Hollywood Warming

Google on Laurie David and you find that she began her career as a talent coordinator for David Letterman, rose to VP of comedy development for Fox TV, she is the wife of Seinfeld producer Larry David, an eco-crusader and “environmental hero.” From a tribute by her hubby, we find that Laurie used to be “a materialistic, narcissistic, superficial, bosomy woman from Long Island … watched hours of mindless television and shopped like there was no tomorrow … someone as shallow as me.”

But a meeting with Robert Kennedy Jr. transformed Laurie into an environmental activist. Laurie got religion. Now she admonishes her kids about taking long showers, but offers no apologies for her super-sized house where she hosts “hundreds of people for eco-salons.” Laurie drives a hybrid car and reviles SUV owners as terrorist enablers, but gives herself a pass when chartering a Gulf Stream jet. You find no mention of her credentials in atmospheric science. But there she is in the LA Times, railing at us about the dire threat of global warming – “the greatest security crisis in the world.”

Mrs. David says that the U.S. refusal to adopt the Kyoto Protocol is an “act of extreme irresponsibility” and yet another example of America behaving “like a superpower bully.” She points to Tony Blair’s statement of the “emerging consensus” on climate change and ridicules Oklahoma Senator James Imhofe for saying that “global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Science or hoax, which is it?

Laurie’s science: “The 1990s were the hottest decade in the last 1000 years. Nine of the ten hottest years on record occurred after 1994. The artic ice sheet has shrunk 20% since 1979.” That’s it.

The scientific facts are that the measured global temperature rise in the 20th century was only about 0.6 degree Centigrade. Most of the rise occurred in the first few decades, before 80% of the increase in atmospheric Carbon Dioxide due to burning fossil fuels. (The most accurate measurements in the U.S. show only about 1/3 degree C increase.) Between 1940 and 1970 the global temperature actually decreased while atmospheric Carbon Dioxide increased.

Antarctica contains 90% of the world’s ice and has been getting colder and accumulating ice for 50 years. The Greenland ice cap has been cooling at a rate of more than 2 degrees Centigrade per decade since 1987. The best measurements of mean sea level show a slight fall over the last 20 years.

While insisting that the science of global warming is irrefutable, Mrs. David avoids the sticky points. The global warming theory predicts that the upper atmosphere will heat more than the earth surface, but satellite and balloon measurements show that the opposite is true. The computer models vary by 400% in their predictions of warming over the next 100 years depending on the assumption about CO2 increase. Of the two most respected models one predicts an increase of cloud cover with a doubling of Carbon Dioxide while the other predicts a decrease of cloud cover.

Is it any wonder that the “Bush administration refuses to believe in (this) science”.