MARYANNE McELROY Opinions Columnist
As the Loyola campus spent the weekend snowed in, wondering if a candy-run to Royal Farms would result in frostbite, and tried every possible snow-related excuse not to do homework or laundry, I think this is the perfect time to reflect on one of the hot-button issues of our time: global warming. Just think. While you spend the week plotting to sabotage snow-plowers and thus maximize your number of snow days, members of the UN-run International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are in a mad dash to save its reputation after both India and the Netherlands say that they can no longer rely on IPCC data. The timing couldn't be more perfect. As the IPCC reasserts its crusade to prevent the earth from becoming a fire-ball, Baltimore has its biggest blizzard since the 1922 "Knickerbocker" Blizzard. If you are like me, sitting at your window wishing you had Balto to take you to Primo's, and doubting the unequivocal dogmatic cries of the IPCC that the earth is on the brink of becoming a 400-degree oven, you are not alone. Besides people such as yourself who just might hold doubts about global warming as you weather through Baltimore's most severe blizzard since 1922, members of the international community have also challenged the IPCC this week. The Netherlands asks the IPCC how it concluded that half of their country was below sea level in a 2007 report when in 2010 only 26 percent of the country is. India asks the IPCC how it found that the Himalayan glaciers would be totally melted by 2035, when scientists say it could take more than 300 years for them to completely melt. India in fact has created its own climate change body to study the Himalayans, the Indian coastline and border regions, saying it cannot rely on IPCC data. The world community is also asking the IPCC to explain how hundreds of e-mails and documents between IPCC climatologists over the past 13 years have gone missing in the wake of previous IPCC scandal. Proponents of the global warming theory advocate their cause with the very same religious fervor and fundamentalism that they so disdainfully look down upon in Bible-belt Christians. Phrases likes "global warming" and "climate change" have become part of a dogma so widely accepted that any challenges to the theory, based on science or not, are dismissed by the IPCC's head as "nefarious designs behind people trying to attack me with lies, falsehoods." Whether or not you bring your green, eco-friendly bag to avoid plastic bags at the grocery store, everyone needs to take a step back and realize that science, especially climate science, is not above politics. "Going green" is a multi-billion dollar industry and climate scientists rely on both private donations and government money for research funds. Any industry that requires government money cannot be separated from power politics. Politicians and members of government have very good reasons to support global warming and squash those who challenge the popularly-accepted belief. The threat of global warming allows governments to interfere in the economy in much greater ways. It allows them to receive generous donations from lobby groups with profit-seeking initiatives to be made off of your fear of melting like an ice cube. I am not a climatologist and do not intend to debate over the validity of global warming. All I ask is that we have the debate in the first place. It is OK to look out your window and not somehow find a link back to global warming, or worse yet, call it global cooling. It's OK to see weather and climate changes as part of a natural flux; after all, we did go through a non-human induced ice age. It's OK to challenge what the IPCC says. It's OK to question the scientists and question where their funding comes from. All of this questioning is healthy and better for science because theories must be tested with as much evidence and research as possible. I cannot tell you whether or not global warming exists, but I can tell you that human error, greed and corruption exist and that no field or institution or belief can be presumed exempt from these. So go ahead, sip hot chocolate and make a snowman and guiltlessly count down the days until spring break. This snowfall is not the result of your throwing a plastic bottle in the trash and not the recycling bin. Go ahead and laugh at the ridiculousness of the phrase "global warming" while you try to determine how much snow we've gotten, and worry about violating some religious-like principle. Go ahead, look at your window and admire the snow and its beauty but think, "Global warming, it cannot come fast enough."
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