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Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Debra J. Saunders :: Townhall.com Columnist
The cows missed the movie
by Debra J. Saunders
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Two British news reports could not have come at a better time for Fred Singer, a scientist and global-warming denier, who has incurred the wrath of global-warming guru and former Vice President Al Gore.

The Independent reported Sunday that a new U.N. report found that livestock is responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gases. In other words, in the universe of global-warming alarmism, cow gas does more damage to Mother Earth than SUVs. (American cars are responsible for some 6 percent of greenhouse gases.)

The Sunday Telegraph reported that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is downgrading its predictions as to how much sea levels will rise due to global warming. The IPCC lowered its upper estimate for sea-level rise by 2100 from 34 inches to 17 inches.

In "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore warned that global warming would cause sea levels to rise by some 20 feet. "I claim that Al Gore is a contrarian because he disagrees with the IPCC," Singer said, as he smiled. Singer was in town to speak at this week's meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Gore also will talk to the group about global warming on Thursday.

If there's one thing that irritates Singer, it is Gore's belief that there is a scientific "consensus" about human-induced global warming, even as Gore incessantly complains about scientists who deny global warming.

"Well, which is it?" Singer asked. If there is a consensus, there should be no deniers. Singer has co-written a book, "Unstoppable Global Warming -- Every 1,500 Years," that argues that the Earth warms every 1,500 years due to a solar-linked cycle. The book begins in the year 1100, when Vikings grew vegetables on Greenland, where the population reached 3,000 before creeping glaciers and cold killed the remaining residents. Now, Greenland is warm again.

Don't blame manmade global warming for rising sea levels, the book argues. "Sea levels have been rising steadily since the peak of the last Ice Age about 18,000 years ago. The total rise has been 400 feet." For the last 5,000 years, sea levels have risen about 7 inches per century. No surprise, Singer sees the new IPCC take on sea levels as "more realistic" than past predictions. Continued...

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Beware Corporations Bearing Statistics
One of the big problems that has confused many regarding global warming is the plethora of conflicting statistics.

Some of these are genuine, just as when different scientists perform experiments on different days they get different results, mostly broadly similar, but sometimes wildly different.

However, there is good reason to believe that a great deal of information regarding global warming is fallacious, wrong or deliberately misleading.

It is important to know the source of the information, because certain nameless companies who might lose-out financially from reductions in CO2 emissions might just be motivated to suppress 'inconvenient' data or supply fictitious information statistics in an attempt to 'prove' that global warming is a myth

If the source of the data is hard to identify - assume it's highly dubious

Needless to say the corporations are not stupid and carefully launder their phoney statistics and pseudoscience via ostensibly 'independent' organizations.
See http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf

I believe that something like this has happened before!
Tobacco, Cancer, cigarettes - Need I say more?

Puerile Sniping
All this sniggering about Al Gore is unjustified, puerile and indicative of the ignorance of the commentators. It is perfectly clear that 'The Inconvenient Truth' was aimed at the the general population. Apart from becoming vegetarian, there is little that the average citizen can do about cattle methane.

We will all have to alter our lifestyles, if we are to meet the necessary reductions in greenhouse gases. This is exactly the message Gore was intending to promote.

The fact that GHGs are higher from cattle means that things are not OK, they are worse!

There is no evidence that Fred Singer is a reliable source of good science. In-fact the opposite would seem to be true:
He has a history of being associated with deceptive disinformation campaigns.
See 'The Denial Machine' for more information,
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=522784499045867811
also
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf
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