Don't be fooled... the Earth is always

[ironmonk]

[url="http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will1.asp"]http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will1.asp[/url]
[quote][b]Let cooler heads prevail: The media heat up over global warming [/b]
[url="http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com"]http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com[/url] | So, "the debate is over." Time magazine says so. Last week's cover story exhorted readers to "Be Worried. Be Very Worried," and ABC News concurred in several stories. So did Montana's governor, speaking on ABC. And there was polling about global warming, gathered by Time and ABC in collaboration.


Eighty-five percent of Americans say warming is probably happening, and 62 percent say it threatens them personally. The National Academy of Sciences says the rise in the Earth's surface temperature has been about one degree Fahrenheit in the past century. Did 85 percent of Americans notice? Of course not. They got their anxiety from journalism calculated to produce it. Never mind that one degree might be the margin of error when measuring the planet's temperature. To take a person's temperature, you put a thermometer in an orifice or under an arm. Taking the temperature of our churning planet, with its tectonic plates sliding around over a molten core, involves limited precision.


Why have Americans been dilatory about becoming as worried — as very worried — as Time and ABC think proper? An article on ABC's Web site wonders ominously, "Was Confusion Over Global Warming a Con Job?"


It suggests there has been a misinformation campaign implying that scientists might not be unanimous, a campaign by — how did you guess? — big oil. And the coal industry. But speaking of coal . . .


Recently, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer flew with ABC's George Stephanopoulos over Glacier National Park's receding glaciers. But Schweitzer offered hope: Everyone, buy Montana coal. New technologies can, he said, burn it while removing carbon causes of global warming.


Stephanopoulos noted that such technologies are at least four years away and "all the scientists" say something must be done "right now." Schweitzer, quickly recovering from hopefulness and returning to the "be worried, be very worried" message, said "it's even more critical than that" because China and India are going to "put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with conventional coal-fired generators than all of the rest of the planet has during the last 150 years."

That is one reason why the Clinton administration never submitted the Kyoto accord on global warming for Senate ratification. In 1997 the Senate voted 95 to 0 that the accord would disproportionately burden America while being too permissive toward major polluters that are America's trade competitors.


While worrying about Montana's receding glaciers, Schweitzer, who is 50, should also worry about the fact that when he was 20 he was told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling. Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age." The Christian Science Monitor ("Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect," Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers "have begun to advance," "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" and "the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool." Newsweek agreed ("The Cooling World," April 28, 1975) that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said "may mark the return to another ice age." The Times (May 21, 1975) also said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" now that it is "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950."


In fact, the Earth is always experiencing either warming or cooling. But suppose the scientists and their journalistic conduits, who today say they were so spectacularly wrong so recently, are now correct. Suppose the Earth is warming and suppose the warming is caused by human activity. Are we sure there will be proportionate benefits from whatever climate change can be purchased at the cost of slowing economic growth and spending trillions? Are we sure the consequences of climate change — remember, a thick sheet of ice once covered the Midwest — must be bad? Or has the science-journalism complex decided that debate about these questions, too, is "over"?


About the mystery that vexes ABC — Why have Americans been slow to get in lock step concerning global warming? — perhaps the "problem" is not big oil or big coal, both of which have discovered there is big money to be made from tax breaks and other subsidies justified in the name of combating carbon.


[i][b]Perhaps the problem is big crusading journalism. [/b][/i][/quote]


Other people are finally wising up, it would be nice if more followed... instead of being media zombies.

When are some people going to learn that the media seeks to sensationalize to the point of lying. My guess is that they hear what they want to hear to help justify their stance on issues that go against logic and reason in light of Catholic teaching. They reason like the anti-Catholics do with Scripture; they are selective instead of looking at the whole. They ignore the facts and only go on their assumptions.... this is also why I believe that they have a knack to take something I write out of context and try to twist it's meaning.... they take one line, draw a conclusion, and ignore all the other lines in my writings that show their conclusion to be wrong.

There is something wrong with the way they think. The opposite of right is wrong, not left.


God Bless
ironmonk

[Brother Adam]

haven't you seen the day after tomorrow. We are all going to die because rich people drive SUV's. Wait. The media are the rich people.

[Paladin]

[quote name='Brother Adam' date='Apr 2 2006, 07:55 PM']haven't you seen the day after tomorrow. We are all going to die because rich people drive SUV's. Wait. The media are the rich people.
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What I love about that film is that so many in the MSM took it as a prediction of things to come, as though one day everything would just fall all to heck.

Though I don't think global warming is happening on the scale and necessarily for the causes many would lead us to believe, I do think we should be more responsible toward Sister Nature than some would have it. We have dominion over nature, but also responsibility, and we should cultivate it carefully rather than milking it dry.

Not to say that that's what anyone here is suggesting we do.

[catholicinsd]

Well releasing gases that could put holes in the atmospherw is never a good thing.

[morostheos]

[quote name='ironmonk' date='Apr 2 2006, 07:01 PM'][url="http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will1.asp"]http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will1.asp[/url]
Other people are finally wising up, it would be nice if more followed... instead of being media zombies.

When are some people going to learn that the media seeks to sensationalize to the point of lying. My guess is that they hear what they want to hear to help justify their stance on issues that go against logic and reason in light of Catholic teaching. They reason like the anti-Catholics do with Scripture; they are selective instead of looking at the whole. They ignore the facts and only go on their assumptions.... this is also why I believe that they have a knack to take something I write out of context and try to twist it's meaning.... they take one line, draw a conclusion, and ignore all the other lines in my writings that show their conclusion to be wrong.

There is something wrong with the way they think. The opposite of right is wrong, not left.
God Bless 
ironmonk
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Funny how you put that....I feel like I could say exactly the same thing about most articles you post regarding global climate change. They are always coming from media sources and .com's rather than scientific articles...

[Era Might]

[quote name='morostheos' date='Apr 3 2006, 11:14 PM']Funny how you put that....I feel like I could say exactly the same thing about most articles you post regarding global climate change.  They are always coming from media sources and .com's rather than scientific articles... 
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I was going to say the same thing. The argument in the article boils down to "Scientists are fallible, and the temperature of the earth has been known to change, so global warming can't be true". Not exactly an iron-clad scientific rebuttal.

[Snarf]

Don't fall for it!! Liberals have so much to gain from throwing everyone into a panic for no reason.

As far as credibility goes, conservatives have far much more to lose from combatting global warming than liberals have to gain. I think that speaks volumes in itself.

[Snarf]

From [url="http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Agri/agri_weather_OzoneDepletionHumanHealth.html"]http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Agri/agri_weather_...umanHealth.html[/url] :
[i]Studies have shown that in Europe persons who are now age 30 have a higher incidence of melanoma than persons at age 30, ten years earlier.[/i]

And you do understand that skin cancer is related foremost to UV rays and not temperature, right? And that, if anything, in the period in question sunblock lotions have only seen an increase in sales?

[Didacus]

[quote]Never mind that one degree might be the margin of error when measuring the planet's temperature.[/quote]

This made me laugh a bit.




You have more chance to convince me of the exact value of pi than to get me to hop on the 'planet warming' bandwagon.

Fearmongoring sells paper and gets people to watch the news (unless a bomb goes off in Kuwait). Global warming ain't anymore than that.


Peakoil though! SFD!!! Watch out for peak oil!
*joke*


THUNDERCATS!!!

yaaaayyyyy SNARF!!!

[img]http://www.queencheetah.com/Thundercats/Snarf1.jpg[/img]
(sorry)

[Snarf]

I don't see how it's really fearmongering, when most outlets concede there won't be any real effects within our lifetime. To that end, I don't see what sources like NASA have to gain from talking about the ozone hole. Oh, and "I'm not listening" isn't a sound form of debate.