The Real War On Science

Anthropogenic global warming poses one of the greatest threats to humanity of any problem we may have ever faced. Actually AGW itself (or is it climate change?) doesn't but the political "solutions" proposed by its proponents certainly do.

I'm old enough to remember when the problem was the coming ice age. Whatever the problem the solution is to reduce our use of energy and slow or reverse economic growth. This despite the fact that prosperity has allowed us to adapt to and cope with the most extreme weather our planet has to offer. Whatever the problem environmentalists recognize the solution is always the same. It is as if their goal is to implement the solution and mold the problem to fit it.

At American Thinker, John McLaughlin dissects some of the so-called "science" that has led us to where we are today.

It seems reasonable to ask, therefore, how can a seriously flawed -- if not actually fraudulent --mathematical model linking production of the relatively minuscule amount of an atmospheric trace gas be used to blame mankind for major planetary climate change? The answer lies in the intense public relations campaign launched by environmentalists worldwide following publication of the 1997 IPCC report. The entire debate has been framed by presenting only one side to the maximum extent possible while demeaning any skeptics. The worldwide distribution in 2006 of the Al Gore movie An Inconvenient Truth added to the simplistic polarization and politicization of debate.

One cannot ignore how the IPCC report initiated within the United Nations played into an anti-Capitalism agenda. The report became justification to launch a major campaign throughout much of the late 1990s beginning with the 1997 Kyoto protocol and incorporating numerous U.N. special sessions and other international conferences during the following decade. All focused on accusing the world's richest countries of being long-standing polluters who must bear the burden for cutting greenhouse gases. A special 2007 UN conference, dominated by third world countries, demanded that rich industrial nations curtail their economic growth by reducing CO2 emissions and use their wealth to finance cuts in emissions in other countries. As British Prime Minister Gordon Brown put it, the effort involved "making the issue of climate change one of justice as much as economic development."

Given these multinational political forces seeking worldwide redistribution of wealth, it also becomes clear why throughout much of the 1990s only that scientific work promoting the concept of manmade global warming received serious financial support from government sources. This led to the perception of a scientific "consensus." Numerous scientists and mathematicians complained that serious debate on climate change was being suppressed by the lack of funding for skeptical research and the systematic criticism of such skeptics as just "tools" of energy companies or paid servants of Corporate America.

However, as the work of McIntyre, McKitrick, Wegman, Carter and others has spread, scientific "consensus" in recent years has begun collapsing. A detailed review of 539 technical papers about climate change published between 2004 and 2007 found no evidence -- none --supporting specific "catastrophic" climate change due to man. In March 2009, a petition signed by over 31,000 scientists stated in part: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

There are many in positions of power who view the economic development and human prosperity that capitalism has brought as the real problems. AGW, or climate change, is the latest vehicle they have chosen to advance their agenda.