Global warming alarmists, among them the Record editorial staff, have been ranting for the last couple of years about global warming.

The primary justifications for their concern is that temperatures have been creeping up, and when this data is fed into computer models, they conclude that drastic measures are needed to save the earth.

Their proposed remedies fail to recognize that there were dramatic changes in the climate thousands of years before the union of Adam and Eve evolved into billions of humans crawling the earth with their resultant pollution. The melting of the ice cap that covered Canada and the northern tier of the United States thousands of years ago is a perfect example.

When people first began collecting weather data, they used instrumentation that was developed centuries ago. All of this data was dutifully recorded and eventually the National Weather Service was created in 1870 to collect and analyze the information and then try to predict the weather.

But, these measurements are relatively new when compared to the meteorological life of the earth and as public awareness evolves, many people find that it is becoming more and more obvious that predictions of doom-and-gloom by environmental activists is probably a false alarm based on tainted, frequently inaccurate or purposely misrepresented information.

The use of core samples taken from either the earth or glacial fields is the most reliable way to determine how the earth's climate has evolved since it was created. In reality, the earth is still evolving; witness the earthquakes that are recorded daily, volcanic eruptions and “historic” weather events that are recorded annually.

The current state of our earth took tens-of-thousands of years to create. Glaciers come and go, for example when discussing Mount Shasta's seven glaciers, Slawek Tulaczyk, an assistant professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, reports “When people look at glaciers around the world, the majority of them are shrinking. These (Shasta) glaciers seem to be benefiting (growing) from the warming ocean.”

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In an article, “Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered,” authored by Christopher Monckton this year, he reports, “Since the phase-transition in mean global surface temperature late in 2001, a pronounced downtrend has set in. In the cold winter of 2007/8, record sea-ice extents were observed at both Poles. The January-to-January fall in temperature from 2007-2008 was the greatest since global records began in 1880 (Data source, Hadley Center, University of Alabama at Huntsville).”

The media, including the Record editorial staff, has swallowed the myth that global warming is caused by human activity and they have repeated it to the point that has become a “fact” to many people, mostly entertainers or washed up politicians who seek recognition and who are too lazy to objectively investigate the issue.

Many of our politicians have been convinced by the arguments of these pseudo scientists and have concluded that one solution is to regulate all internal combustion engines - that means a group of government functionaries will demand expensive retrofitting and testing of everything from lawnmowers to locomotives.

The State of California, at the urging of hardcore environmental alarmists, including the Governor, has begun a political process that will eventually cost billions and eventually prove to have little impact on the weather.

For example, the California Air Resources Board unveiled a revised draft regulation in May 2008 that would require retrofits and engine replacements for the estimated 420,000 trucks and buses registered in California or transiting our roadways. These regulations basically require that every truck engine in California will have to be replaced at a cost of billions and this is just the beginning!

Millions of words have been used to try and make the case that global warming is an immediate threat to our existence. While I believe that the climate is in a constant state of flux, I also believe that when we try to predict the weather, we usually get it wrong.

So, I really don't think that all those actors, activists and alarmists should declare with any finality that the earth is ending due to global warming or impose billion-dollar fixes for a problem that doesn't seem to exist.

Ron Fink is a longtime Lompoc resident and a community activist.

August 5, 2008