Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/19/2004 7:56:01 AM PST by bigsoxfan
Washington (CNSNews.com) - Recent U.S. Senate hearings into alleged global warming, chaired by Arizona Republican John McCain, were among the "most biased" that a noted climatologist has ever seen - "much less balanced than anything I saw in the Clinton administration," he said.
Patrick J. Michaels is the author of a new book "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media." He is an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia who believes that claims of human-caused "global warming" are scientifically unfounded.
Michaels spoke with CNSNews.com Thursday following a panel discussion sponsored by the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., where Michaels also serves as a senior fellow in environmental studies.
"John McCain, a Republican, has probably held the most biased hearing of all," Michaels said. McCain is a big proponent of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, which he believes are causing "global warming." The Arizona senator also "is trying to define himself as an environmental Republican, which he is going to use to differentiate himself from his rivals for the (presidential) nomination in 2008," according to Michaels.
Earlier this week, McCain, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said the Bush administration's views about human-caused climate change were "terribly disappointing."
McCain also held a Senate hearing on Tuesday to enlist testimony on the recently released report from an international commission called the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), which warned about rising temperatures in the North Pole.
Citing a visit he had to the Arctic with several U.S. senators last summer, McCain made it clear that he believed human-caused "global warming" was a certainty.
"It was remarkable going up on a small ship next to this glacier and seeing where it had been just 10 short years ago and how quickly it's receded," McCain told the New York Times on Monday.
McCain also warned about what he saw as the rapid pace of Arctic warming, evidenced by the arrival of wildlife that had never previously been seen in the region. "The Inuit language for 10,000 years never had a word for robin and now there are robins all over their villages," he told the Times.
Michaels refuted McCain's assertions about the North Pole, noting that the Arctic has actually been warmer in the past than it is now.
"It was warmer 4 to 7,000 years ago [in the Arctic.] Every climatologist knows that. I saw no mention of that in the Arctic report that was paraded in front of McCain," Michaels said. He added that the past warming of the Arctic couldn't possibly be blamed on greenhouse gas emissions since it occurred long before the industrial era.
'Temperature has always changed'
Other participants in Thursday's panel discussion also disputed McCain's statements. Harvard Astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas agreed that using the polar ice caps to promote "global warming" did not make sense.
"Antarctica has been cooling for the last 50 years. Most of the Arctic has not warmed over long time scales," Baliunas told CNSNews.com. Baliunas also serves as the enviro-science editor for Tech Central Station.
"Temperatures [have] always changed in the past and [they] always will. It can either go up or it goes down. We don't have enough understanding of natural variability and we don't see enormous amounts of temperature change to be alarmed about," Baliunas explained.
She also blasted the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to limit greenhouse gases which the U.S. does not support. "The Kyoto (Protocol) does not work, no matter what you think of it because Kyoto won't do anything meaningful."
McCain's claims about a robin population explosion in the Arctic were refuted as well.
Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), said "Even if it's true that robins are making their first appearance in Arctic areas, what it means it that the robin's habitat is expanding."
"I always thought environmentalists liked birds. To me this is good news," Lewis added.
'Playing the media'
Michaels lamented that the media are allowing certain government-funded scientists to manipulate science for funding advantages. "Scientists are playing the media because they know the media will publish a story that the world is about to end," he said.
"What has happened to the editing process? What has happened to fact checking," he wondered.
Baliunas noted that the media like to imply that the overwhelming majority of scientists believe in dire "global warming" scenarios. In fact, she said, "The scientific literature is full of skepticism. The only problem is -- one doesn't get the call from the newspapers and those [skeptical] quotes don't get included."
Lewis of the CEI added, "The embrace of government and government funding corrupts whatever it touches and that is certainly the case of the scientific process."
Michaels lamented that the media are allowing certain government-funded scientists to manipulate science for funding advantages. "Scientists are playing the media because they know the media will publish a story that the world is about to end," he said.
In the end this is what it is all about. Follow the grant money trail and you will find the true cause of ""global warming". 30 years ago the grants were for cooling research, and the cry was the "coming ice age".
Researchers love crises that will take hundreds or thousands of years to disprove. A career's worth of funding on unprovable problems!
Bingo. That's what it is all about. Money.
I did catch the last part of it where Drew Shindell (NASA) admitted that if we implemented Kyoto protocols, it would make no difference. And this was from the pro-warming side.
Please pass the word. If you look at the basis for the KP's, you will find that there OWN research shows the same. Unbelievable that any politician would sacrafice our economy for something that would do NO good!
Also, it does not surprise me that John McCain is in the middle of this distorted effort to push the media's view of global warming. What he knows about science and climate change would not fill a small rain guage. McCain is a media whore always looking for ink. He can forget about '08. Ain't going to happen!
God help us -- what next?? Now politicians are experts on global warming and touting it as if climatic change was something new to the earth...would someone buy them a couple of high school earth science books, and introduce them to the history of our globe???
Ever hear of the ice ages boys?? The world's climate has been changing since any form of recorded time...and now it is some type of catastrophe.
God help us -- what next?? Now politicians are experts on global warming and touting it as if climatic change was something new to the earth...would someone buy them a couple of high school earth science books, and introduce them to the history of our globe???
Ever hear of the ice ages boys?? The world's climate has been changing since any form of recorded time...and now it is some type of catastrophe.
MONEY is the real common demoninator. The phoney Freon myth, (replacing all Freon in refrigerant sources in the world, so far has cost us TRILLIONS of dallars. The ozone hole is as it has been for centuries, (changing like our climate has changed for ever).
Smaller periodic fluctuations are well documented back to 1000AD or so.
Human activity is the LEAST probable explanation for current changes, sice such cahnges are a constant feature of the record.
The null hypothesis of the global warmers is that the "normal" state of the climate is no change. This is clearly, totally, wrong.
"The embrace of government and government funding corrupts whatever it touches".
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Give it up, McCain. Condi Rice has a lock on the nomination.
I still can't believe that there are Republicans that want this anti-gun, anti-free speech greenie to be the nominee in '08. His election would be a disaster for freedom in this country, and I will work and contribute to stop him (just as I will with Rudy, should he run).
I believe the Senate voted 98-0 against ratifying the Kyoto Treaty the first time it came up. Even the libs could see it was bad for the country. Can't account for the missing 2 senators
Me throwing an ice cube into my pool makes more difference in the temperature of the pool than anything man does has on the temperature of the planet. More white jackets agreeing on unscientific conclusions and calling it science.
Some of the comments from 2004 are interesting to read. Most seem to think that a 2008 nomination of John McCain is impossible or unattainable for him.
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