The Writer's Voice
The World's Favourite Literary Website
Global Catastrophe
by
Gregory J. Rummo
SEPTEMBER 3, 2002
CLEAN WATER, CLEAN air and the alleviation of poverty were among the
goals discussed at the 2002 Johannesburg Summit, held from August 26 to
September 4.
They sound like worthwhile endeavors. Who would argue that a decrease in air and
water pollution and an increase in the per-capita wealth of the poor aren’t
laudable goals?
Unfortunately, the majority of the attendees at Johannesburg Climate Legacy 2002 were ill suited for implementing their own agenda. They are simply nut cases, whose ideas are so far-fetched most of them should be ignored.
Carbon dioxide emissions and global warming were on everybody’s agenda. But the ‘science’ under girding the premise that the earth has been steadily warming due to the indiscriminate use of fossil fuel continues to be suspect, beginning with the computer models that portend drastic climate changes on the earth.
The adage, “garbage in equals garbage out” applies here.
Faulty data supported by questionable assumptions embraced by left-leaning pseudo-scientists fed into a computer is incapable of producing accurate forecasts. And the computer simulations are similar to the ones meteorologists use to predict the weather and, well, that should be enough to tip anyone off.
But it’s not just bad computer modeling.
Accuracy in Media’s 2002 report on global warming featured comments from experts in the field of environmentalism and meteorology.
Dr. S. Fred Singer, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project points out, “a study of carbon dioxide and temperatures over the last 11,000 years that was analyzed in both Science and Nature in 1999 found that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tends to follow not precede a rise in temperature.”
He further explained, “The bulk of the temperature rise in the 20th century took place before 1940 while most of the carbon dioxide emissions took place after 1940 and coincided with a slight cooling between 1940 and 1975.”
Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of meteorology at MIT, in his testimony before a Senate committee earlier this year, stated that past climate changes were either “uncorrelated with changes in carbon dioxide or were characterized by temperature changes which preceded changes in carbon dioxide [levels] by hundreds or thousands of years.”
The global warming alarmists ignore these voices of reason. There’s nothing like the hard facts of science to create enough cognitive dissonance to threaten an agenda. The mainstream media is no better. It has made global warming its cause celebre. Objective journalists rarely present the research that refutes global warming in a positive light if at all. They’re too busy featuring the hysteria of the Chicken Littles.
The United States should continue to remain obdurate in its refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol—an inane agreement that would force us to drastically limit carbon dioxide emissions—and in so doing, drastically crimp our economic engine. Even the green team of Clinton-Gore couldn’t accept its Draconian restrictions. And the US Senate passed a resolution in 1998 against its adoption by a vote of 95-0.
Clean water was another topic addressed in Johannesburg. As delegates sat around tables in plush surroundings sipping bottled spring water, they established a goal of a fifty percent reduction in the number of people with poor sanitation by 2015.
But there were no concrete proposals, only paper agreements.
The US has the deepest pockets and the biggest heart of any country on the planet. But when America offers aid it comes with strings attached. We require countries that receive aid from us to have an acceptable form of government, for example.
This constraint seems reasonable. But it rubs the malcontents that show up at these summits the wrong way. And since they always manage to get their faces in front of a camera, America is branded as an evil, “rogue nation.”
If the environmentalists really want to see the poor of the world lifted out of poverty, then it is the American model that should be showcased.
Like it or not, the only force capable of making any discernible improvement in the infrastructure of destitute Third World countries is big, private, American business.
It’s too bad that so many of the participants are leftover socialists who hate everybody and everything remotely affiliated with the United States. That animus has blinded them to the true greatness of this country, which is the result of its religious and political freedom working in tandem with democracy and capitalism.
As long as fostering the belief that America is the enemy and capitalism continues to destroy people is made the centerpiece of Earth summits, there is little real hope for the poor of the world to improve their environment.
And that is the real global catastrophe.
Gregory J. Rummo is a syndicated columnist and author of “The View from
the Grass Roots,” published in July, 2002 by American-Book and available from
Amazon.com. You may order an autographed copy from his website
www.GregRummo.com. E-mail the author at
GregoryJRummo@aol.com
Critique this work
Click on the book to leave a comment about this work
