5 Global Warming Myths

5. The U.S. is going it alone on Kyoto and global warming.

Nonsense. The U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol's energy-rationing scheme, along with 155 other countries, representing most of the world's population, economic activity and projected future growth. Kyoto is a European treaty with one dozen others, none of whom is in fact presently reducing its emissions. Similarly, claims that Bush refused to sign Kyoto, and/or he withdrew, not only are mutually exclusive but also false. We signed it, Nov. 11, 1998. The Senate won't vote on it. Ergo, the (Democratic) Senate is blocking Kyoto. Gosh.
Don't demand they behave otherwise, however. Since Kyoto was agreed, Europe's CO2 emissions are rising twice as fast as those of the climate-criminal United States, a gap that is widening in more recent years. So we should jump on a sinking ship?
Given Al Gore's proclivity for invoking Winston Churchill in this drama, it is only appropriate to summarize his claims as such: Never in the field of political conflict has so much been asked by so few of so many ... for so little.

4. Global-warming proposals are about the environment.

Only if this means that they would make things worse, given that "wealthier is healthier and cleaner." Even accepting every underlying economic and alarmist environmentalist assumption, no one dares say that the expensive Kyoto Protocol would detectably affect climate. Imagine how expensive a pact must be -- in both financial and human costs -- to so severely ration energy use as the greens demand. Instead, proponents candidly admit desires to control others' lifestyles, and supportive industries all hope to make millions off the deal. Europe's former environment commissioner admitted that Kyoto is "about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide" (in other words, bailing them out).

3. Climate change is the greatest threat to the world's poor.

Climate -- or more accurately, weather -- remains one of the greatest challenges facing the poor. Climate change adds nothing to that calculus, however. Climate and weather patterns have always changed, as they always will. Man has always best dealt with this through wealth creation and technological advance -- a.k.a. adaptation -- and most poorly through superstitious casting of blame, such as burning "witches." The wealthiest societies have always adapted best. One would prefer to face a similar storm in Florida than Bangladesh. Institutions, infrastructure and affordable energy are key to dealing with an ever-changing climate, not rationing energy.

2. Global warming means more frequent, more severe storms.

Here again the alarmists cannot even turn to the wildly distorted and politicized "Summary for Policy Makers" of the UN's IPCC to support this favorite chestnut of the press.

1. Global warming has doomed the polar bears!

For some reason, Al Gore's computerized polar bear can't swim, unlike the real kind, as one might expect of an animal named Ursa Maritimus. On the whole, these bears are thriving, if a little less well in those areas of the Arctic that are cooling (yes, cooling). Their biggest threat seems to be computer models that air-brush them from the future, the same models that tell us it is much warmer now than it is. As usual in this context, you must answer the question: Who are you going to believe -- me or your lying eyes?