GREENIES KILL COWS

The record rains in Southern California have done heavy damage to the dairy industry, killing or sickening cows and leaving herds udder-deep in mud and cold water. Many farmers are watching their cows die from exhaustion and exposure. Dairy farmers said the drenching has cost the Southern California industry at least $38 million in lost milk production, dead and sickened animals, and damage to holding ponds and other flood-control features on their farms. In many cases, the farmers are unable to do much to remove the standing water, because of strict environmental laws regulating dairy-farm runoff, which is usually fouled with manure. "We have nowhere to go with the water, the ground is soaked. Our dairies aren't designed to deal with this," said Art Marquez, a third-generation dairy farmer in this community about 40 miles east of Los Angeles. Marquez has 2,000 cows at two dairies and said he has lost at least $2,000 a day to the rain over the past few weeks.

Normally, the region receives about 14 inches of rain in the entire winter season, but this year it has registered more than 30 inches since October, he said.

Cows produce less milk when they have to expend so much energy slogging through water. Also, cows resist lying down in standing water and will stand for days in the soggy muck until they collapse — and sometimes die — from exhaustion. In a normal rainy season, each dairy farmer in the region usually loses about two cows a month to exhaustion and disease. The 250 dairies this year in the region are losing about a cow a day.

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EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL COOLING UNDERWAY

Some 19,000 of the world's scientists and experts on climatology have signed declarations saying that blaming rising CO2 levels on mankind is garbage – junk science at its worst – and they insist that all the available evidence proves their contention. In fact, the global warmiacs couldn't be further from the truth. As I argued in my January 13 column, Let Eyes See and Ears Hear, and in my 1997 investigative report, "Global Warming or Globaloney," high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are indeed a dire warning that something very unpleasant is about to befall our planet and those of us who reside here, but it has nothing to do with global warming. Precisely the opposite: It is both the harbinger and the cause of a coming new ice age.

Now comes Robert W. Felix, who in his book "Not by Fire but by Ice" argues persuasively that it is not global warming but ocean warming that is pushing CO2 levels through the roof. Moreover, those skyrocketing levels of CO2 are bringing on a new ice age, which is sitting at our front door right now. Here's how he puts it: "If today's rising carbon dioxide levels are caused by humans, then what caused the dramatic rise in CO2 levels at the dinosaur extinction? Research shows that there was 'a sudden and dramatic rise' in carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere at the dinosaur extinction of 65 million years ago. ... [T]oday's rise in CO2 levels can be attributed to our warming oceans. After all, the oceans are known as a carbon dioxide 'sink,' especially when the water is cold. But as the water warms up, it releases CO2 into the atmosphere. This happens in much the same way that a warm bottle of home-brewed root beer will release CO2. And if you give that CO2 no way to escape, the bottle will explode. We've got it backwards. We've got cause and effect in reverse. The CO2 is not causing global warming. Instead, our warming oceans are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. It's not global warming, it's ocean warming, and it's leading us into an ice age."

According to Felix, the oceans are warming as the result of widespread underwater volcanic activity, which he thoroughly documents. He adds that "We've forgotten that this isn't the first time our seas have warmed. Sea temperatures also shot upward 10º to 18ºF just prior to the last ice age. As the oceans warmed, evaporation increased. The excess moisture then fell to the ground as giant blizzards, giant storms and floods (Noah's Deluge type floods), and a new ice age began." And he warns, "The same thing is happening today. Underwater volcanic activity in the Arctic Ocean far stronger than anyone ever imagined! German-American researchers have discovered more hydrothermal activity at the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean than anyone ever imagined. The Gakkel Ridge is a gigantic volcanic mountain chain stretching beneath the Arctic Ocean. With its deep valleys 5,500 meters beneath the sea surface and its 5,000-meter-high summits, Gakkel Ridge is far mightier than the Alps.

Two research icebreakers, the USCGC Healy from USA and the German PFS Polarstern, recently joined forces in the international expedition AMORE (Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Expedition). In attendance were scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and other international institutions. The scientists had expected that the Gakkel Ridge would exhibit 'anemic' magnetism. Instead, they found 'surprisingly strong magmatic activity in the West and the East of the ridge and one of the strongest hydrothermal activities ever seen at mid-ocean ridges.' The Gakkel Ridge extends about 1,800 kilometers beneath the Arctic Ocean from north of Greenland to Siberia, and is the northernmost portion of the mid-ocean ridge system.

To their surprise, the researchers found high levels of volcanic activity. Indeed, magmatism [blazing hot magma flowing from eruptions] was 'dramatically' higher than expected. Hydrothermal hot springs on the seafloor were also far more abundant than predicted. 'We expected this to be a hydrothermally dead ridge, and almost every time our water measurement instrument came up, they showed evidence of hydrothermal activity, and once we even "saw" an active hot spring on the sea floor,' said Dr. Jonathan Snow, the leader of the research group from Munich's Max Planck Institute in a 2003 press release.

Researchers found that "Naturally occurring bubbles of liquid carbon dioxide were observed rising from the ocean floor," according to the Associated Press. "For the first time ever, scientists using a camera-equipped submarine have been able to witness an undersea volcano during an eruptive episode. Exploring the ocean floor in an area known as the Mariana Trench, last year researchers found bubbles of liquid carbon dioxide being released into the sea, enlarging up to a thousand times and turning to gas as they drifted upward."....

"Worldwide flood activity is the worst since before Christopher Columbus. In Poland, it's the worst in several thousand years. In the U.S., precipitation has increased by more than 20 percent just since 1970. This is no coincidence. When that precipitation begins falling in the winter, you have the makings of an ice age."

Felix emphasizes that the record proves that we are on on the verge of the onset of a new ice age. "Ice ages begin and end abruptly every 11,500 years. First comes an enormous flood, a Noah's Deluge type of flood, which ends the previous ice age. Then comes a period of warmth similar to today's ... which lasts about 11,500 years. Then the next ice age begins – catastrophically. "That 11,500-year cycle of warmth followed by an ice age has returned like clockwork for millions of years. To hope it won't happen again just because humans now inhabit this planet would be wishful thinking."

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MORE CRICHTON

At a January 28 AEI-Brookings Joint Center event, bestselling author, medical doctor, and Emmy and Oscar recipient Michael Crichton addressed the quality of science employed in environmental policy--a topic he explores in his latest novel, State of Fear.

Crichton discussed how to ensure that unbiased information reaches those responsible for environmental policymaking. He recalled the use of a 1998 study as the foundation for the third environmental assessment by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, despite a lack of independent review. This study estimated temperatures from 1000 A.D. to the present, yet Crichton pointed out that it omitted the so-called medieval warm period and the "little ice age that occurred during the sixteenth century," among other flaws. The public mistakenly perceives that studies of this sort are independently verified. To help ensure better quality information, Crichton recommended that competing theories be openly debated, that multiple laboratories perform research to ensure a range of opinions, and that scientists be held accountable for their research.

Because of the uncertainties of current climate science, Crichton urged makers of environmental policy to pay greater attention to epidemiological studies. Crichton also noted that policymakers must judge the efficiency of preventative methods versus methods of adaptation, arguing that there are cases such as oil slicks, radiation leaks, and exposure to pathogens when prevention works better but that that is not necessarily always the case.

He also highlighted the failures of policymakers to promote desirable technologies, arguing that only two major government-sponsored pushes for technology have proven successful in the United States: the Manhattan Project and efforts to land on the moon. Using California as an example, he contended that, rather than adopting the very expensive goal of making electric cars constitute 10 percent of all new cars by 2004, taxpayers would have been better served by policies to raise the price of gasoline, force older cars from the road, or formulate land policies that discourage long commutes.


Crichton also considered the methods for managing complex natural systems that are inherently resistant to control. He noted that many scientists promoted the now-discredited "balance of nature" theory, which held that natural spaces could only be preserved by preventing human intrusion whenever possible. This is not always the case, however, as he predicted that "if you leave a forest alone, probably what'll happen is, it'll decay, become filled with pests, and burn down." Historically, native peoples in the New World set portions of the plains and entire old-growth forests ablaze, yet today California contains more old-growth forests than in 1850, thereby demonstrating that human contact did not destroy forests and that "imposing intellectual notions on a landscape that, by the way, doesn't care what we think," is often untenable.

Today, according to Crichton, we need to continue gathering information and considering unexpected consequences rather than locking into theories with little or questionable scientific basis. After all, he spoke of science as "a process of discovery that goes on for a very long period of time, over the course of which we should adapt to new information. Ultimately," he declared, "I would really like to get the political psychodrama out of decision making."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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