What Will Global Warming Advocates Do with Coldest April Ever?

Bloomberg is reporting that this April in New York is the coldest in recorded history. The agriculture industry is reporting the same thing nationwide. Such news is having a chilling effect of the global warming campaign. Well, at least it should. But the common belief among the global warming crowd is "please don't bore us with facts."

The facts are is that weather has shifted in different directions for years. In the 1970s, when I was a young person in school, the fear was global freezing. Every serious weather scientist has told me that these changes have been cyclical and have serious doubts about global warming. The current extreme weather in April is indicative of this fact.

Why are conservatives and many libertarians suspicious about global warming warnings? Here's just a few reasons:

• Environmentalists need to produce negative reports in order to get more money. The alarmism fuels a very lucrative industry called "scientific research"


• The real issue for environmentalists is control. They are not nearly as interested in stopping pollution as they are in controlling the economy. For example, if the rain forest is so important in preventing climate change, environmentalists should buy large portions of the land, rather than try to force the Latin American governments to do what they demand. The ten largest environmental organizations have more money than the two major political parties in the US combined. They could certainly afford to preserve much of it.


• The best way to improve the environment is technology, not regulation. I visited Poland and found it almost impossible to breath. While there I found out it had the toughest regulations of any country in the world and that they existed for decades. Another example is the Super Fund, which was designed by the EPA to clean up waste from factories and other environmental disasters. The vast majority of that fund goes to lawyers, according to the National Center for Policy Analysts.


• The safety of such reforms are questionable. For example, every time fuel mileage requirements goes up, auto safety goes down because cars are not as safe when they face such difficult fuel mileage requirements (they reduce the weight in order to improve the mileage).

I can go on, but the theme is the same. The science is suspicious and the consequences to dramatic reforms could be huge and devastating on the economy. Freedom and economic prosperity could be victims of the global warming hysteria.

Starvation in Africa: Global Warming vs. Man Made Poverty

This morning I saw several headlines about how Global Warming will be particularly devastating on poor countries. Vast starvation will become common place in the years to come because of the "climate changes," these articles argue.

Ironically, I also recently stumbled on an article by the Heritage Foundation that noted that Zimbabwe had 7 million people facing starvation and it is one of the fastest declining countries of the last two decades. This is not proof of climate changes, however, but policy changes. Until the late 1970s the country then known as Rhodesia was the second richest country on the continent (following South Africa) and until the mid 1970s was a country who's economy was comparable to many countries in Western Europe in many ways.

If one studies climate and other issues since the late 70s when it comes to Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), there has not been any of the dramatic changes that people would expect to cause the type of deprivation that is rampant. The real problem is the same ones facing most African countries: bad policies. Impoverished African countries suffer from common themes:

* Corrupt governments that put their own personal wealth as their single biggest priority.

* Price controls that forces farmers to charge less for their products than it costs to make them (this is a leading cause of starvation), people will not make food if they can't make money from it. This has been a rampant force behind the "droughts" that Ethiopia has suffered from over the years.

* Punitive tax laws that discourage economic growth.

* Often the total disregard of private property rights, forcing land to be redistributed without cause.

These are just a few of the examples that relate to Africa's poverty, although we will see more news stories pointing to climate change than the real culprit of policy change. This type of government created poverty has been around for decades in Africa. Blaming it on the environment makes these third world dictators victims and allows Liberals to promote their environmental agenda.

The headlines continually warn of global warming, but many in the United States are preparing for a White Easter, including some who live here in Texas (in the Panhandle). There is discussion by very few in the media about "global freezing" (see picture). But, don't expect such an idea to become rampant in the media, it doesn't meet the media or the global warming communities' objectives, which have more to do with government control than the environment.

Winter Blast Puts a Chill on Global Warming

"The Coldest Temperatures in a Decade" was a lead story on the Fox News Channel this morning, describing the weather in the Midwest and Northeast. Later the announcer described the freezing temperatures in the New England area as "deadly."

The big discussion, when it comes to the environment, is that Global Warming is a "fact" and should not be disputed. Furthermore, the ones who caused it are the "industrialized nations who continue to use carbon fuels as we move rapidly to our demise." These are the stories we see and hear daily and the message our children get in the classroom as if it were gospel. However, a few decades ago, these same forces were concerned about Global Freezing. They claimed we were facing a future ice age, unless we turn around our energy and environmental policies.

The truth is, no one appears to know definitively what is happening and what needs to be done to "stop" it. Some scientists, like Richard Lindzen of MIT believes the changes of temperature are cyclical and have gone on for centuries. Many scientists who are pushing global warming make a living off of their alarmist announcements, because every study that scares people justifies funding of another study that will scare people more. Imagine if a group of scientists received a grant to study the "problem" and came back with, "it isn't a problem." How likely will they be to get more funding?

The United States has seen a huge improvement in its environmental situation and energy usage over the last few decades. The real sources of pollution are the emerging economies of India and China that are building factories, but their technologies lag far behind. The "solution" to "global warming" being advocated by experts are policies that will make countries, including the US, more poor by excessively taxing and regulating industry. Such policies will damage both the economy and the ecology. We need to be very careful about how we "solve" this problem and make sure the cure isn't worse than the disease.