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Nov. 25, 2006 Hollywood often uses a standard plot in spy and adventure novels involving stereotypical mad scientists or political tyrants bent on ruling the world and frequently this world domination threatens the earth itself. This hokey fiction has actually become a true story. Big corporations are the villians, most notably big oil and utility companies. Big oil owns the U.S. government and along with electric utilities they squash any policies that might reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. They know anthropogenic greenhouse gases contribute to global warming, yet their avarice is so great, they won't allow changes that might reverse this situation. They know they're the cause of global warming because the scientific consensus is unanimous. Naomi Oreskes studied the scientific literature on climate change and published her findings in Science Magazine. Dr. Oreskes typed in the words, global climate change, in the ISP database and analyzed the 928 abstracts of papers from peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 that came up. Not a single abstract disagreed with the consensus opinion that anthropogenic CO2 contributes to global warming. No papers argued that this change is part of a natural cycle. 75% of the papers implicitly or explicity endorsed the consensus, while the balance didn't mention it. I was startled by this study. Although I'm a strong environmentalist, I've always been skeptical science could demonstrate that man caused global warming. Benny Peiser, an anthropologist from a university in England, claimed he couldn't replicate her study, but his letter to Science Magazine was rejected. Mr. Peiser said he found 12,000 abstracts referenced to global climate change rather than 928, but he included papers from social science journals and humanities periodicals. Dr. Oreskes only looked at scientific abstracts. Mr. Peiser also said 3% or a total of 34 papers rejected the consensus view. All but two of these were from non-science journals and one of the two science papers was an editorial written by The Petroleum Institute--not a reliable source. The opposition to the scientific consensus comes from the energy industry and right wing editorial writers. Would you trust the tobacco companies to come up with honest research about the health risks of cigarette smoking? Would you trust the likes of Sean Hannitty to tell the truth about anything? The ISP database used by Dr. Oreskes is not available to most of us online, but you can also replicate her experiment. Go to google and type in global climate change. You will be hardpressed to find any scientific literature that disputes the consensus on global warming. Global warming is scary stuff and scientists can't accurately predict the ultimate outcome. Anthropogenic CO2 must be reduced as much as possible, no matter the cost. Switching to other technologies such as electric cars, solar power, and wind would probably even be economically beneficial for everyone except the evil entities now in control of our government. ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. www.mark-gelbart.com Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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