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Opinion
The Battalion
- - ■ 11
Page 5 ♦ Wednesday, June 2, 2004
The myth of global warming
The Day After Tomorrow’ reignites debate, but where’s the supporting evidence?
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H ollywood is playing
politics again — this
time it’s not celebri
ties protesting a war or pro
moting their favorite charity,
but actors dramatizing the
myth of global warming
through Roland Emmerich’s
summer action flick, “The
Day After Tomorrow.”
In the movie, global
warming alters ocean cur
rents and triggers an ice age, causing
bizarre and highly destructive weather
to level major cities worldwide. Unlike
most science-fiction flicks, however,
the filmmakers actually believe that
these horrors present a real-life threat.
As co-screenwriter Jeffer Nachmanoff
describes it, “It’s a cautionary tale
about what can happen if we continue
to provoke Mother Nature.”
The film packages and sells what
environmentalists have been preaching
in schools and in public for decades:
the idea that technological advances
that prolong and enrich human life
come at the cost of destroying the
planet through global warming — a
suggested increase in worldwide tem
peratures caused by man-made green
house gases such as carbon dioxide.
With the release of “The Day After
Tomorrow,” people and the media have
a renewed interest in this topic.
However, there seems to be a lack of
hard evidence suggesting that the earth
really is getting warmer, that such
weather patterns are outside of the
normal fluctuation ranges or that any
of it is caused by human activity.
This isn’t just a stubborn denial by
politicians or chemical plant owners.
More than 17,000 scientists have
signed the Oregon Institute Petition,
which states that "there is no convinc
ing scientific evidence that human
release of carbon dioxide, methane or
other greenhouse gases is causing or
will, in the foreseeable future, cause
catastrophic heating of the Earth's
atmosphere and disruption of the
Earth's climate."
If this were a small misunderstand-
MAIL CALL
ing, it wouldn’t be a problem
to clear up. However, an
incredible amount of people
believe in this. In a national
survey of 1,000 adults con
ducted by the polling firm
Global Strategy Group this
year, 70 percent of
Americans polled said they
consider global warming to
be a "very serious" or
"somewhat serious" problem.
And the media doesn’t seem to be
doing much to clear this matter up.
John Houghton, a former member of
the United Nations’
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change described global warming as
“a weapon of mass destruction” in the
British newspaper, The Guardian. He
further asserted that “The 1990s were
probably the warmest decade in the
past 1,000 years.”
At first glance, this seems to be a
staggering statistic affirming a rise in
global temperature, but it immediately
draws the question: Why was it so
warm 1,000 years ago? In 990, power
plants, factories, chemical plants and
SUVs didn’t exist, so why would we
assume that the temperature change
was a natural occurrence back then yet
believe it to be manmade now?
Environmentalists such as
Houghton point to 1,500 deaths last
year in an Indian pre-monsoon heat
wave where temperatures reached 120
degrees, 9 degrees above normal.
Indeed, on “The Day After Tomorrow”
Web site, such death tolls flash on the
screen as if the bodies would make a
person forget about actual evidence
through an emotional appeal. But truth
and evidence speak beyond the tragic
loss of life — in 2003, temperatures
hit 127 degrees in Palm Springs,
Calif., with no reported heat-related
deaths. That’s 7 degrees hotter and
1,500 less dead people. Like it or not,
in this case the difference between life
and death is living in the United
States, with the benefit of the technol
ogy these environmentalists are accus
ing to be the world’s doom.
Karry Mullis, the 1993 Nobel Prize
winner in chemistry once said,
"Environmentalists predict that global
warming is coming, and our emissions
are to blame. They do that to keep us
worried about our role in the whole
thing. If we aren't worried and guilty,
we might not pay their salaries. It's
that simple."
Hopefully most of those perpetuat
ing the myth of global warming and
the doom of our planet are guided by a
genuine sense of protecting the beauti
ful planet we inhabit, and merely need
to examine the wealth of facts to the
contrary that are readily available on
the Internet and in scientific journals.
Hollywood and the media must face
these facts and debunk this myth, so
that another generation of Americans
doesn’t grow up trying to hinder eco
nomic and technological progress in
fear of Roland Emmerich’s vision of a
judgment day that will never happen.
Mike Walters is a senior
psychology major.
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In response to George Deutsch’s June 1 column:
George Deutsch firmly claims that it is a "lie" that high-rank
ing military personnel or Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld knew
anything about the horrendous abuses occurring in the Abu
Ghraib prison. What is Mr. Deutsch's evidence for such a bold
statement? Because CIA and Defense Department spokesper
sons say so? Surely we can all rest more easily now knowing that
bit of irrefutable evidence.
Seymour Hersh, who originally made the accusations about
Rumsfeld's involvement (www.newyorker.com/fact/con-
tent/?040524fa_fact), has stated that he feels confident that his
unnamed sources would testify if a Congressional inquiry were
undertaken. Perhaps a Congressional investigation would be
more honest and probing than relying on Dubya's internal inves
tigation of his own appointees.
Deutsch then goes on to use the typically conservative tactic
of blaming the "liberal media" for all the ugliness associated
with the Bush regime's tinkering with the otherwise sovereign
nations of the world.
I suggest you read Eric Alterman's book "What Liberal Media?:
The Truth About Bias and the News" to see how misguided this
assertion actually is. You might also find it interesting how the
New York Times, often considered the ringleader of the "liberal
media," has now had to issue an apology in its pages for its role
in promoting the unfounded assertion that there were weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq prior to U.S. intervention.
That assertion, which formed the centerpiece of our adminis
tration's rationale for invasion, was largely presented to the U.S.
public through the New York Times and some 300 other news
papers around the country which regularly print such articles
from the Times.
Those stories were largely unsubstantiated and leaked to
Times reporters (mainly Judith Miller) by the Pentagon, and
then printed and immediately cited by the Rumsfelds of the
world as further justification for their actions. Anyone see a
problem here?
Robert Powell
Graduate Student
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TX 77843-1111. Fax: (979) 845-2647 Email: mail-
call@thebatt.com
Pat Tillman is personification
of American heroism, ideals
O n Friday, April
23, 2004, the
nation mourned
the death of the 110th
soldier killed in
Afghanistan: U.S. Army
Ranger specialist and
former Arizona Cardinal
free safety Pat Tillman.
The Department of
Defense concluded that
“his patrol vehicle came
under attack” by Afghan insurgents during a
firefight with anti-coalition forces 25 miles
southwest of the U.S. military base at
Khost, but recent developments indicate that
Tillman was likely killed by friendly fire.
Regardless of how he died, tributes and
eulogies have appeared and spanned the
front pages and Web sites of every major
news source in the country. At some point
during all this, Pat Tillman became an All-
American hero.
This courageous man’s death is certainly
not the first to come from a soldier in the line
of duty. It definitely won’t be the last. And he
is no more courageous than the other two
U.S. soldiers who were injured alongside
him. So, what causes an entire country to
mourn the death of a single soldier?
It could be his celebrity status — that he
has name recognition undoubtedly helps. But
the reason he will have legendary recognition
and soul-stirring permanence, and the reason
his Army fatigue-clad muscular build monop
olized the front pages of the nation’s newspa
pers, is that Tillman is a true American — a
personification of America. There is the
model citizen Tillman, the model soldier
Tillman, the model athlete Tillman, the
model husband Tillman, and the model
American Tillman essentially integrated a lit
tle bit of everyone.
Although he may have considered the
things accomplished in his life to be nor
mal, there’s no doubt that Tillman’s legacy
is great.
It began at the end of the NFL’s 2001 reg
ular season when the young man decided he
was ready for a venue change. Driven by the
deep sense of civic duty that defined his life,
and spurred by the Sept. 11 attacks on his
true home turf, he saw the prospect of spend
ing another year at Sun Devil Stadium in
Tempe, Ariz. insignificant and selfish. He left
a $3.6 million contract offer with the
Cardinals and his fifth NFL season, which
proffered him high hopes of bettering the
franchise record for tackles that he had set
the previous season, and opted for a $40,000
contract that was everything he had ever
dreamed of: a venue change to the arid
deserts and craggy wastelands of southern
Asia, the crossfire of automatic AK-47s and
the prospect of the ultimate sacrifice — death
at the hands of the Afghan enemy.
^ ^... there's no doubt that
Tillman's legacy was great.
Tillman’s love for America made him the
heroic soldier, but this lifestyle of principle,
morals and ambition cast him as the model
American athlete too. In a league plagued
by pill popping, steroid use, drug sentences,
domestic violence and star-studded egoism
from its “finest” players, Tillman would
seem like an outcast. But this demonstra
tion of sanity, normalcy and that he is one
player with a head still attached under his
helmet is exactly why he’s a hero to the rest
of the country.
There was nothing flashy about Tillman.
There was nothing that screamed greatness or
commanded attention — maybe a bit of a
mystique and a lot of hard work, but no larg
er-than-life extravagance. He was just your
everyday American. This is because Tillman
chose to join the ranks of American heroes
with little fanfare. He used the front of a team
tackles-leading NFL star turned combat sol
dier, just as Cpl. Jessica Lynch pretended to
be a West Virginia schoolteacher turned
Purple Heart recipient; just as 1st Lt. Doyle
Hufstedler, who gave his life on March 31 in
Iraq, disguised himself as a proud husband, a
proud future father and the proudest member
of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Class of 2001;
just as the millions of other true American
heroes don the guise of an ordinary citizen
each day. Indeed, the masked faces of
American heroes come in all shapes and
sizes, but they all belong to ordinary citizens
— that which makes them extraordinary
comes from a simple, but poignant love of
their country and from principles, morals and
hard work.
On Jan. 20, 1961, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy ended his inaugural address with
what has become the quintessential doctrine
of a true patriot. “And so, my fellow
Americans,” he charged, “Ask not what your
country can do for you — ask what you can
do for your country. My fellow citizens of
the world: Ask not what America will do for
you, but what together we can do for the
freedom of man.”
The Pat Tillmans, the Jessica Lynches and
the Doyle Hufstedlers have asked their coun
try that question and have been willing to
fight for the freedom of man and for the
honor of America. The thousands fighting
today in Iraq, the hundreds fighting in
Afghanistan and those stationed in Kosovo
and North Korea have asked their country that
question. And, the 725 who have heroically
forfeited their lives in Iraq and the 3,864 oth
ers who have been wounded in the recent
days, weeks and months have not run from
the answer they were given.
Tillman’s home-state paper, The Arizona
Republic, perhaps said it best when it told
its readers, “Do not mourn Tillman, follow
his lead.”
If all who call this great country home dig
deep and find that bit of heroic Pat Tillman,
that bit of Jessica Lynch gusto busting at the
seams, think of what we can do together for
the freedom of man — think of what we can
do proudly for the honor of America.
Clint Rainey is a sophomore
general studies major.