Scientists say the last major warm period of the Earth’s climate began about 5 million years ago. They call it the “Pliocene epoch.”
There were no coal-fired power plants, nor SUVs, nor heavy industry of any sort during the Pliocene epoch. Nobody, in short, was engaging in the activities that environmental activists claim are catastrophically heating the Earth’s atmosphere today with “greenhouse gases.”
And yet, what do scientists tell us about the Pliocene epoch?
According to a new study of sediment from the floor of the Bering Sea, off the western coast of Alaska, “the region was ice-free all year [during the Pliocene] and … there was a high level of biological activity,” McClatchy Newspapers reported.
By contrast, McClatchy noted, “Today, the Bering Sea is only ice-free during the summer.”
In other words, it’s a lot colder in and around the Bering Sea today than it was in the distant past, long before man could have been doing anything to warm the atmosphere.
That should make it clear to all but the most diehard advocates of the theory of “global warming” that there are complicated natural forces at work that can increase or decrease temperatures quite naturally – and in spite of what man does or doesn’t do.
Those issues are important because of President Barack Obama’s plans to regulate “greenhouse gases” in the coming months and years. He wants to use the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to slap harsh emissions controls on industry.
Why is he relying on the EPA to do that? It’s simple: Even when both houses of Congress were under overwhelming Democratic control up through last month, Congress did not pass the radical, economy-crushing “anti-global-warming” legislation that the president wanted.
So he is trying to do an end run around Congress and impose burdensome environmental regulations through the EPA instead.
Twelve states have already sued to keep the mandates from taking effect, and Congress can at least partially block them with legislation. It should do so.
In a time of economic crisis and 9.4 percent unemployment, the last thing businesses need is a new set of regulations that threaten further harm to our economy and would do little or no good for our environment.