I’m so sick and tired off all this “go green” and global warming talk. I can’t use a tray at the dining hall  because the University of Massachusetts needs to pretend it’s saving the environment one Dining Commons swipe at a time? Is the school even helping to save the world or is it really just saving itself money by preparing less food? One would think the school makes so much money off of parking that they wouldn’t need to bother to save a few dollars by conserving organically grown carrots. But regardless of where you come out on that issue, I think this whole global warming fairy tale has gotten way out of hand.

Based on all of the research I’ve read, global warming is nothing more then a myth. It’s a fantasy. It makes for fun sci-fi movies, but at the end of the day it is about as legitimate as the 2008 Detroit Lions’ Super Bowl chances. In fact, many scientists think that man-made global warming does not exist and that there is significant evidence suggesting that global cooling has been going on for nearly 11 years.

Everyone who is familiar with the man-made global warming argument knows the fundamental diea behind it is that humans are creating too much carbon dioxide. Those increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause more solar radiation to be trapped in it, increasing global temperature. This theory is taken seriously by leaders around the world. President Barack Obama and the rest of the democrats in our government are taking the global warming myth so seriously that they are considering putting a cap-and-trade system into place to regulate carbon dioxide emissions nation-wide. They are considering this despite the fact that the system would put American corporations at a disadvantage and raise taxes on all Americans during an economic slow down. But is carbon dioxide even causing climate change?

In March of this year, Alan Carlin of the Environmental Protection Agency wrote a report that is extremely skeptical of the science backing global warming. He said, as of the time of the report, that, “given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.” He also said that a decline in global temperatures over the past 11 years, during a time when carbon dioxide emissions have risen, would indicate that the supposed cause of global warming needs to be re-examined. Carlin didn’t think it was necessary for government to step in and put regulations on carbon dioxide emissions.

Obviously, the liberal left and the “inconvenient truthers” didn’t take too kindly to this report. According to CBS news, the EPA allegedly tried to prevent the report from being released in the first place. So much for Obama’s promises of transparency and integrity.

I think the data in Carlin’s and many other reports needs to be emphasized. The world is not undergoing global warming. Data shows that over the past 11 years the world has actually been cooling down, despite the increase in atmospheric carbon levels during the same time frame. Because the observed decrease of global temperature and the observed increase of carbon dioxide emissions contradict what is predicted by proponents of man-made global warming, the theory must be false and another mechanism must be proposed to explain the data.

I encourage everyone who doesn’t believe what they are reading in this column to look up the data for themselves. The fact that you have to just lets you know how ridiculously liberal the media is in this country. The tough questions aren’t asked. Nothing is investigated anymore. Things just get reported as accepted facts and published in science books even though they aren’t proven.

The cap-and-trade bill will be the next big discussion in Congress after health care reform is dealt with. As I and many others have written in the past, although the bill will likely succeed in reducing carbon emissions, the cost will be higher taxes for everyone and still higher costs for American corporations. Considering that the U.S. already has one of the world’s highest corporate tax rates, the unnecessary environmental costs forced on businesses by a cap-and-trade bill will put corporations at an even greater disadvantage to other countries that don’t have the same regulations. The results will be more outsourcing of American jobs to those countries.

If corporations, schools, cities, towns or any other communities want to “go green” in order to minimize waste and be more efficient to save money and energy I’m all for it. I think efficiency is a good thing. But let’s not have government or anyone else force it on us. There is no global warming problem, just a bunch of generally accepted myths and sci-fi movies. That’s the real inconvenient truth.

Alex Perry is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].