Let's hope more reasoned voices from the scientific realm will be exposing the real facts about global warming. Currently, if legitimate scientists raise questions about the theory of humans causing catastrophic global warming, they risk losing grants and being shunned by mainstream media.
For a good laugh, go online to check out Newsweek's and Time magazine's headlines back in April, 1975. The reports were breathless in their warnings of the new Ice Age that was upon us. That's right; a mere three decades ago we were going to freeze to death. Here's just one sample paragraph from the April 28, 1975 Newsweek article (newsweek.org):
"The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century."
Uh huh. Right. But a few decades before that, scientists and the media had us going south again in a global warming pattern, as Senator James Inhofe pointed out in a speech before the U.S. Senate last year. To quote from Senator Inhofe's speech:
"Over the last century, the media has flip-flopped between global cooling and warming scares. At the turn of the 20th century, the media peddled an upcoming ice age — and they said the world was coming to an end. Then in the 1930s, the alarm was raised about disaster from global warming — and they said the world was coming to an end. Then in the 70's, an alarm for another ice age was raised — and they said the world was coming to an end. And now, today we are back to fears of catastrophic global warming — and again they are saying the world is coming to an end."
Last month Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his "documentary" An Inconvenient Truth. But coverage of a speech by Dr. William Gray, a well-respected scientist, was hard to find. However, the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald newspaper (www.smh.com.au/articles) reported:
ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works." Dr. William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.
"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr. Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."
"...Dr. Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicized, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures — related to the amount of salt in ocean water — was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place. However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.
"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realize how foolish it was," Dr. Gray said.
Dr Gray also said those who had linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years were in error. He cited statistics showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed.
"The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Dr Gray said. "It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."
At Global Warming: A closer look at the numbers the following is pointed out:
"Just how much of the "Greenhouse Effect" is caused by human activity?
It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account — about 5.53%, if no ...Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect."
"...Human activities contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small — perhaps undetectable — effect on global climate."
