A Convenient Truth

Former Presidential candidate Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in bringing to light the issue of ‘Global Warming’. Yet the hypocrisy of the award was not lost on some as Gore continued to travel to his speaking engagements in a private jet – a machine which, in one trip across the United States, burned more fuel than the average American family car would in an entire year.
Much criticism of the issue of ‘Global Warming’ has been expressed over the last few years since the release of Gore’s award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Many scientists in many fields have issued statements regarding the state of the planet, saying that any change in climate is due to naturally occurring phenomena and not from the actions of mankind. To suggest that man, in a relatively short time since the beginning of the industrial age, has screwed the planet to such an extent as to what is claimed by Gore and his supporters is sheer lunacy, some say. In the wide expanse of time since the planet was seemingly formed, man’s existence is the equivalent to a grain of sand on One Mile Beach. The planets’ climate shifts – it has always been so and there is nothing we can do about it.

Growing evidence seems to support the idea of naturally occurring climate change. Many of the graphs and illustrations used by Gore in An Inconvenient Truth were used in a way to support the thesis being presented. Yet alternate suggestions for these changes and even alternate data point towards the opposite. For example, the ‘frightening’ claim that the glaciers of the Himalayas – which provide one sixth of the water used by mankind – are vanishing and will have disappeared completely in 25 years seems entirely false. A British study, published by the American Meteorological Society in 2006, found that glaciers are only shrinking in the eastern Himalayas. West, in the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram, glaciers are “thickening and expanding”.

Many scientists argue that if temperatures are rising on one side of the planet, they are dropping on the other side. It is all relative. Botanist David Bellamy, writing in The Australian newspaper earlier this week, points out that 10,000 years ago Australia would have been under ice. Thank goodness for global warming, he says, or we all would not be here. Bellamy and others like him voicing dissent across the globe have been met with vicious hysteria. They are branded ‘paranoid conspiracy theorists’ even though their statements have nothing to do with ‘paranoia’ or ‘conspiracy’. These are learned people who should be heard, not censored for practicing free speech.

Lately, the term ‘Global Warming’ has been replaced by the term ‘Climate Change’. Is this a response to the growing evidence to support the fact that the idea of man-made ‘Global Warming’ is a bald-faced lie, perpetuated by a select group of people with a particular agenda? There is no denying that the planet is experiencing climate change, but given the knowledge that it is merely the earth doing its’ thing, why are governments across the world creating legislation (including taxation) to combat an issue which simply cannot be overcome? What is the proposed plan of action for a problem that doesn’t exist? Any move to reduce toxic emissions into the atmosphere is definitely a good thing, but not through the use of baseless fearmongering.

If the knowledge that climate change is not the cause of man, what is the possible agenda to ignore the evidence and create solutions for a non-existent problem? That is the question worth asking.

by Max Drake

(Sources: The Australian; The Telegraph (UK). Read the articles at:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0%2C25197%2C24700827-7583%2C00.html and
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/23/do2310b.xml )