The Good News: for Truth, Science and the Environment

Not a week has passed since the posting of "101 Scientists: Stop Fighting Climate Change" or our correspondent Theo Richel at De Klimatosoof (Dutch) is reporting as follows:

"What consensus? 400 scientists declare against climate panic"

It was a lie from the get go, but it was nevertheless a masterful propaganda trick (Ed.: a.k.a. Third Way politics by spin) - the statement that "all scientists are in agreement over the seriousness of climate problems." Masterful, because if all scientists agree, there's no need for lay people to make further enquiries into the scientifically complicated matter of climate change. Thus everyone could partake in the discourse without having to know anything about it, since ... scientists agree!

But the propaganda trick has now been exposed by a US Senate Report which lists more than four hundred prominent scientists from all over the world who - in the course of 2007 - have explicitly cast doubt if the phenomenon of global warming exists, if human activities are to blame, and if the present is the time for action.

The report has come as a terrific blow, especially in the US; Al Gore has also commented. 2007 Was supposed to be the year of "An Inconvenient Truth", but in view of Bali's deficit and the increasing number of skeptics (according to the Washington Post), and with the present report, another course seems indicated.

Senator Inhofe's report is accessible at the site of the Environment & Public Works Senate Committee in two parts: the introduction, and the full Senate Report.

The Report calls the scientists by name, country, university or institute, and offers links to their peer reviewed studies. Several of the four hundred take part in the IPCC, but apparently remain unheard, or are ignored. A great many communicated to be persuaded that many colleagues agree with them, but keep silent for fear of reprisals.

Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor Dynamic Meteorology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of almost seventy peer reviewed studies, indicated that many of his colleagues felt intimidated. (In the scientific world this is something unheard of, but the IPCC being 'intergovernmental, it ís something of a scientific-political hybrid).

A regular commentator in bulletins that have appeared world-wide as a result of the Senate Report, is Dutch scholar Hendrik Tennekes, former Scientific Director of the Royal Meteorological Institute KNMI. In the report he states: "I think the disaster scenario painted by Gore, the rising of sea levels by six meters - fifteen times the IPCC assumption - is without any value. I strongly protest against the idea that the climate reacts as the central heating thermostat at home: turn it up and you get the correct temperature. Of course I agree that the earth is going through cycles of heating up and cooling down, part of the natural history of the earth over billions of years."

"This is caused by periodic changes in solar flare activity", says physicist John W. Brosnahan, who develops remote-sensing equipment for NOAA and NASA. I have seen poor computer models that suggest that CO2 is responsible for the current reheating, but no scientific proof."

Mrs Kalee Kreider, spokesperson for Al Gore has suggested - without identifying them - that 25-30 of the scientists mentioned in the Report have worked for oil giant Exxon-Mobil. In response a representative of that company asserted that Exxon Mobil is concerned about climate change and does not engage scientists to refute the theory. The recycling of outdated conspiracy theories only deflect from the real challenge which is, how do we ensure the availability of sufficient fuel to continued economic and social development without producing gases that contribute to global warming".

It would appear that Exxon Mobil is still buying into the Hottest Hoax Around! Part of the new "sustainable" corporate marketing communication strategy, driven by "social responsibility"? Get me a baggy!

A commentator in Theo Richel's blog is suggesting that a German former Nazi scientist, H. Flohn was a member of the IPCC. It would appear that Flohn in 1941 already published tracts, indicating humans as a climatic factor. The fact that he was a Nazi doesn't mean he was necessarily a bad scientist, comments another. The Communists produced awesome inventions!

It does however suggest two other things: 1. that a variety of the Stalin test wouldn't be a bad idea: would Hitler have found it useful? And 2. that coincidentally, anti capitalist and anti human positions do not produce cognitive dissonance in any of the mentioned ideologies (i.e. environmentalism, National Socialism and Communism), all being the result of Counter-Enlightenment thought based on Rousseau's Noble Savage nonsense: nature is good, culture is bad.

Further reading:

- The Science and Public Policy Institute: "“Consensus”? What “Consensus”?Among Climate Scientists, The Debate Is Not Over", by Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

Here's a video sample of the type of 'debate' that is going on.

- Filed in Articles on "The Science of Global Warming: Case Closed", cat. Environmentalism and Control -