The Global Warming Hoax

Local weatherman John Coleman had an hour-long prime-time television special on our local independent channel the other night to prove that global warming is a hoax, is “science gone bad.” As you might expect, it was long on rhetoric and short on actual, um, facts.

For instance, it was claimed that the greenhouse gas in our atmosphere is water vapor, not carbon dioxide, as proved by the fact that cloudy nights are warmer than clear nights because clouds keep the heat in. No mention was made of the concomitant and inconvenient fact that cloudy days are cooler than clear days, nor was it explained how warmer nights disproves the effect of carbon dioxide on global temperatures.

The concern about the effects of the spread of tropical diseases was cleared up by establishing that the reason that Malaria is endemic in the tropics is due to lack of pest control, and that the mosquitoes that spread it can live as far north as the North Pole. That would indeed solve the issue if anybody had mentioned Malaria, but nobody did. The discussion was about tropical diseases, of which there are a great many, so calming fears about Malaria doesn’t do much to resolve the discussion, and why it needed resolving is unclear if the globe isn't actually warming as is claimed.

If there’s a herd of elephants in the room, you don’t solve the problem by shooting one of them; there would be one dead elephant, but you would still have a herd of elephants in the room. And bear in mind, they are claiming there is no herd of elephants, but still finding it necessary to shoot one of the elephants that they claim does not exist.

One scientist debunked the loss of Arctic ice cap, stating that it did indeed shrink for one single year, in 2007. In 2008, he said, it had largely rebounded, and in 2009 it was fully back to normal. Hmmm. Well, let’s not split hairs, here, he’s full of it.

Another scientist claimed that the rise in carbon dioxide will double crop yields, since that harmless gas is a nutrient for plants. That might have some merit if CO2 was the only thing that plants feed on, but they also need a couple of other things like nitrogen, phosphorous and, oh yeah, water. Additionally, some types of plants consume a lot more CO2 than others, and crops are a type of plant that consume very little. Trees consume a lot, but we don’t actually eat trees very much.

All of their efforts at refuting arguments about the rise of sea level were somewhat comedic in view of the unarguable and inconvenient fact that
it’s already happening.

Coleman went on at great length about the U.S. government deliberately manipulating temperature readings. He has found a computer programmer and a meteorologist who have discovered that the government used 6000 thermometers to measure global temperatures until about 1980, at which point they dropped that number to 1000. The ones they quit using are all in cold locations on mountains and such, while the ones they continue to use are in warm places such as beaches in San Diego. The government has not limited its dishonesty to that, however, it has cooked the computer program so that it produces artificially high temperature averages from the readings of the 1000 thermometers that the government does continue to use.

He and his two friends are going public about this heinous conspiracy soon, and “it will become major news.” I can’t wait.