Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming – Now Skeptics

Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made

Global Warming – Now Skeptics

Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research

Following the U.S. Senate’s vote today on a global warming measure (see today’s AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure,) it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics.  The names included below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven “consensus” on man-made global warming. 

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg.  A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report. Please stay tuned to this website, as this new government report is set to redefine the current climate debate.

In the meantime, please review the list of scientists below and ask yourself why the media is missing one of the biggest stories in climate of 2007.  Feel free to distribute the partial list of scientists who recently converted to skeptics to your local schools and universities. The voices of rank and file scientists opposing climate doomsayers can serve as a counter to the alarmism that children are being exposed to on a daily basis. (See Washington Post April 16, 2007 article about kids fearing of a “climactic Armageddon” )

The media’s climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. (See Der Spiegel May 7, 2007 article: Not the End of the World as We Know It ) It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics. (See UPI May 10, 2007 article: U.N. official says it’s ‘completely immoral’ to doubt global warming fears )

Once Believers, Now Skeptics ( Link to pdf version )  

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is “unknown” and accused the “prophets of doom of global warming” of being motivated by money, noting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!” “Glaciers’ chronicles or historical archives point to the fact that climate is a capricious phenomena. This fact is confirmed by mathematical meteorological theories. So, let us be cautious,” Allegre explained in a September 21, 2006 article in the French newspaper L’EXPRESS. The National Post in Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 2007, noting “Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution.” Allegre now calls fears of a climate disaster “simplistic and obscuring the true dangers” mocks “the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man’s role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters.” Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. “By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century,” Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.”

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997.  Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol’s goals were achievable by people making small changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled “The Emperor’s New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.”  A November 15, 2006 Edmonton Sun article explains Wiskel’s conversion while building his “Kyoto house”: “Instead, he said he realized global warming theory was full of holes and ‘red flags,’ and became convinced that humans are not responsible for rising temperatures.” Wiskel now says “the truth has to start somewhere.”  Noting that the Earth has been warming for 18,000 years, Wiskel told the Canadian newspaper, “If this happened once and we were the cause of it, that would be cause for concern. But glaciers have been coming and going for billions of years.”  Wiskel also said that global warming has gone “from a science to a religion” and noted that research money is being funneled into promoting climate alarmism instead of funding areas he considers more worthy. “If you funnel money into things that can’t be changed, the money is not going into the places that it is needed,” he said.

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel’s top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. “”Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye,” Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post article. According to Shaviv, the C02 temperature link is only “incriminating circumstantial evidence.” “Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming” and “it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist,” Shaviv noted pointing to the impact cosmic- rays have on the atmosphere. According to the National Post, Shaviv believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100 “will not dramatically increase the global temperature.” “Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant,” Shaviv explained. Shaviv also wrote on August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that “CO2 should have a large effect on climate” so “he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic temperature. He wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since there was none, he slowly had to change his views.”  Shaviv believes there will be more scientists converting to man-made global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence. “I think this is common to many of the scientists who think like us (that is, that CO2 is a secondary climate driver). Each one of us was working in his or her own niche. While working there, each one of us realized that things just don’t add up to support the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) picture. So many had to change their views,” he wrote.

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical,” Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog. “But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker — better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds,” Evans wrote.  “As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’” he added. Evans noted how he benefited from climate fears as a scientist. “And the political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 1990’s, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn’t believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet!  But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence outlined above fell away or reversed,” Evans wrote. “The pre-2000 ice core data was the central evidence for believing that atmospheric carbon caused temperature increases. The new ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused by rises in atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any amplification. This piece of evidence casts reasonable doubt that atmospheric carbon had any role in past warmings, while still allowing the possibility that it had a supporting role,” he added. “Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. The science of global warming has become a partisan political issue, so positions become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly supports carbon emissions as the cause of global warming, to the point of sometimes rubbishing or silencing critics,” he concluded. (Evans bio link )  

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic.  “I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,” Murty explained on August 17, 2006.  “I switched to the other side in the early 1990’s when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously,” Murty explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”  

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears “poppycock.” According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon.  The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.” “The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything,” Bellamy added. Bellamy’s conversion on global warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental groups have ended their association with him because of his views on climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy’s long activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy “won respect from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save Britain’s peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was arrested when he tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest.” 
 
Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.” de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006. “I accept there may be small changes. But I see the risk of anything serious to be minute,” he added. “One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence is not a good reason for complacency. But I believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people,” de Freitas concluded. de Freitas was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.”

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms “sky is falling” man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?” Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. “All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,” Bryson said. “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,” he added. “We cannot say what part of that warming was due to mankind’s addition of ‘greenhouse gases’ until we consider the other possible factors, such as aerosols. The aerosol content of the atmosphere was measured during the past century, but to my knowledge this data was never used. We can say that the question of anthropogenic modification of the climate is an important question — too important to ignore. However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a political issue more than a scientific problem,” Bryson explained in 2005.

Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research.  Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.”  “After that, I changed my mind,” Labohn explained. Labohn co-authored the 2004 book “Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma,” with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “’Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise.’”

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson  wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.” “[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),” Patterson explained. “Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances,” he wrote. “As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles.  About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified and control climate,” Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion “probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not were activists want me to go.” Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics.  “When I go to a scientific meeting, there’s lots of opinion out there, there’s lots of discussion (about climate change). I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,” Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. Patterson, who believes the sun is responsible for the recent warm up of the Earth, ridiculed the environmentalists and the media for not reporting the truth. “But if you listen to [Canadian environmental activist David] Suzuki and the media, it’s like a tiger chasing its tail. They try to outdo each other and all the while proclaiming that the debate is over but it isn’t — come out to a scientific meeting sometime,” Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics. “I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are saying, (is) we’re about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere,” he said. “The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it’s not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles.”   

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. “At the beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a history book on this pollution,” Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. “With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,” Jaworowski added. Jaworowski, who has published many papers on climate with a focus on CO2 measurements in ice cores, also dismissed the UN IPCC summary and questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the atmosphere in a March 16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled “CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time.” “We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming—with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy—is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels,” Jaworowski wrote. “For the past three decades, these well-known direct CO2 measurements, recently compiled and analyzed by Ernst-Georg Beck (Beck 2006a, Beck 2006b, Beck 2007), were completely ignored by climatologists—and not because they were wrong. Indeed, these measurements were made by several Nobel Prize winners, using the techniques that are standard textbook procedures in chemistry, biochemistry, botany, hygiene, medicine, nutrition, and ecology. The only reason for rejection was that these measurements did not fit the hypothesis of anthropogenic climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific scandal of our time,” Jaworowski wrote. “The hypothesis, in vogue in the 1970s, stating that emissions of industrial dust will soon induce the new Ice Age, seem now to be a conceited anthropocentric exaggeration, bringing into discredit the science of that time. The same fate awaits the present,” he added. Jaworowski believes that cosmic rays and solar activity are major drivers of the Earth’s climate. Jaworowski was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part: “It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth’s climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.”

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. “I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in temperature of the past century was due to human contribution of C02. The association seemed so clear and simple. Increases of greenhouse gases were driving us towards a climate catastrophe,” Clark said in a 2005 documentary “Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You’re Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change.” “However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun. This has completely reversed my views on the Kyoto protocol,” Clark explained. “Actually, many other leading climate researchers also have serious concerns about the science underlying the [Kyoto] Protocol,” he added. 

Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history. “I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,” Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. “The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,” Veizer wrote. “It was the results of my work on past records, on geological time scales, that led me to realize the discrepancies with empirical observations. Trying to understand the background issues of modeling led to realization of the assumptions and uncertainties involved,” Veizer explained. “The past record strongly favors the solar/cosmic alternative as the principal climate driver,” he added. Veizer acknowledgez the Earth has been warming and he believes in the scientific value of climate modeling. “The major point where I diverge from the IPCC scenario is my belief that it underestimates the role of natural variability by proclaiming CO2 to be the only reasonable source of additional energy in the planetary balance. Such additional energy is needed to drive the climate. The point is that most of the temperature, in both nature and models, arises from the greenhouse of water vapor (model language ‘positive water vapor feedback’,) Veizer wrote. “Thus to get more temperature, more water vapor is needed. This is achieved by speeding up the water cycle by inputting more energy into the system,” he continued. “Note that it is not CO2 that is in the models but its presumed energy equivalent (model language ‘prescribed CO2’). Yet, the models (and climate) would generate a more or less similar outcome regardless where this additional energy is coming from. This is why the solar/cosmic connection is so strongly opposed, because it can influence the global energy budget which, in turn, diminishes the need for an energy input from the CO2 greenhouse,” he wrote. 

More to follow…

Related Links:

Senator Inhofe declares climate momentum shifting away from Gore (The Politico op ed)

Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate

Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven “Consensus’

Global Warming: The Momentum has Shifted to Climate Skeptics

Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming – Now a Skeptic

Top Israeli Astrophysicist Recants His Belief in Manmade Global Warming – Now Says Sun Biggest Factor in Warming

Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune’s Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say

Panel of Broadcast Meteorologists Reject Man-Made Global Warming Fears- Claim 95% of Weathermen Skeptical

MIT Climate Scientist Calls Fears of Global Warming ‘Silly’ – Equates Concerns to ‘Little Kids’ Attempting to “Scare Each Other”

Weather Channel TV Host Goes ‘Political’- Stars in Global Warming Film Accusing U.S. Government of ‘Criminal Neglect’

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics

ABC-TV Meteorologist: I Don’t Know A Single Weatherman Who Believes ‘Man-Made Global Warming Hype’

The Weather Channel Climate Expert Refuses to Retract Call for Decertification for Global Warming Skeptics

Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release Of “Skeptic’s Guide To Debunking Global Warming”

SCOTUS Emits Scare Pollution

By Marc Sheppard

The Supreme Court of the United States has arrogantly ruled that the second most vital gas to sustaining life on Earth is a “pollutant.”  In doing so, five of nine Justices did the same dirt to climate science Monday that twelve OJ jurors did to forensic science in 1995.
At issue was the Environmental Protection Agency’s position that it had no power to regulate “greenhouse gases,” such as carbon dioxide, as EPA scientists believed they fail to meet the Clean Air Act’s definition of airborne pollutants. Astoundingly, a majority of non-scientists in robes ruled that they did.
In an all-too-obviously politically motivated decision, the Court found that the EPA not only had the authority to regulate “greenhouse gas” (GHG) emissions but actually carried the legal responsibility to do so.
And right on cue, judicial ignorance of both the scientific and fiscal pitfalls of the Massachusetts v. EPA ruling incited similar media nescience. Alarmists repeated their erroneous mantra that man’s role in global warming had been “settled,” while the press loudly proclaimed that President Bush’s environmental policies had been properly “rebuked.”
But the dire portent of this case far-exceeds the photo-ops it provided gloating greenies.
Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens opined that “air pollutants” include “all airborne compounds of any stripe” and concluded that:

“Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of ‘air pollutant’ we hold that EPA has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of such gases from new motor vehicles.”

Capacious?  That would seem considerably understated, given that the list includes everything from Asbestos to Radon to Hydrochloric Acid, but fails to mention any gases essential to life – until now that is. Nonetheless, the word is so broadly tossed about that the EPA felt it wise to provide The Plain English Guide to the Clean Air Act for clarification.  There, air “pollutants” are defined as (emphasis added):

“unwanted chemicals or other materials found in the air. Pollutants can harm health, the environment and property. Many air pollutants occur as gases or vapors, but some are very tiny solid particles: dust, smoke or soot.”

In his opinion, Stevens cavalierly declared CO2 to be the “most important species” of greenhouse gases. This, itself, is pure enviro-friendly trash — most scientists award that honor to water vapor. Nevertheless, as he considers greenhouse gases to be “well within” the CAA’s definition of pollutants, it would follow that CO2 must be “unwanted” in the air.  I suspect, however, that huggers of every tree, every blade of grass, and every other form of vegetation on the planet would heartily disagree, as its presence in the air is as essential to the flora as O2 is to us fauna.
Writing in dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia agreed with the original CAA position that a “physical, chemical … substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air” must also be an “air pollution agent” to be classified as a  “pollutant,” adding that:

“Not only is EPA’s interpretation reasonable, it is far more plausible than the Court’s alternative. As the Court correctly points out, ‘all airborne compounds of whatever stripe,’ ante, at 26, would qualify as ‘physical, chemical, … substance[s] or matter which [are] emitted into or otherwise ente[r] the ambient air,’ 42 U. S. C. §7602(g).”

The Justice then pointed out the obvious flaw in the majority’s interpretation:

“It follows that everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies as an ‘air pollutant.’ This reading of the statute defies common sense.”

It does, indeed.  Not to mention the Court’s own 1993 Daubert Standard which stated that federal trial judges must become “gatekeepers” of scientific evidence – determining its admissibility based upon standards of being both “relevant” and “reliable.” Yet, given the ongoing debate over and ongoing scientific study of the GHG / Global Warming connection, such evidence can not be reasonably declared as either. 
Does this checklist standard somehow not apply to the highest federal court in the land?
The very opening of Stevens’ headnote accepts as scientific fact that which has been settled only to the satisfaction of long time eco-maniacs, political doomsayers and their “turned” accomplices in the scientific community:

“Based on respected scientific opinion that a well-documented rise in global temperatures and attendant climatological and environmental changes have resulted from a significant increase in the atmospheric concentration of ‘greenhouse gases’…”

Nuts. So, just how “reliable” can the scientific evidence be when hundreds of contrarian scientists offer solar-related theories which dismiss the impact of GHG altogether?  And just how “relevant” can it be when absolutely no evidence exists suggesting that reducing CO2 emissions will lower atmospheric temperatures even by a single degree Celsius?  As Scalia reminded his colleagues,

 ”the science of climate change is extraordinarily complex and still evolving.”

Surely, the only thing “reliable” in the Court’s decision will be its catastrophic impact upon the sticker-price of cars, trucks and buses — and for what?  Nothing but hysteria abatement!  And, as an added bonus to the enviro-nutters, by bolstering pending and future fuel economy standards legislation, an already troubled U.S automobile industry – which depends heavily on truck and SUV sales – could soon be riding a lot further along the  road to doom.
But there’s more. While the current target is tailpipe emissions, eco-maniacs are nothing if not insatiable. Accordingly, let’s not overlook the significantly increased price of electricity from all those plants currently providing cheap power from inexpensive coal which will soon be forced to find “cleaner,” more costly alternatives.  And, of course, the power-related increases in production and transportation costs all the way up the energy food-chain and their subsequent impact upon the price of all consumer goods and services.
As to Daubert’s test of relevance, there’s certainly nothing in the evidence presented which is “relevant” to rising Massachusetts sea levels – the “damage” claimed at the heart of the absurd case being decided.  No, it appears more likely that Stevens and his three fellow bench-liberals — David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer – managed to persuade moderate Anthony M. Kennedy to surrender the rules and sing along with their liberal-alarm-song quartet. 
The upshot of this is staggering: As politics has compromised science, so has politically compromised science compromised a landmark Supreme Court decision.  Effectively, by dragging SCOTUS into the global warming debate, alarmists have managed to inflict chaos upon yet another formerly intellectually structured decision-making system. 
Justice Scalia concluded his dissension in agreement:

“The Court’s alarm over global warming may or may not be justified, but it ought not distort the outcome of this litigation ….  No matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake, this Court has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency.”  

Yet – it most certainly did.
Let conservatives take an important lesson from this.  The philosophical battleground on which we fight for our future now lies as much in the courts as anywhere else. 
Proper selection of justices becomes more essential with every election.

Marc Sheppard is a technology consultant, software engineer, writer, and political and systems analyst. He is a regular contributor to American Thinker. He welcomes your feedback

CNN cheers Barbara Boxer

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/007143.htm

Global Warming: Just Another Liberal Orthodoxy

Global Warming: Just Another Liberal Orthodoxy

by Christopher Adamo

 

An astounding range of absurd ideas have been incorporated into the “mainstream” of modern America, based not on any inherent merit, but rather on the benefits to liberalism that can be derived from them. So much of today’s “conventional wisdom” represents neither convention nor wisdom, but instead results from a fundamentally leftist worldview, combined with a truly juvenile dosage of wishful thinking.

 

Consider, a few such pillars of the liberal faith, and more specifically how fragile they quickly become when placed under the hot lights of honest scrutiny.

 

As the American culture continues to crumble, we are incessantly reminded that “our diversity is our strength.” Tell that to the people of the Balkans where, prior to U.S. intervention, centuries old feuds and tribalism had rendered the region little more than a wasteland of unending bloodshed between bickering “warlords.”

Hardly any better is the current plight of those hapless Europeans, who pride themselves on that most virtuous of liberal precepts, their “tolerance” of other cultures. Yet on a daily basis they witness ever more of their heritage being eradicated by militant Muslims who are neither diverse nor tolerant. Barring a miraculous resurgence of fortitude and conviction of its former heritage, Europe’s fate is sealed.

On this side of the ocean, American liberals claim a virtual monopoly of “tolerance.” Yet the facts indicate otherwise. Under the preposterous auspices of “tolerance,” liberals have over the past several decades sought to squash any stance, any opinion, or any logical question that threatens their agenda.

 

As it was with Cold War “compromise,” whereby American negotiators were expected to abandon their positions in order to embrace those of the Soviet Union, the steadily emerging definition of “tolerance,” from the liberal perspective, amounts to a demand that traditional America unquestioningly blesses their ideology, with no promise whatsoever of reciprocity.

 

Thus, in the name of “tolerance,” liberals expunged any mention of God, the Bible, or America’s Christian roots from the school system, and ultimately all other areas of public life. Concurrently, in the name of “diversity,” they relentlessly work to replace those standards with the canons and icons of other, often pagan, cultures. And ultimately, in the place of traditional morality and faith, they seek to establish an orthodoxy of the secularist liberal state.

 

So it is no surprise that the latest catechism of their “true believers,” is conversion, by force if necessary, to an acceptance of “global warming” and all of the necessary precepts of the liberal agenda needed to “fix” it. This mandatory conversion is being pursued with a fervor rarely witnessed outside of the most oppressive cults.

 

Humanity has been dealing with the extremes of climate since time immemorial. Admittedly during that entire period, eras of heightened temperatures, followed by cooler periods have been visited on the human race. Thus it is natural to react to such shifts with feelings of helplessness, and at times, foreboding.

 

To many, the dire implications of last summer’s blistering high temperatures seemed irrefutable, at least until the record setting lows of this winter. So far, the inarguably “conclusive” proof offered by those who claim the planet is getting steadily warmer has borne little or no repeatable evidence of a scientifically established pattern.

 

We were likewise forewarned that the 2006 hurricane season would surely eclipse the devastation of Katrina, Rita, and the horrendous toll of 2005. Yet this proclamation of doom turned out to be a bust. Apparently the prophets of the left need a bit of honing on their skills. Nevertheless, to even question the legitimacy of their utterances is no less than “blasphemy,” spawning instant calls for excommunication of the offending parties.

 

So, rather than dwelling for too long on such an unknown quantity as the weather, it is more relevant to consider the wholly anticipated patterns of liberalism. Among their ranks, far more than in the weekend forecast, can be found the underlying motives and workings of the current global warming hysteria.

 

In no other way can the sanctimonious rantings of Dr. Heidi Cullen of the now thoroughly politicized Weather Channel be explained. Cullen recently pushed for the professional disqualification of any meteorologist who refuses to profess the doctrine of man made global warming. And what, other than similarly mindless fanaticism can explain the behavior of the Grand Green Inquisitor himself, former vice-president Al Gore?

 

Elsewhere, the “hot earth society” seeks to denigrate skeptics as a class of politically incorrect social “pariahs,” labeling them as “global warming deniers,” a clear allusion to those anti-Semitic deniers of the Nazi holocaust.

 

Yet among few if any of these people is the primary goal to “save the planet,” but rather to promote the liberal agenda, as their own unbridled usage of energy, and selective attacks against the “Great Polluters” clearly proves. Perhaps the most glaring evidence is that the Russians and Chinese, who pollute to a horrendous degree, get a “pass” on account of being good socialists. Meanwhile the United States is roundly condemned.

 

The ’08 campaign season is already gearing up, and Democrats are desperate to frame the debate around anything other than traditional values or the terror war. So of course, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-CA) has been quick to jump onto this bandwagon. Expect Hillary to follow soon.

 

The randomness of sunspots and other factors quite beyond the understanding of humanity ultimately render it impossible for meteorologists to forecast the weekend weather with absolute certainty. In contrast, the actions and motives of the American left, committed always and only in pursuit of their own interests, are among the most predictable phenomena of the modern world.

 

 

Christopher G. Adamo is a freelance writer and staff writer for the New Media Alliance. He lives in southeastern Wyoming. He has been active in local and state politics for many years. His contact information and archives can be found at www.chrisadamo.com