DAVID LETTERMAN
NOMINATED FOR If President Clinton and Al Gore were on the Nobel committee, Dave Letterman might have a shot at the Nobel Prize. Before you think I have completely lost my mind, let me remind you that before Dave became a comedian and talk show host, he was a television weatherman. Over the past week, President Clinton invited 100 TV weather persons to the White House to talk about "global warming." The administration claims "global warming" is a horrible problem caused by human beings. They must take drastic action or the end of the world is at hand. It must be a problem because the chief administration scientist, Al Gore, says it is. If you don’t agree, just check out Gore’s scientific credentials. First, he grew up on a tobacco farm in Tennessee. He followed this with invigorating scientific study at the Harvard School of Journalism. His scientific training climaxed with his doctoral thesis, based on research in the halls of the U.S. Capital. I must applaud the president for adding these 100 equally distinguished scientists, from the great lab of the TV newsroom, to his cause. As a political stunt, it works well with our unusually warm October. It is easier to pass out 100 cue cards with which to spread their propaganda than to debate the issue with qualified scientists who are dubious of the administration's claims. For example, according to a Gallup poll, only 17% of scientists belonging to the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society believe that human action causes "global warming." The administration’s purpose is to drum up popular support for a controversial international agreement that they want to sign later this year in Kyoto, Japan. Independent studies of this plan indicate that it could be a disaster for the American economy. The opposition to this treaty is widespread, with both business and the labor movement opposed to it. The treaty calls for carbon dioxide levels to be returned to 1990 levels. This would only apply to a few of the wealthier countries, like the United States, while other countries do not have to have requirements that are as strict. Now, if the threat of "global warming" was a real danger, it might be worth the economic sacrifice. However, the fact is that "global warming" hasn’t been shown to cause any real threat. In particular, the actions of human beings play very little role in increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Consider these numbers. Since 1950, the amount of carbon dioxide that makes up earth’s atmosphere increased from .04 percent to .06 percent. Of this .02% change, only 6% is attributed to human activity. This minute percentage is no reason for all the apocalyptic claims of the Clinton administration. This is especially true when you consider the fact that humans have virtually no significant effect on the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. The original hypothesis of "global warming" was based on computer models starting in the mid-1980's. Over the last decade, as computer technology increased, scientists have improved these models. The result is that they have reduced the predicted climate change that is due to "global warming." The current prediction is a slight increase of a couple degrees over the next twenty-five years. It is even possible that the changes could be positive rather than negative. For example, a longer growing season in Nebraska might lead to greater crop yields. One other thing to keep in mind: twenty years ago, the dooms-day crowd was making apocalyptic predictions about the effects of human activity putting carbon dioxide in the air. The difference, then, was that they predicted that we were on the verge of another ice age. Of course, these predictions were false. When they didn’t come true, the same group changed course and, now, predicts the dangers of "global warming." The lesson to learn from this is that many claims about an environmental apocalypse are unjustified. The real reason they make these absurd claims is to promote a political agenda designed at increasing the power of government to control our property and lives. I am not denying that there are legitimate environmental problems that we must solve. Nevertheless, we need to approach these problems with reason rather than emotional hysteria. Emotional hysteria often has led to solutions that are more harmful than the perceived problem. The worldwide ban of the pesticide DDT best illustrates this. Despite no evidence that DDT had ever killed a human, they banned it all over the world because it had killed some animals. Also, some lab studies of rats indicated that, in large doses, it could cause cancer among rats. We might pass this off as a reasonable precaution, just in case it could harm humans. However, the result was that millions of people suffered and died because of the DDT ban that was supposed to save us all. In 1951, India had seventy-five million cases of malaria. Over the next ten years, malaria cases decreased to a figure of fifty thousand in 1961. This was because they used DDT to control the mosquitoes that carry malaria. Then, a few years later, they banned DDT. By 1977, India reported more than thirty million cases of malaria. It is estimated that they could have avoided twenty million deaths worldwide, if DDT had continued to be used. How many people died in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany? On this upbeat note, I conclude this in time that I might tune into the 10:00 P.M. weather report to hear the local weather person read his cue card that tells me that "global warming" is the cause of the unusually warm October weather. (I doubt they mention it in January.) Then, I will watch Letterman to get a few laughs and hope to forget the reality that freedom is once again being challenged by the politics of fear. At least, I want to forget long enough to get a good night's sleep. Enough gullible people are wringing their hands and losing sleep because they buy into the garbage of environmental extremism. It is time to make America beautiful again by dumping these wacky freedom-sucking ideas in a sanitary landfill. |
