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(originally posted July 18, 2007)
I have conducted a fair amount of reading about the various aspects of global warming. Enough so that saying it is a mere interest does not describe it properly; passion or fetish might be more appropriate terms. Not out of a desire to be an expert, but out of the desire to prove that corn derived ethanol is a bad idea and is equally bad for the environment and us, and also to prove that the ultra-left has high-jacked what should be a debate on how pollution effects the environment and what, if anything, can or should be done to stop it. The thing has taken of a life of it's own however, and the more I read the more I see the same assumptions based upon the same theories, but no data to support it. Despite claims to the contrary, the science is far from settled, shockingly so. Best estimates are that human activity account for 40 to 60 percent of the rise in temperature. With a range that wide the scientific debate is far from over. And even then scientists cannot agree on which human activities, such as green house gas emissions, deforestation, urbanization, or air pollution have the greatest effect or how much synergy exists between them. Why is this? Because the research has not been done. When one reads the various articles and "research" and then looks at the footnotes and bibliographies one realizes that most of the printed matter relies not on original research, but rather rehashes old theories, some of which has not been critically reviewed. In the scientific world research is conducted and published in a scientific journal where other scientists examine the data, looking to support the theory or find flaws in it. Often other scientists use another's theory as a steppingstone for additional research using a revised theory, or they just try to duplicate it to prove it faulty. There is a media explosion is in response to the public's demand for information. What used to be published in scientific journals is being published in science hobby magazines. Besides the author's fee the researcher also gets to propose a theory, with little or no supporting data, without the trouble of having to do hard research or subject their work to review. That has led to a number of sources that publish what on the surface appears to be scientific data but is really just an article for a magazine written by someone who refers on another's work. There is no research involved, which is why it is in a science hobby periodical and not a scientific journal. "An Inconvenient Truth" relies on faulty data and unproven science, and yet it is shown in schools as an educational documentary, when in fact it is a piece of emotional propaganda unable to support its theories. The left has even instituted a practice of defying those they brand as "deniers" to prove they are wrong, rather that providing the documentation to prove they are correct. That is not science; that is propaganda. Science is about facts and data, not offset credits and tax-free foundations. And it is certainly not about emotional blackmail. The environmental extremists and some opportunists have hijacked the issue and have deemed the debate over when in fact the true scientific debate never began.
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One important thing to add. An entry in a scientific journal has to be factually sound and is subject to peer review. An article for Newsweek, Time magazine or the science hobby magazine is not the same as research as there is no critical review and frequently the only research cited is conducted by others, making it more of an untested theory than scientific data.
The media, besides being the puppets (or perhaps the puppetmasters) of the left, are also terrorists. Remember that the media's main priority is to get advertising dollars. And ad dollars are driven by ratings (sales, viewers). And nothing sells like telling someone they are going to die. The media always reproaches the right for being fear mongers, while they have been disingenuously practicing it for over 100 years.
Once the media became commercialized, truth and what was right took a back seat to ad sales. That led to the rise of sensationalism over journalism.
There is a 2006 study by the Business and Media Institute, formerly the Media Research Center, called "FIRE AND ICE". It traces not just the history of global climate change, from global cooling to global warming to clobal cooling to global warming, but rather focuses on the media's fear mongering over 100 years.
It is a case study in how the media have used this topic over the last 100+ years to manipulate people... to scare people... and to sell their agendas.
Noam Mohr is a physicist whose "hockey stick" graph showing the earth's warming trend was prominently featured in "An Inconvenient truth." Prior to the movie's release an academic review of the data showed some irregularities which were subsequently corrected. But the new graph proved, ironically, that the truth was inconvenient to the movie's producers who opted with the original graph because it was "less confusing".
Now Noam Mohr is being cast aside by the global warming community because he has published that environmental groups have hijacked his studies and twisted them to say carbon dioxide is the main component in global warming. Mohr further says that it is methane and other greenhouse gasses that have the greatest impact on the warming patterns.
And Mohr's solution? The most dramatic way to decrease methane is for everyone to become vegetarians!
A New Global Warming Strategy: by Noam Mohr
He is not the only scientist to say methane and other green house gasses are greater contributors to global warming than carbon dioxide. But he is the only one to propose vegetarianism as a possible fix.
Which is not what those poised to rake in a few billion in donations and carbon offsets want to be heard. Fortunately for them Mohr is committed enough to his ideals that he is quite a prolific author and even the environmentalists have begun to question his motives (and sanity). Kosher slaughterhouse horrors highlight cruelty of modern meat by Noam Mohr. So the carbon dioxide cultists are casting aside his recent articles saying that he has an agenda to further his cause of vegetarianism. But they are somehow comfortable misrepresenting his earlier data on global warming.
It appears as they too have an agenda... which I believe is greed. The carbon dioxide cultists have devleoped an ingenious system of polluting, and then paying others not to pollute for them. They call these offset credits. You calculate how much carbon you "generate" and pay one of the approved offset brokers who forward that money to companies who use low pollution technoolgy... after deducting a small administrative fee.
OK, since noon I've had about a case of beer, so take this in it's proper perspective... but Fidel Castro, the UN, and I have all said the same thing... that corn ethanol will lead to higher grain prices, and that will have world wide effects, most noticeably in food and feed grain prices.
U.N. official says bio fuels raise food supply risk The problem is multifold. Corn raised for ethanol does not have to be the more expensive corn used for food, nor the more moderately priced corn used for feed grain. But the price per bushel for "corn" does not discriminate between the grade of corn. And since the price is so high it is encouraging growers of other, less profitable crops, to plant corn instead. This will increase the prices of the diverted crops, as well as the price of corn and corn based products. The range or corn based products is enormous, but if you include the pork, beef, and poultry raised on corn, and their byproducts of meats, gelatin, and dairy products, you can see how the prices of food will skyrocket. And the crops being diverted to ethanol corn include cotton, sugar beets, soya, wheat, and oats. This means those crops will also increase in price, affecting the end products of cereals, breads, sugar, baked goods, soda, and an endless list of food products.
But the UN is not concerned about the USA paying high prices for food. The UN is concerned that the 40% of the world's population that depends on the US for grains and milk will have to pay more. Most of the world that buys our feed grain, food grain, and dairy already pays more than they can, they certainly pay a larger percentage of their income than the US citizens do. And Fidel Castro certainly does not care about how much the US has to pay. He is acting as Hugo Chavez' mouthpiece, who does not want the US, Brazil, and other South American countries to form an ethanol cartel to compete against OPEC. Not that Castro cares about OPEC, but he is in alliance with Russia, China and Venezuela, all who have similar, but differenting, reasons for being against ethanol. Russia and Venezuela because they have petroleum they want to sell, and China because they want to buy cheap grain and they are drilling for oil a few miles off the coast of the Florida Keys in Cuban waters.
I however, am also against corn ethanol, but the reasons are USA-centric. Food prices have already gone up, meat, dairy, cereal, poultry, soda, baked goods... virtually everything! Plus ethanol is not better for the environment. While it may reduce greenhouse gases at the tailpipe, it generates a lot at the distillery, not to mention that the exhaust exacerbates respiratory problems. Bio-diesel made from soya or peanut oil does not cause these problems but Americans have an unnatural aversion to driving a diesel powered car. But as one who also studied Africa and the starvation and atrocities that occur there I am also painfully aware that when US farmers divert crops from the food or feed chain it affects people worldwide.
Ethanol blog 5/27/07Ethanol blog 5/30/07Ethanol blog 6/12/07*****
As an aside, have you any idea what it feels like to see that an issue you have supported for months is championed by Fidel Castro and the UN!!! Despite the public support by communists and socialists I still maintain that corn derived ethanol is a huge mistake and cellulose or sugar derived ethanol are better, and more efficient, alternatives.
