GLOBAL WARMING: A Boon to Humans and Other Animals

Thomas Gale Moore,Senior Fellow,Hoover Institution (1995)     (More)

Raising the specter of disaster as well, Vice President Al Gore has called the threat of global warming "the most serious problem our civilization faces."[3] In fact, he has styled those who dispute it as "self-interested" and compared them to spokesmen for the tobacco industry who have questioned the relation of smoking to cancer. But Gore is misinformed; many disinterested scientists, including climatologists with no financial interest other than preventing wasteful expenditures of society's limited resources, question the evidence and the models that underlie the warming hypothesis.
In fact, the evidence supporting the claim that the earth has grown warmer is shaky; the theory is weak; and the models on which the conclusions are based cannot even replicate the current climate. It is asserted, for example, that over the last hundred years the average temperature at the earth's surface has gone up by 0.5deg. Centigrade or about 1deg. Fahrenheit. Given the paucity of data in the Southern Hemisphere, the evidence that in the United States, with the best records, temperatures have failed to rise; the British naval records that find no significant change in temperatures at sea since the mid-1800s; and that the reported increases occurred mainly prior to 1940 -- before the rapid rise in CO2 -- the public is entitled to be wary. Moreover, even the National Academy of Sciences is skeptical of the validity of the computer models and warns that the modeling of clouds -- a key factor -- is inadequate and poorly understood.[4] "   (A Must Read)