Global warming, global warning

Do you like a good read? A fast-paced fiction that you can’t put down? I have one for you: Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. It is all about man-made Global Warming. And the basic story is not fiction. The premise is that there is no discernable man-made global warming. And this book pre-dates the expose of Professor Phil Jones of England’s University of East Anglia whose work has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

I am not new to Crichton’s exceptionally well researched piece of work. I came to it several years ago and I have read it, researched the detailed references, done my best to understand its message and communicate that message to anyone who will listen.

I am from the United Kingdom, though I have chosen to make my home and career in these United States – the greatest country that this world has known even allowing for the past might of the British Empire. America is the powerhouse that runs the world. Trucking, I am very happy to say, is one of the major enablers that makes that happen. I often say God Bless America and I am not alone in this sentiment. I would refer you to a much more erudite, informed and elevated anti-global warming Englishman in the person of Christopher Lord Moncton. A peer of the realm.

You can find many of his speeches with a Google search, but one of the best is his address to the Aggies young conservatives in Texas a few years ago. Go here http://www.hootervillegazette.com/Videos.html and click on the top left window if you have an hour to spare. You will note in his opening remarks he says in his household he also frequently offers the blessing of America.

Most peers of the British Aristocracy are held – with good reason – to be total buffoons. This man is not. He is, in fact, a Nobel laureate precisely for holding global warming alarmists feet to the fire for their intentional misrepresentation of the climate change situation. Though to my mind, since Al Gore has been awarded a Nobel, the whole prize thing has gone out of the window . . .

I am happy to report that Moncton is Gore’s nemesis. Gore will not appear on the same stage to debate Moncton because the British peer has the research and data that tears the inconvenient and profiteering alarmist to shreds.

This is not new News. I first heard at an SAE Truck and Bus meeting nearly a decade ago, when one on the most senior executives from Bosch pegged the man-made contribution to greenhouse gases at no more than 2%. I took him aside to ask if this were the case, why spend millions of dollars to address a non-issue. His response was that it was politically appropriate to do so.

But let’s take that 2% and go back to Michael Crichton. He writes that you should imagine the earth’s atmosphere as a football field. Take away the nitrogen and you are standing at the 20-yard line. Take away the oxygen and you are within a few feet of the goal line. Next, eliminate the noble gases and other non-global warming constituents and you are left with a three-inch strip, about the width of the actual goal line. Of that, the man-made CO2 content is the width of a pencil.

Adding my own spin, the increase in man-made CO2 is likely about the thickness of the paint on the pencil.

Detractors of Moncton and Crichton will point to the “landmark 881-page 2001 report by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but, as noted above, this was based on the work of Professor Phil Jones of East Anglia who now says that far from being in a period of global warming, there has been no statistical evidence for the last 15 years to support any such theory.

So I was especially pleased to see in USA Today on the very day I was preparing this column a letter from Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney General of Virginia, arguing strongly against any precipitate legislation on global warming that will bring this country’s economy to its knees. He concludes: “Any official or organization arguing that the science underlying the claims of man-made global warming should not be seriously and comprehensively reassessed before imposing regulations with such enormous consequences for the standard of living of every American is acting irresponsibly.”

Hear, hear.