Why Are They Lying to Our Children?

"I don't have a future." With tears streaming down her face, a 13-year-old girl made this bleak assessment to her father. To back up her pessimism, she had brought home from school a mimeographed sheet listing the horrors that awaited her generation in the next 25 years: Worldwide famine, overpopulation, air pollution so bad that everyone would wear a gas mask, befouled rivers and streams that would mandate cleansing tablets in drinking water... a greenhouse effect that would melt the polar ice caps and devastate U.S. coastal cities... a cancer epidemic brought on by damage to the ozone layer. Moved by the girl's misery, her father, Herbert I. London of the Hudson Institute and New York University, wrote a book, Why Are They Lying to Our Children? The book documents how some of the myths of the 1960s and 1970s…

Who: Mobil
Advert: New York Times, 1984
Methane: 1644.85 ppb

Source: The New York Times

Adopting quick-fix measures at this point could pose grave economic risks for the world.

As the debate over climate change heats up, science is being up-staged by the call for solutions. At stake is a complex issue with many questions. Some things we know for certain. Others are far from certain.

First, we know greenhouse gases account for less than one percent of Earth's atmosphere. The ability of these gases to trap heat and warm Earth is an important part of the climate system because it makes our planet habitable. Greenhouse gases consist largely of water vapor, with smaller amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane and nitrous oxide and traces of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

The focus of concern is CO₂. While most of the CO, emitted by far is the result of natural phenomena namely respiration and decomposition, most attention has centered on the three to four percent related to human activities-burning of fossil fuels, deforestation. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen in the last 100 years, leading scientists to conclude that the increase is a result of man-made activities.

Although the linkage between the greenhouse gases and global warming is one factor, other variables could be much more important in the climate system than emissions produced by man.

The UN sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thought it had found the magic bullet when it concluded that the one-degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperatures over the past century may bear a "fingerprint" of human activity. The fingerprint soon blurred when an IPCC lead author conceded to the "uncertainty inherent in computer climate modeling."

Nonetheless, nations at Kyoto are being asked to embrace proposals that could have potentially huge impacts on economies and lifestyles. Nations are being urged to cut emissions without knowing either the severity of the problem - that is, will Earth's temperature increase over the next 50-100 years? - or the efficacy of the solution - will cutting CO₂ emissions reduce the problem?

Within a decade. science is likely to provide more answers on what factors affect global warming, there - by improving our decision-making. We just don't have this information today.

Answers to questions on climate change will require more reliable. measurements of temperature at many places on Earth, better understanding of clouds and ocean currents along with greater computer power.

This process shouldn't be short-circuited to satisfy an artificial deadline, like the conference in Kyoto. Whatever effect increased concentrations of man-made gases may have, it will develop slowly over decades. Thus, there is time for scientists to refine their understanding of the climate system, while governments, industry and the public work to find practical means to control greenhouse gases, if such measures are called for.

Adopting quick-fix measures at this point could pose grave economic risks for the world.

Who: Mobil
Advert: New York Times, 1997
Methane: 1754.48 ppb

Source: Geoffrey Supran & Naomi Oreskes

Cooling the warming hysteria... Media hype proclaiming that the sky was falling did not properly portray the consensus of the scientific community.

For the first half of 1992, America was inundated by the media with dire predictions of global warming catastrophes, all of which seemed to be aimed at heating up the rhetoric from the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro last June.

Unfortunately, the media hype proclaiming that the sky was falling did not properly portray the consensus of the scientific community. After the Earth Summit, there was a noticeable lack of evidence….

Who: Mobil
Advert: New York Times, 1993
Methane: 1736.53 ppb

Source: Geoffrey Supran & Naomi Oreskes