Be that as it may, you can imagine my chagrin when I recently found out that
cows are dirty nasty polluters as well...bye bye, moo-cows. Plants,
cows...where does it end? Oh, the humanity! (Speaking of humanity,
humans are CO2 polluters as well...uh oh).
Just kidding--sort of. Although there
was a period in the heady early days of Obama's first term as POTUS (back when the
oceans and earth were at humanity's beck and call), when the fact that humans exhale CO2 with each breath was considered a profound problem. I have no doubt that there were numerous global warming fanatics who would have taxed "we the people"
for breathing -- seriously. Things have since cooled down,
a bit.
CO2 polluters are now divided into "good" polluters, such as humans and plants, and "bad" polluters such as automobiles and...cows. (I would call humans, plants, and animals CO2
producers instead of
polluters, but the EPA
has told us that CO2 is a
dangerous pollutant, and who am I to disagree).
The reasoning behind this dichotomy runs something along these lines: the CO2 created by humans and animals exists in a
symbiotic relationship with the world's plant life--hence it is a naturally occurring exchange that essentially balances itself out, and is therefore
good CO2. How did cows get singled out from the herd, so to speak? Bad karma, bad publicity, bad press agent...I don't know. The CO2 created by automobiles and other fossil fuel guzzlers occurs outside of, and in addition to, the cycle just mentioned, and is therefore
bad CO2. Don't look at
me;
I didn't think
this stuff up.
Don't get me wrong, it is not like I am
pro pollution or anything. I like clean air, heck I
love clean air. I remember when I lived in LA in the late '70s--I would head back toward town after a weekend in the San Bernardino Mountains and look down on LA immersed in smog, and think to myself "I
really do not want to go back into that."
I am 100% behind any and all efforts to clean up, and keep clean, our environment--as long as those efforts are based on sound scientific techniques and data. Unfortunately, all too many of the environmental issues and efforts I see today are
not based on sound scientific techniques and data.
Think
hockey sticks, think
duplicity, think
greed, think
science perverted to serve ideological ends.
You might suppose that anyone with half a brain would have long ago figured out that
AGW (human-caused global warming) is an unproven premise at best -- but you would be wrong. Global warming alarmists make
Luddites look like starry-eyed technophiles. It's all "my way or the highway" with
AGW fanatics--case closed, door shut,
science settled thank you very much.
Invincible ignorance.
I admit that global warming enthusiasts can occasionally be amusing, however. A couple of years ago a group of them sailed off to the South Polar Region in order to watch "the rapidly melting Antarctic ice cap" (and also catch a glimpse of the odd
polar bear plummeting from the sky one suspects).
Alas, all they got to see was ice, lots and lots of it, as it formed around them and
froze their ship in place: "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean," or upon a painted ice-field or whatever.
Perhaps the passengers amused themselves by discussing the latest "
It's Colder Because It's Warmer" theory (global warming fanatics are not easily discouraged by mere reality). Their discussions must have been fascinating: "I know...let's change it from "global warming' to "
climate change'--yes, let's do! I mean the weather
does change after all--deny
that, "
deniers.'"
Despite the fact that the world has been experiencing a
cooling trend for the past fifteen years or so, the global warming alarmists continue to fan their fevered brows and weep over the sorry plight of the polar bear (whose population annoyingly continues
to climb no matter how much the AGW "scientists" spin, fold, and mutilate the scientific data).
Anyone who has looked into the global warming debate knows that the topic is rife with conflicting reports. A representative example is the controversy over the CO2 emissions put out by the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull (try saying
that three times fast--or
just once for that matter).
In a widely circulated article attributed to Australian
professor Ian Plimer, the claim was made that the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in 2009 released enough CO2 to negate the previous five years of man-made CO2 reduction. Bad news indeed for global warming alarmists, if true--but is it?
Got me--I am no expert on such things. But the attacks on Mr. Plimer were immediate, vicious, and numerous. From the liberal media's appalled reaction you would think that Plimer had proposed an annual "Kill A
Koala Day" or something of the sort.
In any event, I did my "due diligence" research on global warming a few years back, and as a result I don't trust any of the "scientific data" coming out of the global warming corner. The AGW "scientists" have proven themselves to be, in a word,
untrustworthy.
It is instructive and useful to understand the way that the famous (infamous) "
Hockey Stick Graph" (HSG) came into being and was used -- it is illustrative of the
underhanded machinations of the AGW crowd.
For those of you who may still be unfamiliar with the HSG: it earned its nickname because of its shape, which roughly follows a flat line that terminates in a sharp uptick at its terminus--like a hockey stick profile. It reputedly shows the levels of CO2 over the past ten centuries.
Inconveniently for global warming alarmists it is not exactly what you might call...scientifically accurate.
The HSG was much ballyhooed by AGW enthusiasts when it was unveiled in 1998, for it showed (or rather
appeared to show) that the planet's level of CO2 had been relatively stable until the time of the Industrial Revolution, when it experienced an abrupt upturn. We were told (and many school children continue to be taught) that global warming coincided with a relatively recent increased level of CO2, which in turn mirrored the onset and spread of the Industrial Revolution--hence global warming was caused by mankind. End of story, case closed, science settled.
Perhaps the HSG's main claim to fame rested on the fact that it seemed to dispense with the pesky
Medieval Warm Period (MWP). I say "pesky" because the MWP showed that the planet has experienced previous periods of global warmth, well
before the advent of the Industrial Revolution (it is worth noting that the HSG also pretty much eliminated the "
Little Ice Age" that followed the MWP as well). The MWP is rather more than pesky if you are an AGW enthusiast, for it leaves the whole AGW narrative on shaky ground indeed.
What if it could be proven that the data and methods used in arriving at the HSG's signature shape were in fact
intentionally manipulated to bring about the desired result? What if it could proven that
unscientific (to phrase it politely) methods were used in order to hide that pesky MWP? Well it
has been proven,
proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. Anyone with an open mind who does the research must
reach that conclusion.
If you think that the shape of the HSG was legitimately arrived at then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. And if "we the people" have been lied to about such an important and fundamental building block of
the AGW narrative, then what else have we been lied to about?
What else indeed.
As I say, I am all for clean air and a clean environment, but don't p--s on my leg and tell me it's raining, and don't expect me to buy into
the AGW scam when I know that any number of its "proven facts" are
proven lies.
When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) listed carbon dioxide (CO2) as a dangerous pollutant I imagine that the world's plant life (trees and such) took it pretty hard, seeing as how they need CO2 in order to survive. Well, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, as the saying goes. Sorry, plants, nothing personal but, adios.
