CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, July 1, 2013

Global warming: Let it stay in Las Vegas

As Las Vegas folds under record high heat, this seems like a good time to discuss global warming or, as it is now called: climate change. Each side of the never-ending climate-change debate has its extreme proponents. One of the tenets of Leftism is: global warming. The ranks of the Left are filled with people who are firmly convinced the North Pole ice is melting, all the Polar Bears will drown, our coastal cities will soon be under salt water, and civilization will cease to exist.

On the other side, are people who see global warming as a giant, for-profit-hoax being pulled off, at best, by people like Al Gore who have gotten wealthy by scaring the ill-informed and, at worst, as a sinister hoax being manipulated by those who want to shackle American’s economy so the smoke-belching Red Chinese and Russians can overtake the American economy.

Both extremes have something in common: They are both wrong.

One side gets its data from the hard sciences. The other side gets most of its data from the soft sciences. Here are some widely-accepted definitions: The soft sciences are: economics, psychology, sociology, communications studies, cultural studies, history, law, linguistics, dance, art, and rhetoric. The hard sciences are: atmospheric science, meteorology, environmental science, earth science, computer and mathematical science, physics, astronomy, aerospace science, and chemistry

Whoever loaded up Mr. Obama’s TelePrompTer recently had him saying that 97-percent of the world’s scientists believe in man-made global warming. Apparently, his speech writers missed the memo about the Global Warming Petition Project. Between 1998 and 2007, 31,487 professors of the hard sciences signed a petition saying they could see no evidence of human-made global climate change. Their ranks included: 9,029 Ph.D.s, 7,157 with a Master’s of Science, and 12,715 with a Bachelor of Science degree.

Moreover, since 2007, there has been no global increase in temperature and maybe even a bit of global cooling. Professor Mojib Latif, who had been a leader in the UN’s global warming movement, now says recent changes in North Atlantic Ocean currents may be signaling 30 years of cooling temperatures ahead. Other defectors from global warming include: the president of the World Federation of Scientists and the former president of the New York Academy of Sciences.

To give Mr. Obama the benefit of the doubt, whoever loaded his TelePrompter must have gotten that 97-percent figure from the professors of the soft sciences. We report. You decide.

Indeed, Mr. Obama needs all the benefit of the doubt he can muster because the image of the Office of the President has now fallen upon hard times. When Mr. Obama spoke in Berlin in 2008, the crowd was over 100,000. Recently, when he spoke again in Berlin, the crowd was only 4,500.

When the prestige of a U.S President suffers abroad, so does the perception of the United States as a world power and that, of course, has negative economic and military consequences. In the midst of all the Obama Administration scandals, it is not helpful for other nations to think that no one in Mr. Obama’s cabinet knows what is going on under them and/or that the Chief Executive himself is equally clueless. Using ignorance and/or incompetence as a defense does not put America’s best foot forward. Pray they think of something else.

Nationally syndicated columnist, William Hamilton, was educated at the University of Oklahoma, the George Washington University, the U.S Naval War College, the University of Nebraska, and Harvard University.

©2013. William Hamilton.

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Email: william@central-view.com