Ever wonder how it came about – that die-hard Democrats know there’s global warming and die-harder Republicans know there isn’t? What is it about temperature that creates such heated argument? How’d that get to be political? As for me, being non-partisan and naturally insulated, I come down firmly on both sides.
To understand how Republicans think as they do on the issue, and maybe change your mind if you lean the other way, come to Washington College campus this Sunday at 8 p.m. There, in Litrenta Lecture Hall, you’ll hear counter arguments to a climate change doomsday scenario. The Washington College Republican Club is presenting the new documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria.” It was produced to rebut the 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth” by former Vice President Al Gore (Democrat). This presentation at the college is billed as part of “the world’s largest simultaneous film premiere in history.”
A key premise is that global warming is “ecology-spurred policy overreach.” One of the film’s examples is how the World Health Organization decided to ban the pesticide DDT in 2006. Says the press release on the film, “Since then, some 40 million malaria deaths in the developing world might have been prevented if DDT had not been banned, according to experts cited in “Not Evil Just Wrong.”
Hmmmm. So, bring back DDT? Is there a Republican/Democrat divide on that, too? So much to know, so hard to know it. Like, there’s this hunting guide I’ve gone with outside Chestertown who observes that Canada geese don’t get here in the numbers they did in the 70s or 80s, because many are shortstopping in Pennsylvania these days. And what he concludes is, “I don’t like to say, global warming. It’s just, winters aren’t as cold as they used to be.” All I can say is, Hmmmm.
Nancy Robson says
Yep. And a quick look at the new plant hardiness map, which is based on NOAA data, will confirm why the geese prefer PA’s temps to ours now. The whole thing is moving northward — some regions have shifted as much as two whole planting zones since the first map was amended in 1965 to include then-new data. (Interestingly, the last administration blocked the update of the maps, They only were made public when the National Arbor Foundation retrieved the data via the Freedom of Information Act, collated it and published it. The Smithsonian’s 30-years study on bloom times also confirms the shifts.
One problem is calling the phenomenon ‘global warming.’ It IS, but it makes it easier for doubters to dismiss it the minute we get a freeze. It’s maybe more helpful to call it climate change. And it’s something that we play a documented part in creating, so need to get off our bums, by-pass those who want business-as-usual and make changes. The Earth won’t mind if we make ourselves extinct. Mosquitoes will still be here, so will a host of invasive plants. But I for one like it here and want to stay.
Ruth Tallman says
It’s interesting that one of the quotes from the movie was about malaria. I just read an article this morning by a NYTimes nature writer who wrote that “almost a million” people died from malaria in 2006. So I searched some more and found that the CDC site states “At least one million deaths occur every year due to malaria.” The movie quote is “some 40 million deaths” since the ban on DDT in 2006. Three years, a million every year, hmmmm, that doesn’t come close to 40 million?
One death due to malaria is one too many, but claiming an over exaggerated number on the ban on DDT is so extreme. Not tempted to see this flick one bit.
Jimmy Reynolds says
“The Climate is very healthful, and agreeable with English constitutions. In summer, the heats are equal to those of Spain, but qualified daily about noon, at that time of the year, either with some gentle breezes, or small showers of rain. In winter there is frost and snow, and sometimes it is extremely cold, insomuch, that the rivers and the northerly part of the Bay of Chesapeake are frozen, but it seldom lasts long; and some winters are so warm, that people have gone in half shirts and drawers only at Christmas. But in March, April, and May, September, October and November, there is generally most pleasant temperate weather. The winds there are variable, from the south comes heat, gusts, and thunder; from the north or north-west, cold weather; and in winter, frost and snow; from the east and south-east, rain.” We’ve had mild weather around Christmas, too. And if we didn’t dress in half shirts and drawers, we have worn short-sleeve Shirts.”
John Ogilby, 1671
John Seidel says
I saw the film last night. What a disappointment! Not so much the film’s message – we knew what was coming – but that so many intelligent people seemed to buy it. As a disclaimer, I don’t much like Al Gore, the film’s primary punching bag, and feel that he’s over-stated the global warming crisis. But cataloging the fallacies and misinformation in this “documentary” would take a book. Take malaria, for starters…
The film holds up Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring as a prime example of the misguided efforts of environmentalism. We’re told that the DDT ban in Uganda and elsewhere (stimulated by Silent Spring) has resulted in more than 40 million unnecessary deaths from malaria, and it shows moving images of sick children in Africa. But the fact is that DDT was not banned world-wide after Silent Spring was published in 1962. It had been used very heavily from the ‘50s, not only for malaria control, but also for wide-spread agricultural use. By the early ‘60’s, malaria mosquitoes and other insects were showing signs of resistance, and its use already was being curtailed in many places as a result. It wasn’t banned in the US until 1972 (by a Republican administration), in the UK in 1984 and world-wide via the Stockholm Convention in 2004 – but all of these bans left the door open for DDT’s use as a disease vector control agent (even Carson recognized this need). It wasn’t banned in Uganda until 2008, at the behest of farmers who had trouble selling crops with traces of DDT in the EU and US. Today, something like 5000 tons a year of DDT are still produced and used to control malaria. So to imply as the film does that DDT was banned immediately following Silent Spring and has resulted in 40 million deaths is pure fantasy.
But the manipulation and shoddy reporting doesn’t stop there. The film opens by juxtaposing claims of global warming with catastrophic Y2K prophecies, trying to reduce it to the ridiculous. Funny, but I don’t recall the same kind of scientific support for Y2K Armageddon theories that exists for the notion of human-induced climate change. More than 450 lead authors, 800 plus contributing authors, and an additional 2,500 experts helped prepare the last UN IPCC report, and there is in fact wide-spread agreement in the scientific community for its position. Nice try guys – a neat theatrical ploy.
It follows with a series of claims from Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Green Peace, who makes some surprisingly strange and often irrelevant comments. He suggests, for example, that the increasing ice in Antarctica is contrary to expectations of global warming – but it’s not. Models (yes, science relies heavily on models) clearly indicate that warming should be faster in the northern hemisphere and the Arctic. The Antarctic is insulated to some extent by the southern seas that surround it, and warming will be slower. Nevertheless, warmer climates induce more precipitation – so as the climate gradually warms in the south, we should expect to see more snow fall and a thickening of the ice sheets. It’s just a lot more complicated than Moore’s sound bites suggest. Much of the so-called “evidence ” against global warming is of this caliber.
Speaking of models, the film hits hard on Gore’s so-called “hockey stick” graph (first published by Mann), purporting to show an extremely rapid rise in temperatures consistent with the recent increases in atmospheric CO2. They’re correct in part – there were problems with Mann’s work. What we’re not told by the film is that the National Research Council studied the issue and found that these errors were small in effect and that the general conclusions reached by Mann and others were correct. Moreover, there are a variety of different models out there that do a very good job in predicting past, recorded climate change, and they agree in predicting continued large scale rises in the future. Oh, and by the way, we’re confident that temperatures do continue to rise today, despite the film’s disclaimers. 1998 was one of the warmest on record because of a massive El Nino effect, but even after that huge increase, we’ve had warmer than usual years in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007. Today’s global mean temperatures are indeed higher than the 1930s, whatever the film says (mind you, we’re talking about global temps here, not just the US). It’s a matter of record – check it yourself (https://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/images/temperature-records/Fig1-2008gmt.gif/view). And it don’t tell me about how cold it was last week – that’s weather, which is notoriously hard to predict, not climate, which we can predict.
The film makes the bold claim that environmentalists are anti-human (I didn’t know that I was!). It generally takes the stance that warming will be good for the planet and for humans, and that attempts to reduce carbon consumption will hamstring economic development and opportunity for everyday people across the globe. These arguments confuse two different issues. The potential impacts of global warming itself are pretty stark, and anyone who thinks warming will be good for us will have another think coming. Yes, we’re an adaptable species, and yes, the world has seen rapid climate change in the past, but NEVER anything this rapid. It will tax our ability to respond socially, culturally and technologically. Two-thirds of the world’s population today lives in coastal zones that will be impacted by gradually rising sea level, increased impacts from storm surge, and more intense weather events. If trends continue, by 2030 our coastlines will be home to 6.4 billion people, or 75% of the world’s population.
As another example of the impact, a fifth of the world’s population today depends upon water from the Himalayan/Pamir/Hindu Kush snow pack, which feeds ten great rivers of Asia, including the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh; the Irrawaddy in Myanmar; the Mekong in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam; and the Yangtze and Huang Ho in China. These snow fields are shrinking (some 1,000 Himalayan glaciers have shrunk 16-18% in the last 30-40 years). As the 1.5 billion people in these regions start to see drinking water and fields dry up, unrest and population movement may be the least of our problems in an already unstable part of the world. The same is true in Peru and even in some of our western cities.
But don’t take my word for it. The U.S. military, the State Department and the intelligence community have planning under way to deal with security risks from such developments – including predicted water shortages – and a recent National Intelligence Assessment on the National Security Implications of Global Climate Change outlines a host of potential problems. So it seems pretty hard to me to argue that global warming will be a good thing.
What we do about it is another question, one that is worthy of serious and reasoned debate. These are unquestionably political choices, with human consequences. But they should be made with the best science available, not with half-baked half-truths of the sort pitched by “Not Evil, Just Wrong.” Putting our heads in the sand and hoping it will all go away is not the answer, and the film does nothing to contribute to informed debate.
Tara Holste says
Find another review of the movie by the college’s Shane Brill at https://georgegoesgreen.blogspot.com/, along with other reviews of environmental lectures, books, movies, and whatever crosses our minds.