We have decided to rename our local paper the Sarasota Hypocrisy-Tribune for their editorial, "Warm dead zones".

In the editorial they link the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico to global warming and use an article in Science magazine to prove their point. The problem is the scientists who wrote the article aren't sure that global warming is the culprit.

According to Phil Berardelli of ScienceNOW daily news, "The team doesn't yet know why some areas are worse off than others, adds physical oceanographer and lead author Lothar Stramma of the University of Kiel in Germany. Although models predict oxygen reduction due to warming, he says, ocean circulation may also play a role, perhaps by transporting oxygen away."

So ocean circulation may also play a role. "Models" predict oxygen reduction? Remember the UN's IPCC models have been proven wrong on human caused global warming.

Berardelli states, "an international team cobbled together all available data on oxygen content of tropical waters collected since 1960, concentrating on six areas for which the records were the most complete."

Cobbled together? Tropical waters (where water is supposed to be warmer anyway)? Six areas where the records "were most complete"? Cherry picking the data input?

Sprintall, one of the scientists states, ""The results definitely exceeded my expectations". Expectations? I thought scientists trying to prove a theory were open to all data available.

Let's look at some facts.

1. The earth cooled between 1940 and 1975 even though global CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuels increased dramatically. The Science team looked at data starting in 1960. So 15 years of the early data came from a global cooling period.

2. Global warming stopped in 1998. We have in fact entered a global cooling period that is predicted to last until 2015 according to current research. So of all the data the Science team looked at from 1998 to 2007 we were not warming. Nine years of the data came from a time the planet was not warming. So that leaves the period between 1975 and 1998 (23 years) when the planet warmed 0.7 degrees.

3. According to a 2006 article in Mother Earth News, "the dead zone is human-made: runoff from farms in the Midwest adds as much as 7.8 million pounds of nitrate fertilizer to the Mississippi River and its tributaries each day during peak loading periods, which then runs downriver and empties into the Gulf. As it does with plants grown on land, the nitrogen causes algae and plankton in the area to flourish, using all available oxygen in the water. The result is hypoxia, an oxygen depleted dead zone in which fish and other marine life simply cannot survive."

4. The Environmental Working Group reports that, "Taxpayers have been subsidizing wasteful commercial agricultural practices that hurt an important source of our fish...Farmlands in 15 percent of the Mississippi River Basin send 80 percent of the critical spring surge of fertilizer pollution into the Gulf. Farms in 124 counties that make up 5 percent of the Basin send 40 percent of the spring fertilizer pollution load to the Gulf."

5. The Herald-Tribune in its own editorial, "Corn-based caution" states, "the recent expansion of corn farming in the Midwest, in response to higher prices triggered by ethanol production, has been linked to a spreading 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico." This reality is backed up by National Geographic.

So is the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico due to human caused global warming or human caused production of corn based biofuels?

The answer: It is caused by growing corn to produce ethanol and other biofuels.

Why are we growing crops for fuel? Of course, to fight global warming.

As we reported earlier the Democratic controlled Congress passed an energy in 2007 that called for a massive expansion of the production of ethanol. To produce the additional eight billion gallons of corn ethanol use mandated in the energy bill will require growing 20 million more acres of corn. In Florida it would mean massively expanding sugar cane production, which will impact the Everglades.

The UN has already rung alarm bells saying that ethanol production for fuel is harming the world's poor. A UN report released just days after the Bali conference on global warming states, “Unless new policies are enacted to protect threatened lands, secure socially acceptable land use, and steer bio energy development in a sustainable direction overall, the environmental and social damage could in some cases outweigh the benefits.”

Stratfor in April 2008 reported that, "High food prices have sparked a great deal of unrest over the past few weeks. Indeed, the skyrocketing cost of food staples like grain has caused protests involving thousands of people in places such as South Africa, Egypt and Pakistan. These protests turned deadly in Haiti and even led to the ouster of Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis."

There you have it. The cause of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is not caused by global warming but rather by human caused production of ethanol to help stop global warming, which is a failed theory. The result of this ethanol and biofuel program pushed by environmentalists and liberals has many unintended consequences. We may be soon killing people with this wrong-headed idea, let alone fish in the Gulf of Mexico.

It is amazing how hypocritical the Sarasota Herald-Tribune really is on the "dead zone". That is why we renamed them the Hypocrisy-Tribune.