The Global Warming Debate is Over

Or so declares Laurie David, who's only claim to fame is being the bored wife of the guy who co-created Seinfeld, in today's LA Times:

THIS IS THE most monumental Earth Day since its inception more than 30 years ago because the issue of global warming is finally catapulting toward a tipping point. With the debate firmly behind us, the focus is turning to solutions.

Really? The debate is behind us? Did she figure that out while zooming across the country in her gas-guzzling private jet?

Somebody should have told the Times the argument was "behind us", and therefore they could have spared their tree-hugging readers the pain of Jonah Goldberg's column in yesterday's Times which seemed to indicate that the argument is still very much alive.

Hence the irony of the title "An Inconvenient Truth." It is the green scare that has no patience for inconvenient truths. For example, Gore blames the disappearing snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro on global warming, but a 2003 study in Nature identified the clear-cutting of surrounding moisture-rich forests as the culprit. In the famously fact-checked New Yorker, Editor David Remnick pens a love letter to Gore in which he laments that Earth will "likely be an uninhabitable planet" if we don't heed Gore's jeremiads. Oh … come … on!

This is just a small taste of the millenarian battiness running through the green scare. Sure, a one- or two-degree-per-century rise in average global temperatures may have unpleasant consequences — with some pleasant ones as well — but in what study did the New Yorker's fact-checkers verify that Earth will become uninhabitable? Moreover, the greens' proposed solutions to global warming are even more otherworldly. Reducing global carbon dioxide emissions to 60% of 1990 levels before 2050, while China, India and (hopefully) Africa modernize, is inconceivable, ill-conceived and also immoral because it would consign generations to poverty.

But none of that seems to matter to the greens. To them, the only thing we have to fear is the lack of fear itself.

And what about this from the Washington Times:

Global warming may not be as dramatic as some scientists have predicted.
Using temperature readings from the past 100 years, 1,000 computer simulations and the evidence left in ancient tree rings, Duke University scientists announced yesterday that "the magnitude of future global warming will likely fall well short of current highest predictions."

Supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, the Duke researchers noted that some observational studies predicted that the Earth's temperature could rise as much as 16 degrees in this century because of an increase in carbon dioxide or other so-called greenhouse gases.

The Duke estimates show the chances that the planet's temperature will rise even by 11 degrees is only 5 percent, which falls in line with previous, less-alarming predictions that meteorologists made almost three decades ago.

Of course, there's always another wacky view (also from the Washington Times article):

In recent years, much academic research has indicated otherwise, often in colorful terms and citing the United States as the biggest contributor to global warming. This month, a University of Toronto scientist predicted that a quarter of the planet's plants and animals would be extinct by 2050 because of rising temperatures. On Wednesday, two geophysics professors at the University of Chicago warned those who eat red meat that their increased flatulence contributes to greenhouse gases.

And then there's this link to an article on how experts have underestimated the Sun's direct role in global warming. The scientists at Duke have been busy. Good thing they're not on the lacrosse team or we'd never know any of this.

Bottom line - the debate is far from over, and just because some bored Hollywood housewife says it is and can get the LA Times to print her tripe, doesn't make it so.

Happy Earth Day to all you frustrated greenies out there. May your pagan gods smile upon you.

Related Tags: Global Warming, Earth Day, Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore