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Mythical Global Warming: Blame It On The Cows, Trees

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By JOHN HERBERT

From Where I Sit

Published: July 30, 2008

I was both puzzled and horrified when I listened to Nobel laureate Al Gore blatantly lie about global warming when he recently appeared on TV's Meet the Press. With a perfectly straight face, Gore claimed that more and more scientists are warning about the dangers of global warming.
Gore's assertion was left unchallenged, too.
The truth is that an increasing number of these very same scientists are now admitting that the Earth was hotter back in the 1990s, and even in the 1950s. They note, for example, that sunspot activities usually linked to global warming have dropped to levels that actually match eras of global cooling, which we've uncovered in the past.
We mortals can't do much about some 90 percent of global warming causes, anyway. The culprits are trees and cows, among other products of nature. Cows have to break wind occasionally, and when they do they contribute to global warming. You shouldn't blame everything on the dog.
When cows are seriously constipated, all that methane gas in their bellies makes them explode. One actually did, a few years ago, out in the West.
As for trees, there are awfully large jungles in both Africa and South America. I'd like to hear the environmentalists scream when we threaten to uproot the Amazon. On second thought, I wouldn't.
Why does a man of Gore's weight, both literal and figurative, continue to mislead us? Global warming is an easy (and lucrative) target. And it's on the liberal agenda to rid the world of allegedly polluting industrial activities. At considerable cost, I should note. He never mentions the unemployment or electricity shortages that massive attacks on mythical global warming would cause.
At the same time this summer, I saw on TV and read in The New York Times and other dailies that the leaders of the world's eight richest nations (the G8 Group) have pledged to cut carbon emissions from current levels by 50 percent by the year 2050. Carbon emissions have been named as one of the leading causes of global warming. Sure.
How on earth do some of the world's greatest heads of state plan to reduce carbon emissions by that much when they don't even have two of the globe's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, China and India, on board?
With China, India and other so-called developing nations competing for our high-priced fossil fuels, we are never going to see a worldwide treaty on climate change, even if we sometimes think we might need one.
If the G8 agrees with China on anything, it should start with the Chinese currency being kept too strong by the government in Beijing. China can easily afford to buy all the petroleum products it wants, as long as its currency remains golden, leaving us -- until we finally decide to reduce our dependence on foreign oil -- to foot the bill with higher prices at the pump and in the supermarket.
The G8 agreement doesn't begin to suggest how we would ever reach such a distant goal. Or even really specify what the goal is. The prime minister of Japan thought it was based on 1990 levels. This, from a supposed world leader?
To his credit, the U.S. president gave into the G8 goal just to reach some measure of global harmony. But he repeated, time after time, that he could not really agree to targets that China and India did not share.
It was probably the first time the Bush White House had even backed, publicly at least, any kind of agreement targeting carbon emissions or that global warming truly threatens earth. Must be an election year.

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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