Dan McLaughlin

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To Home Page Latest Newsletter Column Archives Click to get these columns for your local paper	© 2007 Daniel J. McLaughlin Beware The Coming Ice Age The year is 2020. Tension fills the air. Glaciers are advancing at an alarming rate, threatening villages in their path. Scientists have confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that we are headed into an ice age, due primarily to anthropogenic causes (read human-induced). Newspapers have headline stories. Networks are interviewing experts and “knowledgeable” politicians and movie stars. Cooling is on everybody’s mind. There is a consensus about impending disaster. It seems an unlikely scenario, given the current rhetoric. It is, however, quite certain that this media event will occur sometime in the coming decades. There is solid history of the phenomenon for well over a century. Every few decades, there is a new scare, each time, flip flopping between warming and cooling. Each time, the unhappy ending calls for devastation and death for millions of people. Some scientists compared the 1970’s threat of global cooling to nuclear war as a risk for death and misery of the people. There is a very interesting summary of headlines by research analysts R. Warren Anderson and Dan Gainor called “Fire And Ice”. The document includes climate change news reports dating back to the late 1800’s. What is most striking about the news is that you can’t tell that it was from many decades ago, in one of the previous versions of warming or cooling. 1895 – news stories warned of the coming ice age: “Geologists think the world may be frozen up again”. In the 1930’s there is “widespread and persistent warming”. In the early 50’s, “We have learned that the earth has been getting warmer for the last half century”. The late 1950’s, however, brought the threat of a “new cold war, man versus nature”. The cooling worries culminated in the 1970’s, with “a major cooling widely thought to be inevitable” and “There is no relief in sight”. Just a few short years later, in the 1980’s, the current warming disaster started to sprout, with predictions of warming of an “almost unprecedented amount”. News media need stories that sell. Death and catastrophe does that. In that respect, it is understandable that even high profile newspapers, magazines and networks can forget their embarrassments from past decades to earn a dime from today’s climate flavor of the decade. It is even understandable how politicians and celebrities can take up the mantle to look like the good guys, to capture a few extra votes on election day or Oscar night. It is less understandable that so many scientists can put on blinders to the past and follow the same crowd. That is, until you realize that scientists aren’t immune to self interest. When the massive funding of research by the federal government, the UN and other nations depends on how exaggerated the claims to disaster are, it becomes more understandable. If the scientific community said that there is no significant long term problem, the billions of dollars of climate research money would evaporate. Thousands of climate scientists would be out in the streets looking for another looming disaster to restart the money spigot. The undeniable fact is that the climate is changing, just as it always has. What is not changing is the opportunism of disaster predictors. As sure as spring follows winter, in 15 or 20 years, people will have forgotten the current folly and will be duped again, as another cycle of panic takes over the hype machine. Master opportunist Al Gore has garnered so much attention in throttling the current war on global warming that he is being considered for a Nobel prize. One should wonder if he will still be around in a couple of decades to get a second Nobel for scary movies about the coming Ice Age. It would not be so hard to take all of the current exaggeration if a balanced view was given. In spite of what is constantly spewed, the opinion of climate scientists is very far from unanimous. There are many dissenting voices that are being ignored and overwhelmed. Debate is declared over. Alternate views are not tolerated. The real danger in the present situation is the growing power of lobbying groups and the United Nations. Hidden agendas will make for very interesting developments in the coming years. Unfortunately, it really won’t matter whether the fear mongers are pedaling warming or cooling. Their disaster stories prey on the public’s fears as they substitute perceived security for freedom. Let’s just hope that they continue to be as ineffective in their evil as they are in their good intentions.
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Daniel Mclaughlin Copyright © 2006 [Daniel McLaughlin]. All rights reserved. Revised: 03/18/08

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Beware The Coming Ice Age

The year is 2020. Tension fills the air. Glaciers are advancing at an alarming rate, threatening villages in their path. Scientists have confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that we are headed into an ice age, due primarily to anthropogenic causes (read human-induced). Newspapers have headline stories. Networks are interviewing experts and “knowledgeable” politicians and movie stars. Cooling is on everybody’s mind. There is a consensus about impending disaster.

It seems an unlikely scenario, given the current rhetoric. It is, however, quite certain that this media event will occur sometime in the coming decades. There is solid history of the phenomenon for well over a century. Every few decades, there is a new scare, each time, flip flopping between warming and cooling. Each time, the unhappy ending calls for devastation and death for millions of people. Some scientists compared the 1970’s threat of global cooling to nuclear war as a risk for death and misery of the people.

There is a very interesting summary of headlines by research analysts R. Warren Anderson and Dan Gainor called “Fire And Ice”. The document includes climate change news reports dating back to the late 1800’s. What is most striking about the news is that you can’t tell that it was from many decades ago, in one of the previous versions of warming or cooling.

1895 – news stories warned of the coming ice age: “Geologists think the world may be frozen up again”. In the 1930’s there is “widespread and persistent warming”. In the early 50’s, “We have learned that the earth has been getting warmer for the last half century”. The late 1950’s, however, brought the threat of a “new cold war, man versus nature”. The cooling worries culminated in the 1970’s, with “a major cooling widely thought to be inevitable” and “There is no relief in sight”. Just a few short years later, in the 1980’s, the current warming disaster started to sprout, with predictions of warming of an “almost unprecedented amount”.

News media need stories that sell. Death and catastrophe does that. In that respect, it is understandable that even high profile newspapers, magazines and networks can forget their embarrassments from past decades to earn a dime from today’s climate flavor of the decade. It is even understandable how politicians and celebrities can take up the mantle to look like the good guys, to capture a few extra votes on election day or Oscar night.

It is less understandable that so many scientists can put on blinders to the past and follow the same crowd. That is, until you realize that scientists aren’t immune to self interest. When the massive funding of research by the federal government, the UN and other nations depends on how exaggerated the claims to disaster are, it becomes more understandable. If the scientific community said that there is no significant long term problem, the billions of dollars of climate research money would evaporate. Thousands of climate scientists would be out in the streets looking for another looming disaster to restart the money spigot.

The undeniable fact is that the climate is changing, just as it always has. What is not changing is the opportunism of disaster predictors. As sure as spring follows winter, in 15 or 20 years, people will have forgotten the current folly and will be duped again, as another cycle of panic takes over the hype machine. Master opportunist Al Gore has garnered so much attention in throttling the current war on global warming that he is being considered for a Nobel prize. One should wonder if he will still be around in a couple of decades to get a second Nobel for scary movies about the coming Ice Age.

It would not be so hard to take all of the current exaggeration if a balanced view was given. In spite of what is constantly spewed, the opinion of climate scientists is very far from unanimous. There are many dissenting voices that are being ignored and overwhelmed. Debate is declared over. Alternate views are not tolerated.

The real danger in the present situation is the growing power of lobbying groups and the United Nations. Hidden agendas will make for very interesting developments in the coming years. Unfortunately, it really won’t matter whether the fear mongers are pedaling warming or cooling. Their disaster stories prey on the public’s fears as they substitute perceived security for freedom. Let’s just hope that they continue to be as ineffective in their evil as they are in their good intentions.

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