Global Warming: Not a Crisis

Tagged as: climate change, global warming, IPCC

by Joe Bast

Joseph Bast is president and CEO of The Heartland Institute. Bast is the coauthor of 12 books, including Rebuilding America's Schools (1990), Why We Spend Too Much on Health Care (1992), Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism (1994), and Education & Capitalism (2003). His writing has appeared in Phi Delta Kappan, Economics of Education Review, Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, The Cato Journal, USA Today, and many of the country’s largest-circulation newspapers.

Twitter | Archive

  • Anonymous

    The “majority” of the scientists simply watched as their colleagues polluted and poisoned the planet with their pesticides and cancer causing chemicals that all originated from their labs. That fact alone plus 25 years of studies and warnings from the scientists proves to this planet lover, that these lab coat consultants exaggerated and exploited Human CO2 fears. They were not the saints we wanted them to be and it’s not a lie to study worst case scenarios.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1032381965 Vera Narishkin

    And Denial is a river in Egypt…

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/4JT2IM4GINPHDIINHG3AQEA2NE Jeremy

    Heartland Institute, might as well say Massey Coal or Peabody Coal or Exxon-Mobile.
    Sure, enough and coal ash is good for your lungs!

  • David K

    I’m sorry, but your entire article is so full of half-truths and outright falsifications and misrepresentations as to be nothing but denialist propaganda.  Not surprising given that your organization, The Heartland Institute, is funded to spread such falsehood.  Not to mention still funded by the tobacco industry for which you denied the effects of smoking on cancer occurrence. 

  • J.J. McCampbell

    I want to ask a simple question to the readers…. Can you see the weather patterns changing?  Droughts, floods, record breaking heat, record breaking cold, record breaking strength of storms, all of these have been happening with increasing frequency.  The drought/flood scenario is simple… mass relocation of ground water, due to increased heat.  Hotter air holds more moisture.  More water in the air means more rainfall.  This is exactly what we have been seeing.  Don’t let your political views be a blindfold.  It’s right there where everyone can see it.  I have seen extremely intelligent people completely ignore the facts, to better fit with their ideology.  I hate politics for this very reason.  Look at what is going on around you,  and don’t count on the people who have a vested interest to keep the status quo….  

  • subl33t

    The IPCC is nothing more than a Greenpeace lobbying organization.
    How many warmists posting here here are green NGO shills? Plenty I bet.

  • NICK M

    There has never been any evidence really lets face it. The earth does what it wants we cant stop it. Does anyone here think we would be able to stop another ice age? People who say it is happening have ulterior motives as far as im concerned.

  • Anonymous

    What alarmists like Jellynoel, Mark Schaffer, mememine, David K, Jeremy, Jimcarino and Vera Narishkin have in common, is a complete unability to put forward any real arguments. They are only capable of personal attacks.  Probably it is a case of desperation, because they are fighting a battle already lost.

  • Leslie Graham

    “Not one single case of lung cancer can be proven to have been caused by cigarette smoking”.

    Not one single case of extreme weather can be proven to have been caused by the observed rise in global temperatures.

    Both technicaly true.

    See how the denial industry does it.

    ‘The Heartland Institute’ !!  Really – is there anyone on Earth who still take these proffesional liars seriously on Climate Change.
    I only hope that one day these people will be charged and tried for spreading this deliberate, calculated misinformation aimed solely at proteting their client’s profits for a few more years and screw everyone else on the planet.

    Tell me sir. Will there be no shame – no shame at all.

    Disgusting.

    • http://somewhatreasonable.com/author/jlakely/ Jim Lakely

      Charged and tried (and presumably jailed)… for thought crimes? For disagreeing with liberals and exposing the holes in the climate alarmist arguments and errors in the scientific record?

      And it’s you lefties who call the right fascists and dangerous. No one at Heartland would even think of suggesting that those who have been proven wrong — and have protected their government clients and the funding from which it flows — be jailed. But the left has always had a totalitarian streak from Marx to the modern “New Left.”

  • Baron Greeves

    Generalized (and snobby) “I know better” arguments don’t wash.  Ad hominems don’t equate to truth.  Leaning on logical fallacies is an indication of desperation (or stupidity).  I don’t care if this group said the sun rises in the north in other material – or if they’re funded by Idi Amin’s ghost!  This is like saying “Bob says 1 + 1 = 2, but Bob is a Mormon, so his statement is false.” Or “Ted believes in the Law of Conservation of Mass, but Ted is funded by ___, so Ted is wrong.”  Btw, if we’re stooping to logical fallacies, don’t you people realize that they BACKFIRE on you?  Like Politician X believes in AGW, but he’s a raging zealot and uses green causes to grab more political power, so….  Oh, that’s different – you’re not a hypocrite, noooooo.

    I’m laughing at you sad sacks of hurting despair.  Want to play the logical fallacy game some more?  Lets play appeal to masses:  not only do a large majority of Americans reject AGW, 51% of DEMOCRATS reject AGW now.  Hurts, doesn’t it?  No, it shouldn’t – that’s a logical fallacy – like saying “everyone believes in AGW” (appeal to masses) or “all credible scientists believe in AGW” (appeal to authority).  It doesn’t matter (except in popularity contests – oh, and political elections – but it is a logical fallacy to think that the support of masses of people or experts equates to truth).

    The logical fallacies aren’t taught much.  I know some of you are really scratching your heads here.  Google the subject and think about it.  Btw, it’s only human nature to commit logical fallacies, just as we tend to rely on inductive reasoning in our daily lives (paradoxical, but there it is – and hell yes, I commite logical fallacies all the time – we all do).  Then come back here and make a real, point by point SUBSTANTIAL ARGUMENT – and don’t think you’ll get away with casually flicking your boogers at the above case and be able to claim you won (strawman?  getting there, getting there).  Stop being pathetic.

  • Anonymous

    I had a look through your references. Yikes – the Heartland institute and Energy and Environment?!? Why didn’t you list Laurel and Hardy, Groucho Marx and Monty Python? You stated that 1/3 of the warming was due to man but supplied no reference – this is not how you get people to listen.

    • Baron Greeves

      Um Drew, there’s this thing called the “scroll bar.”  It allows you to read the rest of the article, where reasons and references are given (not the most thorough approach I’ve seen, but it’s there).  Just thought it might help you to know (yeah, scrolling down is hard, but you can do it, bud – just try).

      Now, the attack on Heartland itself – gosh you guys like to use ad hominems.  What other logical fallacies do you keep in your bag of tricks?  Come on now, don’t be shy!

  • http://somewhatreasonable.com/ Jim_Lakely

    The typical lies about Heartland that show up on left-wing sites are popping up in these comments. Go here for the truth about the organization: http://heartland.org/reply-to-critics

    But, in short: Exxon’s last very modest contribution to The Heartland Institute was 2006 — two full years before our first international conference on climate change and our major work on that topic.

    And no Heartland document or expert has ever said that smoking doesn’t cause cancer. We have pointed out the shoddy science that suggests second-hand (and, now, even third-hand) smoke is “just as bad” as smoking cigarettes. There is a very big difference between the two. 

    Heartland likes the give and take of debate in the arena of ideas, but we have no obligation to let lies about the organization stand on our own site. Those will be removed.

    Jim Lakely
    Director of Communications
    The Heartland Institute

  • http://members.optusnet.com.au/rbsmith3/Climate%20Change.html Raymond F. Smith

    The Earth has cycles of being hotter and cooler and some temperature maxima having been more extreme than others. Whilst scientists know much about the effects of these cycles on climate, and have theories and evidence such as solar fuel changes, sunspots, galactic events, orbits of planets and asteroids. However, why global warming happens, and what are the causal factors, no respectable scientist would dare venture a causal link.The last time high temperatures happened was around the tenth century. Then the wise men of the day recommended burning witches and sure enough after a while the Earth did cool down. The warm part of the cycle before that, people had all kinds of problems with desertification and people dying and they eventually found God, and sure enough after a while the Earth did cool down.Scientists have been warning for years about the consequences of the present hot cycle, without getting anything except for a yawn from politicians to get funding to research this phenomenon. It took a failed politician, Al Gore, to find a modern day witch to blame — carbon dioxide! And will you just look at the number of scientists who then jumped onto that bandwagon to get the funding they needed to exist.Whilst there is undisputed evidence that carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse gas’ that does react with the IR spectrum of solar emission, there is not one skerrick of evidence that carbon dioxide is the causal factor of global warming. And since there is 300 times more water vapour than there is carbon dioxide, why isn’t water vapour blamed as the causal factor instead, especially since global warming creates even more water vapour?There are more problem for the carbon dioxide theorists. Changes in water vapour were expected to amplify the effects of changing carbon dioxide, but the magnitude of this feedback is the largest single uncertainty in current quantitative understanding of the greenhouse effect. Another big problem is in explaining how such a miniscule amount — 0.0004% — of atmospheric gases that carbon dioxide occupies could have such a profound heating effect?Finally, why was it in the tenth century, that Greenland was indeed a green land with a temperate climate and Global temperatures were much hotter than they are now, yet people were not producing carbon dioxide like they are now?What to do instead? Scientists need funding to research how to live with Climate Change – now! It would be just as effective to burn a few witches as trying to suck carbon dioxide out of the air. Our politicians are willing to ruin our economy implementing a failed politician’s theory. Better still, if you also pray to God enough, after a while the Earth will cool down — I guarantee it!See:

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Anca-Diaconu-D/100000768490616 Anca Diaconu D

    http://adf.ly/2IqzU  global warming

Previous post:

Next post: