“Climategate” aside, skepticism reigns on climate change

The University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) is in hot water, and it isn’t due to global warming. East Anglia’s scientists produce the data that form the gospel according to Al Gore. Now, thanks to a computer hacker, we know their research has been tweaked to produce predetermined results.

CRU data, the cornerstone of man-made climate change, is in question. And rather than face the possibility of exposure the scientists involved devised ways to keep undesired data secret, or to delete it altogether.

If these scientists were climate change skeptics they’d be summarily dismissed. “Shills for Big Oil,” their detractors would charge. But since they promote climate change their malfeasance is excused or ignored. Are they not shills for “Big Gov”?

But climate change skepticism doesn’t require scientific fraud or manipulated data. Skepticism requires no degree in climatology, meteorology, geology, or other related field. All that’s needed is a degree of common sense and a little research.

California regulates open fires, wood burning stoves and fireplaces because of climate change. Burning wood, green crusaders reason, releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and accelerates global warming. But fire isn’t new technology. Wood has burned since the first lightning strike and will continue as long as the world turns. Nothing could be a more natural part of our environment.

How about industrial pollution? Smokestacks are a relic; a mute tribute to the industrial age. Their pollution, we were told, was destroying the planet. New technologies allow power plants and factories to operate without those smoke-belching behemoths. Fast forward to 2006 and pollution becomes our savior.

Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, suggested that pollution is the key to combating climate change. His plan is simple. Balloons would carry heavy guns into the sky and spew sulfates into the stratosphere, which would reflect solar radiation and cool the planet.

Sound crazy? Not to everyone. NASA’s Ames Research Center held private meetings to discuss re-polluting the skies that we formerly cleansed. NASA, if you’ll recall, is a leading proponent of man-made climate change.

Doesn’t global warming mean that the entire globe warms? Well, maybe not. In 2005, the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK argued that man-made climate change would stop the flow of warm air from the tropical Atlantic Ocean toward Europe. Not only is global warming man-made, it will produce a European Ice Age.

So, warming means cooling and cooling means warming. But that’s not the only part that’s confusing. The last time this Atlantic conveyor shutdown was 12,000 years ago, around the end of the Ice Age. A slowing of this process is also suspected to have occurred during the Little Ice Age between 1300 and 1850. Whatever the cause and effect, such a process is not unprecedented and has occurred without SUVs, coal-fired power plants, or incandescent light bulbs.

How about this? According to environmentalists, one of the prime contributors to global warming is deforestation. We must protect the forest canopy from loggers and wildfires. Or not.

According to a 2006 report from James Randerson, a science professor at UC-Irvine, a reduced forest canopy--say from a wildfire--would reflect sunlight back into space. Other research suggests that forests in colder climates raise temperatures as trees absorb solar energy. However, the co-author of the second report, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, cautions that following these findings is also detrimental to the environment.

Then there’s the Petition Project, where more than 30,000 scientists bucked the “consensus” on climate change. And there’s Al Gore--Captain Planet himself--who stands to profit big time from the climate change laws and regulations he champions. He refers to this conflict of interest as capitalism, which he defends for himself but condemns for everyone else.

Hopefully, Climategate is the torpedo that sinks this nonsensical ship once and for all. But it’s only the latest in a long line of insults to common sense that drives environmental skepticism.