ALEXANDRIA, La. (BP)–“Climate change is the most critical sustainability issue of our time,” Alcoa President and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld said while announcing a joint venture with The Pew Research Center, “and to make a real difference we all need to take action — on all fronts and at all levels, individually and together.”
According to the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch, Alcoa and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change have launched a joint venture, considered to be the first of its kind, called “Make An Impact.” The goal of the initiative is to help find answers to man-made global warming.
Market Watch says Alcoa has reduced its “emissions inside its operations 33% from a 1990 base” and “had invested over $8 million in community-driven climate change projects in the last year.” The new program will help Alcoa employees and others become a part of the solution to global warming by managing their carbon footprint as well as reducing energy costs, Market Watch said.
Alas, Alcoa is just one of many large corporations that have succumbed to the growing politically correct hysteria over man-made global warming. President John F. Kennedy was right when he observed, “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -– deliberate, contrived, and dishonest –- but the myth –- persistent, persuasive, and realistic.”
Despite the fact that many scientists offer evidence that counters the theory of man-made global warming, many stubbornly believe it’s true. One scientist who is challenging the idea that mankind has contributed significantly to climate change is David Evans of Australia. In an article that appeared in The Australian recently, Evans wrote:
“I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector…. I have been following the global warming debate closely for years.”
Evans indicated that when he began the job of monitoring climate change in Australia in 1999, “the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good.” However, once he began collecting the data Evans found that “since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming.”
“By 2007,” Evans wrote, “the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?'”
Evans goes on to assert that there is absolutely no evidence — none — to support the notion that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. In fact, he says that satellites used to measure the world’s temperature indicate that the most recent warming trend ended in 2001 and that temperatures have dropped in the last year.
The main motive in Evans’ recent article was to stimulate real debate over the issue of climate change, which he maintains has been all but absent. “So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.”
Evans insists that heretofore, the cause of global warming has only been asserted and not proved. “Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.”
In spite of information to the contrary, intelligent people continue to cling to the unproven idea that mankind is the main source of global warming. Why?
May I suggest a couple of reasons: one is ego and the other is politically correct peer pressure. Hans Christian Anderson articulated the combination of the two quite well in his 19th century tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
No doubt, you are familiar with the story. An emperor hired two swindlers who promised him the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth. This cloth supposedly was very special and invisible to all who were stupid or unfit for his position.
Of course, the emperor could not see the non-existent cloth, but pretended to for fear of appearing stupid. His closest advisors did the same. When the swindlers reported that the suit was finished, they dressed him in it.
The emperor then went on a procession through the capital showing off his new “clothes”. For fear of being thought stupid, no one in the crowd was willing to state the obvious. Eventually, a small child cried out, “But he has nothing on!” The emperor, however, ignored the truth and continued his naked procession.
The evidence is starting to reveal that the theory of man-made global warming is naked — it has no clothes. Thankfully scientists like David Evans are courageous enough to point it out. Now it is up to us in the crowd to join them and reject it for what it is — a myth.
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Kelly Boggs, whose column appears each week in Baptist Press, is editor of the Baptist Message, the newspaper of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, which is online at baptistmessage.com.
