Global Warming

Tampa, FL -

                                          Cap and Trade Hoax

We all heard recently that the last survivor of the Titanic disaster died. But do we really understand the reason for the sinking of the Titanic?

In the spring of 1912 the Titanic was brand new, the pride of the White Star Line. the Titanic was nearly as long as three football fields—882 ½ feet—and she was designed to be unsinkable. Her hull was divided into sixteen watertight compartments, and she would float unless five of those compartments were punctured and flooded.

When the Titanic steamed away from the dock at Southampton on April 10, 1912, she carried 2,207 passengers and crewmen. She carried only twenty lifeboats, sufficient to rescue just 1,178 of those aboard, but the owners deemed this number of lifeboats was adequate, considering the character of the ship.

On the great ship’s maiden voyage, many rich and glamorous people sailed as passengers. The radiotelegraph was a novelty, and the passengers kept the two wireless operators busy with an endless stream of trivial personal messages to be sent ashore from mid-Atlantic.

The 66,000 ton Titanic was steaming at twenty-two and a half knots when an impact occurred. The Leyland liner Californian, only ten miles from the Titanic, bound from London to Boston, had broadcast a warning that ice had drifted into the shipping lanes. The Titanic did not collide head-on with an iceberg; she merely sideswiped an underwater spur of ice. This light grazing blow had slit a long gash in Titanic’s belly, and water began pouring into five of the vessel’s watertight compartments. She then proceeded to sink. Iceberg??? What significance does that have with "Global Warming?"

Remember, that was 1912. Ice was breaking off of larger forms of ice. Was it due to global warming? The importance is, in spite of what the Gore political environmentalists are saying, some nowadays wackos could have claimed that Global Warming caused the incident, had they been alive at that time.

Regarding Global Warming, I feel we are hearing far too often that the "science" is "settled,"and that mankind's contribution to the natural CO2 in the atmosphere has been the principal cause of an increasing "Greenhouse Effect," which is the root "cause" of global warming. We're also falsely hearing that "all the world's scientists now agree on this settled science," and it is now time to quickly and most radically alter our culture, and prevent a looming global catastrophe. And last, but not least, we're seeing a sort of mass hysteria sweeping our culture, which is really quite disturbing. 

Sorry folks, but I'm not exactly buying into the Global Hysteria just yet. We know a great deal about atmospheric physics, and from the onset, many of the claims are just plain fishy. The extreme haste with which supposedly the entire world immediately accepted the idea of Anthropogenic ( man-made ) Global Warming made me more than a little bit suspicious that no one had really taken a close look at the science.  I also knew that the catch-all activity today known as "Climate Science" was in its infancy, and that atmospheric modeling did not and still does not exist which can predict changes in the weather or climate more than about a day or two in advance.

So with the endless stream of dire predictions of what was going to happen today, years or decades from now, if we did not drastically reduce our CO2 production by virtually shutting down the economies of the world, appeared to be more the product of radical progressive political and environmental activism rather than science. Since I am not buying it, I call it a hoax.  

The laws of physics show us that CO2 isn't even a significant "greenhouse gas" and certainly the human contribution is insignificant. We should know that CO2 can't possibly be the evil byproduct all the ballyhoo has been claiming, and in fact, our biologist friends tell us if we could increase the CO2 content a little more, the planet would be much the richer... because plants love it, grow much larger with more of it, and we all like to eat.  Check it out. CO2 is a non-toxic, non-polluting, earth-friendly component that really is critical to our survival. Maybe that's why I laughed so hard when the Popular Journalist in the Addison Independent insisted that 340, rather than 380 parts per million CO2 was a "target" we should all shoot for. While you're pulling rabbits out of a hat, could you please bring me a Pepsi? Now I don’t laugh. I believe that irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.

Beginning with FDR, wily statists justified the massive expansion of federal power under ever more elastic definitions of the commerce clause. For Obama-era control freaks, the environment and health care are the commerce clause supersized. They establish the pretext for the regulation of everything; If the government is obligated to cure you of illness, it has an interest in preventing you from getting ill in the first place — by regulating what you eat, how you live, the choices you make from the moment you get up in the morning. Likewise, if everything you do impacts "the environment," then the environment is an all-purpose umbrella for regulating everything you do. It’s the most convenient and romantic justification for what the title of Paul Rahe’s book rightly identifies as "soft despotism," part of the journey to socialism. When the political plan is for the government to grow and control today’s future, as will be happening, I say "no way." God Bless America.

In God We Trust.

Glenn A. Clepper

Writer, Columnist, Book Author, Patriot and Historian