Global Warming Hypocrisy

By Henry Lamb

February 03, 2007

The up-tick in global warming propaganda in recent days is to set the stage for the release of the Fourth Assessment Report from the International Panel on Climate Change. Surprise, surprise, the report will say the sky is falling - faster and faster.

For people who have watched this process since the beginning, this report, at least the executive summary of the report, is mostly hogwash, word-smithed by policy wonks and media specialists, to scare the gas out of the economy.

The First Assessment Report was developed by a fairly balanced group of scientists from around the world, and released in 1990. The report was quite extensive, and dealt primarily with capturing and storing carbon dioxide.

The Second Assessment Report was adopted by a fairly balanced group of participating scientists in December, 1995. Then, the lead author of the report, B. D. Santor, acting with the consent of the Co-chair of the Working Group, John Houghton, and with the consent of the Executive Secretary of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, Michael Cutajar - changed the report significantly, without the approval of the scientists.

Dr. Freidrich Seitz, President emeritus of Rockefeller University, and former President of the National Academy of Sciences, said:

"I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report. Nearly all the changes worked to remove hints of the skepticism with which many scientists regard global warming claims."

A hundred distinguished scientists, meeting in Leipzig, Germany, released a joint statement on July 10, 1966 which said:

"There is still no scientific consensus on the subject of climate change. On the contrary, most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from Earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever."

From that point forward, any scientist who dared to offer research results that did not affirm the conclusions of the IPCC, has been denied invitations to participate in the IPCC studies, denied funding, and/or denigrated publicly by politically motivated scientists and/or the media. Any scientist who dares express skepticism is at once denounced as a pawn for the oil and coal industry.

The opposite is true: advocates of global warming are pawns of the global warming industry. And, indeed, global warming is an industry. In 1996, at the same U.N. meeting at which the Second Assessment Report was released, Mohamed T. El-Ashry, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), released its quarterly report. He told the delegates that his agency had leveraged $462.3 million into $3.2 billion in climate change projects. And that was just the beginning.

In the last decade, billions and billions of dollars have been spent by governments and foundations on research and mitigation programs related to global warming. To the endless bureaucracies, recipients of grant awards, and non-government organizations, it is imperative that the global warming hysteria continue - to produce the funding that provides their livelihood. Their incessant hype has convinced many people, including legislators, that ridiculous policies should be enacted to prevent carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere.

Senator James Inhofe is one of the few in Congress who really knows that the science of climate change is in its infancy, and no one really knows whether human activity has any impact on the climate at all. After all, the Earth was warmer during the "Global Medieval Optimum," (1100-1250) when gas-guzzlers didn’t exist. The same global warming zealots who manipulated the science to distort the Second (and subsequent) Assessment Reports, reinterpreted the science that has stood for more than a century, to now deny that there was a Global Medieval Optimum.

This study, produced by Michael E. Mann and Raymond S. Bradley in 1999, was shown to be flawed in a subsequent study by Drs. Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. Global warming advocates extol the Mann study and decry the Soon/Baliunas study. Real science welcomes conflict as a challenge, and evidence that further study is required.

Global warming hypocrites, such as the Weather Channel's Heidi Cullen, who wants the American Meteorological Society to decertify any weatherman who doesn't tow the global warming line, continues to disparage scientists and others who dare to disagree with her/their conclusions.

The Second Assessment Report was released in 1996 to instill fear, and stir up support for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. This current round of global warming hype, including the Fourth Assessment Report, is designed to instill fear, and stir up support for forcing the U.S. to join the Kyoto crowd in adopting energy restrictions that will have no effect on the climate, but will severely impact the economy.

U.S. policy makers, and the public, would do well to reject the propaganda from the global warming hypocrites.

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