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FROM- the spectrum.com

Global warming is great hoax of our time


"It's a planetary emergency." "At stake is the survival of our civilization." "We face medieval-style impoverishment and societal collapse in just 40 years." "Before this century is over, billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs that survive will be in the arctic where the climate remains tolerable." "Be worried. Be very worried."

These incredible proclamations are a sample of the nonsense the global warming hoax has spawned. The threats are vastly exaggerated. The fact is, there currently is no such thing as global warming or global climate change. It's all local.

Most of the scientific "evidence" for global warming has been fabricated, exaggerated or misinterpreted by special interest groups for their own purposes. The rest of the evidence is either locally based and cannot be extrapolated to a global scope, or is the result of forces well beyond the cause, control and maybe the understanding of man.

I'm not sure how this hoax got started, but here's a likely scenario for how it got out of control. First, it became the cause of choice for morally bankrupt celebrities who found in it a humanitarian soapbox to deflect their depravities. Next, the media took up the cry. The more outlandish the fabricated calamity, the more naughty the celebrity who proclaimed it, the more papers, books, magazines and airtime they sold.

The American public, with their morbid fascination for doom and debauchery, ate it up. Ever aware of how they could buy votes, politicians started throwing our money at the popular issue. Corrupt and greedy scientists then started prostituting their scholarship for an increasing number of research grants. Feeding this amazing cash cow on the fodder of fictitious reports produced even more research money and "proved" to all the deluded devotees that they really were saving the world from imminent destruction.

Carbon dioxide, a by-product of our great industry, has been targeted as the cause of global warming. A correlation cannot be proven. There is significant evidence, however, that drastically reducing carbon emissions will be prohibitively expensive, practically impossible and will not affect global climate. We should be addressing more imminent, threatening and truly global problems. When we solve them, there will be time to address global warming - if anyone still believes in it.

This is not to suggest that local air quality problems should not be addressed. They are real health hazards that have real solutions. But global warming is a fraud. It will not cause widespread catastrophes in the next 100 years, or ever. The next time doom-sayers predict yet another global warming disaster, and suggest spending your money to prevent it, be skeptical, be very skeptical. Righteous anger might even be appropriate.

Keith G. Seegmiller is a Cedar City resident. Much of the information for this column came from the book "Cool It," by Bjorn Lomborg.

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