Blinding Us With Science
The Democratic chairman of a House panel examining the government's response to climate change said Tuesday there is evidence that senior Bush administration officials sought repeatedly "to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming."
There's no need to inject doubt into the science of global warming, the doubt already exists. What the administration is trying to do is inject some doubt into the crusade to insist that there is no doubt.
Don't believe me? Here's an example. The father of a California student found out that his daughter's school was to show the Al Gore film, An Inconvenient Truth, with no opposing views. After complaining to the school, the showing was cancelled -- but only for a few days. Seems the teacher just couldn't find any opposing viewpoints -- her underfunded district no doubt couldn't afford computers that could access Google.
In this case, Walls told the Washington Post that she could not find any authoritative articles that counter "An Inconvenient Truth" -- other than a 32-year-old Newsweek article. CNN apparently went to the same school as Walls, as it aired a segment in which University of Maryland professor Phil Arkin asserted, "I don't think there is legitimately an actual opposing viewpoint to the 'Inconvenient Truth' film."
Allow me to present a few names. Massachusetts Institute of Technollogy's Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology Richard S. Lindzen complained to the Boston Globe about the "shrill alarmism" of Gore's flic. Neil Frank, who was considered authoritative when he was the director of the National Hurricane Center, told the Washington Post that global warming is "a hoax." Hurricane expert William Gray of Colorado State University believes the Earth will start to cool within 10 years.
University of Virginia professor emeritus Fred Singer' co-authored a book," Unstoppable Global Warming -- Every 1,500 Years," that argues that global warming is not human-induced but based on a solar cycle. Last year, 60 Canadian scientists signed a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in which they argued that there is no consensus among climate scientists.
Odd, isn't it? Global warming believers heap scorn on religious zealots for not valuing science and knowledge. Yet the thrust of their argument to prove apocalyptic global warming relies on denying the existence of views and scientists who clearly exist.
As the science of climatology improves and as more and more scientists begin to express doubts about the validity of the theory of human-caused global warming, we could expect people on both sides would be studying each other's data with equal interest. But as it is now, the skeptics study while the advocates exaggerate, hurl insults and insist on drastic governmental action now.
Scientific debates aren't carried on in such a manner; political debates often are, though.
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