What if GW?

Posted June 14, 2008 in The Orlando Sentinel

Now that John McCain has jumped on the Global Warming bandwagon, the religion of Global Warming has completed its trifecta. Now, we can be assured that our economy will be raped in the name of preventing climate change. Even without objective scientific evidence that anything we do will have the slightest effect on what appears to be a global warming trend, we will be taxed for using fuel in addition to the tax we paid for the fuel.

I would like to raise a question that I have never seen discussed: What if we find that all we have done has made no difference? What if, in the end, we find Florida under water, but have done nothing to prepare?

The Earth is a complex system. Things happen over which humans have no control: volcanoes erupt, huge tracts of land burn, and rivers change their courses. The Army Corps of Engineers has spent $ Millions trying to prevent the Mississippi River from moving west; it is a best a holding effort. If the Global Warming phenomenon is valid, wise people would be considering actions to deal with the possibility that -- like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes -- nothing we do will prevent it.

If Florida is, indeed, in danger of being inundated by sea water, a few of those expert scientists who are traipsing around the globe promoting radical social and economic changes to prevent GW should be working on how Floridians, and Americans in general, can survive should their prevention efforts fail or be ineffective But, their voices are earthshatteringly silent when it comes to actually preparing for the worst.

I am reminded of my childhood in 1950s Texas. Drought was a persistent reality, year after year. Eventually, most local government bodies hired “rainmakers,“ itinerant experts who purported to have the ability to wring precipitation from the occasional, puffy white cumulus cloud that drifted overhead. For their precious tax dollars, the residents got a show; I can remember a giant cannon shooting ice and a fleet of surplus Air Force bombers dropping ice into the clouds. But, there was never any rain that could be attributed to the rainmakers’ efforts. In the end, they were no more effective than the Commanche and Caddo rain dancers centuries before, and the fact that rainmakers are no longer in business attests to their relative success. They were cynical con men who fed on peoples’ fears.

I suspect that the GW bunch is no different. If the “scientific community” that supports current Global Warming theory really believed the dismal forecasts possible, they would be concentrating on measures to deal with the consequences instead of promoting a political agenda whose economic impact could cripple the few economies that might have a chance to survive their worst warnings.

Greed, cynicism, and intellectual arrogance are strong motivators. While I wouldn’t label all the scientists promoting GW as con men, what they are not doing speaks volumes about their intentions.