Global Warming Computer Hackers

Conservatives and liberals all agree that we need to do everything we can to save and protect the environment.  Many of the suggestions coming from the liberals will kill jobs.   I prefer win-win solutions to those that protect the environment and protect our jobs and economy.

 One of my problems with global warming advocates is that their suggestions will cost many Americans their jobs, yet they are casual about the scientific evidence.  They are willing to ignore any evidence that contradicts their arguments.  The winter of 2007 broke all cold records.  There was ice in Viet Nam that year.  I was there for the better part of 3 years—winter, summer, fall and spring—and there was no ice, no winter at all. But two years ago, thousands of cattle froze.  The global warming advocates refused to include that winter in their calculation because it messed up the model.  They exclude forest fires and volcanic eruptions both of which dwarf human inputs of carbon in the atmosphere.

We have taken our jobs for granted in this country.  It has been generations since we have experienced the hopelessness of not having steady incomes.  We carelessly gave away the great manufacturing jobs this nation once had.  We now have an economy that is 70% retail.  That is not the way to ensure a great future for our country.  Yet Congress is continuously enacting policies, which will cause more jobs to disappear.

I have seen economies with few jobs and no hope.  I lived in the Philippines for a year and a half and spent time on bases in Vietnam and Thailand.

I knew bright young men and women in all three cultures who worked extremely hard to get the highly coveted civilian jobs on base. If one did not get these jobs they could still hope for a second tier of jobs associated with the base; young women could hope to be a maid on the Air Force base, and young men worked hard to get positions washing the servicemen’s cars.   Young men in their mid 20’s would wash and guard your car for a month for $20.  The eagerness for this kind of work came from the fact that these countries had extremely limited economies with very few jobs. 

I was the minority leader in the congressional hearing of the Resources Committee that dealt with global warming.  Such a hearing should be concerned with facts. I invited the only scientist on the panel, Tim Ball.  He testified that the science is very unclear on whether the carbon in the atmosphere is manmade.   The fact is that scientists are still deeply divided on the issue.

On the other hand, the Democrat majority invited 4 panelists: a ski resort owner, an advocate for polar bears, a mountain bike rental shop owner and a person who advocated on behalf of putting out forest fires.  They were nice people, but their testimony did not touch the hard scientific facts.  They gave sound bites like: “Global warming is causing more forest fires”, “Global warming is causing our ski season to be shorter”, Global Warming is causing the polar ice caps to melt; the polar bear has no habitat."

The polar ice caps did diminish over about 10 years from 5 million square miles to 1 million square miles, but then in 2007, in one winter, they grew back to the original 5 million square miles. These issues deserve to be discussed, especially if the ensuing policy will cost us the jobs and the livelihoods of our friends, neighbors, and children.  We cannot afford to sweep under the rug the arguments of either side. We cannot afford a contaminated environment. We cannot afford a nation without jobs.  We cannot afford lives without hope.

The global warming discussion is being used to fuel the policy of Cap and Trade.  This proposal will cost families about $1,700 more per year.  It will cost our economy thousands of jobs.  It will cost consumers untold amounts in higher gasoline costs.

But most importantly, it will not improve the environment.  This is the important thing to understand about this kind of legislation.  Cap and trade does not really cap or control carbon emissions but it does take billions away from business.  Common sense will tell you that all this does is raise cost of business in the U.S., it makes our companies less competitive.  Other nations will get the jobs when we become less competitive. Those industries and those pollutions won’t go away.  They simply move to India or China, to places that pollute and contaminate far more than would ever occur in the U.S.  We lose our jobs, we lose our livelihoods, and we lose our power to make a difference in the world.

And The Environment Is No Better Off.

It is a critical debate, so the science underlying it is critical. The congressional hearing—heavy on hype and low on scientific fact—did not serve the public well.  The scientists who reject evidence do not serve the country well.  The activists who would have us make drastic decisions without considering the consequences do not serve the world well.

Thousands of emails were recently leaked which indicated that global warming activists know their arguments are flawed.  They arrogantly refuse to acknowledge the weakness of their position, and resort to name calling to stifle debate on this issue.  In the links below you can see all the source material for yourself that is going largely unreported by the media.

Below is some commentary on the leaked emails.  You can download the whole batch at this website: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=U44FST89
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal has an interesting take on this disclosure with his article “Settled Science?” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704779704574552533758682774.html)

Taranto states: “This is downright Orwellian.  What the [Washington] Post describes is not vigorous debate but an attempt to suppress debate—to politicize a predetermined result… If they have the facts on their side, why do they need to resort to tactics of suppression and intimidation?”

And James Delingpole of Human Events (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34550) points out that emails reveal several dubious practices.  He lists seven:

• Manipulation of evidence.
• Concealing private doubts about whether the world is really heating up.
• Destruction of evidence.
• Fantasizing violence against prominent climate skeptic scientists.
• Gloating over news of the death of a prominent climate-change skeptic.
• Attempting to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period.
• Communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process.

That’s incredible when you stop to think about it.  Scientists trying to advance their own agenda at the expense of the truth!

Before we put more US jobs at risk by this very controversial Cap and Trade legislation, before we accept an ineffective proposal, before we fall victim to scare tactics and hasty conclusions, I will insist that we get the science right.  It is the least I can do—and the most important—to protect the economic and environmental future for our kids and grandkids.