The Real Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming: Skeptics Have Valid Arguments

Imagine living in a world where no one is allowed to think or act independently--only state-approved human responses are acceptable. To break the rule and engage in forbidden thought would result in terrible retribution, perhaps leading literally to ones destruction.

That’s the kind of world apparently desired by the global warming Chicken Littles. It seems they are prepared to do anything to achieve it. Case in point is an outrageous letter to ExxonMobil Chairman Rex Tillerson on October 27, 2006. The letter was sent by two United States Senators, Olympia Snowe (R-MA), and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV).

The letter derides Exxon for helping to fund global warming “deniers,” (a term the global warming crowd is using more and more these days to try to draw a parallel with those who deny the Holocaust):

“We are convinced that ExxonMobil’s longstanding support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics, and those skeptics access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy.”

The letter goes on to say, “ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years.”

The mention of the tobacco industry is not just a randomly chosen analogy. It’s a threat that Exxon could face the same government attack on its very existence if it doesn’t play ball. Threats of a “wind fall profits” tax and increased regulation being just a couple of the weapons in the government’s arsenal.

The letter concludes, saying, “We would recommend that ExxonMobil publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it. Second, ExxonMobil should repudiate its climate change denial campaign…”

As incredible as the letter may seem, one must pause to understand the “new think” being foisted on our society. In the August, 2006 issue of The DeWeese Report, (Vol.12, Issue 7), I reported on the root of the new edicts on thinking, called “globally acceptable truth.” This is not just an Ivory Tower intellectual exercise. Those who practice it believe the only way we can have a well-ordered society is for everyone to think and act in unison. Those who break the rules and think for themselves or take action contrary to the “consensus” are evil.

This idea is not just the silly ranting of a few lunatics. It is being accepted as the proper focus for major policy matters from Congress and the news media.

The main source of such thinking seems to come from the Eden Institute, operating out of New York and with close ties to the UN. The official use of globally acceptable truth is best described in a letter to the Eden Institute from Robert Muller, Assistant Secretary General of the UN. He wrote, “I am referring to the need to establish a body of objective, globally acceptable information to serve as a foundation for global education…Its (Eden Project) formula for identifying universally acceptable objective data is truly unique. It achieves this distinction by establishing a global standard for inquiry.”

Translation: We will decide what is truth and all new information or scientific discovery will be judged on whether it matches this “globally acceptable” truth.

The last time human kind was strapped into such a mental straight jacket was during the Inquisition of the Dark Ages. The period was called the Dark Ages because it was an era of ignorance, superstition and social chaos and repression. Anyone caught questioning the doctrine or power of the church was labeled a heretic and found his or her way to the rack or into the middle of a fire while tied to a stake. The church, of course, was practicing its own brand of globally acceptable truth.

Today, the new heretics to the religion of global warming are those who question whether scientific facts support the dire warnings that are screaming from the newspaper headlines and from environmental groups’ press releases.

The letter to ExxonMobile from Rockefeller and Snowe is but one example of the dire tactics being used to stifle any debate on the subject. Just recently, the Attorney General of California filed suit against the world’s three biggest care manufacturers for their complicity in creating CO2 emissions. As part of the discovery for the suit, the Attorney General demanded copies of any correspondence between the automakers and so-called “skeptics” of climate change. Message: you can’t even talk to these people! 2006 has seen the church of global warming go into near panic at any sign of heretical behavior.

It’s absolutely incredible to see such panic, considering the global warming mantra is near universal. There are over 12,000 environmental groups in the country controlling over $20 billion in assets, all unified in spreading the climate change gospel. On top of their vast holdings, many of those same groups receive federal grants for “studies” and “reports” on their climate change findings.

Added to that substantial fire power is a willing news media which offers magazine cover photos of melting ice caps; and the efforts of the movie and television industry which lets no opportunity get by without some reference to global warming. Al Gore’s own documentary has been in theaters around the nation for months. He is the guest on talk shows nearly every week.

The catastrophic global warming message is literally everywhere. It indoctrinates our children in the classroom. It flows from the advertising messages of corporations, in their corporate social responsible ad to sell their environmentally-responsible products (for which research and development was probably paid for with federal tax dollars). Huge numbers of Hollywood stars and international political leaders have endorsed the mantra of the church of global warming. Billions and billions of dollars are being spent to influence literally every corner of the earth to accept global warming as a fact.

Countering this massive onslaught of globally acceptable climate change “truth” is a tiny, dedicated band of scientists, political leaders and non-profits that are seeking the truth. Their assets are literally in the low millions of dollars -- simply a drop in the bucket when compared to the war chest of the climate change church. They don’t have the media’s attention. They don’t have the ability to issue massive grants. Hollywood certainly isn’t making movies to promote the “skeptics” point of view. And the federal government isn’t allowing the contrary opinions in many classrooms.

So, with so much incredible fire power covering every possible exit, one must ask the logical question: why are the climate change crowd so scared of a few renegade groups and their measly few million dollars? The fact is, the “skeptics” are having such an impact on the debate because they are telling the truth. The Church of Global Warming is wrong!

As George Orwell once wrote: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” There is no greater hero in the revolution for climate change truth than Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He has truly demonstrated the power one honest individual can wield.

Earlier this year (2006) Sen. Inhofe gave two explosive speeches on the floor of the Senate in which he attacked and exposed the unfounded claims and scare tactics being employed by the Global Warming crowd. The speeches were literally unprecedented in the decades-long climate change debate. And their effect was like a lightning bolt. Almost immediately some scientists began coming out of hiding to side with the Senator.

On December 6th, just as the Rockefeller/Snowe letter was being exposed across the Internet, Inhofe held a hearing on Capitol Hill exposing the “alarmist media.” Said Inhofe, “Rather than focus on the hard science of global warming, the media has instead become advocates for hyping scientifically unfounded climate alarmism.” His attacks have already forced 60 Minutes, CNN and other major media to at least give lip service to the “skeptic” point of view. More importantly, the Senator’s efforts are putting the Global Warming crowd into near cardiac arrest.

It is important to note that the so-called “Skeptics” include Dr. Daniel Schrag of Harvard; Claude Allegre, one of the most decorated French geophysicists; Dr. Richard Lindzen, professor of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT; Dr. Patrick Michaels, University of Virginia: Dr. Fred Singer; Professor Bob Carter, geologist at James Cook University, Australia; 85 scientists and climate experts who signed the 1995 Leipzeg Declaration which called drastic climate controls “ill-advised, lacking credible support from the underlying science; 17,000 scientists and leaders involved in climate study who signed a petition issued by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine saying there is no evidence green house gasses cause global warming; and the 4,000 scientists and leaders from around the world, including 70 Nobel Prize winners, who signed the Heidelberg Appeal calling greenhouse global warming theories “highly uncertainly scientific theories.”

These are but a few of the highly qualified “skeptics” derided by Jay Rockefeller, Olympia Snowe and Al Gore whom, they say, should not be given a voice on the issue.

There are lots of lies surrounding the Global Warming mantra. The biggest one claims there is “consensus” among scientists that human-caused global warming is a fact. There is no such consensus. Human survival demands that we listen to the “Skeptics” before they are burned at the stake by Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe.

It is important to note that the so-called “Skeptics” include Dr. Daniel Schrag of Harvard; Claude Allegre, one of the most decorated French geophysicists; Dr. Richard Lindzen, professor of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT; Dr. Patrick Michaels, University of Virginia: Dr. Fred Singer; Professor Bob Carter, geologist at James Cook University, Australia; 85 scientists and climate experts who signed the 1995 Leipzeg Declaration which called drastic climate controls “ill-advised, lacking credible support from the underlying science; 17,000 scientists and leaders involved in climate study who signed a petition issued by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine saying there is no evidence green house gasses cause global warming; and the 4,000 scientists and leaders from around the world, including 70 Nobel Prize winners, who signed the Heidelberg Appeal calling greenhouse global warming theories “highly uncertainly scientific theories.”

Could we find any new names for the skeptic list?

Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine

"n reality, neither Robinson's paper nor OISM's petition drive had anything to do with the National Academy of Sciences, which first heard about the petition when its members began calling to ask if the NAS had taken a stand against the Kyoto treaty. Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer. (It was subsequently published as a "review" in Climate Research, which contributed to an editorial scandal at that publication.)

None of the coauthors of "Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" had any more standing than Robinson himself as a climate change researcher. They included Robinson's 22-year-old son, Zachary, along with astrophysicists Sallie L. Baliunas and Willie Soon. Both Baliunas and Soon worked with Frederick Seitz at the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank where Seitz served as executive director. Funded by a number of right-wing foundations, including Scaife and Bradley, the George C. Marshall Institute does not conduct any original research. It is a conservative think tank that was initially founded during the years of the Reagan administration to advocate funding for Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative--the "Star Wars" weapons program. Today, the Marshall Institute is still a big fan of high-tech weapons. In 1999, its website gave prominent placement to an essay by Col. Simon P. Worden titled "Why We Need the Air-Borne Laser," along with an essay titled "Missile Defense for Populations--What Does It Take? Why Are We Not Doing It?" Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the Marshall Institute has adapted to the times by devoting much of its firepower to the war against environmentalism, and in particular against the "scaremongers" who raise warnings about global warming.

"The mailing is clearly designed to be deceptive by giving people the impression that the article, which is full of half-truths, is a reprint and has passed peer review," complained Raymond Pierrehumbert, a meteorlogist at the University of Chicago. NAS foreign secretary F. Sherwood Rowland, an atmospheric chemist, said researchers "are wondering if someone is trying to hoodwink them." NAS council member Ralph J. Cicerone, dean of the School of Physical Sciences at the University of California at Irvine, was particularly offended that Seitz described himself in the cover letter as a "past president" of the NAS. Although Seitz had indeed held that title in the 1960s, Cicerone hoped that scientists who received the petition mailing would not be misled into believing that he "still has a role in governing the organization."

The NAS issued an unusually blunt formal response to the petition drive. "The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal," it stated in a news release. "The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy." In fact, it pointed out, its own prior published study had shown that "even given the considerable uncertainties in our knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses. Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises."

Notwithstanding this rebuke, the Oregon Petition managed to garner 15,000 signatures within a month's time. S. Fred Singer called the petition "the latest and largest effort by rank-and-file scientists to express their opposition to schemes that subvert science for the sake of a political agenda."

Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel called it an "extraordinary response" and cited it as his basis for continuing to oppose a global warming treaty. "Nearly all of these 15,000 scientists have technical training suitable for evaluating climate research data," Hagel said. Columns citing the Seitz petition and the Robinson paper as credible sources of scientific expertise on the global warming issue have appeared in publications ranging from Newsday', the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post to the Austin-American Statesman, Denver Post, and Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.

In addition to the bulk mailing, OISM's website enables people to add their names to the petition over the Internet, and by June 2000 it claimed to have recruited more than 19,000 scientists. The institute is so lax about screening names, however, that virtually anyone can sign, including for example Al Caruba, a pesticide-industry PR man and conservative ideologue who runs his own website called the "National Anxiety Center." Caruba has no scientific credentials whatsoever, but in addition to signing the Oregon Petition he has editorialized on his own website against the science of global warming, calling it the "biggest hoax of the decade," a "genocidal" campaign by environmentalists who believe that "humanity must be destroyed to 'Save the Earth.' . . . There is no global warming, but there is a global political agenda, comparable to the failed Soviet Union experiment with Communism, being orchestrated by the United Nations, supported by its many Green NGOs, to impose international treaties of every description that would turn the institution into a global government, superceding the sovereignty of every nation in the world."

When questioned in 1998, OISM's Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, "and of those the greatest number are physicists." This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM's website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all. When the Oregon Petition first circulated, in fact, environmental activists successfully added the names of several fictional characters and celebrities to the list, including John Grisham, Michael J. Fox, Drs. Frank Burns, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce (from the TV show M*A*S*H), an individual by the name of "Dr. Red Wine," and Geraldine Halliwell, formerly known as pop singer Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls. Halliwell's field of scientific specialization was listed as "biology." Even in 2003, the list was loaded with misspellings, duplications, name and title fragments, and names of non-persons, such as company names."

Heidelberg Appeal

The Heidelberg Appeal, authored by Michel Salomon and signed by a number of leading scientists, is a statement decrying "an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress, and impedes economic and social development." Issued to coincide with the opening of the United Nations-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the Appeal stated that its signers "share the objectives of the 'Earth Summit'" but advised "the authorities in charge of our planet's destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant data. ... The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and oppression, and not Science, Technology and Industry."

A version of the Heidelberg Appeal was published in the June 1, 1992 Wall Street Journal over the signatures of 46 prominent scientists and other intellectuals. It has subsequently been endorsed by some 4,000 scientists, including 72 Nobel Prize winners. The Appeal was for an anthropocentric assessment of the world's resources and a utilitarian as opposed to abolitionist approach to hazardous substances used or created by technology. It targeted as irrational, by implication, if not explicitly, both a vision of a "Natural State" with intrinsic rights to impede the activities of man, and hysterical fears of environmental poisons, disproportionate to the threat and dismissive of their associated benefits. Sponsors of the Heidelberg Appeal included the asbestos and tobacco industries. The latter continued sponsorship of the principal proponents of the Appeal, in research directed to discredit concerns over environmental tobacco smoke.

The Heidelberg Appeal has been enthusiastically embraced by critics of the environmental movement such as S. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project. Conservative think tanks frequently cite the Heidelberg Appeal as proof that scientists reject the theory of global warming as well as a host of other environmental health risks associated with modern science and industry. Its name has subsequently been adopted by the Heidelberg Appeal Nederland Foundation, which was founded in 1993 and disputes health risks related to nitrates in foods and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. However, the Heidelberg Appeal itself makes no explicit reference to global warming, although the paragraph,

We draw everybody's attention to the absolute necessity of helping poor countries attain a level of sustainable development which matches that of the rest of the planet, protecting them from troubles and dangers stemming from developed nations, and avoiding their entanglement in a web of unrealistic obligations which would compromise both their independence and their dignity.

is clearly intended to hint at the problem of climate change and international environmental agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol. Neither for that matter does it specifically mention pesticides or antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Ultimately, why should anyone take an op-ed piece seriously if it cannot accurately quote from a source that is readily available on the Internet and found easily by Google search?

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