If you were suffering from a hangnail and your doctor recommended open heart surgery, you'd probably seek a second opinion - and fast.So it is with Vice President Al Gore and his predictions of impending climatic disaster due to global warming. Americans who heard him declare that the Texas heat wave and Florida wildfires are proof of global warming would be well advised to seek a second opinion from real scientists.
For starters, we would recommend Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. His laboratory works jointly with NASA in compiling global temperatures measured by weather satellites and high-altitude balloons.
His data, which are shared freely with scientists around the world, are considered to be the most accurate record of global temperature variations in existence.
Christy says the vice president is flat wrong. This year's heat wave is not due to global warming. Rather, it's the natural and predictable outcome of last winter's El Nino - the cyclical warming that occurs every seven years in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
It takes several months for the heat from El Nino to transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere, Christy explained in his August bulletin. So the relatively high temperatures now occurring in the atmosphere are right on time and more importantly, are fading away.
Over the long haul, planet Earth is no warmer than it was 20 years ago, according to Christy.
"The global temperature trend from 1979 through 1997 was zero," Christy said. "For those years, the temperature wasn't going up or down. The average global temperature for 1997 was almost exactly normal, so you can hardly say that this year's heat has been building up from year to year. "
Gore scoffs at scientists who don't believe in global warming. He likens them to tobacco company scientists who say there is no proof smoking is harmful.
But Christy is no maverick. Some of the most pre-eminent researchers in the world have come to similar conclusions, including meteorologist Richard S. Lindzen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and physicist S. Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service.
Lindzen says the computer models used to predict global warming are a long way from being perfected. He says there is no evidence that the man-made increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are having any harmful effects.
Singer says it would be reckless for the government to impose drastic economic measures before predicted climatic changes are substantiated by careful scientific observations.
But their views are inconvenient to the vice president's political agenda, which includes persuading Americans that the drastic reductions in energy use called for in the Kyoto treaty on global warming are truly necessary.
The treaty would hit Indiana hard because of its dependence on electricity from coal-fired power plants and abundance of energy-intensive industries.
A study by Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates predicts gasoline would go up by 65 cents per gallon, electric rates would rise by 64 percent, and the cost of natural gas for home heating would rise 73 percent. This would chill the economy to the tune of 100,000 jobs lost.
Gore, who has a bachelor's degree in government from Harvard, is telling us we don't need to listen to people like Christy, Lindzen and Singer, who have Ph.D.'s and are considered to be pre-eminent scholars in their fields.
"You don't have to be a scientist to know it's been hot this summer," the vice president told reporters earlier this week. On that narrow point, we would agree. And likewise, we'd add that you don't have to be a gourmet chef to recognize baloney when it's shoved in your face.
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