With great fanfare, former Vice President Al Gore took Capitol Hill this March like a conquering hero as he testified on global warming before both houses of Congress.
Fresh from conquests at the Academy Awards, where adoring Hollywood elites showered him with coveted golden statues for spreading their favorite propaganda, Gore was determined to turn his personal conquest into draconian federal law and human misery.
Debate Is Changing
Gore’s words to Congress were predictable. The Earth is warming. The polar ice caps are melting. Polar bears are on the run. And it’s man’s fault. Solution? Ban or control human activities.
The mantra of the religion of global warming is getting a little boring. It’s quite possible, however, that Gore’s appearance on the Hill actually represents the beginning of the end of his influence on climate policy, rather than the start of a legislative tsunami.
Why? Because even after the global warming storm troopers–armed with billions of dollars, the backing of the Hollywood elite, the news media, and most of academia–have done everything possible to threaten, bully, and force their one-sided propaganda on us, the so-called global warming skeptics seem to be coming out of their hiding places in ever greater numbers.
The debate is now taking a dramatic change. As the skeptics’ side is heard, more Americans are beginning to understand there are legitimate reasons for skepticism. Here are just a few of the latest developments.
Inconvenient Truths
Item: Just days before Gore’s charge up Capitol Hill, a high-profile climate debate between prominent scientists ended with global warming skeptics being voted the clear winner.
Before the start of the debate, held in New York City, the audience polled 57.3 percent to 29.9 percent in favor of believing that global warming was a crisis. After the debate, 46.2 percent of the audience said they believe global warming is not a crisis, while 42.2 percent said it was a crisis. Conclusion: When people hear both sides, they can easily judge for themselves what is truth, and they reject the alarmists.
Item: On March 13, the New York Times, one of the most adamant promoters of the global warming gospel, published a landmark article stating, “scientists argue that some of [former Vice President Al] Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous.”
Item: French scientist Claude Allegre, a prominent Socialist and supporter of global warming dogma, recanted his belief in manmade, catastrophic global warming and now says promotion of the idea is motivated by money.
Switching Sides
Item: One of Israel’s top young scientists, Nir Shaviv, recently reversed his opinion, noting the link between emissions and climate variability has nothing more than “circumstantial evidence” to support it.
Item: The United Kingdom’s famed environmental activist David Bellamy also recently converted to skepticism, as did meteorologist Reid Bryson, who has switched from originally supporting the 1970s global cooling scare and has become a global warming skeptic.
Item: A report by The Heartland Institute, titled “What Climate Scientists Really Say About Global Warming,” exposes the weakness of the “consensus” claims of the global warming shock troops. To reach its findings the report examined two surveys conducted among climate scientists; the first in 1996 and the second in 2003. Both surveys confirm scientists are divided on the issue. Says the report:
- More climate scientists “strongly disagree” than “strongly agree” with the notion that climate change is caused by humans.
- Most climate scientists do not believe “the current state of knowledge is able to provide reasonable predictions of climate variability” over 100-year periods.
- Only 2 percent of climate scientists surveyed “strongly agree” modeling programs designed to predict climate changes are accurate.
- Almost all climate scientists agree climate change could have “positive effects for some societies.”
‘Consensus’ Claims Refuted
Item: After global warming propagandists rushed to declare the 2007 report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) proved conclusively that global warming was caused by human action, the report itself predicts less global warming than was forecast by previous IPCC reports.
Item: New research by international scientists is confirming that the sun has been a major driver of climate variability. Solar specialist Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center explained, “We have the highest solar activity we have had in at least 1,000 years.”
As Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) sums it up, “The usual suspects will still insist that there is a ‘consensus’ of scientists who agree with Gore. And yes, many governing boards and spokesmen of science institutions must toe the politically correct line of Gore-inspired science, but rank and file scientists are now openly rebelling.”
As real debate finally exposes the factual inaccuracies of headline-making one-liners, the truth will become ever more inconvenient for Al Gore and his global warming zealots.
Tom DeWeese ([email protected]) is president of the American Policy Center.
For more information …
“What Climate Scientists Really Say About Global Warming,” by James M. Taylor, February 28, 2007, http://heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=20732
