Mining Affairs Forum - “A Global Warming Primer for You and Your Friends”
By Ken Thornberg

To quote Ogden Nash, “I find it difficult to enthuse…over the current news. Just when you think the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens…And that is why I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were so right for so many of the wrong persons.” Wow, if only Ogden were alive today, would he have a fit or what?

Well, I for one am hoping that the truth about global warming is about to begin prevailing and that the “wrong persons” will not have everything go so right for them any longer. I have a cute cartoon in front of me that shows an older couple on a beach with parkas and snow hats on with a penguin walking by. The wife says to her husband, “I’d rub you down the sun tan lotion, but it was frozen to the potato salad!” I had a good laugh on that one. And then there is one of an Obama press gathering where one reporter asks the president, “What do you say about the BBC report that shows we have seen no global warming over the last eleven years?” To which the president replies, “You’re welcome.” Uhhhhhh….yeah.

How to Defend Your Position

In this column, I would like to give our readers something they can cut out and save to convince naysayers of the truth about the fallacy of global warming. It is difficult to cut and paste some facts for everyone, as there are so many to choose from. But we all need something we can share with other people who do not know the facts and only listen to network media for their news. Try the following on for size:

“Climategate” The scandal that entailed hundreds of pirated emails showing that researchers had manipulated and hidden climate-change data that proved that global warming is a hoax.
The share of mankind’s contribution to the so-called greenhouse effect is about one quarter of one percent (0.28), compared to 4.72% for ocean biologic activity, volcanoes, decaying plants, etc. and 95% from water vapor. Yes, you read that right. Anyone for doing a cap on the oceans? (Source: National Center for Policy Analysis)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a 2009 report claiming that global warming would cause the massive Himalayan glaciers to shrink to extinction by 2035. They deliberately exaggerated the report based on a World Wildlife Fund piece of campaign literature, which quoted from a 1999 article from the journal New Scientist which quoted an Indian scientist who had no specific data by which any melting was forecast to occur, nor had it been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal. The IPCC acknowledged it was a “regrettable error” only after using the bogus data to obtain about a half million dollars in grant money to study it! Oops.
The average temperature has risen about 1 degree Centigrade during the 20th Century—that is since 1900 folks! Most of this increase—60%--occurred prior to 1940 with the decade of the 19302 being the hottest on record in America. There was such a deep decline in the temperature since 1940 that they were warning of a coming Ice Age! Temps then turned around and hit a peak high in 1998 and have been dropping ever since.
Environmentalist extremists and left-wing politicians are seeking to get the United Nations (that bastion of freedom and liberty) to seek “climate justice” and present developed nations with a tab amounting to $6 Trillion (yes, trillion) over a decade to pay undeveloped nations. (Double our national budget for two years) Seems this group has much in common with hookers, who, by the way, according to a UN official, are growing in number because of global warming in the Philippines. This person says that the farming and fishing industries are suffering there from global warming so that unemployed women are being forced into prostitution. Uhhh…sure…no other jobs to creatively come up with, eh? I thought I’d heard it all.
Al Gore claims that the entire polar ice cap could be completely ice free within the next five to seven years. (From his Copenhagen speech) The scientist he quoted denied making such a statement! Then the Danish Meteorological Institute published a report showing how the ice cap measurements have not changed one iota in five years. Oops. The good news is that if the entire ice cap actually melted, it would not raise the oceanic depth one millimeter! It is no different than ice cubes melting in a glass of water. Some scientists are predicting Earth will experience a period of cooling for the next two or three decades. A climate modeler with the UN’s IPCC, Mojib Latif, explains that cyclical changes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans cause Earth’s temperatures to fluctuate between warm and cold modes every 20 to 30 years. He adds that we are at the beginning of a cooling period.
Jane Eert, Oceanographer, explained the polar ice cap “loss” during a cooling period as a result of winds. Winds can actually expert enormous amounts of ice, she says. Then she said the following surprising statement: “The guys who are running the long-term climate change models have a tough problem. They’re looking at really long time scales, and as a result they can’t look at a lot of details for each year. In order to get the results before you die, you have to fudge some things. And what they fudge is the small-scale stuff. But it turns out that probably the small-scale stuff is important, and fudging it gives you wrong answers.
Data collection at the U. of Illinois has confirmed two strange facts: Summer sea ice in the Arctic reached a 30-year minimum in 2007, while summer sea ice in Antarctica reached a 30-year maximum the same year! Total global sea ice extent in the past 30 years shows no trend. All of Al Gore’s scare tactics hold no merit—his “The ice is melting!” rant deserves as much attention as Chicken Little’s “The sky is falling.”
Retreating glaciers have been doing that for more than 100 years, even before any industrial age. A few retreating glaciers are revealing tree stumps!! So they are obviously not shrinking to some unprecedented sizes.

Warnings of what’s to Potentially Come for Mining and Consumers

Even while the U.S. has not been part of the Kyoto Treaty, carbon-dioxide emissions declined 3% from 2000 to 2006! The overall emissions of the 27 European signatories was up slightly, while the rate in Canada was up 21.3%! The quick-growing huge emitters such as China and India have been given an “emissions pass” so that there is no data on their emissions and they are not responsbile to answer to the world community for their violations! As one who has been to Beijing on a “clean air day” (what the Chinese called it), I can promise our readers that the percentage growth from there dwarfs Canada. I could not see a skyscraper even ¼ mile away on a sunny day the smog was so thick. Piles of rubber tires were being burned in the middle of downtown streets. No living fish in many of their rivers. It’s a mess.

A bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives that calls for a reduction of 17% in carbon-dioxide emissions from a 2005 baselines by year 2020 and 83% by year 2050. The harm to the U.S. economy will be substantial and will cost each household $3000 annually. One million jobs will be lost annually also. The Senate version, yet to pass, is even worse. Emissions would have to be slashed to 1977 levels—our population was 220 million then and now it is 305 million. The economy was half the size it is today. That bill’s 20% reduction would change our lives radically. Car and truck miles traveled would have to be reduced by one-third. Next the amount of coal burned to generate electricity would have to be cut in half! Own a pickup? Sorry, it will have to go. This is not a joke if this bill passes. All this for being responsible for 0.28% of the problem! Can anyone spell “insanity?” It’s all about government control and dictatorial rule over our nation. If we don’t speak up and contact our leaders now, it will be too late very soon. Just look at the makeup of Congress, everyone. The time to act is now.

Al Gore, in his latest book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, has produced an emotionally charged piece of propaganda which is amazing, if not alarming. Characteristically missing from his argument is evidence that humans are a significant cause of global warming. You can’t find the issue in his entire book. His entire appeal is emotional and majors in misinformation. He talks of how 65% of all electricity produced is lost but the truth is exactly the opposite. He says that we can shift towards renewable energy sources quickly today, but the truth is that, as an example, windmill generation has not increased or become more proficient in 30 years. Solar cells have reached their limit in converting wind to electricity and we cannot harness more wind or more sun. He criticizes the Atomic Energy Commission for not having 1000 nuclear power plants by year 2000. As one writer put it, “Well, duh, Al. If your buddies had not kept filing all of those lawsuits, we would have 1000 reactors and your hated coal would still be in the ground.” Finally, he wrote that the Amazon rain forest is losing 3900 square miles of land each year. But the arch-conservative newspaper, the New York Times wrote, For every acre of rainforest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing.” Oops. Gore’s solution? Cap and trade bills, but he won’t talk about its ramifications. Why should he? They won’t impact him. We covered that debacle a couple issues back.

Global warming has not gone away, but the facts and a cooling earth that God is responsible for, are helping to turn the tide. We could actually see truth prevail if we keep fighting hard and spreading the truth. I hope this column has helped you do so more easily.