COOL THOUGHTS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AND

 

POLITICAL PREVARICATION

 

 

“Global Warming” is a catchall phrase, which is meant to grab the public’s attention around the world. It is an attempt to be a warning that human activity can overheat this planet, resulting in dire changes to global climate, to the detriment of human existence. It is the intent of this paper to show that Global Warming, as portrayed, is a scientific possibility, not a probability, and that political motivations in this country and in the United Nations have purposely created a fright scenario. The news media, which thrives on crises and disasters, have seized upon this science of fright to propel the mythology surrounding the science. Unfortunately, the science involved in global climatology is extremely complex, and must be explored first in this paper to try and give some definition to where we really are in our understanding of global climate. The political motives, I think, are much simpler and will be presented afterward.

There are up to five million parameters in modeling climate. Defining and placing all of them in computer programs would overwhelm computer capacity. Therefore, the main thrust of climatologic science in order to outline civilization’s contribution to climate change must be to define all the major “ causes of natural change of the climate….that way we can subtract out the natural changes and look for the human signal”, i.e., the effect human activity might have on the climate. (Sallie Baliunas, Ph. D., Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Deputy Director Mt. Wilson Observatory; interview 4/23/01, techcentralstation.com)

 The thrust of my argument is: first, there is no doubt among climatologists that the earth currently is in a warming trend, but it is the size of the trend and its cause that is in dispute; second, the “human signal” has not been quantified, and it must be in terms of comparison with all the other climate control parameters; resulting, third, in rational decisions for changes in energy production and conservation, so as to avoid harming the economy of any country; which, fourth, will clearly show that the Kyoto Accord is putting a political cart before an unproven scientific horse.

Let’s start the science with our solar system. The Earth, about 4.5 billion years old, has maintained a relatively steady climate that has supported life for 3.8 billion years. Our orbit around the sun, unlike the elliptical orbits of the other planets, is almost circular, off by just three percent, allowing for approximately equal radiant heat at all points on the orbit. The other planets bake and freeze alternately. This precise orbit also is placed in an unusual position when the average distances of the orbits of the other planets are studied. Except for the Earth, all other planets occupy positions about twice as far away as the next closer planet. In millions of kilometers the distances from the sun are Mercury 58, Venus 110, Earth 150, Mars 230, asteroids 440, Jupiter 780, Saturn 1430 and Uranus 2880. (“The Science of God”, Schroeder, 1997)

 Not only is the amount of heat received from the Sun remarkably constant year ‘round, “the temperature of the Earth’s surface has remained remarkably constant over [its history], a fact [based on] the presence of liquid water” for most of that history and attested to by the presence of water-based life on Earth for the last 3.8 billion years. The heat from the sun has increased about 30 percent since the Earth was formed, which is the way medium-sized stars act; but the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, present in very large amounts as the Earth formed and which has always provided a necessary greenhouse effect to hold heat on the Earth’s surface, declined as living plants appeared, using the carbon dioxide to manufacture themselves, allowing more heat to escape, and “matching rather precisely the increasing output of heat from the Sun.” (“The Cosmic Blueprint,” Davies, 1988) Note the preceding phrase, “necessary greenhouse effect to hold heat,” which our atmosphere could not do if greenhouse gases were not present. The Earth’s enormous volume of water also plays a major role. Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas of all, exerting 93 % of the entire greenhouse effect.   Also, aerosols probably play a much more important role in greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, but it is about carbon dioxide that all the fuss is made.

 The strongest greenhouse gas, molecule for molecule, exclusive of water vapor and ten times stronger in effect than carbon dioxide, is methane, a product in animal flatulence, but primarily a result of decomposition of vegetable matter in wetlands, areas environmentalists love to save. Although this is true of methane, it is currently at very low concentrations in the atmosphere and therefore does not play a large greenhouse role. Until 1990 methane concentrations had been rising, causing environmentalists to ask for reductions in domesticated animal herds, but during the 1990’s the concentrations inexplicably dropped, confusing the computer models of climate change. (“The Satanic Gases”, Michaels and Balling, Jr., 2000) I cannot find an explanation of the cause of the drop in the literature I have followed, and in fact some scientific commentaries state the cause has not been identified. Other greenhouse gases that play a minor role because of very low concentration are nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons.

The greenhouse gases exert their effect in the troposphere, the lowest zone of our atmosphere, up to 50,000 feet in summer and 35,000 feet in winter. As greenhouse gases block the escape of heat from the earth’s surface, troposphere temperatures rise and the temperature of the next higher atmospheric layer, the stratosphere falls. Measurements of tropospheric temperatures rising while stratospheric temperatures are falling are complementary findings of global warming. (“Satanic Gases”)

Returning to the “bad boy”, as carbon dioxide has been presented through the news media, please remember the interlocking cycle of plant and animal life inferred above. When life started on Earth most of the oxygen present was locked up in iron ore. Anaerobic bacteria (cyanobacteria) and plants were the first life, not dependent on oxygen, and as their photosynthesis manufactured free oxygen into the atmosphere, that rising oxygen concentration allowed animal life to appear later on.

 Besides the balance between plant and animal respiration controlling oxygen and carbon dioxide levels there is the “carbon dioxide rock cycle”, which scientists now believe exerts enormous control “on the balance of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere.” This cycle works in the following way: the Earth’s hot liquid core of molten iron and nickel is kept hot by radioactive decay of uranium and other radioactive metals, and the low-density outer crust floats and moves over the core as a series of plates (recently discovered by geologists and called plate tectonics). This creates the recently recognized continental drift (in the latter half of the 20th century) and explains why volcanic activity appears in linear fashion, i.e., the “ring of fire” around the Pacific. Warming of atmospheric temperature increases the weathering of rocks, such as granite, made of calcium silicate. The calcium combines with carbon dioxide to form limestone, which is carried into the oceans by rainwater. Obviously, this removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by the weathering process tends to lower the earth’s temperature. The limestone is deposited on the ocean floor and eventually is carried under a continental plate, where it is decomposed by heat from the core, releasing carbon dioxide to be vented into the atmosphere by volcanic activity, thereby tending to raise the earth’s temperature. (“Rare Earth”, Ward and Brownlee, 2000) These authors feel that the carbon dioxide-rock cycle caused by plate tectonics is the major thermostatic control of our climate’s temperature range. The plant- animal respiration cycle is, of course, another important global thermostat. The generally accepted human contribution of carbon dioxide from the use of fossil fuels is only 5 percent of yearly total world carbon dioxide production. (“Satanic Gases”)

 As an aside, our atmosphere is made up of gases and water vapor ionized by the sun’s radiation. (Also, think ozone, which is the last of the greenhouse gases not mentioned so far, and which helps deflect enough of that lethal sun radiation to protect us. Only when ozone is at the surface is it bad.) The charges on those gases help hold our atmosphere around the earth, attracted as they are by the earth’s magnetic field, which in turn is created by convection currents in the molten core. It is our atmosphere, captured by the Earth and when warmed by greenhouse gases, which allows us to be here and investigate global warming. Another example of the interlocking arrangements that help control the earth’ environment and allow life.

The last major cycle, which is not a thermostat but which has a profound effect on earth temperature, is the ice age cycle, seven in number. The first occurred 2.5 billion years ago and is referred to as “Snowball Earth”, because of the very low temperatures with widespread freezing of the oceans. A similar severe snowball age occurred between 800-650 million years ago. Since then the ages have been milder, appearing about every 150 million years, and we currently experiencing the most recent one, which is about 2.5 million years old. We are now considered to be in an interglacial period of this current ice age, a warming trend since the glaciers last ice age receded about 12,000 years ago. Why? Interglacials, warming and cooling trends, generally last about 100,000 years. Each ice age tends to be longer than 2.5 million years; considering the age of the earth, 4.5 billion years, adding up all the time ice ages have been present (somewhat over 20 million years), for more than 99% of the life of the earth there has been no ice. A layer called tillite, a rock identified as hardened glacial drift, is employed by geologists to outline this ice history. (“Rare Earth”; Encarta Encyclopedia)

Note that ice ages occur only in the Northern Hemisphere. There is no clear-cut theory to explain this other than continental drift, which resulted in placement of landmasses blocking warming ocean currents from reaching the north, and the larger landmasses of the north creating a colder climate, with both playing a role. The ice ages themselves are thought to be due to rotation of our galaxy every 300 million years taking our solar system through regions of increased interstellar dust, reducing heating from the sun and also by passing through changing magnetic and gravitational fields. The interglacial cycles are generally but not perfectly related to the interaction of: 1) Slight elliptical changes in the earth’s orbit every 100,000 years; 2) Tilt of the equatorial plane in relation to the orbital plane every 41,000 years: and 3) A wobble of our polar axis occurring every 26,000 years. Milutin Milankovitch, a Yugoslav scientist developed the mathematical formulas to describe this relationship in the 1930’s. (“The Atlas of the Living World,” Whitfield et al., 1989)

I apologize for all this cosmic detail, but it is extremely important to recognize that “change” is the only thing constant about climate and weather, and there are a great many interlocking systems both outside the Earth and on Earth, itself, affecting temperature as one aspect of climate. We should wonder how civilization would handle the next ice age, with glaciations southward to the Alps and south of the Great Lakes, and average temperature declines of 12-18 degrees Fahrenheit. Our current 6,000 years of civilization has occurred during a rather mild period of climate. For example, “when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the carbon dioxide concentration was about 10 times higher than it was before the industrial revolution. And yet the temperature was only about 10 degrees Centigrade (18 degrees Fahrenheit) above what it is today.” (“Satanic Gases”)

 Coming up to the present, since the last glacial period ended “about 11,000 years ago, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere has varied from around 260 parts per million (ppm) to about 320 ppm,” (“Satanic Gases”) and was 260 ppm, at the lower end of the natural variation range, in the middle of the last century. This data, indicating a natural variation of 60 ppm was derived from studies of trapped gases in ice cores, which have been used to study ancient atmosphere as far back as 200,000 years ago. (Wagner, F. et. al., Science 284, 1999) Currently, carbon dioxide is present at a level of 370 ppm, a rise of 110 ppm in 150 years and about 50 ppm above the natural variation range, undoubtedly due in large part to the massive increase in use of fossil fuels during the past 150 years of the Industrial Revolution. The total rise in 150 years is 42%, and the rise above the average (290 ppm) of the natural variation range is 28%. Despite this recent sizeable increase in carbon dioxide concentration, the 20th Century has had an average increase in temperature over the 19th Century of only one degree Fahrenheit!! And most of that increase occurred before 1940, (“Science Has Spoken: Global Warming is a Myth”, Robinson & Robinson, Wall Street J. [WSJ], 12/4/97) followed by a cooling trend to 1970, and then a slight warming for the past 30years. There is nothing here that correlates with the steady advance of carbon dioxide concentration.

And this one-degree increase is influenced by the Little Ice Age, totally confusing the interpretation of this minute rise. The Little Ice Age began in the 1300’s and finally came to an end about 1850. There were severe winters in both North America and Europe. Think of the American Continental Army suffering at Valley Forge, and also of the famous portrait of Washington crossing the Delaware, ice floes scattered across the surface of the river. The drop in temperature was an average four degrees Fahrenheit from the previous medieval warm period that occurred around the year 1000, a stretch of time that was two degrees warmer than now, and is known as the Medieval Climate Optimum. (“Global Warming is 300-Year-Old News”, Robinson & Robinson, WSJ, 1/18/00) Around the year 1000 the Vikings discovered a new land out in the North Atlantic, well forested and with a climate that allowed farming at its southern end. We now refer to that glacier-covered island as Greenland, so-named by the Vikings. There is no scientific evidence that these large climatic temperature changes were related to changes in carbon dioxide concentration. But from 1645-1705 sunspots were noted to have largely disappeared, which may have contributed to the lower temperatures. (Review of “The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850,” by Brian Fagan, 2000, in Scientific American, May 2001)

How do we know these historical temperatures? Accurate thermometers have given us obviously reliable worldwide climate temperatures for only 100 years (about 300 years in Great Britain), but scientists have used a variety of inferential approaches to establish them going back for thousands of years. Obviously there are historical references to the climate to help the various scientific approaches, but the methods do support each other to establish rather precise estimates. The scientific methods include: studies of the size of tree rings; ice borings into glaciers and ice caps; coral growth rings in shallow ocean (Baliunas, techcentralstation.com); studies of “thermally dependent oxygen isotopes in fossils of the ocean floor”, specifically in the Sargasso Sea (“Its not PC to blame Mother Nature”, American Spectator, May 2001); analyses of advances and retreats of glaciers; and borings into the earth. (Temperature trends over the past five centuries reconstructed from borehole temperatures”, Huang, Pollack, & Shen, Nature 403, 756-758, 2000) The “ice core records—drilled in high latitudes and polar regions to pull up a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand years of ice core layers that tell the temperature- there’s some warmings and coolings there over decades that are astonishing: several degrees. Not man-made”. (Baliunas, techcentralstation.com)

To me, the changes in temperature over the past 3,000 years are astonishing. Those marked variations cannot scientifically be related to carbon dioxide, which as stated before varies over the centuries between 260 and 320 ppm in the atmosphere.

  

The figure on the left shows estimates of temperatures from the Sargasso Sea study starting from 1000 B.C. to the present. Note the mean temperature for the period of 73.4 degrees, which is somewhat above the current value. Note also how the estimates fit the historical record of the Medieval Climate Optimum and the Little Ice Age.

The Sargasso Sea study appeared in Science, was carefully peer-reviewed, and is widely accepted as accurate to represent the whole earth’s climate. Dr. Lloyd Keigwin, who is an oceanographer at Woods Hole Observatory, Massachusetts, conducted it. Dr. Baliunas has recently confirmed these temperatures with an oxygen isotope study in peat bogs of northeastern China, extending the estimates back for 6,000 years from the present. (Am. Spectator. May 2001) and also proving the point that the Sargasso Sea temperatures really illustrate worldwide temperature variations. The answer to the question, what causes those large variations in earth temperature, may well be provided in the figure on the right, data from Baliunas’ study of solar sunspot and magnetic activity, her major field of expertise. It can be seen there is an amazing correlation between solar magnetic cycle length in years and deviations of earth temperature, starting in 1750 for which there are scattered thermometer records. Sunspots have been followed for over 300 years (as noted on page 8 in the discussion of the Little Ice Age).

Returning to the 20th Century, Dr. Baliunas observes: “Temperature records show a rise of 0.5 degree Celsius over the century, peaking before 1940. The average surface temperature then decreased until the 1970’s (when the doomsayers were warning of an impending ice age) and has since risen a modest 0.2 degree Celsius. Because more than 80% of the manmade carbon dioxide has entered the air since the ‘40s, the early-century warming of 0.5 degree must be natural”. (WSJ, 8/5/99) It is obvious; there is no way of identifying a human carbon dioxide “footprint” in this data.

 Actually there is some scientific opinion and some experimental evidence to suggest that there has been no rise at all in surface temperature during the 20th Century. For example, urbanization creates “heat islands” in and around cities, and most observation stations have been in or near cities. Note Bush Intercontinental Airport here, surrounded by subdivisions, is also our official weather station. When this “heat island” effect is subtracted from surface temperature data, the recent “rise” in those temperatures either completely disappears (S. Fred Singer, Letters to the Editor, WSJ, 3/16/01) or is abated to a very small increase. (oism.org/pproject/, figures 12 &13; and “Satanic Gases,” Figure 5.1, page 77) Another very forceful finding is that the weather satellites, which have been in orbit since 1979 and are accurate to +/- 0.02 degrees Fahrenheit, show no appreciable change in overall global temperature, 0.0567 degrees F/ decade. (“The Skeptical Environmentalist”, B. Lomborg, 2001)  Weather balloons, which rise as high as 80,000 feet, fully confirm the satellites. (“Satanic Gases”, pages 81-84, & “The Skeptical Environmentalist”) And finally, measurements of seawater temperature, when used directly, have been found to overestimate earth warming. Use of sea-air temperatures lowers the estimates of rise by about 40%. Buoys in the Pacific that measure sea and air temperatures simultaneously were analyzed. (Reported in “Geophysical Research Letters”, website: telegraph.co.uk, 1/14/01)

One conclusion appears obvious: current science does not find evidence of the human production of carbon dioxide changing climate temperature at present. But scientists all agree that carbon dioxide, in a high enough concentration, can raise the temperature in the future. Unfortunately the current computer models cannot make an accurate prediction of the carbon-dioxide-induced temperature effect for the future. “Our planet’s atmosphere is a complicated system with many positive and negative feedback loops and unpredictable responses. Changes in vegetation, land use and cloud covers all have an impact on Earth’s temperature and are components of these loops. The only way to isolate the effects of greenhouse gases is to increase them without changing anything else. The experiment, of course, cannot be conducted”. (My italics, Robert E. Davis, associate professor of climatology, U. of Virginia, Houston Chronicle, 9/22/96)

 Other confounding factors include soot in the air causing warming (Kenneth Green, techcentralstation.com/, science and technology, 2/12/01), sulfate aerosols cooling effect (“Satanic Gases”, page 133), and the size of ice and snowfields, and oceanic whitecaps, which can reflect sunlight and heat. Some of these latter effects can be analyzed by studying the earth’s albedo, the earth’s reflective ability, which can be measured by looking at the soft glow on the dark side of the moon. This is “earthshine” created by sunlight reflected off the earth. For some reason it is 2.5% lower than it was five years ago. This effect on the moon is not included in current models of global climate change. (“Scientific American”, July 2001, page 29)

The models that are used to mimic earth’s climate are called General Circulation Models (GCM’s) and use super computers to cover areas of the earth up to 192,000 square miles, envision five Iowas, topped by 40,000 feet of troposphere. (“Satanic Gases”) All of the parameters that create temperature and climate must be put into the model and human judgment must come into play, deciding the weight to give each factor, in relation to other factors, not to mention the magnitude of each parameter. For example, how much cloud cover should there be? Obviously much more at times of heavy rain, and much less when there is a drought cycle, such as during the Dust Bowl era. There are dozens of GCM’s at work, but in 1990 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used only five of them for estimations and predictions. (“Satanic Gases”) It is not clear if using more GCM’s would help in predicting climate and temperature, considering that each GCM covers a very limited portion of the earth. However they all tend to predict an overestimate of temperature increases when the future as predicted is compared to what actually happens. “No GCM has ever succeeded in creating a troposphere that behaves at all like the observed data of the last quarter of the 20th Century.” (“Satanic Gases”) They all have severe systemic errors, and do not work in either direction, forward or backward in time, following the GIGO rule: garbage in, garbage out.

Concluding this scientific review, it is quite clear that the effect of human production of carbon dioxide on our climate cannot currently be demonstrated, and the effect in the future cannot currently be accurately predicted. That does not negate, however, the realization that enough carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere may cause a troublesome rise in global temperature in the future. One mitigating factor must be noted. Rising temperature and rising carbon dioxide help plant growth in a longer growing season. (oism.org/pproject, figs. 17-23, and “Satanic Gases”) “A composite of 279 research studies predicts that overall plant growth rates will ultimately double as carbon dioxide increases.” (Robinson & Robinson, WSJ op ed, 12/4/97) Carbon dioxide is a great plant fertilizer. As the population of the planet climbs, a modest change in this direction will be very beneficial.

The Politics

If the scientific findings I have presented are generally accepted, what is the fuss? Simply put, a difference of opinion among scientists whether the slight rise in overall global temperature during the latter half of the 20th century is a sign of global warming due to carbon dioxide and/or also whether there can be expected some rise in global temperature averages in the next century due to carbon dioxide. Science is not meant to be a beauty contest nor are scientific findings to be accepted simply by democratic vote. The scientific method requires that hypotheses and theories be held up to scientific scrutiny, and after falsification is attempted, when several studies are generally accepted by the scientific community to support each other, then the theory is accepted as a valid advance, and becomes a scientific paradigm.

 With global warming we are not really at that final stage of scientific decision: in 1992 “a Gallop Poll revealed that only 18 percent of climate experts thought identifiable man-caused warming had occurred (whereas 49 percent held the opposite view and 33 percent did not know). Opinions” in 2000 were similar. (“Why doesn’t Al Gore trust us with the truth?”, John R. Lott, Jr., Houston Chronicle June 2000) At the same time the political propaganda was already in swing: In Al Gore’s book, “Earth in the Balance”, 1992, he claimed that 98 percent of scientists shared his view that man-made pollution was responsible for an already present global warming due to carbon dioxide. (Lott) The political propaganda originating from politicians in many countries and from the U.N., and constantly reiterated by a compliant news media, represents an attempt to establish a scientific paradigm in the minds of both the scientific community and the general lay public.

It appears that human psychology prefers pat explanations rather than endure uncertainty when faced with a confused situation. And amazingly this applies just as much to scientists, from whom one would expect a marked degree of pride in logic. “Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments”. Scientists tend to be so wedded to paradigms that much of laboratory experimentation “seems to be an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies”. “In science… novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation”. Eventually awareness appears of the paradigm’s inability to fully explain the phenomenon in question. (“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Thomas Kuhn, 1962) The authors of “Satanic Gases” refer to Kuhn and this aspect of human nature that demands the establishment of paradigms, to excuse the climatologists who keep trying to overcome scientific evidence that denies the presence of dangerous global warming.

Kuhn’s observations are correct. From my own experience in medicine is the recent history of peptic ulcer therapy. The paradigm was simply that high acid production in the stomach, often driven by emotions, ate holes in the lining of the duodenum. Further, chronic peptic ulcers, not responding to therapy, were due to poor tissue resistance to the acid, even if its concentration was reduced by therapy. More than 18 years ago two Australian physicians noted a strange bacterium in biopsy specimens of duodenal ulcers. With great difficulty it was cultured and a new variety was found, Helicobacter pylori. (Lancet 1983; 1:1273-5) The Aussie M.D.’s treated their patients with Pepto-Bismol and a combination of antibiotics and cured most of their patients. In this country they were either ignored or laughed at. I tried their method and it worked. I knew they were right. The Australian studies had to be repeated in this country and finally, just a few years ago gastroenterologists here accepted the new therapeutic paradigm: chronic ulcers are due to colonization by H. pylori.

It is clear from the Gallup Poll results I presented above that science is not fully behind a global warming paradigm, but the information constantly presented by the news media purports that the scientific community is convinced. Many articles on the subject end with standardized “instructive” paragraphs: “Global warming is a phenomenon caused by increasing concentrations of certain gases in the Earth’s atmosphere…Most scientists say the long-term environmental effects could be profound, including increased drought in semiarid regions and higher sea levels in coastal areas”. (“Senators tackle greenhouse gas”, N.Y. Times article in Houston Chronicle, 8/4/01; my italics) At times the “instructive” paragraph is tucked in where it obviously is extraneous and doesn’t belong. At the end of an article in the Houston Chronicle describing a study which analyzed the relationship between air pollution from burning fossil fuels and current mortality rates, appeared the following: “Carbon dioxide and other gases from the burning of coal and oil have been blamed by many researchers for warming of the global climate. Some have predicted long-term and varied global effects, including melting glaciers, rising sea levels and recurring weather extremes”. (“Air pollution called an immediate threat”, 8/17/01) Any mention of fossil fuels seems to allow the “instructive” paragraph. Dr. Goebbels who headed Nazi Germany’s propaganda effort taught us that information repeated often enough becomes an accepted truth.

It not just standard instructive paragraphs that are used. Watch the headlines. They are written to influence readers who just flash through the headlines, and may or may not truly reflect the story as written. In July 2001, 178 nations met to discuss rules for enforcing the Kyoto Pact. The Houston Chronicle on 7/24/01 headlined: “U.S. left alone as 178 nations sign Kyoto Pact. Pressure now put on Bush to offer alternative plan.” (my italics) The Wall Street Journal covered the event differently: “Nations Approve Rules for Kyoto Pact Without U.S.” The truth is the nations only approved compliance rules in preparation for their next meeting in October 2001. Just one country, Rumania, has actually ratified the Pact. The slanted Houston Chronicle story was accompanied by a “fright” graphic depicting all of the unproven disasters that might occur with global warming.

In fact the media carefully hides scientific skepticism. A recent study by the Media Research Center  “reviewed 51 stories on global warming by five cable and broadcast news programs and found ‘only seven references to the existence of global warming skeptics,’ six on Fox News Channel and the seventh on CNN by Mr. Bush [43] [who mentioned] ‘the incomplete state of scientific knowledge.’” (James K. Glassman, WSJ, 5/11/01)

Representative John Peterson, Republican, 5th District, Pennsylvania came to Congress in 1997. Since he was assigned to the House Resources Committee and the Forest and Forest Health Sub-committee, he was inundated by environmental lobbying. Not a scientist, he recognized his responsibility to be informed and studied the science with an open mind and is now a confirmed global warming skeptic. He describes how brain-washed the media are: in 1998 he contacted Time magazine to correct an error concerning global warming in their “Earth Watch” section. They refused. “Their panel of three ‘science’ editors had adopted a policy that since man-made warming was such a major threat to the planet, they would not publish anything which would undercut the theory in the minds of their readers”. (Interview with Peterson, techcentralstation.com, 6/25/01) Peterson also reported that environmental organizations would not participate in a truly scientific forum he arranged to occur at Penn State University, which is in his district. He proposed a panel of three skeptical climatologists and three climatologists who thought global warming was occurring. The environmentalists backed out when they saw a list of the skeptical experts. He held the forum anyway with his three experts and one proponent of warming. “If there is anything that seems to frighten climate alarmists more than their own propaganda, its an honest discussion of real science.” (techcentralstation.com)

The driving force behind this propaganda effort is political and governmental. The Clinton administration ran special seminars to teach TV weather reporters the nuances of the global warming theories and predictions. These folks are not climatologists, just a specialized form of news reporter. As Charles L. Harper, Jr., a planetary scientist at Harvard, pointed out in 1995, “one should keep in mind H. L. Mencken’s admonition that ‘the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed---and hence clamorous to be led to safety---by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.’” (WSJ, op ed, 1995, “Time to Phase Out Fossil Fuels?”) We all recognize the “crisis du jour” approach of politicians. Al Gore uses the most marvelous hyperbole: “Modern industrial civilization, as presently organized, is colliding violently with our planet’s ecological system. The ferocity of its assault on the Earth is breathtaking, and the horrific consequences are occurring so quickly as to defy our capacity to recognize them.” (Address to the UN Earth Summit June, 1992, Rio de Janeiro; George Melloan column, WSJ, 7/12/93) Does this mean happening so fast our science cannot recognize the changes? And one last quote from “Earth in the Balance”: the media should not give “equal weight” to both sides in environmental debates such as global warming, for “it undermines the effort to build a solid base of public support for difficult actions we must soon take.” (Adopted from “Why doesn’t Al Gore trust us with the truth?”, John R. Lott, Jr., Houston Chronicle, June 2000) Consistent with this statement Gore’s chapter on global warming is a one-sided polemic, presenting only those scientific findings which support his contention that global warming is here.

In the Clinton administration Gore was allowed to shape environmental policy and to pack “such bodies as the Environmental Protection Agency, the council on Environmental Quality and the Department of Energy with his friends, acolytes and ex-staffers; from those positions the Gore-ites hold sway over a large part of the regulatory apparatus.” I’m sure early in the Bush (43) administration these people have not been dislodged. Until that is done, the damage will continue. “With his influence over the federal purse strings, the Vice President has made sure that environmental lobbying groups receive plenty of taxpayer funds. James Sheehan, a research associate at Washington’s Competitive Enterprise Institute, says organizations backing the Kyoto treaty tend to win federal research grants, while dissenters don’t…Among the environmental groups that have already received funds are Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and Jonathan Lash’s World Resources Institute---all fervent Gore supporters”. (“Gore’s crusaders”, Gupte & Cohen, Forbes, 2/22/99)

Science has an insatiable appetite for government grants. The just published book, “Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion”, by Daniel S. Greenberg, U. Chicago Press, 2001, carries in its title the major threat encompassed by government grants. The book “depicts American ‘Big Science’ as a classic self-perpetuating bureaucracy---bloated, whiny and self-important.” (Book review in Scientific American, September 2001) If the grants are driven by politics (and they are) then there is ‘ethical erosion’ in that only the scientific version in political favor gets the grants. Three examples follow.

David Ellsworth of the U. of Michigan reported that increased carbon dioxide contributed to plant growth by as much as 74 percent as long as fertilizer was also present. In “infertile sites extra carbon dioxide led to virtually no additional growth.” Ellsworth protected his grant with the following comment: “I don’t think we can assume existing forests, with their fertility limitations, will completely offset rising carbon dioxide without soil amendments. We will more likely find solutions in measures such as burning less fossil fuel and planting more trees with high nutrient soils.” (my italics; Scientific American News in Brief, 5/24/01, sciam.com) The slanted headline used by the Scientific American for the Ellsworth study was, “Forest Growth Can’t Keep Up With Carbon Dioxide Emissions”, which cannot be concluded from the report. The scientific truth is totally different. The North American continent completely absorbs all the carbon dioxide produced here, probably due to re-forestation, with no effort at refertilization. (“Possibly Vast Greenhouse Gas Sponge Ignites Controversy”, Science vol. 282, 10/16/98 and Peter Huber column, Forbes 4/5/99) This scientific truth will be mentioned again when the Kyoto Treaty is discussed.

A second example is Dr. Lloyd Keigwin. He has been mentioned above as the chief investigator who developed the method to obtain 3,000 years of temperature records from the Sargasso Sea. His findings refute the global warming alarmists. But as reported in the WSJ he was pressured by “government-financed colleagues to reinterpret his own findings. He denied “that his findings had anything much to do with the global warming issue and said his results are not representative of the Earth as a whole.” He said that “the importance of his research isn’t in the data per se, but rather that marine biologists can undertake such a study at all.” (sitewave.net/news, 7/16/01) Let’s not worry about logical conclusions. It is finding the new method that counts! What a neat sidestep.

The third example is Dr. James E. Hansen, the government’s chief climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He is extremely well known as the “father” (or perhaps Godfather) of the global warming movement. He first presented his predictions that carbon dioxide would drive global warming in the early 1980’s. He “told a congressional committee in 1988: ‘It is time to stop waffling…the greenhouse effect is here.’” (“Rethink by global warming expert”, Sheridan & Highfield, Electronic Telegraph [telegraph.co.uk] 8/15/00) In August 2000 he and his team published a report from the Goddard Institute in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “Global Warming in the 21st Century: An Alternate Scenario,” in which the role of carbon dioxide was downplayed. (giss.nasa.gov) The opening sentence of the Telegraph article indicates the trouble Hansen got himself into by publishing an honest re-appraisal: “The scientist who alerted the world to the consequences of the greenhouse effect admits today that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels was not the main cause of rapid warming of the Earth in recent decades.” The response of the world media can be represented by the New York Times, which had a similar interpretation: “An influential expert on global warming who for nearly 20 years has pressed countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases now say the emphasis on carbon dioxide may be misplaced.” (8/19/00) The Union of Concerned Scientists attacked him in an “Information Update” to its members. The essence of the update was that the paper was controversial, potentially harmful to the Kyoto Protocol, and not a helpful contribution to the climate change discussion as “it may fuel confusion about global warming among the public.” (Do you recognize the Al Gore approach to honest and truthful discussion?) And the UCS added: “the author team seems unduly convinced that reducing fossil fuel emissions would be economically wrenching to the United States.”

I have read the paper carefully. It is an honest reappraisal and a well-reasoned new approach. It does not deny global warming as a threat; further, it states that a drastic reduction of the production of carbon dioxide is not currently necessary, as he now is willing to declare that the carbon dioxide build-up is slower, and is having less effect than he had predicted originally. He proposes an alternative approach: a campaign to further reduce chlorofluorocarbons, methane and the emphasize the reduction of black carbon aerosols (soot), while continuing to ask for a reduction in fossil fuels and increased scientific research into lessening the production of carbon dioxide from those fuels along with the development of alternate fuels. He quotes other authorities who feel that the Kyoto approach “will have very little effect in the 21st century, and ‘Thirty Kyotos’ may be needed to reduce the warming to an acceptable level.”

 The media and his other global-warming allies have treated him almost like a pariah, or like a general who is leading the charge and suddenly turns tail and heads for the rear. His so-called allies are so accustomed to the mantra of “carbon dioxide is our chief enemy” that they cannot follow his new reasoning. It is as though they are attuned to only one religious dogma and it is being attacked by the one person presumed to be infallible.

 Hansen was so distressed by this reaction, (and possibly worried that his bureaucratic government “handlers” would pressure him to change his tune, for after all, they control the research money) that two months after the article appeared he presented a defense of his position at an MIT Workshop at Johns Hopkins, Oct. 16, 2000: “Global Warming in the 21st Century: Discussion of ‘An Alternative Scenario’.” (giss.nasa.gov) In his introduction he noted: “some thoughtful people did not understand very well what we were trying to say.” He took blame for not being clear enough: “I have found it difficult to correct the mischaracterizations.” He endorsed a Washington Post editorial (8/28/00) as containing a “positive construction” of his new proposal: “What [the Hansen paper] does do is remind us that climate issues are complex, far from fully understood and open to a variety of approaches. It should serve as a caution to environmentalists so certain of their position that they’re willing to advocate radical solutions, no matter what the economic cost. It suggests that the sensible course is to move ahead with a strong dose of realism and flexibility, focusing on approaches that are economically viable…and that can help support international consensus for addressing climate change.” And he offered a “bottom line” description of the scientific role he and team wished to play: “Our aim is to produce the most objective quantitative analysis that we can. In the end that is likely to serve the public best.” I applaud his courage, and honesty. A breath of fresh air in a political whirlwind. Please note, however, this whole dust-up was generally ignored by our national news media other than noting his change of mind about carbon dioxide.

The other political arena with just as much, if not more, heat and fury is international and within the United Nations (UN). The UN formed the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, in large part as a result of Hansen’s declarations concerning the dangers of global warming. The ostensible reason for UN action is to save the planet.  Several authors and observers have ascribed other factors as hiding in the background. George Melloan noted that the “Third World [can] winkle more money out of the rich nations.” (WSJ, 7/12/93) How? That is apparent in how the Kyoto Accord is proposed to work. “What could better suit the United Nations’ consistent agenda of wealth transfer? Here was a truly global issue in which the alleged perpetrators---the rich, industrial North---could be blamed for the coming environmental Armageddon. Given the voting structure of the UN General Assembly, as long as the United Nations could generate some type of scientific cover, global warming would generate a majority sentiment for transferring money from North to South.” It is not surprising that under the Kyoto Accord “roughly 80 percent of the world’s population has no [immediate] commitments” toward carbon dioxide control. (“Satanic Gases”)

 The requirements of Kyoto to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is almost as severe a requirement on Europe as on the U.S., but they appear to support Kyoto. Don’t the Europeans realize they will pay an economic price? James K. Glassman cites their attitude: “Europe has lost leadership to the U.S. in virtually every business sector. One way to fight back is to impose higher costs on the U.S. economy than on their own. That [is] the charm of Kyoto.” (WSJ, 7/24/01) In the same vein “Former Secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger [commented that] the European allies now perceive a need to check American strength. Using the balance-of-power calculations that are the mainstay of traditional European diplomacy, Europe worries that America is too strong, and wants to ring it down a notch.” (Gregg Easterbrook, N.Y. Times, 6/17/01) Many of the governments in Europe are coalitions with environmental parties (greens). Supporting Kyoto helps hold the coalitions together. “Yet no European nation other than Denmark has any serious greenhouse-reduction strategy even in the planning stages. From the Europeans’ standpoint, the ideal outcome [is] for the Kyoto treaty to collapse but for Washington to take the blame. Europe gets to act outraged, while being spared the hard work and cost of actual reform.” (Easterbrook)

The “scientific cover” for the UN to create the Kyoto Accord is the IPCC report produced in 1996. It is a deception bordering on fraud. This startling statement is completely supported by fact. The IPCC began its work about eight years before the final report, instructed by the UN “to initiate action leading as soon as possible to recommendations with respect to identification and possible strengthening of relevant existing international legal instruments having a bearing on climate [and] elements for inclusion in a possible future international convention on climate.” In other words, the IPCC was expected to discover threats to climate and offer solutions. (“Satanic Gases”) The final draft report was produced in 1995 by Working Group I, scientists who reviewed the world scientific literature. The UN likes to claim that “2,500 scientists” were involved. In fact, what they did was to add up all the authors in all the papers reviewed and all the reviewers, which total comes to 2100 by actual count! (“Not Scientific Consensus”, S. Fred Singer, WSJ, 1996; he is professor emeritus of environmental sciences, U. of Virginia) This group actually totaled about 200 working scientists, of whom 80 or so were bone fide climatologists. (“Satanic Gases”)

Working Group II then took the report, 2,000 pages long and prepared a simplified summary for press and lay consumption. But they first did something else. They edited Chapter 8, “the key chapter setting out the scientific evidence for and against a human influence over climate”, (my italics) changing or deleting more than 15 key sections. “Nearly all [the changes] worked to remove hints of the skepticism with which many scientists charged with examining this question had accepted a supposedly final text.” Therefore, this report “is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the title page. In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.” This scathing commentary is from Frederick Seitz (WSJ 1996), who neglected to mention he also was president emeritus of Rockefeller University and chairman of the George C. Marshall Institute, a prestigious scientific organization. The alterations by Working Group II, after peer-review approval, are a very grave breach of scientific protocol and ethics.

Seitz was so angry that after the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997 he wrote an open letter to all scientists using the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine website (oism.org/pproject). He presented the scientific research to support his position, and offered an anti-Kyoto petition. Within two months he had 15,000 signatures, including more than 6,000 Ph.D.’s in the hard sciences. Currently there are “20,000 signatures, 18,000 of whom have scientific degrees, many with advanced degrees.” (“Hot Topics, Cold Truth,” interview with Dr. S. Fred Singer, thenewamerican.com, 1/31/00)

About 100 other climate scientists were just as angry and in 1996 produced the “Leipzig Declaration.” It describes the impending Kyoto treaty as “dangerously simplistic, quite ineffective, and economically destructive. The dire predictions of a future warming have not been validated by the historic climate records. Weather satellites and balloon-borne radiosondes show no current warming whatsoever, in direct contradiction to computer model results.” (“Scientists don’t agree on global warming”, by Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 11/5/98) Fred Singer (WSJ, 1996) noted that signing the Declaration “takes a certain amount of courage---given that it could jeopardize research grants from the U.S. government agencies that have adopted climate catastrophe as an article of faith, and managed to convince Congress to ante up about $2 billion a year.” Claims by the UN and the media that there is an overwhelming consensus among scientists about global warming are simply lies.

Who was in charge of Working Group II, which created this propagandistic approach to true science? The Group was made up in large part by economists, social scientists, and politicians who were charged with assessing the impacts and response options related to global warming. The lead author was a scientist, Benjamin D. Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the other main author was John Houghton who has been chief scientist for the IPCC since its inception. He is a climate physicist. (“Satanic Gases”) After the scientific peer-review process had completely finished (see Seitz above) this Group added the following statement to the full report and to the summary: “The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate.” (“Satanic Gases”) This line has been widely quoted as proof we humans are the bad guys; however, consider that the issue of just how we do it and how much we do it is not at all settled. They also pulled a strange sentence from the full report to give it prominence in the summary: “Warmer temperatures will lead to a more vigorous hydrological cycle; this translates into prospects for more severe droughts and/or floods in some places and less severe droughts and/or floods in other places.” Robert E. Davis, associate professor of climatology, U. Virginia analyzed the sentence this way: “So if you get more rainfall, that’s evidence of global warming; less rainfall---global warming. Rainfall staying about the same? Hey, that’s evidence of global warming, too. Who says climatology’s not an exact science.” (Houston Chronicle, 9/22/96) The obvious reason for this weird generalization that says nothing, is to allow the media to pick up the “more severe droughts and/or floods” phrase, which is exactly what they have done. Richard S. Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at M.I.T. recently characterized the summary: “It represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom are also their nations’ Kyoto representatives), rather than of scientists. The resulting document has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.” (WSJ, 6/11/01)

There is one final example of deception. Just four days before a UN Geneva conference in 1996, which would set up binding targets and timetables for greenhouse emissions reductions, an article by Benjamin Santer and 12 coauthors appeared in Nature, which showed a steep rise in climate temperature from 1963 to 1987, using weather balloon data. The authors concluded: “ it is likely that this trend is partially due to human activities, although many uncertainties remain, particularly relating to estimates of natural variability.” (Nature 382, 36-45, 1996) Patrick Michaels, the lead author of “Satanic Gases”, is professor of environmental sciences at U. of Virginia, a past president of the National Association of State Climatologists and a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, which takes no government grants. He checked the literature and found that similar data actually was available beginning in1958 and ran through 1995. Furthermore, 1963 was the year that the Indonesian volcano Mt. Agung had a major eruption, the largest since Alaska’s Katmai exploded in 1912. Large eruptions of this sort usually sharply lower the earth’s temperature in the year following, and Santer’s data showed a sharp drop in 1964, and then a steadily upward climb. What Santer published appears to be a recovery from the volcano’s effect of putting a layer of ash into the upper atmosphere, partially blocking the sun’s radiation. Michaels immediately published the longer record overlaid on Santer’s findings, as shown in the figure below.

 

Santer, caught in a trap, complained that Michaels used data from a different study source, which was true. But most of the data in both studies came off the same balloons; and where the years matched, and there were only a few years when the records were not concurrent, the correlation between the two sets of records was 0.94, a very impressive r-value. (“Satanic Gases” and oism.org/pproject) Adding the open circles representing the extra years completely changes the findings. It took Michaels just one day to discover the extra data, and he offers the opinion that Santer had to be aware that such data existed. (“Satanic Gases”)

In Michaels’ opinion, in another Science article in 2000, Santer again manipulated data using the 1992 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo volcano to try to show that climate models’ temperature predictions and satellite and balloon data agree. They don’t.  Michaels’ analysis is quite persuasive. What was Santer’s motive? Was he simply defending a scientific paradigm, Michael’s (and Kuhn’s) overly generous theory mentioned earlier, or as an American governmental scientist, living under the control of a Gore-infected (infested?) bureaucracy, was he also protecting his career and himself? The IPCC deceptions that he authored suggest the latter. “A lot of careers are wrapped up in this [Kyoto] treaty and a lot of hopes for bureaucratic jobs that would be created.” (“Global View”, George Melloan, WSJ, 4/3/01) Bjorn Lomborg makes the same point: “It is reasonably certain that it will become more difficult to get research grants…if the threat of carbon dioxide…is not maintained to some degree. It takes courage and powerful conviction to speak out against the results of the IPCC computer models---it is not only one’s own research funding that would be at stake, but also that of all the others.” (“The Skeptical Environmentalist”, pg. 411, note 2109)

Despite all the propaganda and deception the skeptical scientists finally got their message to Congress. In June 1997, the Senate passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (98), by a 95-0 vote, stating that the United States should not sign the Kyoto Protocol. Despite that warning, Al Gore signed the treaty in December 1997. President Clinton wisely never presented it to the Senate for conformation. And President Bush (43) has told the world in March 2001 that Kyoto is “flawed science”.

 The economic consequences are also extremely flawed. For example, Kyoto requires that by 2012 the U.S. reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels. The requirements for the other leading industrialized nations are only slightly less stringent. Large developing nations like India, China, and Mexico, and all the third world nations have no restrictions. And worse, there is no provision to credit us with the reabsorption of all that carbon dioxide by our extensive forests. We have no net contribution to the rising world concentrations of carbon dioxide (mentioned above). “The U.S. Department of Energy [has] estimated that implementation would [mean] a $397 billion lower gross national product in 2010 than if the U.S., opted out. Kyoto would boost electric prices by 86.4 % and other energy cost accordingly.” (“Global View”, George Mellon, WSJ, 4/3/01) Bjorn Lomberg estimates a cost of $107-274 trillion deducted from the total world economy during the 21st century if the Kyoto Protocol is implemented as proposed. (“The Skeptical Environmentalist”)

The Protocol contains another economic snake pit. In the guise of making it easier for the developed nations to meet their goals, there is a provision for “emissions trading”: the need for rapid cuts in carbon dioxide production can be offset by buying emission credits from other countries and third world countries. “Starting this trading system would require emission permits worth two trillion dollars---the largest single invention of assets by voluntary treaty in world history. Even if it were politically possible to distribute such astronomical sums, the Protocol does not provide for adequate monitoring and enforcement of these new property rights. Nor does it offer an achievable plan for allocating new permits” as third world countries earn them. (Publisher’s review of “The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming,” David Victor, 2001) It is, however, a neat plan to transfer massive amounts of money from the first world to the third world. And although the Protocol does not describe an adequate monitoring and enforcement program, eventually a monitoring agency of the UN would have to be created. No wonder the politicians within the UN tailored the IPCC report to remove any scientific waffling. The stronger the report, the more likely the Protocol would be accepted and the UN bureaucracy would have to grow to administer it. No Protocol, no newly created jobs.

What should this country do? The most reasonable scientific prediction is that in the next century there will be a small degree of global warming, based on, if nothing else, the warming trend following the Little Ice Age. However, we should not lose sight of the threat contained in a definitely continuing linear rise of carbon dioxide concentration. Perhaps all the feedback mechanisms that control climate temperature will not be strong enough to contain the carbon dioxide effect. Therefore, the James Hansen proposal makes the most sense: concentrate primarily on soot reduction during the first half of the century, while conducting intensive scientific studies both into the reduction of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use and the perfection of alternate energy sources. Then later in the century put into play the new science to control carbon dioxide.

 Bjorn Lomborg suggests essentially the same approach. To qualify how important I think is Lomborg’s opinion, consider his own admission that he is “an old left-wing Greenpeace member and had for a long time been concerned about environmental questions.” As an Associate Professor of Statistics in the Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark he attempted to challenge Julian Simon’s contention that the material conditions of life would continue to improve worldwide over the next century or two, rather than worsen as the Greenpeace environmentalists were predicting. Julian Simon was the 20th Century’s premier anti-Malthusian, and Lomborg discovered Simon was correct. The book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist”, is the result. It is an excellent reference text for the science and the economics of the problem, while making a brief glancing reference to the underlying politics.

R. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors also agrees. “A good policy should be immediately to increase basic research. An effective climate-change policy requires: the development of competitive alternatives to carbon-dioxide emitting fossil fuels, focusing on nuclear power, solar power, hydrogen fuels from fossil fuels, and other carbon-free technologies. Without these technologies, emissions will continue to rise as developing countries adopt existing fossil-fuel energy.” (WSJ, 6/12/01) As the leading nation in the world for inventiveness and science, we should be able to provide the developing nations with the non-polluting or minimally polluting energy sources they need to advance. This plan is the type of international cooperation that makes real sense. Some Europeans agree: “Every significant environmental improvement---from lead-free gas to recycling---comes from America, and global warming, such as it is, will be solved, like most problems, by American ingenuity, not Euro-regulation.” (“Where rising hot air hits cold hard facts”, Mark Steyn, The Sunday Telegraph, 4/1/ 2001)

The United States possibly can make some immediate changes in carbon dioxide production. We produce “22 percent of the world’s gross domestic product [and use] 25 percent of the world’s energy” while emitting 25 percent of global carbon dioxide. “The European Union accounts for 20 percent of the world GDP while consuming only 16 percent of the world’s energy.” Japan’s numbers are similar. “If the U.S. economy operated as efficiently as those of Europe or Japan, American energy consumption would fall by about 30 percent.” (“No more excuses---U.S. can meet emission goals”, Norbert Walter, chief economist for Deutsche Bank Group, Frankfurt Germany, Houston Chronicle, Opinion Section, June 2001) We need to analyze this European suggestion. If we adopt some of the European and Japanese energy production techniques, is it possible, or probable, that we will save our economy some sizeable amounts of money in fuel cost after absorbing the initial cost of conversions? By using industrial tax incentives, Congress can reduce the initial costs and encourage the conversions. This approach should be studied immediately. Faced with the possibility of global warming, let’s use reasoned science and reasoned economics and create real worldwide cooperation not manufactured hysteria.