Illustration by Josh Hagler

Friday October 5, 2001

I recently checked out a very interesting book from our fine university library. It's called "The Cooling," written in 1976 by a scientist named Lowell Ponte, detailing what he thinks is overwhelming evidence that another ice age is in Earth's immediate future. That's right - with all the talk of global warming that began to surface around 1990, a book advocating the strong possibility of global cooling came out less than a decade and a half before.

The forward for "The Cooling" was written by then-Senator Claiborne Pell, D-R.I., who, at the time, headed the Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment. In it, Pell describes the possible global implications if Earth, which at that time had been reportedly cooling since 1945, continues to cool down. He writes, "If, indeed, the climatological changes which Mr. Ponte foresees do in fact take placeˇ then the world's leaders must come to grips with the real possibility, as Mr. Ponte contends, that food will very soon play a dominant role in world politicsˇ"

There's that magic word: politics. If the concept of global cooling became plausible and, inevitably, a political issue, why wouldn't the concept of global warming incur the same fate?

Despite what is printed in most major newspapers and reported on national news networks, the premise that global warming is occurring and that humans hold responsibility is far from fact. It's still widely debated and contested among climatologists around the world.

As one might expect, I have my own very strong beliefs on the politics of global warming. The way I look at it, if environmental special interest groups receive most of their donations through fear, then with global warming, they've struck their proverbial gold mine.

Just as many churches of various religious faiths make their money by warning of eternal damnation and passing the collection plate, organizations such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club make theirs primarily through the fear of melting ice caps, receding shore lines and unbearably hot temperatures. Global cooling failed to scare enough people; they've learned from their past mistakes.

Beyond that, these groups want you to alter your way of life in the name of saving the planet. Your SUV pollutes too much; your oversized house uses too much electricity, and so on. At the risk of beating a dead horse, it once again comes down to the fact that most of these people are anti-capitalists who wish for everyone to live a simpler, less expensive way of life.

Keeping this in mind, I would highly recommend not giving into the fear of, "well, it might happen, we just never know, so we should definitely act now before it can get any worse."

Environmental special interest groups feed off this notion. They scare you; you donate; they fund their favorite liberal's campaign; taxes are raised capitalism takes a small hit, and the cycle repeats. It's beautiful - and at the same time unnerving - in its simplicity.

Besides, there are many reasons for remaining skeptical of the possibility of our planet burning up in the near future: Earth has been hotter in the past millennium than it is now; documented changes in sun spots and general solar activity correlate with varying temperatures on Earth, and thousands of scientists have signed a collective letter stating that global warming isn't a realistic threat to the planet. And of course, there's the whole global cooling business mentioned earlier.

But I'm hardly an environmental expert, so I'll spare you anything further on the issue. All I really want is for all of us to maintain an open mind on the matter. Forget for a moment all the environmental nonsense the media constantly attempts to shove down our throats. Consider independently educating yourself on the subject.

Along with other books in our science library that may be useful, there's a great deal of knowledge to be gained on global warming from - where else - the World Wide Web.

There are a great many reasons to remain skeptical that global warming is happening; we're causing it, and if we don't do anything soon, it's going to kill us all. But I wouldn't expect anyone to take my word for it. Do yourself a favor and check up on it for yourself.