Aftermath News

Basing policy on carbon dioxide levels ‘potentially disastrous economic folly’

WorldNetDaily.com | Dec 21, 2007

By Bob Unruh

A new U.S. Senate report documents hundreds of prominent scientists – experts in dozens of fields of study worldwide – who say global warming and cooling is a cycle of nature and cannot legitimately be connected to man’s activities.

“Of course I believe in global warming, and in global cooling – all part of the natural climate changes that the Earth has experienced for billions of years, caused primarily by the cyclical variations in solar output,” said research physicist John W. Brosnahan, who develops remote-sensing instruments for atmospheric science for clients including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

However, he said, “I have not seen any sort of definitive, scientific link to man-made carbon dioxide as the root cause of the current global warming, only incomplete computer models that suggest that this might be the case.

“Even though these computer climate models do not properly handle a number of important factors, including the role of precipitation as a temperature regulator, they are being (mis-)used to force a political agenda upon the U.S.,” he continued. “While there are any number of reasons to reduce carbon dioxide generation, to base any major fiscal policy on the role of carbon dioxide in climate change would be inappropriate and imprudent at best and potentially disastrous economic folly at the worst.”

The report compiled observations from more than 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen nations who have voiced objections to claims of a “consensus” on “man-made global warming.”

Many of the scientists are current or former participants in the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose present officials, along with former Vice President Al Gore, have asserted a definite connection.

The new report, which comes from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the GOP ranking member, cites the hundreds of opinions issued just this year asserting global warming and man’s activities are unrelated.

“Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists,” the introduction to the Senate report said. “In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics ‘appear to be expanding rather than shrinking.’

“Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears ‘bite the dust,’” the introduction said.

And there probably would be many more scientists making such statements, were it not for the fear of retaliation from those aboard the global-warming-is-caused-by-SUVs bandwagon, the report said.

“Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media,” noted Nathan Paldor, professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies said, “First, temperature changes, as well as rates of temperature changes (both increase and decrease) of magnitudes similar to that reported by IPCC to have occurred since the Industrial revolution (about 0.8C in 150 years or even 0.4C in the last 35 years) have occurred in Earth’s climatic history. There’s nothing special about the recent rise!”

At an earlier hearing, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., confronted Stephen Johnson, administrator of the EPA, about a threatening e-mail from a group that includes the EPA. The e-mail from the American Council on Renewable Energy was addressed to Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and said, “It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.”

It was signed Michael T. Eckhart, president of ACORE.

The scientists cited in the new study hail from Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, New Zealand, France, Russia and the United States. They defied the idea promoted by various political and environmental agendas that man’s activities are endangering the future of the Earth through contributions to a rise in temperatures.

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, recently converted from a believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. Patterson noted that the notion of a “consensus” of scientists aligned with the U.N. IPCC or former Vice President Al Gore is false.

“I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall, and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,” he said.

The report was generated after U.N. IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri implied there were only “about half a dozen” skeptical scientists left in the world.

Gore has likened skeptics of the global-warming philosophy to “flat Earth society members.”

But the Senate report noted the scientists who are expressing a dissatisfaction with such generalizations include experts in climatology, geology, oceanography, biology, glaciology, biogeography, meteorology, economics, chemistry, mathematics, environmental sciences, engineering, physics and paleoclimatology.

“Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Price with Vice President Gore,” the report said.

Besides the Nobel Gore shared over the issue of global warming, he also won an Oscar for his work on “An Inconvenient Truth,” which proclaims the validity of man-made global warming and advocates urgent action.

However, Muriel Newman, director of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, has told Academy President Sid Ganis and Executive Director Bruce Davis that the honor should be withdrawn.

That’s because British High Court judge Michael Burton has concluded Gore’s documentary should be shown in British schools only with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination. The decision followed a lawsuit by a father, Stewart Dimmock, who claimed the film contained “serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush.”

The Nobel panel honored Gore and the IPCC for their efforts to spread awareness of “man-made climate change.”

But the British court pointed to 11 inaccuracies in the production:

“The truth, as inconvenient as it is to Al Gore, is that his so-called documentary contained critical distortions that are quite contrary to the principles of good documentary journalism,” Newman said. “Good documentaries should be factually correct. Clearly this documentary is not.”

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