A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

I realize that the debate over global warming has gotten . . . um . . . rather hot and roiling over the past couple of years, especially with The Apotheosis Of Al Gore upon us. That's fine with me; Gore is entitled to his beliefs, the issue is quite complicated and we ought to have a vigorous debate both about the nature of global warming and about what to do in response.

But let us stop thinking that there is no controversy whatsoever about Gore's claims regarding global warming. Because there is:

. . . Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."

Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.

Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.

Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."

Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.

Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.

Is all of this doubt-casting wrong? Maybe. At the same time, the doubt-casters themselves are not right-wing propaganda organs. Quite the contrary; they are mainstream institutions--many of which have in the past been traditionally inclined to accept the alarmist view of global warming--that are now stating that perhaps, just perhaps, many of Gore's more startling claims regarding global warming are not quite correct.

All of this is reason enough to ensure that we have a strong and vigorous debate concerning the issue of global warming. Each side should be given latitude to lay its case out and through the most exacting and demanding colloquy, we can best divine what our approach to the climate ought to be.

So let's stop thinking that this is a closed issue. It is not--the vociferous protestations of certain segments of the population notwithstanding.