The Myth of Global Warming

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Page 7

IN MY OPINION (Column)

The Myth of Global Warming

By RAY HAYNES

(The writer represents the 66th Assembly District which includes portions of western Riverside County and northern San Diego County.)

The story in Genesis reveals the sin of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were told not to eat the “fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden,” or they “would surely die.” When the serpent was talking to Eve, he said eat the fruit, you won’t die, “you will be like God.” She and Adam ate, wanting to be like God, and then they figured out they had made a huge mistake, and in the spirit of a true husband, Adam told God that Eve made him do it. (Actually, blaming the wife wasn’t the sin, although most women can relate to that problem). The first sin was the desire to be like God.

The problem with most of the environmentalists is that they suffer from that sin. They think that mankind is God, and can actually affect the rising of the sun, the coming of the rain, and the direction of the wind. The fact is that nature existed before us, and will exist after us, and the balance of nature is not under our control. It will survive, in balance, no matter what we do.

Interestingly enough, both of the major theories about the origin of the species confirm this fact. If you believe in the biblical story of creation, God says that man will have dominion over “birds ... and over all the earth and every creeping thing,” which means these things don’t have dominion over us. God will end things when he is ready, no matter what we do. If you are an evolutionist, you believe that natural selection will cause our demise when something better on the evolutionary scale comes along. Both ways, nature resolves its problems by itself.

Those who believe in global warming think that we can actually make long term permanent changes to the global climate by driving around too much. Once again, no matter what you believe there is actually no evidence to support that claim.

There is evidence that the earth is getting slightly warmer right now — but the earth has been warm before, and then got cold. Think about the dinosaur age and the ensuing ice age. Do you think the T-Rex caused the ice age with its SUVs?

More recently, the warmest time in the last 1000 years was in the 12-14th centuries. People weren’t generating much in the way of greenhouse gasses in that mainly agrarian society — unless you count the methane gas caused by the prevalent bovine indigestion at the time.

In the last century, we got warmer from about 1930 to 1970, cooled off for a while, and we have been warming up slightly since then. By and large, however, these changes have been small, and not caused by human activity, but by the vagaries of nature.

In fact, a warmer globe causes a little more evaporation of water, which, by the way, creates more clouds, which, by the way, cools down the surface of the planet. This is a bit of a simplification of what happens in the weather, but, suffice it to say, nature has a way of fixing things. We are not God, we cannot permanently change things.

So — our environmental friends who claim that government regulations can stop global warming are like the witch doctors who say that their incantations can cause it to rain or stop the wind. Their hocus-pocus is meaningless babble, and their actions are literally spitting into the wind. The problem is when they spit into the wind; it comes back and hits us.

The fact is that the sun will come up tomorrow no matter what the environuts do. The wind will blow, and the rain will come no matter what dance they do. In fact, the globe will warm and cool, no matter how much you drive your SUV. So happy motoring to you.