Page 22 - Spring2008

butter. No chemicals or petroleum required (except electricity for churning substitute for our solar energy-derived butter. The

the butter); just the sun, the grass and the cow (and her rumen flora) in an average environmentalist pays little attention to
elegantly simple process. these details, turning his back to the truth. He is
Let’s run a quick comparison to the production of a food that the U.N. not really concerned with the details of how our

and its whistleblowers tell us has a smaller ecological footprint—the produc- choices about what we eat influence our soil, our
tion of vegetable oil. First the soil must be plowed; a process that requires landscape, or our environment as a whole. He is
immense amounts of diesel fuel. Then the seed, whether it’s rapeseed ultimately concerned only with saving one more
(canola), soybeans, corn or any other oil-producing seed, must be planted. tree, lobbying for one more acre to be locked
This is accomplished by a tractor as well, thus more diesel fuel. After the away from human infl uence, which is certainly a

plant begins to grow, the field must be cultivated to kill the invading weeds. reductive proposition. And therein lies the prob-

Then the fields are sprayed several times by a tractor-mounted rig, dowsing lem with the national park mentality: the lobby
the weeds in oil-derived petrochemical herbicide. If bugs are a problem to spare land from “negative” human infl uence
out comes the pesticide, also derived from oil. Harvest time, and massive also denies it positive human infl uence. Without
combining ensues. The seeds are then trucked cross-country to a factory warm bodies consciously and periodically dis-
where a multi-step refining process takes place. The factory is similar in turbing the landbase, whether we use livestock,

design and practice to a crude oil refi nery. chainsaws, or other land-healing measures, we

After much chemical and mechanical refining of our seed, we have a will ultimately witness deterioration. Ecosystems
product, which is not food, but which the U.N. tells us is the earth-friendly are meant to be dynamic, with a lively growth and

IS THE WORLD REALLY HEATING UP?

The topic that has defined our decade is Global Warming, used as an argument for vegetarian diets and vast in-
ternational bureaucracies. The “science” that bolsters the fear-mongering premise of catastrophic climate change is the
famous “hockey stick” graph prepared by Michael Mann for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The
graph seems to show that the earth’s climate was very stable from AD 1000 to 1900, when temperatures began climb-
ing very dramatically to levels never reached before. The implication is that manmade industrial activities—including,
apparently, cattle raising—have caused a rapid increase in global temperatures, which threaten the whole world with
famine and suffering. But when mathematicians tried to duplicate Mann’s hockey stick graph using his own data (reports
of variations in tree ring growth from various parts of the world), they were unable to do so. They found that Mann had
used an unusual type of data analysis that allowed him to put greater emphasis—390 times greater—on the few data
sets that resulted in a hockey stick graph and thus create the impression that global warming is a unique modern event.
(This kind of statistical manipulation will be familiar to those who know about the phony science used to promulgate the
cholesterol theory of heart disease.) Furthermore, tree ring data is apparently a poor proxy for temperature. For example,
tree rings may be misleadingly wider during cold years that happen to have a warm period in the late spring, when trees
accomplish most of their growth.
The real spoiler for the proponents of global warming is something called the MWP—the Medieval Warm Pe-
riod—when temperatures in Europe were at least 2 degrees C higher than they are today—when it was so warm that
wine grapes flourished in England and Chaucer’s pilgrims could set out in April, a month of warm showers. Proponents
of global warming argue that the MWP was a local event, but worldwide evidence—from cherry blossom festival records
in Asia to lake sediment samples in Africa—indicate that the entire planet was warmer during the period. The MWP was
followed in about 1500 AD by the Little Ice Age, when temperatures plunged, the Thames regularly froze in winter, and
people suffered from famine, plague and political unrest. In Sweden, for example, extremely cold weather 1696 caused
harvests to fail and 100,000 people to die. The Little Ice Age ended around 1840, and since that time temperatures
have slowly climbed. Another warm period occured during the time period of the Roman Empire, followed by a cold
period corresponding to the Dark Ages. In other words, the earth’s climate goes through fluctuations of warm and cold
that obviously have nothing to do with man’s activities.
The most likely explanation for climate fluctuation is changes in solar activity, which can be monitored by sunspot
activity. The Little Ice Age, for example, corresponds exactly with something called the Maunder Minimum, when there
were virtually no sunspots at all. Even the smaller 11-year climate variation cycle corresponds with an 11-year sunspot
cycle. When solar activity is high, less cloud-forming radiation enters the atmosphere and the planet heats up.
Perhaps what we really should be concerned about is global cooling. Satellite data indicate that the earth’s tem-
perature hit a high point in 1998 and has been steadily cooling ever since.
Source:http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm

22 Wise Traditions SPRING 2008