Global warming skeptics have been compared with holocaust deniers, and media reports routinely present the issue as "settled." Those opposed to the global warming agenda are being openly mocked and attacked - but they are being mocked and attacked based on a straw-man misrepresentation of their position.
Most global warming skeptics readily acknowledge that the planet is warming. What they deny is that man is causing that warming (anthropogenic global warming), or that man can do anything that would have more than a trivial impact on the warming that is occurring. And they question whether the warming that is occurring is even bad for the planet or for humanity.
There is clear evidence of a persistent natural global warming cycle that has dominated Earth's temperatures for the past 10,000 years and extends back through several ice ages and warm interglacials for at least 1 million years. The evidence shows this cycle is responsible for most of Earth's warming since 1850. The scientific evidence is found in more than 200 peer-reviewed papers published in professional journals representing the conclusions of more than 500 scientific experts. But that information is simply ignored by a frankly biased and leftist media, compressed into sounbites and buried in the back pages of newspapers, or spun by being "put into context."
For example, it was front-page news when the 2007 UN Intergovernmental Panal on Climate Change (IPCC) report proclaimed near-certainty that the cause of global warming was human; but how much coverage did the 2006 US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report get that presented clear evidence to the contrary?
Similarly, the statement in the IPCC Climate Change 1995 report claiming that scientists had found a "human fingerprint" in the current global warming received a great deal of attention. But the fact that that statement had been inserted into the report for political, not scientific, reasons, and that the accompanying "science volume" had been edited to remove five different statements by the scientific panel specifically saying that no such human fingerprint had been found, received very little attention. The author of that IPCC science chapter - a US government employee - had to publicly admit that he had inserted the scientifically indefensible language because of "back room" pressure from top US government officials (see Frederick Seitz, former president, National Academy of Sciences, "A Major Deception on Global Warming" in the 12 June 1996 Wall Street Journal; see also S. Fred Singer, Climate Policy from Rio to Kyoto: A Political Issue for 2000 and Beyond (Palo Alto: Hoover Institution, Standford University 2000, p.19).
The truth of the matter is that scientists from around the world are having to gather to discuss academic misconduct - the falsification or misrepresentation of research data - which is described as an "open sore" in scientific research. But the media does not seem to be interested in anything that would undermine their narrative of a crisis caused by global warming.
History professor Naomi Oreskes' 2004 paper purporting to show "a unanimous, scientific consensus on the anthropogenic causes of recent global warming" garnered a great deal of media exposure. However, Dr. Benny Peiser's devastating refutation of that paper by revealing its terrible methodology was largely shunned. Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte provided another refutation of Oreskes' work. No matter: Oreskes paper is accepted as gospel by global warming advocates and by the media. Thus a history professor with an obviously biased and flawed methodology declares a scientific consensus on man-caused global warming, and that view has become the gospel-truth with the media which disregards the truth in favor of a footnote that supports their agenda.
Dr. Benny Peiser went on to present an 18 April 2007 paper titled "Editorial Bias and the Prediction of Climate Disaster: The Crisis of Science Communication" at the conference "Climate Change: Evaluating Appropriate Responses" before the European Parliament. He said:
Over the last 10 years, the editors of the world's leading science journals such as Science and Nature as well as popular science magazines such as Scientific American and New Scientist have publicly advocated drastic policies to curb CO2 emissions. At the same time, they have publicly attacked scientists skeptical of the climate consensus. The key message science editors have thus been sending out is brazen and simple: "The science of climate change is settled. The scientific debate is over. It's time to take political action."Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar, one of the invited expert reviewers for the 2007 IPCC documents, has decried the myth of "scientific consensus," and pointed out the flawed review process used by the IPCC scientists. He has also pointed out that an increasing number of scientists are now questioning the hypothesis of GHG-induced warming of the earth's surface and suggesting a stronger impact of solar variability and large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns on the observed temperature increase than previously believed. But he has largely been ignored by the media. Other scientists, such as Dr. Richard S. Lindzen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have similarly come out to declare their scientific skepticism of global warming alarmism. "I must state at the outset, that, as a scientist, I can find no substantive basis for the warming scenarios being popularly described. Moreover, according to many studies I have read by economists, agronomists, and hydrologists, there would be little difficulty adapting to such warming if it were to occur. Such was also the conclusion of the recent National Research Council's report on adapting to global change."
Instead of serving as an honest and open-minded broker of scientific controversy, science editors have opted to take a rigid stance on the science and politics of climate change. In so doing, they have in effect sealed the doors for any critical assessment of the prevailing consensus which their journals officially sponsor. Consequently, their public endorsement undoubtedly deters critics from submitting falsification attempts for publication. Such critiques, not surprisingly, are simply non-existing in the mainstream science media.
Such views are not only dismissed, but are all-too often being ferociously attacked by every means possible with tactics that could legitimately be called Stalinist.
Dr. Lindzen - the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the leading scientific university in the world - wrote an article titled, "Climate of Fear" detailing the Orwellian tactics routinely used by the global warming alarmism industry to stifle or outright destroy skeptical scientists. He says, "there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis."
In one troubling case, a revered hurricane expert and global warming skeptic is being released from Colorado State University. Dr. William Gray, whose dean has publicly acknowledged that "He's a great faculty member," is being forced out of his position - not due to any allegations of incompetency or misconduct - but simply because "handling media inquiries for Dr. Gray's work requires too much time and detracts from efforts to promote the work of other professors." Question: are scientists who believe in anthropogenic global warming being fired because of media inquiries regarding their position? Universities generally like it when their faculty receive media exposure because it translates in increased student applications. Dr Gray rightly says, "This is obviously a flimsy excuse and seems to be a cover for the department's capitulation to the desires of some who want to rein in my global warming and global warming-hurricane predictions."
And if anything, the real "dirty secret" is that the "industry stooges" are actually working on the side of the global warming alarmist industry, such as the Pew Foundation, according to an article by climatologist Dr. Patrick J. Michaels.
A blatant example of this is Goddard Institute of Space Studies' Dr. James Hansen. Hansen wrote his first alarmist climate model - which showed the world was about to experience severe global cooling - in 1971. NASA colleagues used it to warn the world that immediate action was needed to prevent the catastrophe of global cooling. Now his models just as stridently hype global warming catastrophe. He has appeared on numerous friendly media formats decrying "the politicization of science," when he himself has politicized science more than anyone. He has received millions of dollars in funding from liberal activist sources such as George Soros and the Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. He also served as a paid consultant to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and has personally promoted the film.
I personally never had any axe to grind on "global warming" until a one-sided version of it was repeatedly imposed upon me. If there truly was a problem, I would have wanted to take steps toward a solution (I drive the speed limit to reduce my fuel consumption, carefully watch my water consumption, avidly recycle, and routinely pick up other people's trash). But I became very suspicious way back in 1995 when UN officials began to call for draconian steps on the part of wealthy Western European economies, yet imposed nothing upon Russia, China, India, and the developing world. We were either facing a genuine global crisis - in which case coal burning developing countries needed to stop their coal burning and developing along with everyone else - or it was not. I began to suspect that the effort to combat global warming was far more a radical socialist redistribution campaign rather than a legitimate effort to truly combat an actual global crisis. And I have never seen anything that has ever revealed this view to be incorrect since.
I see the overwhelming evidence for constant warming and cooling climate cycles throughout the planet's history simply dismissed as though it is utterly irrelevant to the question of current global warming, even as the global warming establishment categorically states that global warming is anthropocentric based on the flimsiest of evidence largely based on theoretical computer climate models.
I see the "experts" arbitrarily deciding to fixate on the 3.2 percent of carbon dioxide that is caused by humans and ignoring the 96.8% that is completely natural and out of human control. I see the claim that the United States must totally alter its entire way of life to reduce anthropogenic CO2 when anthropogenic CO2 produces less than 0.1 of one percent of the greenhouse effect.
I see Al Gore receiving a Nobel Prize for science when his work is filled with one alarmist and exaggerated claim after another. Giving such an award to a man whose tactics represent those of Joeseph Goebbels more than those of objective science demonstrates what an ideological mockery the scientific project is increasingly becoming.
I see the theoretical future threat to polar bears as grounds for sweeping powers being granted to the Environmental Protection Agency despite the fact that the bear population has clearly doubled in the past thirty years. If global warming is truly having such a terrible impact on our environment, then advocates ought to have the ability to provide species whose population is truly being impacted.
I see the media hyping the melting northern ice caps and simultaneously ignoring the fact that the Antarctic ice levels have hit record highs.
I see the best available observations showing a global warming pattern (in latitude and altitude) that differ dramatically from the pattern calculated by computer greenhouse models being ignored. It doesn't seem to matter that the observed and theoretical fingerprints simply do not match.
I see global warming alarmists continuing to point at severe weather as being caused by global warming when the science says otherwise. One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming causes hurricane activity to intensify has recently reversed his position, with little fanfare. Hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel of MIT now says that hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise over the next two centuries.
I see (and laugh!) one global warming conference hyping catastrophe after another having to be canceled every single year due to cold weather. I see (and laugh at!) the hypocrisy of UN "global warming experts" flying to Bali to have a conference saying the very thing they're doing is destroying the planet!!! I see Al Gore's home creating a carbon footprint that is 20 times larger than anyone else's while he's out telling people to ride their bikes everywhere to save the planet.
I see liberals advocating "carbon credits" the way the Catholic church at its worst sold indulgences to bribe God to ignore their sins. Apparently, if a pedophile molests a kid but gives money to an anti-child-molesting organization, his net molestation is zero. Carbon credits give wealthy global warming alarmists the ability to pay their way out of being forced to live the way they want to force everyone else to live.
I see liberals and environmental activists routinely using every means to block any effort to resolve our energy crisis by exploiting our abundant domestic oil resources, even as they constantly demagogue those who have been proposing how to increase the energy supply and reduce the increasingly shockingly-high price tag of energy that is essential to our economy. If your car will run on wind, then by all means let's build more windmills. But otherwise, by all means, please let us increase our oil supply.
I see all this and more, and am therefore very skeptical as to why I need to support the most massive socialist redistribution program in world history and the complete undermining of the American economy in order to fight a theoretical threat - when all human history has shown that global warming is actually good for humans and it is ice ages that are bad. Civilizations such as the Roman and Mayan empires thrived during warming that is hotter than it is today; and it was during the cooling that occurred during the so-called Dark Ages that human civilization struggled to survive.
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