The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming

Cover via Amazon

I spent the better part of today on an airplane flying from Maryland to California for business. So while waiting in airports and while on the plane, I spent most of my time reading. I finished reading "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism" by Christopher C. Horner. Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and is considered an expert on global warming legislation, having testified before the US Senate and European Parliaments. Now I am no expert on global warming, but I am staying at a Holiday Inn Express tonight, so I will give it a shot.

Horner goes into detail about how the global warming agenda is really more about trying to gain more control over our lives and destroying the American way of life. He discusses in great length the way Al Gore and the other global warming alarmists try to shut off any debate on the subject of global warming. If Gore and company say the science is settled enough times, then it must be true. Anybody that would dare dispute that must be in the pocket of big business. Those who do question global warming, are either cut off from funding or worse, defamed.

The book opens with the argument that the "Green" movement is the new red. It is really nothing more than an anti-American and anti-capitalist agenda. Did you know that Earth Day, April 22nd, is also the day of Vladimir Lenin's birth? Do you think it is a coincidence that Earth Day would fall on the same day as the birth of the first head of the Soviet Union? Maybe, but it makes me wonder.

Horner also goes into the science of global warming. He shows how the current warming trends are not anything out of the ordinary for planet earth. In fact, the Earth has been much warmer than it currently is. One would think that if CO2 was causing global warming, then increases in CO2 would correspond with increases in temperatures. It isn't always the case. Dr. Willie Soon, a Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist, plotted Arctic air temperatures against both CO2 concentrations and solar activity. The graph below shows that solar activity seems to be the overriding factor in climate change.
Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth gets a lot of scrutiny as well. Horner shows numerous examples where Gore utilizes the most extreme examples to try to make his points. Most models of global warming project modest sea level rising, in the range of a few inches to an extreme of a few feet. A far cry from the 20 foot rise that Gore projects. There are several other examples he gives where Gore uses outright exaggeration, or worse.

The final chapter deals with the Kyoto Protocol. The Senate voted 95-0 on a resolution to tell Clinton/Gore that the US should not enter into any agreement that would not include countries such as China and India or would have harmed the US economy, which is precisely what Kyoto would have done. Clinton actually signed the treaty, but never sent it to the Senate for ratification because it would not have passed. Also, Europe has expressed their displeasure with the United States because we are not a part of the Kyoto agreement. It interesting to note that since agreeing to cut back emissions (which they were using a cap and trade program to achieve this), European emissions have actually increased. In fact, from 1997-2004, European CO2 emissions grew at a faster rate than the US. From 2000-2004, that rate of increase was 3 times the rate of the United States. So all Europe got out of their cap and trade policies was higher energy costs, and an increase in CO2.

I highly recommend this book if you want to get beyond the hype of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth hysteria and hype. All of the efforts to try to curb CO2 will have a negligible impact on temperatures, and will only lead to higher costs and a decline in the US standard of living.