Aimed at 8- to 12-year-olds and their parents, it is a good, reasoned, 115-page antidote to the Chicken Little hysteria and propaganda found in the mainstream media and in places like Laurie David’s kids book “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming.” Fretwell is a research fellow who focuses on natural-resource issues and public-lands management at the free-market Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, Mont. I talked to her by telephone on Wednesday, Jan. 16:

Q: What do you say is going on with climate change?

A: We do see the Earth is warming. We are coming out of an ice age and we’d expect to see some warming. The Earth has warmed and cooled and warmed and cooled and warmed and cooled many, many times over its history — long before humans were on Earth and also since humans have been on Earth. We do see a correlation between CO2 in the atmosphere and temperature change in present times and even if we go back into history.

But as any scientist can tell you, correlation is not causation. We need to be very careful about that. We have a lot of people out there trying to tell us that because one thing is happening, it’s causing another thing, when, in fact, we really don’t know that. There’s a lot of uncertainty out there. If you actually go back and look at the data that shows CO2 levels and temperature changes over the last 650,000 years, what we find is that temperature actually changes first and CO2 in the atmosphere follows that temperature change. Maybe I should say that again: Temperature changes first. CO2 lags the temperature change.

Q: What’s the biggest whopper you’ve heard about global warming that is being aimed at either your kids or at school kids in general?

A: That humans are terrible, terrible polluters and we’re ruining the world. There was a show with Linda Ellerbee on Nickelodeon several months back, and I sat down and I watched it with my kids. My youngest son looked at me after the show and he said, “Mom, is this show really way out of the ballpark or are we all going to die?”

Q: And how old is he?

A: Eight.

Q: At least he’s asking the right questions.

A: He is. But shows like that really scare people. I don’t think that’s necessary. I really want to educate people and let them try to solve the problems instead of trying to scare them into being afraid of things.. ... I think the chance of this getting out really widespread is slim, but the reason I wrote the book is because I want at least a few people to get it out there, begin to understand the knowledge and then pass it on. It’s going to be a slow process. But nature is helping me out a little bit, and so are scientists, because it’s becoming a little more accepted that, “Gosh, maybe it’s not CO2 and humans that are causing this change in climate. Maybe there is a lot more natural variability out there than we previously thought there was or than we previously heard about.”

Q: What’s an “enviropreneur” and why do you encourage kids to become one?

A: Enviropreneurs are people who are out there protecting the environment and making a profit while they are doing it. I encourage everybody to be enviropreneurs because I do care about the environment; that’s why I live in Montana, because it’s a beautiful place to be. If you can actually make money or make a living while you are improving the environment, then it makes everybody well off. It’s the old adage of Adam Smith’s — “doing well by doing good.”

Q: Have you seen kids “get” these arguments — it’s counter to the liberal media consensus.

A: I think a big part of it is working through things with kids. It’s not just a kid sitting down and reading a book and saying, “Oh, gosh, now what am I to believe?” With kids, you really have to sit down and talk with them. So I wrote the book not just for kids but also for parents — and any other adult for that matter — to read together and to explore together.

In fact, a great way to look at my book is to sit down with my book and sit down with Al Gore’s movie or Laurie David’s book and read both of them side-by-side and say, “OK, wait a minute here. There are some differences here. They show the exact same graph but they come up with some very different implications from that graph. Let’s look closer ourselves and figure it out.”
Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. E-mail Bill at steigerwald@caglecartoons.com.