Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff, like Paul Revere two centuries ago, is sounding the alarm, and a rather noisy alarm at that, to save the world from environmental catastrophe. The only problem is, he’s rattling off the same ridiculous hyper-exaggerations that enviro-mental Al Gore makes with absolutely nothing to substantiate them.
Says Wolff, “As temperatures around the globe increase, oceans are warming, fields are drying up, snow is melting, more rain is falling, and sea levels are rising.” Oh yeah Alex? Where is all this happening? Where are sea levels rising? Tuvalu? Not true – check for yourself.
Says Wolff, “Because of the melting of glaciers and polar ice, and because water expands as it warms, oceans are rising… In the last year and a half, scientists have noticed that once indestructible ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica have begun to creep toward the sea.” No, actually Alex, scientists, some of them who are firmly in the global warming camp, are finding that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica are growing, not receding.
And this total load of crap oozing from Wolff’s feverish imagination, “If we continue to spew greenhouse gases as we are, the Earth could become five degrees warmer this century. The last time Earth was that warm, three million years ago, sea level stood 80 feet higher than it does now.” There’s so much wrong with that statement, it’s hard to know where to begin.
But let’s try this. The last time the earth, or at least, the part of the earth we inhabit, was five degrees warmer was as recent as about 700 years ago. Estimates are that Europe was 5 to 7 degrees farenheit warmer than today. In fact, the warm weather, which lasted for several hundred years, fueled the growth of European society from bands of nomadic barbarians to peaceful farmers to the solid foundation of the civilization we enjoy today. It was so warm, that Vikings were populating Greenland and farming where today, there is only ice.
The alarmism that Wolff is parroting conveniently ignores the facts in favor of a hysterical rallying cry. Unfortuneately for us who are optimistic about the world’s future, at the bidding of self-obsessed opportunists like Al Gore, useful idiots like Wolff are lending voice to that rallying cry which is calling for an end to human progress.