Some Prize

Someone expressed profound disbelief to me that former Vice President Al Gore should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to raise awareness of the dangers of global warming. I was not surprised. In 1994, the Nobel foundation bestowed its award on the world's leading terrorist at the time, Yasir Arafat. If it could be awarded to someone like Yasir Arafat, the prize lost any credibility it might have had for me up until that time.

One has to wonder why, when the information former VP Gore presents is so full of inaccuracies that so many people in the field of climatology refuse to listen to other voices, within or without their ranks. Just last week, The New Zealand Centre for Political Research, a think tank, asked the Academy Awards organization to take back the two awards Al Gore's movie received. Their reasoning; a British High Court ruled recently that there were eleven inaccuracies in the documentary film that people must be made aware of.

Specifically, the High Court in Great Britain ruled that if "An Inconvenient Truth" is taken into schools in that country as an educational aid, that teachers are required to tell students that the documentary is factually inaccurate, and that those inaccuracies must be pointed out. Former British Environment Secretary David Miliband planned to get the film into every British school, and stated that scientific debate about whether global warming was caused by man "is over." Apparently, the British High Court disagrees. The judge went so far as to rule that the documentary portrayed "partisan political views," something which by law, is not supposed to be allowed in Great Britain's schools.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations shares the Peace Prize with former VP Gore, which is no surprise either. They seemed to have symbiotic relationship once the panel was formed. In many ways, they are a reflection of many smaller groups that have been pointing to man as the reason for what they assert is the almost certain and devastating effects of global warming.

Colorado State University professor Dr. William Gray spoke before a listening audience of nearly three hundred people at the University of North Carolina on the same day the Nobel Prize was awarded. In attendance were meteorologists and students who heard him say that the theory behind Al Gore's documentary is "ridiculous" because it came from "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works." Dr. Gray is not someone to be ignored. His studies in the area of seasonal hurricane forecasts are well-known, but people like him are losing ground. Why? I think the bottom line, as it is with so many things, is money. It seems that if one speaks out against the presently held popular view of global warming, one does not stand to receive any grants. "We're brainwashing our children," Dr. Gray said. "They're going to the Gore movie and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."

In his first public appearance since being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Al Gore announced, "We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing." Some who advocate that global warming will get much worse have said over the last year or so that sea water will likely rise to above twenty feet of their current levels, if things are left unchecked, and sooner than expected. In March 2006, a study was published that projected a temperature for Earth of four degrees warmer (Fahrenheit) than it is now. If that's true, the Arctic would become as warm as it was (theoretically) during the most recent period of interglaciation, thousands of years ago. It is believed that sea levels were twenty feet or so higher then.

This is the sheerest type of speculation, based on computer models, no less. It certainly isn't based on the kind of observational science people like Dr. Gray have been using for many years, and which Al Gore's documentary completely ignores. Dr. Gray has taught for years that there is a natural cyclic temperature fluctuation, specifically related to the level of salt in sea water. He also acknowledges that some global warming has occurred, but says that this natural cycle is responsible for that, not man. He also has stated that after this cycle of warming, a cooling trend will follow and probably last for several years.

Men like Dr. Gray will probably be written off as old school, but I believe he will be proved correct as time goes by. There will be a percentage of people who will listen to the facts. For instance, in "An Inconvenient Truth," the British High Court asserts, “In scene 12 Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans is ascribed to global warming. It is common ground that there is insufficient evidence to show that.”

Dr. Gray realized this long before Katrina slammed into U.S. soil. He gave statistics, citing the fact that from 1900 to 1949, there were one-hundred-one hurricanes, but that from 1957 to 2006, there were only eighty-three, and those in a period where the earth had warmed a bit. The math doesn't lie, yet some people are still behaving like alarmists. I heard a man whose name I didn't catch, interviewed just today, saying that we should expect Category 5, 6, 7 and even 8 hurricanes in the near future. Now how would he know that? What is he basing such sensationalist expectations on? What are the facts?

Climate models based on ice cores, old coral reefs, fossilized pollen and cores from marine and lake sediments may be interesting, but there is so much peripheral data that is not included with those composite studies and the models made from them that a realistic scenario cannot be constructed. You can't just take a portion of the facts and extrapolate a factual picture from partial information.

Dr. Gray said, "The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures." I think he's right, but I believe I'm shrinking into a real minority. I just watched a broadcast on the National Geographic Channel, which admittedly is known for its many scientific biases, and it was fascinating. It showed good observational scientific data on glacial retreat, and then mixed it with extremely liberal doses of the most sensationalistic speculation and worst case scenarios related to global warming, like a total meltdown of the Arctic glaciers, causing a two-hundred-thirty foot rise in global sea levels.

People are scared by these things, and they can be manipulated by fear. If you want to be scared by something, think about this......"Albert Gore--The Environmental President." Yikes.