GLOBAL WARMING: IS IT REALLY A CRISIS?

John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton all promise massive new regulations that will cost trillions of dollars to combat global warming. Ironically, this political unanimity is occurring as scientific evidence points in the other direction, says John R. Lott, Jr., a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland:

• Global temperatures have now largely eliminated most of the one degree Celsius warming that had previously occurred over the last 100 years, according to a consensus of scientists.

• Temperatures rose from the late 1970s to 1998, but there has been no net global warming since 1998; indeed, the more recent numbers show that there is now evidence of significant cooling.

• Even if temperatures were not decreasing, mankind is responsible for just a fraction of one percent of the effect from greenhouse gases, and greenhouse gases are not responsible for most of what causes warming (e.g., the Sun).

Yet we just keep on piling on more and more regulations without asking hard questions about whether they are justified, says Lott.

READ MORE