I have never trusted doomsayers. They have a very long history of being wrong. Not only have they been wrong, but they frequently lie, exagerate, and commit outright fraud in order to push their agenda. This op-ed from the UK highlights a good example:
GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
The EPA tells us that hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas doesn’t harm ground water, except for the leukemia, aplastic anemia, and exploding houses and wells. And don’t bother testing your wells because we proooomise that it’s safe! Many scientists sincerely believe that the world is getting warmer, and maybe it is. But when they or their allies produce “studies” like these, how are we to believe anything they say?
Jimmy, one of the commenters on the above op-ed summed up some of my thoughts pretty well:
I LOVE that set of graphs that show how much warmer its been getting, Its a nice set, one shows CO2 levels, another shows temp. But one is missing….
If you overlay the solar output graph, over the other two, guess what, it lines up perfectly. So if you truely want to affect global warming, then start regulating the Sun. Thats where 50% of it comes from. The other 50% came from Margerate Thatchers political party to justify nuclear power in England. Learn your history people. In the 1970s it was global COOLING that was the big scare (and yet we have been on an upward trend since …when again? 1800s?) And yet in the 1970s we were still to primitive to see that. We could go to the moon, but we couldnt read the outside temp. Its silly. Use common sense. You cant change solar output, you simply cant. And its always a good idea to take care of the enviroment. But save your fear tactics for when you need another war, or a couple of sky scrapers leveled, but keep it out of the scientific world.
Posted by jimmy on November 17, 2008 2:05 PM [emphasis added]
I’d rather they just keep their fear tactics to themselves all of the time, but “Use common sense” is still great advice. There is no reason to resort to lies and panic-mongering. The truth is bad enough. If we held people (Corporations are just people!) accountable for the damage they cause, and if we all tried to live more moderately and by the golden rule (which is partly expressed in the environmental maxim, “Leave every place better than you found it”), we would have such a healthier world!
Update: Don Boudreaux has some good thoughts along the same lines too.
Last year ThinkGeek came out with the 