Republished from Caribbean Net News!
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The following is the clarion call Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador Deborah-Mae Lovell sounded during a seminar the OAS held to impart that “Climate change in the Caribbean demands urgent mitigation”:
The possibility that our climate may change is enough for us to take notice and to be pro-active. We stand to lose nearly everything, if the predictions of the scientists come true.
(OAS.org, January 18, 2007)
It is imperative that we cut pollution, conserve energy, and protect our environment. The sustainable development of the eco-tourism economies of the Caribbean depends on it.
Accordingly, we should reject any notion that the existential alarms of climate-change Cassandras are forcing us to do these things. Likewise, we should take umbrage at fearmongering claims that, if we don’t do as others say, God will break his covenant and flood our islands with the heavenly waters of the Caribbean Sea.
In fact, we should be taking pride in keeping our sea and beaches clean; this, instead of worrying about “the possibility that our climate may change.” And, our leaders would do well to get the OAS and other international organizations to support our efforts to stop the dumping of waste off our shores; this, instead of parroting their alarms about climate change.
But to expose the specious gospel some of our regional leaders are preaching about climate change, here’s a little of the message OAS Assistant Secretary General Albert R. Ramdin delivered at this climate change crusade in Antigua:
[T]here is clear evidence from NASA satellites that the polar ice cap as a whole is shrinking at a rate of about 9 percent each decade. A vicious cycle is in progress: As more of the polar ice cap disappears, the warmer the earth will become.
What Ramdin failed to mention, however, is that there is also clear evidence from NASA satellites that this shrinking is consistent with naturally-occurring glacial cycles. Because ice sheets have grown and shrunk in a complex spatial and temporal pattern (every 40,000 to 100,000 years) dating back to the Precambrian age (over 600 million years ago). More to the point, the last cycle ended about 10,000 years ago.
Alas, this means that we have to put up with myopic global-warming doomsayers for another 30,000 to 90,000 years before the next (growing) glacial cycle comes along and freezes their mouths shut. In the meantime, however, Ramdin should at least bite his tongue for drawing a connection between climate change and Huricane Ivan that is as patently false and misleading as the connection President George W. Bush drew between Saddam Hussein and WMDs….
In the meantime, consider the following for your edification:
The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to inclement weather. The hearing is entitled ‘Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?’
Of course, most members of the US Congress are so clueless that the irony of canceling a hearing on global warming because of unusually cold weather is completely lost on them. But I have no doubt that the preachers of doomsday scenarios about global warming – especially their prophet Al Gore – are acutely aware of the inconvenient truth this irony betrays.
Still, what I suspect will prove even more inconvenient for them is the documentary Channel 4 aired in London last night. It featured “leading scientists” debunking the myth that carbon dioxide (CO2) released by human activity is the primary cause of global warming. Instead, they proffered what I’ve been arguing in layman’s terms for years: namely that climate change is a cyclical phenomenon that results more from the sun’s radiation on the atmosphere than from anything having to do with the whims and wastes of human activity.
Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in carbon dioxide levels.
[Professor Ian Clark, an expert in palaeoclimatology from the University of Ottawa]
Many people in developing countries have unquestioning faith in decrees from the United Nations. Therefore, I feel obliged to clarify the relevance of its Summary for Policymakers on the “human and natural drivers of climate change,” which it published earlier this year.
The Chicken Littles of global-warming have touted this report as offering definitive proof that CO2 emissions from human activities present a clear and present danger of tipping over our Earth in the balance. But here’s a little of what Professor Paul Reiter, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, had to say about it:
It was a sham. This list [of more than 2000 of the world’s leading scientists who allegedly endorsed the report] included the names of scientists who disagreed with its findings…. That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed….It’s not true.
(In fact, Professor Reiter claims that he had to threaten legal action against the UN to have his name removed from the report.)
Therefore, I urge you to contact Channel 4 for a DVD of this program. It will provide a sobering antidote to the infectious hysteria about global warming that Gore’s Inconvenient Truth has spread all over the world.
Indeed, just nine months ago I declared that I’d written “My final word on global warming.” But I felt compelled to sound this “all clear” alert. This, after watching Gore emit so much hot air on this issue during the recent Academy Awards, which over one billion people reportedly inhaled.
Arguably, Gore’s claims about global warming are about as scientific as a groundhog’s forecast about the end of winter. Therefore, it might be helpful to know that Groundhog Punxsutawney Phil predicted that we’d be experiencing the warmth of an early-Spring by now. Instead, we’re suffering the sub-freezing effects of a prolonged winter here in Washington, which was punctuated by another school-closing, hearing-canceling snowstorm today….