Posted on 03/11/2008 3:09:06 PM PDT by pissant
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 is 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."
I don’t know, how about it? I have to deal with reality. That means our country will be FAR worse off under Obama/Hilary. That means I vote for McCain.
McLame chairs a biased hearing. How did we get here and how do we get off this trainwreck? No matter how we look at it, we’re screwed for the next four years and then some.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQMxIwpK_es
Sen. John McCain refutes a global warming denier
“Debate is over... solution is through development of technologies that will help our economy... cap-and-trade ... climate change is real... an obligation of the stewardship of the earth ... In my view, the debate is over.”
The debate was over when he decided to take left wing $$ for his Reform Institute and start this crusade.
In this video, he says while Kyoto was opposed, if China and India would join, the US should consider a global agreement.
(”overwhelming evidence....” yada yada...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eazRhiRpmAs
John McCain on Global Warming
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
New!!: Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
The Great Global Warming Swindle Video - back on the net!! (click here)
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
Oh yeah, now that McCain has sewed up the GOP nomination let’s start campaigning against him...
I think it’s time for a purge of anti-McCain FReepers just as there was a purge of pro-Rudy FReepers.
Attacks on anti-abortion McCain is doing the bidding of the pro-abortionists Democrats, including both pro-abortionists Hillary and Obama.
Since it has been made clear here from the top that the only thing that matters is a candidate’s position on abortion, then any attack on McCain that benefits the Abortion Party must be held as grounds for banning.
Soros funded the so called "Campaign Finance Reform", in order to gain the opportunity to flood American politics with his money.
Soros is backing the Global Warming hoax, in order to bring capitalism to its knees.
The money flowing on the Democrat side of this election dwarfs that flowing on the Republican side. McCain got just enough money, and favorable leftist publicity, to knock off any honest conservatives. Now he will starve, for money, and be rewarded, with much negative press.
Those who are waxing optimistic now that the Republicans can win the elections in November underestimate the power of massive money and propaganda to sway the leftist educated masses.
My real concern is that the evident power behind such destructive forces as Campaign Finance Reform and Global Warming must be larger than one man. If Soros became a born again Christian tomorrow and joined a monastery taking a vow of poverty, surely whatever evil force that has been flowing through him would persist.
What is that force ... how to we thwart it ... is not this force a greater threat to our freedom than the Communists and the Islamo-Fascists combined?
My hunch is that Putin and Soros are public faces of the same corruption.
Reagan didn't defeat Communism. He just forced it to transform, and lifted the Eastern European countries from behind the Iron Curtain -- the later is no small feat, but the former places us at even greater risk in the long term, because the half century that we've spent learning that the USSR is our mortal enemy is neutralized. Like AIDS, the enemy has morphed, side stepping our immunity system, but increasingly deadly.
Fifty years of successfully suppressing Americas own energy industry, forcing us to send trillions of dollars abroad to the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela, are beginning to have their intended affect ... destroying us and enriching our enemies.
ROFL. You want to purge the anti-McCain freepers? That is funniest darn thing I’ve heard in awhile.
But that doesn't mean we should close our eyes to the policies he promotes what would destroy this nation.
We must fight those policies, every inch of the way.
Do a search on McCain and “CAFE standards” and you’ll find him wanting to impose all sorts of requirements on auto manufacturers. And then he stands innocently in Michigan saying “those jobs won’t be coming back.” Scumbag. His partner-in-crime at the time was John Kerry, but now he has old Joe to offer up his “bipartisan” stewardship of the earth scam.
It would make John Robinson's job easier; less load on the FR servers.
Opposition prior to the nomination being settled is one thing.
I myself opposed McCain. But the nomination is settled, and everyone must come together for the good of the COUNTRY. McCain is anti-abortion. He has always been anti-abortion. This is all that matters at FR. If you want to sabotage McCain to the benefit of the Democrats, then you are working to undermine 30 years of work by the anti-abortion/judicial conservative movement. That makes you a traitor to FR and the highest goal of self-identified conservatives.
Conservatives are one SCOTUS appointment away from overturning Roe v. Wade. People like you stand in the way of accomplishing that. This makes you are our enemy.
We got him because Republicans, (not conservatives) don’t have the stones to just say no. We got him because of the hysterical fear of Hillary advanced by the same bunch who are to this date, still doing the same thing.
We got him because the left in this country gets away with whatever they want to do via the media and the same bunch who gave us McCain through fear and cowardice still do not have the stones to stand up and say “NO!”.
He also was partner in crime with Kerry to kill the B2 bomber program.
LOL. Yes, the workload would be anemic.
Since when is being anti-abortion “all that matters” to FR? It certainly matters. And McCain’s record is a bit shaky on the life issue, FWIW.
Its even shakier on the 2A, also incredibly important to “FR”. As is opposing global warming bunk- he flunks. As is not being a manchurian candidate- he really flunks.
Sounds like something McInsane, the idiot, would say.
I defy anyone to prove scientifically that the Innuit language as understood today existed 10,000 years ago.
Quite a trick for a culture that had no written language, until their "inferiors", Europeans, introduced them to the written alphabet.
Have any of these political morons ever played "telephone"?
So the GOP got what they wanted. Now they must all live with the consequences.
He’s also picky about which eskimos he listens too. The ones who claim there are plenty of polar bears to hunt are being ignored.
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