Climate-change dissenters: excerpts from a recent Senate report and from elsewhere reveal that hundreds of scientists question the idea that humans cause global warming

New American, The, Feb 18, 2008 by Dennis Behreandt

For the internationalist and environmentalist crowd, global warming is no longer about science. Instead, it is about consensus. The United Nations, through its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), argues that the world's scientists are unanimous: global warming, unless it is stopped, is an unprecedented worldwide catastrophe. Yvo de Boer, the world body's top climate official, went so far as to warn, according to USA Today, "that ignoring the urgency of global warming would be 'criminally irresponsible.'"

If that is the case, then the UN will need to find a way to lock up hundreds of scientists. That's because, contrary to the UN propagated myth of consensus, there are many scientists who fundamentally disagree with the idea that human activity is causing the planet to heat up. In fact, a recent report compiled by Senator Inhofe and the minority members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works cited and quoted "over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries" who "recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called 'consensus' on man-made global warming."

The report has received scant coverage in the media, yet its release on December 20, 2007 was a landmark event coming as it did shortly after the closure of the Bali Conference on Climate Change at which the Bush administration pledged to work toward a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Replacing Kyoto is predicated on the idea that there is no further debate about the climate. But as the Senate report, excerpted below with a few additions, overwhelmingly demonstrates, the debate over climate change not only is far from over, but the "skeptics" increasingly seem to have the balance of observational and theoretical findings in their favor.

The new and growing consensus may turn out to be that the man-made global-warming hypothesis so prevalent over the last two decades or more is nothing but a lot of hyperventilation and hot air.

The Sun and Global Warming

Dr. Nir Shaviv

Astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

On his personal website, Dr. Shaviv noted: "Like many others, I was personally sure that C[O.sub.2] is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye." A better explanation of observed warming, he explained, is the sun. "The activity of the sun manifests its self in many ways. One of them is through a variable solar wind. This flux of energetic particles and entangled magnetic field flows outwards from the sun, and impedes on a flux of more energetic particles, the cosmic rays, which come from outside the solar system. Namely, a more active sun with a stronger solar wind will attenuate the flux of cosmic rays reaching Earth. The key point in this picture is that the cosmic rays are the main physical mechanism controlling the amount of ionization in the troposphere (the bottom 10 kms or so). Thus, a more active sun will reduce the flux of cosmic rays, and with it, the amount of tropospheric ionization. As it turns out, this amount of ionization affects the formation of condensation nuclei required for the formation of clouds in [a] clean marine environment. A more active sun will therefore inhibit the formation of cloud condensation nuclei, and the resulting low altitude marine clouds will have larger drops, which are less white and live shorter, thereby warming Earth."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Fossil Fuels and Climate Change Not Linked

Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu

Director, International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska-Fairbanks

According to Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, "The relationship between the air temperature and the amount of ... consumed fossil energy is not obvious at all. It is crucial to investigate the nature of the temperature rise between 1920-1945 [before dramatic increases in fossil fuel usage] and the rise after 1975, in addition to the linear change.... The consumed fossil energy began to increase rapidly after 1945, while the temperature decreased from 1945 to 1975. Thus, it is possible that the large fluctuation between 1920 and 1975 is considered to be a natural change, unless or until proven otherwise. Therefore, unless the difference between the two changes can be understood, it is not possible to say with confidence that the rise after 1975 is mostly caused by the greenhouse effect. It is perfectly reasonable to suspect that the rise after 1975 contains a significant natural component."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Climate Change Is Common

Dr. John T. Everett

Former chief of the NOAA Fisheries

Division of Research

"Warming is not a big deal and is not a bad thing," Everett says. "The oceans and coastal zones have been far warmer and colder than is projected in the present scenarios of climate change," he pointed out. "In the oceans, major climate warming and cooling is a fact of life, whether it is over a few years as in an El Nino or over decades as in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation. Currents. temperatures, salinity, and biology changes rapidly to the new state in months or a couple years. These changes far exceed those expected with global warming and occur much faster. The one degree F. rise since about 1860, indeed since the year 1000, has brought the global average temperature from 56.5 to 57.5 degrees. This is at the level of noise in this rapidly changing system."