I wonder if my biology teacher from the seventies is still alive. In his left hand holding ‘The Report To The Club Of Rome’, with his other hand slamming his desk, predicting that we would never see the daylight of January 1, 2000.
Some ten years later we were daily showered with stories about acid rain en leafless woods, an now, in 2007, the climate is the hottest issue.
It doesn’t make me warm or cold, but I wonder were Al Gore is lecturing these days. His own country is – even in California – struggling with the effects of an extreme severe and vicious winter. That doesn’t mesh with his ‘Inconvenient Truth’ , but if you look somewhat further than your own nose is long, you will find scientists and researchers galore, who call Gore’s movie a ‘Convenient Lie’.
Climatologist Hans Labohm and professor Salomon Kroonenberg don’t call Gore a white liar, but they produce some refreshing sounds.
Both are pointing out the possibility of an approaching small ice age.
According to Labohm about one quarter of his fellow craftsman has a suspicion of global warming, about twenty percent thinks it’s all rubbish, while the rest simply admits they don’t know if or what’s going on.
Kroonenburg suggests in his book ‘De Menselijke Maat’ (The Human Size) that we maybe better put some extra carbon dioxide into the air for those who live in the next millennium: some extra heath might be welcome by then.
By the way: according to Gore’s measuring rod there’s also global warming on Mars. To remind you: there’s only one car driving on that planet, and that’s powered by solar energy.
Meanwhile NASA satellites show us that the ice cap on the south pole is still growing, and that a new small glacial period might as well smack bang begin somewhere between 2012 and 2020. We hardly ever read anything about it, but when an ice floe as big of Vermont breaks loose – daily practice over there – it’s on the front page of every newspaper in the world.
‘But why’, asked an anchor woman with a red hot flushed face Hans Labohm, ‘do we never read about what you are telling us?’
Labohm kept his cool: ‘because you never ask us . . .’.
The complete answer therefore is that we, the media, only lend our ears to the doom mongering minority of climatologists and parroting politicians.
You’d better buy some warm sweaters while they’re still on sale . . .
Woudhuysen and Kaplinsky: A man-made morality tale.