Oct 8, 2006
Running hot and cold
Julia Seymour, Assistant Editor at the Virginia-based Business and Media Institute emailed to tell me that despite blasting senator James Inhofe, CNN had him on “American Morning” on October 3 in a debate with anchor Miles O’Brien.
According to the BandMI write-up on this debacle, “The spirited debate with Inhofe allowed viewers to get a rebuttal to O’Brien’s charge on the September 28 “American Morning” that Inhofe was waging a “lonely battle” against the “overwhelming” evidence of global warming.”
Climate change has been a threat to sanity for decadeas, as long ago as 1895 people were warned of the coming ice age, by the 1920s a warm spell suggested the earth was getting warmer, by the 1950s, once again the earth was to be frozen. As late as 1975 we were all going to freeze according to the media hype. Global warming was on the cards as of 1981 but with a new twist, it could cause changes in the Gulf Stream as melting icebergs broke away from the frozen north and cooled the Atlantic leading to a mini ice age across the British Isles and Europe.
Today, every change the weather is blamed on global warming, every natural disaster including very dubiously earthquake-driven tsunami and even volcanic activity, and perhaps less dubiously the strength of hurricanes. By the way, if it’s a trend, why wasn’t there another Katrina this year? Could it be that Katrina wasn’t actually as powerful as it seemed and that most of the harm done was caused by inadequate defences against flooding?
AAAS is organising an online climate change debate this week. I’ve posted my questions online in advance and will report back on the results.
Global warming is not the problem. The real problem — as exposed in the most recent issue of Scientific American — is the threat of oceanic acidity, which is a result of global warming and CO2 emissions. This leade to anoxic conditions in the oceans and causing an upwelling of hydrogen-sulfate-producing bacteria and the eventual expulsion of massive amounts of hydrogen sulfate. This may sound benign until you realize that this massive release of toxic hydrogen sulfide gas was apparently the cause of all but one of the earth’s major extinction events throughout history.