Veggies Accuse Warmies Of Burying Studies Showing CO2 Isn't The Bugaboo

Because of the steady drumbeat of Warmie propaganda, we all now know that CO2 is the global warming bugaboo, and our neverending production of the stuff is plummeting the planet towards catastrophe.

There's just one little problem, says the vegetarian lobby: It ain't CO2 at all, the Warmies know it, and they're covering it up.

The Web site SaveEarth International, which "promotes a shift towards a healthy plant-based diet," spilled the beans. First, the CO2 matter:

... [T]he environmental community has focused its efforts almost exclusively on abating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Domestic legislative efforts concentrate on raising fuel economy standards, capping CO2 emissions from power plants, and investing in alternative energy sources. Recommendations to consumers also focus on CO2: buy fuel-efficient cars and appliances, and minimize their use.

This is a serious miscalculation. Data published by Dr. James Hansen and others show that CO2 emissions are not the main cause of observed atmospheric warming. Though this may sound like the work of global warming skeptics, it isn’t: Hansen is Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies who has been called “a grandfather of the global warming theory.” He is a longtime supporter of action against global warming, cited by Al Gore and often quoted by environmental organizations, who has argued against skeptics for subverting the scientific process. ...

Many other greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully. When taking into account various gases’ global warming potential—defined as the amount of actual warming a gas will produce over the next one hundred years—it turns out that gases other than CO2 make up most of the global warming problem.

Not only that, but Hansen's study showed that most human-caused CO2 sources also emit aersols which mute the warming effect of CO2. Didn't read that in the Daily Bugle or Science, did you?

EarthSave's motivation in all this is to force meat-eating restrictions on us instead of (or, more likely, in addition to) restrictions on CO2 emitters (those pesky power plants, industries and autos that do so little to improve our quality of life). And it turns out cow flatulence (methane) is much, much worse from a global warming standpoint (and an olfacatory standpoint as well) than SUV exhaust.

Put another way, Mooers are worse for the planet than Hummers.

Interesting as that is, it's hardly scandalous. The scandal here is much like the Mark Foley or Valerie Plame affairs: It turns on who know what and when. When did the Warmies and Greenies know that their efforts to force CO2 restrictions on society were scientifically questionable at best and a cover for Commie social engineering at worst?

It turns out that one of the worst of the abusers of Warmie hysteria, the Union of Concern Scientists, was among those who know, but covered it up:

This result is not widely known in the environmental community, due to a fear that polluting industries will use it to excuse their greenhouse gas emissions. For example, the Union of Concerned Scientists had the data reviewed by other climate experts, who affirmed Hansen’s conclusions. However, the organization also cited climate contrarians’ misuse of the data to argue against curbs in CO2. This contrarian spin cannot be justified.

Do you suppose this news is generating over a thousand media hits a day like Foley did in his infamous prime? Not a chance. But it should.

Every Warmie activist organization from the Center for Biological Diversity to the National Geographic Society should be made to answer under oath this question from a Congressional panel: "When did you first read Dr. Hansen's study on CO2 and what did you do with that informtion?"

They'd hem and haw like a bunch of tobacco execs. But with NanPo and Harry running DC, your chance of viewing this spectacle any time soon is as vaporous as a whiff of carbon dioxide on the breeze.

Hat-tip: Gerry Charlotte Phelps via Real Clear Politics Reader Articles
Related Tags: Global warming, Union of Concern Scientists