The mass hysteria over the alleged warming of the planet, with everyone from the president to, reportedly, the Pope buying into the global warming alarms and calling for Draconian steps to stop Mother Nature from turning up the thermostat reminds me of one of the more bizarre examples of widespread panic created by a fictional crisis.
On Oct. 30, 1938, Orson Welles broadcast an adaptation of "The War of the Worlds," H.G. Wells' story about a Martian invasion. The broadcast consisted of breaking news bulletins that warned that Martian invaders had landed on earth and were waging warfare against humanity in the streets of New York and elsewhere.
I was 12 years old at the time and sitting on the front porch listening to the program and I remember the panic that broadcast, which sounded like a genuine on-the-spot newscast instead of a radio drama, created. Some of our neighbors came running up to ask us if we had heard the awful news.
We got panicked phone calls asking what we were going to do when the aliens showed up at our doorstep. Some people who hadn't heard the initial disclaimers went bonkers, even going so far as rushing to the alleged scene of the action being reported on the broadcast.
It was something like the James Thurber story "The Day the Dam Broke" which told of a man rushing through the streets of town shouting "The dam has burst, the dam, has burst." Panic ensued, with the town's entire population racing down the streets trying to get to higher ground before the onrushing flood could drown them. The panic only ended when a cooler head asked "What Dam? There isn't a dam, within 100 miles of here."
Now an awful lot of people are doing the equivalent of racing down the streets screeching "the ice is melting, run for the hills! The sea levels are rising and will soon engulf coastal areas like Florida and New York City!"
Although there are a lot of cooler heads, mainly highly competent scientists who look at the global warming scam in the same light that cooler heads viewed the Orson Welles broadcast, hordes of civic leaders across the planet, large parts of the mainstream media, and academicians who should be able to spot a scam when they see one, are signing onto Al Gore's campaign to pretty much destroy the economy and repeal much of the technological progress that has gone a long way toward eliminating poverty and improving the lot of a large part of the earth's population.
There are voices asking what dam has burst? Where are the invading Martians? Their voices go largely unheard, or dismissed out of hand by that minority of climate experts the media keeps telling us is really a majority and that all others are "deniers" who cling to the flat earth theory.
It is instructive to take a careful look at the main thrust of the global warming campaign — that the alleged warming is being caused by solar heat being trapped in the earth's atmosphere by a build up of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere that is caused largely by human activity.
As a result we are warned that the only way we can stop a disastrous warming of the planet is to put a limit on anthroprogenic (man-made) sources of CO2.
Those evil deniers however, have taken the trouble to look at the facts instead of the propaganda from the U.N. and the rest of the global warming fanatics. They point out that the the anthroprogenic sources of CO2 account for exactly 0.11 percent of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. In other words, 99.89 percent of the greenhouse effect has not a damn thing to do SUVs, jet travel, backyard barbecues or any other human activity.
The late New Zealand professor Augie Auer explained that three-quarters of the planet is ocean, and 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is governed by water vapour.
"Of that remaining 5 percent, only about 3.6 percent is governed by CO2 and when you break it down even further, studies have shown that the anthropogenic (man-made) contribution to CO2 versus the natural is about 3.2 percent.
"So if you multiply the total contribution 3.6 by the man-made portion of it, 3.2, you find out that the anthropogenic contribution of CO2 to the the global greenhouse effect is 0.115 percent ... that's like .12 cents in $100. It's minuscule ... it's nothing.
"So if that's the driving science, why do we need to be all concerned about CO2 and why do we need Kyoto and why do we need all the consequences from it?"
In other words, anthroprogenic produced CO2 in the atmosphere is hardly measurable when compared to say water vapor, and reducing it by the tiniest percentages by taking Draconian measures wouldn't have any effect on global warming, if indeed there is such a thing, but it would sure make life a lot less tolerable for most of us.
The undeniable facts show that is the truth. And the truth should make you free — or would if the current wisdom would allow you to know it. If not, then you'll end up running down the street screaming "head for the hills! The ocean levels are rising and we're all going to drown if we don't die of heat stroke first."
It all goes to show that there’s more than one sucker born every minute.
Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist and World War II Marine who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor and publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s.
He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska.
He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association For Intelligence Officers.
He can be reached at [email protected].
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