Chicken Little

July 19, 2006

It's Chicken Little running around screaming, "the sky is falling, the sky is falling, the sky is warming, the sky is warming." No, it's not Chicken Little. It's Al Gore. He calls global warming an "inconvenient truth." Well, there are a lot of scientists that would disagree.

Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, "a general characteristic of Al Gore's approach is to ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic." We had the Ice Age 400 years ago. The Ice Age was preceded by the Medieval Warm Period. The earth gets warm, the earth gets cold, now it's warming again. Maybe. Everyone doesn't seem to agree with Mr. Gore. The ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica are growing, not melting according to Carter and Morgan of University of Britain. The Canadian arctic was warmer in the 30's than today, reports Roy Spencer, University of Alabama. The polar bear population is stable and growing, not in decline, says Mitchell Taylor of Canada's Environmental Department. Sea levels aren't rising, says Chris deFreitas, University of Auckland of New Zealand. All of these scientists are refuting Chicken Little's preposterous claims.

There clearly is a lot of difference of opinion on the global warming issue. Looking back over the centuries, those climate changes that happened then cannot be blamed on human activity, can't be blamed on the flatulence of cows, or the hot air from politicians and professors.

I liked what Robert Samuelson had to say about the subject. "We don't know enough to stop global warming, and baring major technological breakthroughs -we can't do much about." I would add, the Kyoto Protocol was nothing more than political grandstanding. Europe and Japanese greenhouse gas emissions have jumped up 15 to 25% since they signed the Treaty.

There is a lot of hot air, but it is coming from environmentalists in search for a cause and Al Gore in search of money .

Any comments -- I can be reached at jblock@ofwlaw.com.

I am John Block sweltering in the heat.