Climate Change: Fabricating the Numbers

George C. Landrith

Al Gore has been flying around the globe to tell anyone who will listen that ten of the hottest years in history came in the last eleven years. Gore says the earth has a fever and that we need big government to shovel medicine down our throats to reduce that fever. Only one problem -- Al Gore has his facts wrong!

NASA has quietly released temperature figures for the last 127 years (since 1880). Interestingly enough, the hottest year on record was 1934. And the 1930s hold the record as the hottest decade with four of the ten hottest years. Five of the hottest years were before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Six of the hottest years were before Elvis Presley’s first song hit the radio airwaves in 1954. Seven of the hottest years according to NASA were before the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 -- before most Americans had even heard of Bill Clinton.

Gore and his climate change enthusiasts have claimed at different times that the hottest year on record was either 2005 or 1998. Neither is correct. The hottest year occurred more than 72 years ago. Only three of the ten hottest years have occurred in the last 11 years. Where did Al Gore come up with ten? The answer is that he made it up -- like so much else in his fictional movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” he takes great liberties with the facts.

The truth is the world’s climate was warmer during the Medieval Warm Period (800-1300 A.D.) than it is now. Interestingly enough, the world’s climate has been even warmer in earlier periods. Al Gore won’t talk about this.

One of the main problems with the global warming enthusiasts’ approach to climate and their claims that the Earth has a fever is that they assume the Earth has a constant climate. Yet, history shows this is simply not the case. The Earth’s climate changes all the time. Since the end of the Little Ice Age in the early 19th Century, the Earth’s climate has generally warmed. But even during this generalized warming trend, the climate has not been uniform. During the 1920s and 1930s there was a strong warming trend. During the 1940s and 1970s there was a cooling trend. In fact, many of those now claiming the world has a fever warned in the 1970s that another ice age was coming.

Al Gore claims that melting glaciers in Greenland will raise sea levels by more than 20 feet in the next one hundred years. But even the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a panel that accepts much of Al Gore’s climate change views, predicts a sea level rise of as little as seven inches. Many experts say that the IPCC’s estimate is too high.

Al Gore claims that global warming threatens polar bears with extinction. Yet, Canada's National Post reports that "the latest government survey of polar bears roaming the vast Arctic expanses of northern Quebec, Labrador and southern Baffin Island show the population of polar bears has jumped to 2,100 animals from around 800 in the mid-1980s.” Thus, we see that Al Gore and the climate change enthusiasts are not much concerned with facts or accuracy.

The question, however, isn’t is the Earth warming or cooling. The question is, is the warming or cooling outside the norm of historical variability and is man’s activity causing such a change?

The Earth’s climate has changed many times with many cooling phases and many warming phases. The Earth’s current modest warming trend (less than 1 degree C over 100 years), is well within historical norms. If in the past, the climate changed and it wasn’t man’s fault, why does Al Gore insist on blaming current climate conditions on man’s activities? And why does he feel it necessary to misrepresent the facts simply to scare people into accepting that current climate conditions are unprecedented and will lead to catastrophic results?

It is interesting that he asks us to part with some our freedom (i.e. government control of our lives, families and businesses) and some of our money (i.e. higher taxes on everything) and in exchange he promises to save us from the calamities he invents. This is one of the oldest political con games. And every time he tells us that the science is certain and the debate is over, we should realize that he’s simply taking the political con to the next level.

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Mr. Landrith is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was Business Editor of the Virginia Journal of Law and Politics. He had a successful law practice in business and litigation. In 1994 and 1996, Mr. Landrith was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's Fifth Congressional District. He served on the Albemarle County School Board. Mr. Landrith is an adjunct professor at the George Mason School of Law. He is recognized as an authority on constitutional law and jurisprudence, federalism, global warming, and property rights.

george@ff.org