Building on the first five from yesterday, I offer another five reasons to doubt global warming is man-made.

1. In 1895, the New York Times was telling America to stock up on firewood, because the Ice Age was coming. On February 24, 1895, the paper’s headline read, “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again.” Then in the 20s, the Earth got a fever and temperatures increased a half a degree, leading the Times to report on the new impending doom: global warming. In 1954, the Earth was destined to freeze again. This time, Fortune magazine filed a report titled: “Climate – the Heat May Be Off.”

   This global cooling talk went through the 70s and the first Earth Day. Three months prior on January 11, the Washington Post published: “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.” The post counseled its readers to “get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come,” Thirty years after Fortune wrote about the coming Ice Age, it won a “Science Writing Award” from the American Institute of Physics. This was for its analysis of the coming global freeze. In 1974 Fortune wrote:

   “It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude,”

   Sound familiar?

   By the 1980s, the world was once again threatened by global warming. The New York Times announced everyone’s doom again by quoting seven government atmospheric scientists who saw the end of civilization. They predicted global warming of “almost unprecedented magnitude.”

   Newspapers and magazines wrote that farms would not be able to produce enough food because of the cold and because of fewer days in the growing season. Then, they told us we would not have enough food because it was warming up and the cattle were a dying off and the crops were withering. Whether they told us it was getting colder or warmer, either way they were certain we were doomed.

   Just looking at the way the media has covered this subject in the past isn’t a reason to doubt global warming today, is it? Yes it is.
   

   Certainly, their record speaks for itself. Four separate and distinct climate theories targeted at a public taught to believe the news. Only all four versions of the truth can’t possibly be accurate.

   For ordinary Americans to judge the media’s version of current events about global warming, it is necessary to admit that journalists have misrepresented the story three other times.

   One more thing to remember. These journalists didn’t just make these stories up out of thin air. Each one was backed up with science. Or so they thought.

2. Scientists who were once proponents of AGW are now dirty, lying shills for the Oil and Energy companies. That is, they doubt the veracity of the theory. This isn’t a list of fringe scientists, or economists who dabble in politics. These are honest to God scientists who are going against the “consensus.” For example:
   

   • Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is “unknown” and accused the “prophets of doom of global warming” of being motivated by money, noting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!”
   • Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel’s top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. “”Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye,”
   • Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. “I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,”
   • Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.”
   • Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. “I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster…”However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun.”

   That is just five. The list is long and growing every day. Another report was published last month listing over four hundred scientists. More and more people who once preached the gospel are now turning away from the Church of Global Warming.

3. I told a guy at work that Vikings used to farm Greenland. In a twist right off the Internet, he asked for a link. I said, “No problem.”
   

   In 1991, two caribou hunters stumbled over a log on a snowy Greenland riverbank, an unusual event because Greenland is above the tree line. Closer investigation uncovered rock-hard sheep droppings. The hunters had stumbled on a 500-year-old Viking farm that lay hidden beneath the sand, gift-wrapped and preserved by nature for future archaeologists.

   GÃ¥rden under Sandet or GUS, Danish for ‘the farm under the sand,’ would become the first major Viking find in Greenland since the 1920s.

   All the Viking farms were buried under the sand. So, where did all the sand come from?

   Sheets of ice sliding down the mountain toward GUS may have pushed sand over the eastern coast of Greenland, burying the Viking settlements. The sand slide was probably a major catastrophic event, comparable to an earthquake.

   So, let’s recap. Erik the Red hops in a boat and lands on Greenland. He likes what he sees and decides to stay and build some farms. Everything is going good, then an incoming ice sheet sends a sandslide to cover the farms. After a while, the area turns to permafrost, sealing the smells of the farm in for five centuries. Now, the ice sheets are retreating and it is all man’s fault.

   Right.

   Another thing about Greenland that is fascinating. Some scientists decided to drill through an ice sheet there, to see what they could find. They drilled all the way through and made a very interesting discovery. Southern Greenland used to be a lush forest, and was probably warmer than they thought. They discover that there used to be a diverse environment there, filled with conifers and insects. And it made some do a double take on their belief system:

   “If our data is correct, then this means that the southern Greenland ice cap is more stable than previously thought,” said Professor Willerslev. “This may have implications for how the ice sheets respond to global warming.”

4. Did you know that global warming was the reason there is a decrease in circumcisions in Africa? Oh yeah. It’s getting pretty bad.

   It also causes bananas to be destroyed, but also allows them to grow. Global warming causes blizzards (I especially like who paid for that research), cold spells, and frostbite.

   There are a few other things global warming is responsible for. It is causing hurricanes, or it might be stopping them. It causes a decrease in snow, and an increase in snow. Plankton population will rise, or or plankton population will decline…or both. Whatever.

   Global warming causes mountains to shrink and grow. It causes ice sheets to grow and to melt. And it causes forests to decline and forests to grow.

   If that isn’t enough, global warming causes nuclear war, crocodile sex and the end of the American Dream.

   And Darfur. Can’t forget that.

   It’s craziness like this that makes me shake my head and wonder what else is global warming going to be blamed for. It’s just silly, and it makes me think global warming is being crammed down our throats any which way it can be. Or it is just the new Boogeyman, being used to scare people into submission. And since when does science need a Boogeyman?

5. Like Glenn Reynolds said, “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who say it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.”

   The alarmists demand that we have to change the way we live. We have to trade in our SUVs for hybrids. We have to use more expensive green energy. They tax energy so much that air conditioners can’t be used by the poor, resulting in the deaths of thousands. Meanwhile, those same people who are putting together the next Kyoto in Bali, Indonesia added 4.07 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That is the equivalent of more than 20,000 cars for a year. Have these people never heard of GotoMeeting.com? I mean, if this is such an Earth-shattering problem, why are they not being more conservative with their carbon output?

   I know, there is nothing scientific about this one, but it is very telling about the motivations of the enviro-mafia. Why do they make excuses for the way Al Gore lives instead of demanding he live more like Ed Begley.

   Would you listen to a really fat guy tell you to lose weight when he justifies his McDonald’s diet with “pound offsets?” No, but you are expected to accept that Al Gore thinks that you should reduce your carbon footprint, but he can live how he wants due to carbon offsets. We are expected to believe he really thinks the oceans are going to rise and flood major parts of the United States, but he still uses that much power. And let’s not talk about how much he uses green energy. He’s still using more energy than he wants you to, and he could get by in a smaller house. He’s not living by example. He’s talking the talk, but not walking the walk. Instead, he’s trying to legislate you into walking the walk, and paying someone else to walk for him.

   It makes it hard to believe that he really, truly believes the stuff he has sold to the environmental movement

Editor’s Note: We did a one-hour interview on global warming with Orson Scott Card a couple of months ago. The interview was excellent, and his reasoning for being skeptical about global warming was extremely well thought out and well delivered. You can listen to that interview here.