It's Official: It's a Hoax

An international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is “unequivocal” and that human activity is the main driver, “very likely” causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950. They said the world was in for centuries of climbing temperatures, rising seas and shifting weather patterns — unavoidable results of the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

After years of denying that global warming existed at all, Bush administration officials asserted Friday that the United States had played a leading role in studying and combating climate change, in part by an investment of an average of almost $5 billion a year for the past six years in research and tax incentives for new technologies. Of course, $5 billion is not all that much compared to the $622 billion budget requested this year by the Pentagon alone, of which $140 billion would go to war related costs.

At the same time, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman rejected the idea of unilateral limits on emissions. “We are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world, so it’s really got to be a global solution,” he said. This in spite of the fact that the United States, with about 5 percent of the world’s population, contributes about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other country by far.

Luckily we can still count on sterling representatives such as Senator James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who has called the idea of dangerous human-driven warming a hoax. He issued a news release headed “Corruption of Science” that rejected the report as “a political document.” Interestingly enough, only Texas senator John Cornyn received more money from the oil and gas industry in the 2004 election cycle. Could there be a connection?

Got evil?

Should greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at even a moderate pace, average temperatures by the end of the century could match those last seen 125,000 years ago, in the previous warm spell between ice ages, the report said.

The PMA tells us that Arizona is really hot. And we all know that Arizona is one of the fastest growing states. So maybe Inhofe is on to something. Heat = economic growth. Maybe one day Oklahoma will be just like Arizona.

We look forward to hearing from A Frolic of My Own, our Oklahoman transplant living and writing in New Orleans.