Earth Day Hysteria

Well its that time of year again. You know it, its Earth Day. Ah yes, Earth Day that one day out of the year where everyone pretends to be an environmentalist (read: hippie) and not shower. Either that, or they plant a tree.

But in all seriousness this whole “Earth Day” thing annoys me. Why? Because it was founded and exists today to bring awareness to problems that don’t even exist.

“*GASP* IMAGINARY problems?! Evan, how could you! Global warming is a serious problem!” Says the audience. Well, Earth day wasn’t created to stop global warming, in fact, that would’ve been the solution to their problem. Sarcasm and immaturity aside, lets talk about the environment.

The first Earth day was April 22, 1970. It was created by Washington Senator Gaylord Nelson. It was made in a response to a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich in 1968. It was called The Population Bomb. This book prophesized that the global population would grow faster than what the food supply could handle. According to Ehrlich, life expectancy would drop to 42 years by 1980 and that the global population would collapse to 22.6 million by 1999.

This, of course, never occurred. Global cooling fizzled out as well. For those who are uninitiated, global cooling was the latest theory that stated that the burning of fossil fuels was causing the Earth to cool down into an ice age. Thirty years later, the same burning of fossil fuels is causing the Earth to warm.

Now, its not that I don’t believe global warming exists: It does. However, my problems arises with what to attribute the warming too. The environmentalists attribute the warming to the burning of fossil fuel and human interference with nature; this is where I disagree.

Global warming is not caused by the evils of humanity, but by nature itself. 97% of the carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere is due to natural events. This events include forest fires, decomposition of plants and animals, and volcanoes. That leaves less that 3%

All of the evidence that supports global warming all comes from global climate models and not real-world collections. You can learn more about the models here. In reality, for the past 10,000 years, the Earth has been in what is called an “interglacial period.” These are periods in which the Earth warms up from an ice age. Once we hit a peak in the warming cycle, the Earth will cool down once more into an ice age. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.

Much of this information comes from a man named John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel. He goes so far to say that “global warming is a scam.” It seems that he may be on to something. In 2004, Al Gore co-launched a company called Generation Investment Management. GIM manages “environmentally friendly portfolios” and sells carbon credits. Two years later in 2006, Al Gore released the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. This documentary sent the “global warming crisis” into the public eye and made it "trendy” to go green.

Al Gore stands to gain for every person who decides to go green. Isn’t this a conflict of interest? Now if you don’t know what carbon credits are, allow me to explain. Carbon credits are things you buy to offset your carbon footprint (the carbon released due to your actions). The proceeds from the carbon credits can go to a variety of sources. From investment of “green technology” to planting a tree. These things by themselves aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but carbon credits are scams to remove your guilt about “destroying” the environment.

The Catholic church had a similar scam back in the 15th and 16th century. Indulgences, like carbon credits, were things you bought  that “removed sin” and allowed you to get into Heaven without penance or confessing your sins to a priest. The Catholic church made a lot of money with indulgences, it was a convenient way to remove sin, and it meant that, provided you had the money, you could sin as much as you pleased. This was all fine and good until Martin Luther, in 1516, began the Protestant Reformation by nailing his 95 thesis to a Catholic church. These thesis contained Luther’s complaints about the Catholic church, including the use of indulgences.

Now, as I try to wrap up this rant of mine, where does this leave us? I’m not sure. The Earth is warming and we feel compelled to do something about it. Its human nature. We need to realize that this is a natural event, and restricting the freedoms and liberties of Americans and other people around the world is no way of doing that. Especially when there is no hard evidence that we could ever make a difference. If nothing else, remember this: expanding governmental power is no way of solving problems.

Some interesting links:

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/comments_about_global_warming/

http://blog.heritage.org/2008/12/11/scientists-make-their-anti-global-warming-case/

http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/19842304.html

http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/38574742.html

 

As always, leave you thoughts and responses in the comments (but please try to stay mature).