In an editorial in The Citizen on Feb. 26 Joseph Garofalo makes several points about global warming (now called climate change). I would like to point out a few issues I see with his argument.
He cites a recent survey which claims that 97 percent of scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. There are numerous articles available that point out serious flaws with this survey. You can do an Internet search for “97 percent debunked” and review them at your leisure.
One article in The American Thinker noted that a review of this survey “found that only 1 – 3 percent of respondents explicitly stated agreement with the IPCC declarations on global warming.”
There are, of course, a lot of counter-arguments on the Internet; again, you can peruse them at leisure. However, to claim that there is “97 percent agreement” based on this survey is an extreme stretch.
This appears to be another case of the global warming alarmists running with a study that can’t stand up to scrutiny (there have been numerous cases in the past where they tried to prevent anyone who wasn’t a true believer from reviewing their work).
A second point is that the misleading survey only claims that there is agreement that humans are causing global warming. This leaves out the following questions: (1) will it be beneficial or harmful overall; (2) if it is harmful on balance, will the cost be significant; and (3) is it cheaper to adapt to any impacts than to greatly increase the cost of energy and other necessities of life?
A third point is the claim that there must be some type of “corporate conspiracy” that controls the media and government that is fighting against the brave scientists trying to save us.
This ignores the fact that there is a mountain of money available to corporations that play along with “Big Green” (Solyndra, GE, etc.). There is also a mountain of research money available to scientists who support “Big Green.”
There have been a number of cases over the past 10 years where scientists who are true believers have argued that anyone who disagrees with them should be professionally ostracized or stripped of credentials.
If there is any conspiracy it is on the part of the true believers, the ClimateGate emails clearly showed that the true believers were working very hard behind the scenes to manipulate the definition of “peer reviewed” to prop up their case.
A final point in his editorial is the old Malthusian argument that resources are finite and the growing human population is going to doom us all. This theory has been proven wrong time and again (anybody remember the “Population Bomb” craze of the ’60s and ’70s?). People today live longer, healthier and more pleasant lives than ever before.
Our best bet to ensure a better future is not to stop using affordable, plentiful energy sources and to change to expensive and unreliable ones (windmills and solar panels, for example).
The same people who want us to lower our standard of living and reduce our freedom because of climate change were asking us to do the same thing because of global warming 10 years ago and overpopulation 20 years before that.
I will admit that I believe that it is possible that the true believers are right and global warming will turn out to be a serious problem. However, they haven’t made a remotely convincing case and have been caught cherry-picking data and changing their story.
They stopped calling it global warming when it turned out that the planet wasn’t warming anymore (it hasn’t for the past 15+ years). Many of their high priests such as Al Gore made predictions about ice caps and snow-free winters that have been proven false. Finally, their computer models have failed time and again.
They have an extremely shaky case to justify the large sacrifices they ask us to make.
Steve Metz
Peachtree City, Ga.
