March 2005     

Global warming fiction versus facts

By Alan Caruba

Famed novelist Michael Crichton may achieve what mountains of scientific data produced by meteorologists and others have not: He may get the public to understand that the U.N. Kyoto "Climate Control" Protocol is, itself, a work of fiction.

His novel, State of Fear, (HarperCollins, 603 pages, $27.95) is a technopolitical thriller based on the widely ignored data that global warming is a hoax, but worse than that, it is a hoax specifically designed to harm the lives, and the economy of people living in industrialized nations.

It may well be the first novel to come complete with a section devoted to the data that demonstrates not only how false global warming is, but also the impact it would have if the U.N. protocol was strictly enforced.

When the global warming treaty was first proposed, the U.S. Senate unanimously rejected it, and, in his first term, President George W. Bush withdrew the Kyoto Protocol from consideration in 2001.

If this action had not been taken, and the treaty applied to the U.S., the country would have been required to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent below its 1990 level. The only way to achieve this would have been to impose strict energy use limits.

Take away energy or greatly reduce it, and you create the conditions for an economic disaster, and impact the lives and health of Americans from coast to coast. You invite draconian "solutions," such as limiting the use of air conditioning, gas rationing, and how many hours factories can operate.

State of Fear begins with the murder of an American graduate student studying ocean-wave dynamics. Other murders follow, but the U.N. Kyoto Protocol is tantamount to murder, too.

Recall the deaths of Frenchmen, when a heat wave hit that nation a few years ago. The lack of air conditioning literally killed countless elderly and others. Consider how the East Coast of the United States shut down when a massive electrical blackout occurred. Only the backup generators in hospitals prevented the deaths of seriously ill patients.

The novel references the same bogus computer models that are cited by such global warming proponents as Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, Kevin Knobloch of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and John Passacantando of Greenpeace, USA.

They predict melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and other catastrophes. They are as reliable as a deck of Tarot cards. Here again, scientific data amply demonstrates that, though the temperatures in Greenland and Iceland have been falling at 2.2 degrees Celsius since 1987, there has been no effect on the ice in those nations, that has actually been accumulating, not melting. The same is happening in Antarctica.

After the Russian Federation approved its participation in the U.N. Kyoto Protocol, the treaty comes into effect on February 16, 2005. Its requirements for the reduction of energy use exempts Red China, India, both home to a billion people, and some 130 Third World nations.

Happily, the U.S. will not participate, but U.N. treaties have saddled us with laws, such as the Endangered Species Act, that have proven a great hindrance to economic growth. Most certainly, the U.S. Constitution does not authorize such laws, although it does bind us to honor idiotic treaties conjured up by the U.N.

There are, however, those in the Congress and in various states, who would impose these harmful restrictions on Americans. Chief among them in Congress is Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who introduced "The Climate Stewardship Act" (S. 139) that would cap CO,₂ emissions at 2000 levels, by 2010. It is estimated this would cost the American economy $106 billion.

Nine northeastern states are colluding for the same goal (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont). Other states' attorneys general are using a public nuisance lawsuit against five utilities, to achieve the same goal.

All this is more than curious, given the Senate resolution that rejected the U.N. Kyoto Protocol. And, of course, they based their action on the same bogus data put forth by the U.N., and the many NGOs behind the global warming hoax. The end result would be a significant slowdown in economic growth, combined with a rise in the cost of energy.

I hope Michael Crichton's novel (which is soundly rooted in documented science) becomes yet another big bestseller. I hope lots of people who remain susceptible to the lies of the Greens will read it, and discover what those of us who have fulminated against the U.N. Kyoto Treaty since the Greens first conjured it in the early 1990s, already know.

Our speeches, our articles, our books, based on real science and real economics, have not slowed or stopped its ratification or implementation. Perhaps a work of fiction will achieve what we could not.

Alan Caruba is the author of "A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam," and a pocket guide, The United Nations Versus The United States, both are available exclusively from www.anxietycenter.com, the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center. He also writes "Warning Signs," a weekly commentary posted on the Internet site.