The Faked "Consensus" on Global Warming

The June 2nd Edition of Canada’s Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon, the Executive Director of the Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, proves that the much touted “consensus” that man is making the globe warmer is a scam, a fib, a great big piece of propaganda to fool the rubes.

"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled."

So said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren't sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn't think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable.

Today, Al Gore is making the same claims of a scientific consensus, as do the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world. But the claims of a scientific consensus remain unsubstantiated. They have only become louder and more frequent.
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Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists -- the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects -- and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position.

What of the one claim that we hear over and over again, that 2,000 or 2,500 of the world's top scientists endorse the IPCC position? I asked the IPCC for their names, to gauge their views. "The 2,500 or so scientists you are referring to are reviewers from countries all over the world," the IPCC Secretariat responded. "The list with their names and contacts will be attached to future IPCC publications, which will hopefully be on-line in the second half of 2007."

An IPCC reviewer does not assess the IPCC's comprehensive findings. He might only review one small part of one study that later becomes one small input to the published IPCC report. Far from endorsing the IPCC reports, some reviewers, offended at what they considered a sham review process, have demanded that the IPCC remove their names from the list of reviewers. One even threatened legal action when the IPCC refused.

Of course no one is claiming that there are no scientists who believe in man-made global warming. But the claims of “consensus” are a sham and even those scientists who believe that mankind is warming the planet are expressing concern that the hype will cause them to be discredited as evidence for or against man-made global warming develops.

This is a serious problem, because the result of this will be drastic and widespread rules and regulations that attempt to deal with a non-existent problem. But these laws and regulations, while they may not affect the world’s climate at all, will have a dramatic impact on its people. The effect is predictable: it will cost the people of developed countries thousands of dollars per year. But the most catastrophic effect will be on the world’s poorest people who may find themselves starving in mass famines at the worst or, prevented from climbing out of their poverty at best.

This will not affect those who, like al Gore, actually profit from the cultivation of this huge lie. From any mass movement, someone benefits. After all, Hitler benefited from the destruction of World War 1 and Germany’s defeat. But the rest of us, non-politicians who wish to live our lives as good stewards of the earth, will be saddled with a hugely expensive “answer” to a non-problem.

I’m on the side of Michael Griffin, NASA Administrator, who stated that it is “arrogant” of some people to assume that our climate can be changed by humans and that the climate we have is the optimal climate of all time for everybody and we need to – in effect – try to stop any further change.

“I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

It appears that Al Gore, his allies in Congress and the press, and the climate hucksters at the IPCC are trying to decide for all of us. The fact that they cannot succeed will not stop them from doing incalculable damage.