless Gore took over, making sure they were aware of the importance of the cause in which they were being enlisted...

...It after Clinton and Gore had briefed them: should also be noted that when the U.N...

...But Wirth was being, let us say, disingenuous...

...A 1- ,l, degree rise is well within the range of known temperature 8 The American Spectator • November 19 97 53 variations...

...In the last 140 years, the earth's average surface temperatures have risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit...

...The consensus among climate scientists seems to be that the burning of fossil fuels has not done much to the climate so far, but that it may very well in the future...

...Keep in mind also that when Bill Clinton goes to Japan in December to sign a treaty to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, he will say there is a scientific consensus on global warming, even though none exists...

...a month later...

...There is no argument about the greenhouse effect...

...Moreover, a Gallup poll found that only 17 percent of the members of the Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society believed that greenhouse-gas emissions had caused twentieth-century warming...

...But then he added, inaccurately, that "no one doubts that they're changing the climate —no one doubts that the potential consequences can be very profound and severe...

...Some studies," the Washington Post reported, "conclude that to reduce carbon emissions, energy taxes would have to be so high that they would choke off investments, force heavy industries overseas and take a sizable chunk out of the U.S...

...Haven't you been outside lately...

...economy...

...like Turner, they know what they know, and they do not want to be contradicted...

...weather satellites a toward convincing me...

...While we cannot say with certainty that the flooding that is now occurring along the Red River signals the onset of climate change," he told reporters, "it is entirely consistent with the predicted effects...

...Meanwhile, the North American tundra could be reduced in size by two-thirds, while the southern boundary of the area covered by permafrost could shift north, and undermine roads, buildings, and pipelines...

...but President Clinton reportedly took The Heat Is On with him on his Martha's Vineyard vacation, and it has been very respectfully received...

...Some no weather forecasters from the eighty top TV markets responded to an invitation to travel to Washington for a briefing on global warming by Clinton and Gore, and then do their stand-ups from the White House...

...Global warming is a liberal Democratic issue, and most of the commentary follows suit, on occasion with abandon...

...to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, it would exempt most other nations...

...Global warming salesmen like Wirth often ascribe natural phenomena that have occurred and re-occurred for millions of years—storms, blizzards, droughts—to climate change...

...while exempting other nations...

...Hold a conference, and they will come...

...Gore also said that he foresaw "the beginning of grassroots activity in tens of thousands of religious congregations across the country...

...According to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, "Environmental issues are part of the mainstream of foreign policy...

...On the other hand, who knows...

...Turner knows what he knows, and that's it...

...Politics influences global warming policy, and media commentary, no matter how dopey, does, too...

...Gore said as much in Earth in the Balance...

...John the Divine in New York...

...And the media, or at least a large part of them, will...

...It concluded that there were skeptics "among the world's top scientists...

...Gore became the political leader of a movement that is shot through with spiritual impulses, and is not necessarily susceptible to science...

...credibility —they can give the public Reportedly it was Gore's idea, anyway...

...There may indeed be a link between warmer temperatures and greenhouse-gas emissions—many, and probably most, climate scientists think there is—but so far it has not been proven...

...It recalls the society of George Orwell's 1984...

...treaty on curbing greenhouse-gas emissions...

...have a hard enough time with five days, and a decade or two would be casters...

...Now he must hold it together, and still appear sane enough to stay in politics...

...Meanwhile, the few miles above ground show that rather New York Times reported what Bryan Nor- than a rise in temperature there has been cross of WBRY in Miami told his viewers a slight decline: about one-quarter of a about what he and his colleagues thought degree in each of the last two decades...

...Meanwhile, an article in the authoritative Science magazine states flatly that "many climate experts caution that it is not at all clear yet that human activities have begun to warm the planet—or how bad greenhouse warming will be when it arrives...

...Why not...

...It is nominally Episcopal, but determinedly left-liberal, and hospitable to secular causes...

...Albright used Earth Day to introduce "Environmental Diplomacy: The Environment and U.S...

...He rightly wonders, given substantial evidence that the skeptics are wrong, why so many news stories still quote them, leaving the impression that the jury remains out on climate change...

...This will lead to a steadily increasing trend toward rising temperatures, or global warming...

...But the science is neither clear nor compelling, and when Clinton had visited a rain forest in Costa Rica in May, he seemed less sure about the science than he was at the U.N...

...Everyone in the room came away panel issued its "best guess" on rising impressed that they know what they're temperatures, in 1995, it scaled back its talking about—that this isn't just a polit- 1990 "best guess" by almost a third...

...Measurements taken at the Mauna Loa in Hawaii show a steady rise: from 315 ppm, or parts per million, to more than 355 today...

...Ann Lewis, the White House corn- today may be discarded tomorrow...

...Reasonableness, however, does not always matter to the global warming lobbyists...

...God is not separate from the earth," he told an audience that included leaders of mainstream churches, not to mention the cats, dogs and other animals, an elephant among them, that parishioners had brought to be blessed...

...Some economic studies really do indicate that gas prices could rise up to 5o cents a gallon, and certainly the treaty would be binding on the U.S...

...When Clinton spoke to the U.N...

...faced," and said "we must make the reswhy not predict rising temperatures over cue of the environment the central orgathe next decade or two...

...We can expect that a continued warming of the earth's atmosphere is likely to result in much more of such occurrences of severe weather...

...Here is an exchange on CNN between Larry King and Ted Turner: Larry: ...you said, "everybody knows" that there's global warming...

...Everyone agrees it exists...

...Gore helped to get it started, and it became part of his political base...

...As a result, it traps more of the heat that would otherwise escape...

...The earth underwent far greater warming between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, which was long before the industrial age...

...He made it his wrote, while paraphrasing Lewis's own special issue when he wrote Earth in remarks, though presumably not by the Balance...

...The problem, he wrote, was that the media "prefer to emphasize controversy and disagreement," even when they scarcely exist, for the sake of a more exciting story...

...Climatology is an emerging scitions, but you must not ignore its duplic- ence, and what is believed to be true ity...

...they give financial support to the skeptics, and then demand that their views be treated as respectfully as those of the mainstream scientists...

...Barry Finn of WYOU in ature over the next decade or two is Scranton, Pennsylvania, told the Wash- beyond the best climate scientists...

...He insisted that the media paid far too much attention to scientists who were skeptical The earth underwent far greater warming between the tenth and fifteenth centuries...

...The ads, financed by a coalition of business, labor, and consumer groups, charged that the treaty would force the U.S...

...It ical event, even though the Vice Presi- also reduced by a quarter its estimate of dent is going to run for President...

...For as dent needs a distraction, and global Howard Kurtz, the Post reporter, then warming will do very well...

...Press commentary, however, does not often reflect the uncertainty shown by the scientists...

...Keep in mind that Al Gore must be redeemed, and Ted Turner told Larry King that his beach-front had washed away...

...The core technique is to turn truth on its head—and then relentlessly repeat the untruth...

...You're in the business of saving lives," he solemnly told the foreJOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...

...munications director, had told the Washington Post earlier why the fore- o much, then, for the forecasters casters had been summoned...

...We are not separate from the earth...

...Policy-makers may pick a scenario that suits them...

...Therefore, he and others argue, unless we curtail emissions of these other greenhouse gases—especially man-made carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, and nitrous oxide—more and more heat will be trapped in the earth's atmosphere...

...But no one believed that, of course, and it was understood that Turner was upset, although as issues ads go, the anti-treaty ads had been quite reasonable...

...You may think that hysterical, and it is...

...But there is a great deal of doubt, and there is no consensus about how profound or severe the consequences might be, if and when they arrive...

...The only sure thing is that the White House is pretending to know more about these things than it really does, and it wants the media to agree with it...

...The problem," Gore wrote, "is that civilization is adding many more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and making the thin blanket significantly thicker...

...But the jury really does remain out, and, as it happened, just before the Times review appeared, the British journal New Scientist published a cover story entitled "Greenhouse Wars: Why the Rebels Have a Cause...

...It also became part of his problem...

...You, just in the way you comment on the events that you cover, may have a real effect on the American people," Clinton told them after they arrived...

...Clinton had not shown much interest in the environment, and none at all in global warming, but green policies were born at Gore's urging...

...Earth in the Balance, though, was not his first excursion into a green quasi-mysticism...

...Vineyards flourished in Britain, while Norsemen founded settlements in Greenland, and balmy weather prevailed...

...The administration, however, pretends otherwise, and the press seldom contradicts it...

...Other studies, by contrast, show that the economic damage from global warming would be so severe, and the gains from conservation and new technologies so great, that reducing greenhouse gases would actually be a boon to the economy...

...It is a tactic that Wirth once openly endorsed himself...

...At the same time, measurements of air bubbles found in glacial ice snow indicate that since the mid-i800's— approximately the start of the industrial age—the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen by 28 percent: from about 28o ppm to the more than 355 today...

...Gelbspan saw this as particularly sinister...

...In it he called global warm-much: "Besides, she added, the meteo- ing "the most serious threat we have ever rologists routinely offer five-day forecasts...

...In 1991, the year before the book was published, Gore spoke at the annual earth mass at the Cathedral of St...

...Sagan admired its "planetary perspective...

...Their political agenda takes precedence over the evidence...

...B ut in The Heat Is On, this year's big global-warming book, journalist Ross Gelbspan took a less charitable view...

...But measure-debate is over, well, that went a long way ments taken by U.S...

...A warming of earth's atmosphere had nothing to do with the floods along the Red River...

...Gaia and God often are indistinguishable in services there, as Gore indicated in his talk...

...The vice presiadroit Lewis did let something slip...

...When they make pessimistic assumptions—that China and India, say, will increase their carbon burning—they make pessimistic predictions...

...Foreign Policy," a mushy io,000-word State Department document that put climate change, or global warming, at the top of the list of priorities...

...The smugness and moralism it is exhibiting show an inability to argue the facts...

...At the same time, Under Secretary of State Timothy Wirth talked about global warming...

...The process is called the greenhouse effect...

...how much the sea levels would rise Uh huh, and you may if you wish because of melting ice and warmer credit the administration with good inten- oceans...

...The Sunday New York Times Book Review, for one, loved it...

...In the centuries after that, however, much of Europe starved in the cold in the Little Ice Age...

...The TV forecasters (and how many of them really are meteorologists...

...The American Spectator • November 1997 55...

...The Upper Midwest had experienced an extremely cold winter, and the flooding, in North Dakota and Minnesota, was a by-product of the melting of vast quantities of snow...

...In fact, they would prefer it if no views were heard other than their own...

...Since long before the rise of industrial civilization, a "thin blanket of gases," as Gore has called it, has encircled the earth, trapped a portion of the sun's heat, and held it near enough to the earth's surface to prevent temperatures from dropping to frigid extremes at night...

...Thank you for your profoundly far beyond them...

...In 1990, when he was a senator from Colorado, he was quoted as saying, "We've got to ride the global warming issue...

...Policy-makers may once again choose the findings that most suit them...

...looking for political and not climatologThis was heady stuff, and it may be ical predictions...

...Moreover, most of the 1-degree rise occurred before 1940, but most of the man-made greenhouse gases entered the atmosphere after that in the postwar economic boom...

...nizing principle for civilization...

...When they make optimistic assumptions — that wind power or solar power, say, could be sufficiently developed to off-set the need for coal or gas—they make optimistic predictions...

...The National Security Council, for example, now has an environmental officer...

...to cut energy use by 20 percent, and also raise gasoline prices as much as 5o cents a gallon...

...He was 52 November 1997 • The American Spectator doing geo-political thinking on a grand scale, and reaching out to New Agers as well...

...for as he wrote: Like most power grabs, that of the oil and coal companies begins at the relatively invisible level of determining public perception—waging war through the media to suppress areas of reality that are likely to become the most active areas of conflict...

...On the other hand—and there is always an on the other hand in anything to do with global warming—warmer weather in the Arctic could also lengthen the growing season, and reduce the amount of offshore ice...

...Their campaign is a prelude to a kind of totalitarianism that is based on the control of information and the subversion of truth...

...E conomic predictions on the impact of global warming, or on what might be done to stop it, are also contradictory...

...It's hotter than hell out there...

...Meanwhile, the State Department has established "regional environmental hubs" in U.S...

...The ads also noted that while the treaty would require the U.S...

...CNN, the network that he founded, recently killed a series of ads it had been airing that criticized the proposed U.N...

...Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy...

...They depend on the assumptions that economists make when they set up their computer models...

...each year by spreading the geographic range of mosquitoes...

...It is policy and not climate science that counts, although global warming is likely to remain a hard sell...

...also, only 13 percent of the scientists who responded to a survey by Greenpeace International thought the current pattern of energy use would lead to a catastrophic change in climate...

...I got an island, and I know that the ocean's rising because I watched my beach get washed away...

...The White House was important work...

...Nonetheless Earth in the Balance was a great success...

...Meanwhile, there is no argument over whether the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing...

...D o not think for a moment that global warming is a subject only for science, or that science will decide government policy...

...it could aid oil and gas pro- duction, and make fishing easier...

...On the other hand, some computer disease models predict that a 2- degree rise in temperature could lead to a million additional deaths from malaria 54 Predicting the temperature over the next decade or two is beyond the best climate scientists...

...about global warming...

...General Assembly in June, he said, "The science is clear and compelling: We humans are changing the global climate...

...The 1-degree rise in the last century or so may only mean that the earth, entirely on its own accord, is warming up again...

...Gelbspan ably dissects the flimsy sophistry employed by greenhouse skeptics," the admiring reviewer wrote...

...more information and help us commu- Buddhist nuns stain his reputation, while nicate the issue in an unexpected and he declines in the polls, and even Janet likely-to-be-heard way...

...A report by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies has concluded that global warming probably would lead to economic gains in countries like the United States...

...In other words, the planet may fry, and icecaps may melt, but then again they may not...