The American Spectator

Ed Greif /p>

Lamenting proposals scientists use two by fours to settle the outcome of the Climate Wars. Pat Michaels protests “Most of the people being shouted down aren’t even guilty as charged. Almost every scientist I know will tell you that the planet is warmer than it was, and that the burning of fossil fuel has certainly contributed to the warming of recent decades.”

What a hoot ! Though a comparative stranger to the experimental atmospheric sciences, State Climatologist Pat has contributed long and voluminously to the warmth of the debate in the press. Now that even the insurance companies have read the handwriting on the wall when it comes to warming, he insists “The science is pretty simple… Hard to deny.” Indeed — but that being the case, what has deterred him from agreeing with his colleagues on so many elementary matters? On every level, from satellite radiometers in orbit to heat flows in the deep blue sea — you name it, and at some time in the last decades he has denied that it signifies humanity is making the planet warm enough to engage the wheels of policy. It seems to be his job.

On August 19, 2004, Cato published Patrick’s “Meltdown for Global Warming Science. With coauthors S. Fred Singer, and David H. Douglas, Michaels commences: “How many times have we heard from Al Gore and assorted European politicians that ‘the science is settled’ on global warming?”

They continue, “Well, the science may now be settled, but not in the way Mr. Gore and [UN official Hans] Blix would have us believe. Three bombshell papers have just hit the refereed literature that knock the stuffing of Mr. Blix’s position and that of his company, the United Nations, and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). …The surface temperature record shows a warming rate of about 0.17 degrees Celsius (0.31 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since 1979. However, there are two other records — one from satellites, the other from weather balloons — that tell a different story….which record is right, the U.N. surface record showing the larger warming or the other two?… The odd-record-out turns out to be the U.N.’s hot-surface history.”

p>So much for Michaels claims to have been swimming all along in the warm mainstream of the IPCC’s much maligned consensus. One of the cardinal rules of science is that when you are wrong, you should publish a retraction, and none has been forthcoming in Michaels’ case. Deplorable as Jim Hansen’s call for 2x4’s may be- physicists have a long tradition of not shooting other physicists, there is no scientific way of denying that Pat has invested so much heavy timber in the petard on which we see him hoist that you ought to engineer other arrangements for TAS anticlimactic retreat from the field of climate denial. At the rate Pat’s rhetoric is skidding downhill, he may come to rest as South Park ‘s official meteorologist before the ski season is out br> — Russell Seitz br> Cambridge, Massachusetts /p>

“Losing It” is a clear, rational and scientifically supportable thesis on global warming. These factors are exactly why it will be vilified and repudiated by the loony left. The purpose for the falderal about global warming is to raise money for those who make a living from “disasters’. We have the-death-of-all-American- seniors-if-the rest-of the-country-doesn’t-pay-all-our-medical-bills- for-us crowd; we have the whales are all going to nuke us disaster pending; not to mention polar bears and let us not forget fur seals and buffalo. The most vocal of each of these groups are those whose table is set by the ill-gotten proceeds of their instilling panic.

p>The purveyors of this death-is-upon-us-all tomorrow mentality are those who thrive when donations are ratcheted up in response to panic. Outright distortions, lies and made up facts are REQUIRED to create the panic that opens the faucets of donations. If you doubt this for one second just look at how one of America’s biggest buffoons has profited form the escalating rhetoric. Yes, I am referring to the Prince of Tennessee, Albert Gore Jr. This is a man who in his last few years has actually worked! His first nearly 60 years were funded by the public and the last couple of years has seen Mr. Gore finally catch on. He too could create a falsehood in the form of a video and sell it to the environmental whackers for huge bucks. Congratulations Mr. Gore. You’ve learned the rudiments of capitalism and much better late than never.