CHICKEN LITTLE, HALF TRUTHS AND THE LOSS OF FREEDOM
By
Dr. Michael S. Coffman Ph. D.
October 25, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
Remember the media coverage last March of the disintegrating Wilkins Ice Shelf in the Antarctic? To listen to the evening news the disintegration was merely another example of how man-caused global warming was having a devastating impact on the Antarctic, and by extension, the Arctic and Greenland ice packs and glaciers. The average viewer came away with the idea that all of Antarctica was melting. The implication, of course, was that species like the polar bear were threatened with extinction and melting ice would flood the world’s coastlines and islands.
The
media and alarmist scientists give the public the impression that Antarctica
is warming so fast that it is causing catastrophic melting, when in
fact the warming is only occurring in the ocean along the western Antarctic
Peninsula. Research shows this warming is probably caused by volcanic
activity, not global warming. Almost all of Antarctica is cooling, not
warming. Source NASA Earth Observatory.
A whooping “220 square miles of the ice shelf collapsed,”
warned Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data
Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Jim Elliot, who captured
video of the disintegration said, "Big hefty chunks of ice, the
size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like
rubble – it's like an explosion," he said. Most media reports
of the incident used powerful adjectives like “collapse,”
“explosion,” “threatened,” “sheer scale,”
“hanging by a thread,” “unprecedented warming,”
and many more to dramatize the event to cataclysmic levels.
What
was not reported was that the 220 square miles 
represented
only 2.67 percent of the entire Wilkins Ice Shelf and only 0.01 percent
of the entire Antarctic ice cover. In that context, the media reporting
sounds like Chicken Little hyperbole. Dismayed by the exaggerated reporting,
former Director of Meteorology at the Weather Channel and current Executive
Director of Icecap.com Joseph D’Aleo said that the breakup was
more comparable to “an icicle falling from a snow and ice covered
roof.”
Unfortunately, the media and alarmist scientists are not content with
putting this issue into perspective. To their credit, the media and
alarmist scientists admitted the breakup will not raise the sea level
because the floating ice had already displaced all the water it was
going to. But they then somberly reported that research reveals that
the area surrounding the Wilkins ice shelf had warmed an incredible
4.5oF since the 1950s; faster than any place on earth. The reader or
viewer is left with the idea that such warming is also melting continental
ice, which will cause oceans levels to rise 20 feet or more as Al Gore
incorrectly, but graphically depicts in his video An Inconvenient
Truth.
This cataclysmic scenario just isn’t going to happen, however.
What the media and global warming alarmists fail to tell the public
is that all of the ice shelf disintegration in the past decade is confined
to Northwestern Antarctica, especially the Antarctic Peninsula. The
disintegration of ice shelves in this region is due to a warming of
the ocean, not of the atmosphere. The rest of Antarctica has been cooling
and accumulating ice since the early 1970s. This is exactly
the opposite of what the man-caused global warming theory predicts should
occur!
There is another problem with this alarmist cataclysmic warming/melting
hyperbole. Research published this past year reveals that the ocean
warming is likely due to volcanic activity, not global warming. In January
2008 one volcano was even found to be actively warming the underside
of the glaciers overlaying it, causing them to melt from the bottom
up and advance much faster than would otherwise be expected. Also not
reported is the fact that some 3,000 scientific temperature measuring
robots plying the oceans have found that earth’s oceans are cooling,
not warming, as the man-caused global warming theory demands. Of course,
none of this is ever reported by the media or acknowledged by the alarmist
scientists. So, there is no way the average reader/viewer can put the
issue into context.
Most people are acutely aware that the winter of 2007 and 2008 was the
coldest in nearly three decades. They are still reeling from their heating
bills. There is a reason for that. The earth’s temperature plummeted
by 0.6oC. Although this does not mean we are heading for the next ice
age, Antarctica’s sea ice nonetheless reached record levels. The
2008 Antarctic winter has not yet reached its peak and the sea ice extent
is on track to break the 2007 record. Likewise, formation of the North
Pole’s sea ice this year was much faster and thicker than in recent
years and the 2008 polar summer melting is significantly less than it
has been in the immediate past.
That is good news for the polar bear, whose populations have been at
record numbers the past few years – even with the 
melting
polar sea ice. Yet in spite of all the good news, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service (USFWS) bowed to hysterical environmentalist pressure
this May and listed the polar bear as a “threatened” species.
There is little to no scientific evidence to list the polar bear, leading
Senator Inhofe (R-OK) to say “the decision to list the polar bear
as ‘threatened’ appears to be based more on politics than
science.” Environmentalists have been salivating for years over
the prospect of listing the polar bear as endangered so they can use
the Endangered Species Act as a weapon to limit the U.S. economy. Watch
for an avalanche of lawsuits.
Why did the USFWS list the polar bear with no science to back it up?
In what can only be described as a leap of irrationality, the USFWS
justified its decision to list the polar bear on computer models that
predict rampant warming and continued melting of polar sea ice. These
are the same computer models that admittedly have over a 100 percent
error level, and which were shown last year to always predict warming
that has not been demonstrated in real life.
It is disingenuous at best for the media to report only those facts
which paint a dire picture of out-of-control global warming. Such one-sided
reporting is nothing more than propaganda and indoctrination cloaked
in the mantle of news. To base policy on biased information inevitably
leads to poor policy decisions, and as we are beginning to see, human
misery. The current high gasoline prices can be traced directly back
to congressional decisions to protect the environment at any expense.
First, by preventing development of the existing vast oil deposits in
the U.S. to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Second, the creation
of feel-good, but counter productive regulations that made the building
of refineries uneconomical for the past 30 years. Third, the very expensive
requirement to create biofuels from food, which in turn has also caused
skyrocketing food prices.
These
examples of environmental overkill are coming back to haunt us. Unfortunately,
it will get worse before it gets better because Congress is blaming
everyone but themselves.
Vaclav Klaus, newly reelected President of Czechoslovakia, sees an even
greater danger. Having lived most of his life under communism, he provided
some disturbing insights on the global warming agenda when he addressed
the National Press Club on May 27, 2008,
“There will be the same attraction, to a great extent pathetic, and at first sight quasi-noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of something above him, (of something greater than his poor self), supplemented by enormous self-confidence on the side of those who stand behind it. Like their predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality. In the past it was in the name of the masses (or of the Proletariat), this time in the name of the Planet. Structurally, it is very similar…. I ask: ‘What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?’ My answer is: ‘it is our freedom.’ I may also add ‘and our prosperity’.” (Bold original)
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Vaclav Klaus speaks from experience, which he discusses in his book Blue Planet in Green Shackles. We are just now seeing the tip of the iceberg that is coming at us like a freight train. It is time to hold our politicians accountable to bring reality back to our policy decisions. We will never have a better time to do it than this November.
� 2008 Michael Coffman - All Rights Reserved
