The Editor

The environmental movement calls for  us to reduce the amount of energy that we use.  We’re told our use of energy is both harmful to the earth and causes an unsustainable drain on finite
resources.

We are presented with two apocalyptic views of the future – a world ravaged by pollution with vast uninhabitable areas, no longer able to support the people living on it or a world totally depleted of resources with hoards of starving people eking out a miserable existence.  Neither picture is pretty.

The climate activist crowd claim as fact, that CO2, the product of combustion in most of our energy use, is warming the earth.  The resulting warming is causing climate havoc. Temperature increase will cause all ice to melt and the ensuing floods will inundate all the coastal cities. Changing air currents will cause deserts to grow and increased rainfall will generate massive flooding. And tropical storm, massively strengthened by the global warming effect, will make life impossible for millions of people.

If that scary scenario leaves you unaffected, there is a second catastrophic event rapidly approaching in your future. Oil is disappearing at an alarming rate. Our consumption of fuel for our  wasteful lifestyle is shortsighted and our children and our worldly neighbors are going to suffer as there will be nothing left for them in the future.

No rational person could object to changing the way we do thing if they believe either of the above ideas to be true, but what if they are not true? What if we are being asked to give up a wealthy lifestyle for no good reason? What if the global warming and the finite resource activist crowd are both wrong?

Is Ice melting causes oceans to rise?  From the 10,000 year record of ocean levels rise, the mean was 4 feet per century. Ocean rise is now 1 foot per century and dropping. Support is growing for the belief that ice melt is due to the ending of last ice age.

The global warming movement claim that increased levels of CO2 cause global temperature to rise but researchers have shown there is a very poor correlation between the two,  and temperatures have historically  risen some 800 years before CO2 increases, not the other way around. The activists also ignore the influence of water vapor and solar activity, both larger drivers of temperature than CO2 according to climate researchers.

The reason CO2 is vilified is that our use of hydrocarbon can be curtailed if proof is given that the earth is being harmed by that release of CO2. It then legitimizes far more government control of our lives, something all bureaucracies strive for.

The people conducting climate research are finally overcoming their reluctance to criticize the activists and some of the media outlets are reporting on the growing rejection of the global warming hyperbola. The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Post have long been critical of the global warming activism movement. Even the New York Times, noted for being pro environmentalism, ran a front page article critical of compact florescent bulbs recently.

April 2nd  National Post ran a front page article reporting that US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, now questions how much global temperature change is due to man’s activity verses natural causes.

On the finite resource issue, we are living on a globe that’s 8000 miles thick and have poked a few holes in the surface. The late Julian Simon probably presented one of the strongest arguments countering the fear of running out of resources.

We need to spend more time and attention to the science rather than the activist’s propaganda, as some other news source are doing. Blindly implementing the scaremonger’s call to cut our energy use by more than 90% does no one any good. As was said at the recent Heartland Institute climate conference, “the uncertainty warrants more study, not draconian regulations”.