Busting global-warming myths: in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, author Christopher Horner unveils the fraud behind the global-warming scare.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, by Christopher C. Horner, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2007, 350 pages, paperback. (To order, please see the ad on page one.)

"The dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice in recent years is the result of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions," National Geographic News breathlessly reported on March 30. That news probably hasn't reached the ears of the crewmen aboard Alaska's crabfishing fleet yet, but if it did it was likely met with laughter and derision. As it turns out, the day before National Geographic complained about the supposed loss of Arctic ice, three boats of the Alaskan crab fleet and two other ships were dangerously trapped in that same, supposedly missing, ice. On March 29, the Anchorage Daily News reported that "three Bering Sea crab boats and two ships were stuck in sea ice late Wednesday, and nervous crews were hoping the wind and tide would soon shift the ice pack and free the vessels."

The ice had trapped the boats and their crews just off the coast of St. Paul Island, one of the Pribilof Islands that lie 250 to 300 miles north of the arc of the Aleutians. That's still quite a long distance south of where most Americans living in the lower 48 states expect the ice to be found. Even so, ice near St. Paul Island is a common occurrence, even in the age of global warming. Ian Pitzman, the captain of one of the boats stuck in the ice, told the Anchorage Daily News that "boats getting hung in the ice outside St. Paul harbor, which often ices up in winter, is hardly unprecedented." According to the Daily News, Pitzman said this year "the ice was a foot to 18 inches thick, but floes were stacked up, making the ice much thicker in places."

Though ice may be common in the seas around St. Paul Island, practically the only place you'll find mention of it outside of the Bering Sea is on Deadliest Catch, the hit Discovery Channel reality show that chronicles the work and adventures of the Alaskan crab fleet. Outside of that show, mention of the ice around St. Paul Island seems to be strictly avoided, probably because it casts doubts on outrageous claims that the Arctic will soon be ice-free.

The existence of ice in the Bering Sea is far from the only climate fact to be banished by political correctness. For decades environmentalists of every stripe have preached that mankind is pushing a fragile Earth toward a climate apocalypse. Along the way they have relied on selective reporting, twisted interpretations, and outrageous and unfounded predictions, all while viciously attacking dissenters. Now, in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, author Christopher C. Homer pulls the mask of respectability off the environmentalist movement and reveals the effort to blame mankind for global warming as an incredible fraud.

Behind the Green Facade

Horner points out that environmentalism is often a facade covering the core of radical collectivism shared by many in the movement, especially among those most vocal about the threat from global warming. After all, fear is a great motivator. If much of the world can be frightened into thinking that the end of the world is near, perhaps they can be convinced that the solution is to turn over economic and political control to a cadre of elite, wizened rulers, savvy in the ways of the Earth.

Horner cites the example of the Green Party in the United States. The party's agenda, he writes, "goes well beyond fighting pollution, and includes dramatic plans for wealth redistribution. The Green Party courted perennial Communist Party vice-presidential candidate and Black Panther Angela Davis." In short, he notes, "Senior environmentalists deeply believe in the destructiveness of capitalism--in this case (despite the evidence) they believe that through capitalism we are destroying the planet."

To radical environmentalists, as to the communists of old, criticism of the supposed failings of capitalism is little more than a rhetorical misdirection. The real objective is control, and the method by which that control, on a global scale, is to be achieved is through destruction. It's a point underscored by Canadian tycoon Maurice Strong, the man who led the 1992 Earth Summit and who has been behind much of the environmental mischief perpetrated in recent decades by the United Nations. Strong and other UN officials have made "illuminating admissions about their aspirations," Homer notes, quoting Strong who said: "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring it about?"

In the radical environmentalist scheme, the engine of that collapse is to be the manufactured crisis over global warming, and the first policy initiative of that crisis is the UN-brokered Kyoto Protocol. Hornet gives a thorough evaluation of the dangers and history of Kyoto, but the essential point of the treaty, and one very much in keeping with the sentiments voiced by Maurice Strong, was admitted by French president Jacques Chirac. Kyoto, Chirac has said, is "the first component of an authentic global governance." There it is, says Hornet. "Kyoto is the tool by which the Chiracs of the world can finally get some control over us unruly Americans."

Distortions and Facts

The heart of the global-warming fraud is the rampant misrepresentation of information concerning climate. Hornet takes readers on a fairly thorough overview of the highlights of some of the larger controversies, including the now-infamous "hockey stick" graph purporting to show that the recent temperatures greatly exceed those from any previous time in history. That's not true, of course, and Homer points out that construction of the now-infamous graph required "airbrushing the record of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Optimum" in order to bolster the alarmist cause. As Hornet observes, when statistical errors in the data underlying the chart were corrected, the real record indicated that modern warming was in line with previous climate variability. But even then, alarmists worked to spin the results in an attempt to keep global-warming scare stories on the table. "The sum total of the Hockey Stick experience suggests nothing short of intent to deceive on the part of the alarmists, as well as among their colleagues in the media," Homer concludes.

Homer is at his contrarian best, though, when pointing out two very inconvenient facts about real climate data. The first is that global warming is hardly global. Scientists have noticed, for instance, that there is no "warming signal" to be found in temperature measurements across most of Antarctica. But Homer goes further and notes that that holds true for the entire Southern Hemisphere. He cites the opinion of Harvard physicist Lubos Motl who says, "One should conclude that according to the observations, there is no discernible recent warming on the Southern Hemisphere, and an expermental refutation of a far-reaching hypothesis by a whole hemisphere is a good enough reason to avoid the adjective 'global' for the observed warming."

But one of the most astute observations made in the whole book comes when Homer turns his critical eye on the weather stations that supply the temperature records on which much of the global-warming hysteria is based. There has long been reasoned speculation that relatively warm cities are encroaching on existing weather stations with the result that temperature measurements have been increasingly skewed upward by urban heat. This phenomenon is called the Urban Heat Effect, and it occurs because cities tend to warm faster and retain heat longer than the surrounding countryside. But Homer points out another recent phenomenon that almost certainly resulted in temperature measurements for the Northern Hemisphere being thrown artificially to the higher end of the scale.

It seems that following the collapse of the Soviet system, many weather stations throughout Russia shut down for lack of funding. Previously those weather stations had contributed data from measurements of Russia's rather chilly climate to the global temperature record. The abrupt disappearance of those cool readings from the record at the beginning of the 1990s, according to Horner, made the global temperature record appear warmer than it otherwise would have been. "If you shut down measuring stations in the cold parts of the world, your average global temperatures will go up," Homer reasons. "It turns out that the 1990s' temperature increases track nicely with these closures. At the very least, one should be wary [of] comparing post-1990 temperature averages with data from before the massive shutdown of stations. Yet not one journalist can be bothered with this concern."

For those beginning to smell a rat in the claims made by climate alarmists, the United Nations, A1 Gore, and other radical environmentalists, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism will be a revelation. The book could, perhaps, have spent more time on recent scientific observations that point toward influences on climate other than human activity. But geared toward the general reader as a thorough overview and analysis of the claims made by the global-warming lobby, Homer's new book is as good as it gets.