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Chilled By The Heat
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, December 12, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Climate Change: The Midwest is frozen stiff, but global warming alarmists won't cool off. Not bound by clear thinking, they can aver that blistering hot and bitter cold are both caused by man burning fossil fuels.
Related Topics: Global Warming
If the zealots are right, global warming is the cause of just about any earthly ill or phenomenon. Hotter weather? It's caused by global warming. Colder weather? Global warming again. More rain? Global warming. Drought? Global warming.
Even an increase in vampire moths, insects that consume human blood, has been blamed on global warming.
In a tribute to rational thinking, and a welcome repudiation of silliness, John Brignell, a British engineering professor, has compiled "a complete list of things caused by global warming." Each of the more than 600 entries links to a story in which some so-called expert or "researcher" blames global warming for an unusual event, man-caused or no.
Taken individually, the items might seem to have some foundation in reality. It's plausible, of course, that a warmer world could cause glaciers to retreat or trigger an increase in malaria. But taken cumulatively (see numberwatch.co.uk), the foolishness quickly comes into focus.
For example, is global warming really causing both more and less rainfall? Larger and smaller harvests? Shrinking and growing ice sheets? How about dying and flourishing coral reefs, or rising and falling fish stocks?
Also attributed to global warming are: riots, nuclear war, frostbite, Earth fever, the Minneapolis bridge collapse, a boom in kittens and sharks, a bust in ducks and geese, struggling brothels, faster ocean waves, higher sewer bills, a spider invasion of Scotland, an end to cremation, and pay raises for lawyers.
There's also the inevitable catalog of extinctions — everything from wood lice to humans and leeches to pikas (rabbit-like creatures that live in the mountains).
One outcome Brignell doesn't have on his list — oblivion — can now be added. That is what awaits, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday at the United Nations global warming conference in Bali, if a comprehensive agreement on stopping climate change is not reached.
Not a lot of science in that statement, but it's just the sort of mystical nonsense that can be expected out of the United Nations.
But it took a spiritual man to bring clarity to the issue. In remarks planned for Pope Benedict XVI's annual World Peace Day address on Jan. 1, released Wednesday, the pontiff reminds the world that the global warming debate should be based on science, not "ideological pressure" used "to draw hasty conclusions."