Truth vs. Fiction

Although it is tempting to philosophize that truth will eventually prevail, that "eventually'' could be in the far distant future with extensive unnecessary human misery between here and there.

As of September 20, all polls indicate that Clinton-Gore will win the November election by an overwhelming margin. Yet the same polls show that the majority of Americans realize that Bill Clinton is habitually untruthful, while Gore's lack of integrity, measured by his published statements on environmental science, is rivaled only by Clinton's. Although it is not unusual for politicians to lack integrity, these two individuals are worse by orders of magnitude.

There is supposedly a worldwide debate in progress on the question of "global warming'' - the hypothesis that human release of carbon dioxide will cause a catastrophic rise in global temperature. The Clinton-Gore Administration, which promotes this hypothesis as established fact, is in the process of committing the United States to reductions in the release of carbon dioxide that will severely diminish American living standards and, promoted on a world-wide scale, will mean death to great numbers of people in less-developed countries.

How is this indisputable logic handled in the press? Consumer Reports, p 40, September 1996, dismisses it by saying, "perfect synchronization is an unrealistic expectation.'' According to Consumer Reports, it is "unrealistic'' to reason that a cause must occur before or during any alleged effect from that cause. It is also unrealistic to believe that writers for Consumer Reports are unable to understand this simple logic. They are evidently telling an untruth in order to deliberately mislead readers who are not carefully evaluating their text.

Even more outrageous is "Global Warming Is the Target of Dis-information Campaign'' by Bette Hileman in Chemical and Engineering News, p 33, August 19, 1996. Hileman claims that satellite measurements which show very little change in atmospheric temperature during the past 17 years should be disregarded because they "are influenced both by the increasing cooling in the stratosphere from increasing ozone depletion and by temperatures at the surface.'' Yet, satellites are also measuring atmospheric ozone concentrations (see, for example, Access to Energy 21 No. 3, p 4 (1993)) and are finding no significant decrease in worldwide ozone levels. The average atmospheric ozone level, except in the very special conditions localized in the Antarctic, fluctuates in a narrow, naturally determined range. Chemical and Engineering News apparently hopes to influence readers who do not know about the results of satellite ozone measurements by compounding one enviro lie with another.

Truthful scientists should generally conclude, therefore, that global warming is an insignificant non-problem as far as all experimental measurements to date have determined. Most also conclude that atmospheric measurements should continue, so that this important aspect of the environment is carefully monitored.

Untruthful politicians, self-interested enviro scientists and journalists, and even some unprincipled nuclear power advocates, however, continue to lie to the American people about catastrophic "global warming.'' Truth is an essential ingredient in the glue that holds our civilization together. Without truth, all that has been built by freedom, science, and technology will eventually disintegrate.